Dealing with Change w/Steph Bertmer
Episode Overview
In this episode of "Making Better," host Matt Gjertsen sits down with Stephanie Bertmer, the Head of Learning and Development at Pinterest, to discuss the topic of dealing with change. As an expert in navigating change in the tech and startup world, Steph shares her insights on how to handle change when leading an L&D team. From prioritizing programs to communicating with the team, Steph provides valuable advice on making the most out of change and ensuring a smooth transition. Whether it's budget cuts, new leadership, or shifts in company direction, this episode offers practical tips for embracing change and thriving in the face of uncertainty. Tune in to learn from Steph's wealth of experience and gain valuable insights on navigating change in the learning and development space.
About Steph Barter
Stephanie Bertmer isthe Head of Learning and Development at Pinterest. Steph is an expert at dealing with change, change of leadership, change of direction, she has seen it all. Since change is something we all deal with, I thought it would be great to have Steph on to discuss how she deals with change, especially when leading an L&D team.
Full Transcript
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Steph Bertmer [00:00:00]:
Your direct reports may not have that visibility into broader initiatives or how initiatives are being received. So I always try to communicate it. Here's a priority that we have going on in another sort of department that is impacting the entire company. Right. So we may be launching a big new companywide sort of change. It's probably not the best time to launch a new learning program.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:25]:
Welcome to Making Better, a podcast from Better Everyday Studios devoted to helping small learning teams have a big impact. Today I am talking to Stephanie Bertmer, the Head of Learning and Development at Pinterest. Steph is an expert at dealing with change. Change of leadership, change of direction. She has seen it all since. Change is something we all deal with. I thought it would be great to have Steph on to discuss how she deals with change, especially when leading an L D team. Let's dive in.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:52]:
Steph, good morning. Welcome to the making. Better podcast. How are you doing today?
Steph Bertmer [00:00:57]:
I am here, I'm alive, I'm well. How are you?
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:00]:
I'm doing great. Yes. We are recording pretty early to make sure we fit it into some schedules, so I definitely probably was a little bit more of a whirlwind this morning than I usually like to be, but we're here. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this a little bit early. Really excited for the conversation.
Steph Bertmer [00:01:19]:
Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:21]:
Absolutely. So we met a few months ago just because of some connections we have with where we've worked, but I'm wondering for anybody that doesn't know you, if you could give us a quick rundown into your background, who you are, how you got started, that kind of thing.
Steph Bertmer [00:01:39]:
Yeah, sounds good. So I've spent the past 15 years or so in the learning and talent development space and different industries like tech, advertising, entertainment, and I started my career in aviation. I worked for an airline called Virgin America when it was just a startup and really got into learning and development that way. So spent a lot of time in frontline training onboarding flight attendants, guest service agents, thinking about leadership development and aviation. So that really grew my love for learning and then transitioned into the tech space and haven't looked back since.
Matt Gjertsen [00:02:15]:
Awesome. Yeah, I think you definitely have a background of kind of that tech startup world, which that's a lot of my background as well. And it's definitely a very interesting space for all things, but especially L and D, just because there's so much change. And change is actually the specific reason that I wanted to have you on, because especially over the past couple of years, whether it's the startups that you've been in that are always going to be having a lot of change, or recently you used to work at Twitter. Now you're in Pinterest, kind of starting a new role there. And so I really wanted to have you on to talk about change from an l D perspective because, you know, since we are a group of people that know so responsible for communicating information to a company and that could be information about what your job function is or what the company culture is. We are often handling onboarding for a company and so a lot of that change has to kind of filter through us in certain ways. And so as someone who's seen a lot of change, I thought it'd be great to talk to you about that specific idea. And so what I'd love to kind of start off with are when you're thinking about change and you know a big change is coming to affect the company or your team, what are the first things that you think about?
Steph Bertmer [00:03:38]:
Yeah, I think immediately where my head goes is, how does this impact our team? I'm thinking about what programs do we have that are live, what work do we have on our roadmap? So I'm really thinking about, okay, how does this impact the team? And then thinking more specifically, like, what is the change? Is it a budget cut? Is there an impending acquisition? Is it a leadership change? I think the type of change also really matters. I'll talk about my experience specifically. I think it was a couple of things. Right now, I know a lot of companies are cutting back on some of their budgets or slowing down hiring. So it's a bit of like a pause phase, I think about what programs do we have that are running live that are still relevant? So when I think about manager development, manager skills are always going to be relevant. So that's probably not something that we're going to stop doing, but is there anything else that is really expensive? It's high touch. The team is putting a lot of work and energy and effort and is this really going to yield the results that we need right now? So I'll give you an example. In my past life, we ran a lot of high touch, very tailored leadership development programs that weren't cheap. And when I was thinking about sort of the context in which I was operating in budgets were pulling back. We may have a new leadership team. Does it make sense to continue to invest in this program or can we reinvest in other areas and have a wider impact? Right, so in that specific example, my team, we decided to pause that program and do something to support all managers. We did like a speaker series on leading through change, offered a coaching circle. So it's really about supporting a broader employee base during that time and just thinking about what's the best use of sort of our time and money and effort. So one, it's really thinking about how is this going to impact our team, are the program still relevant? And then when I think about how do I communicate to my team. It's really about trying to offer as much clarity as I can. Sometimes I don't have the answers, and I tell my team that. I'm like, look, I don't know where this is going, but I want to share with you what I do know. There's a lot we don't, but there are things that we do know.
Matt Gjertsen [00:06:00]:
Yeah, I love how you answered that because I think it really speaks to the importance of being proactive. I think a lot of times when you hear about change, it can be very threatening and defensive. People will get defensive and you pull back and it's almost kind of like you're waiting for the shoe to drop and seeing what's going to happen. Whereas what you said is just like, okay, as soon as you hear some change, especially if it's going to be something around budget, which a lot of people are probably seeing in the last few months or year, is immediately you going to like, okay, so what should we do here? How do we prioritize things? What are we going to cut? When you act in that proactive fashion, have you or obviously everything in life is aspirational we're all saying, what we want to do versus what we maybe do. Do you put together a plan that you then bring to your boss and say, like, hey, these things are happening here's? Kind of what I would suggest we do. Or is it more that you've been asked for those plans and then you provide them?
Steph Bertmer [00:07:11]:
Yeah, it's usually a recommendation because I think a lot of teams in learning and development, they have their ears on the ground. You hear what's happening in training sessions, sometimes managers will reach out to the learning team because that's who they've interacted with during onboarding. Right. So I feel like both Learning and Hrvps really have this opportunity to have an ear on the ground. A lot of the times it's me hearing from my team what's happening and providing a recommendation with that example that I just gave you. I'm like, look, I don't think these programs are really going to land right now within this context. What do you think about X, Y and Z and how that might land? So definitely providing a recommendation, sharing with my leader, and getting sign off there before moving forward.
Matt Gjertsen [00:08:02]:
Yeah, I've been talking to a couple of people about this the last few weeks. I feel like something that comes up a lot because like you said, learning folks, HRBPs, we really do have a good pulse of the company a lot of times because when we're doing our best work, we're out there in the business interacting with people on the ground, really getting a sense of what's happening. And I at least have found in almost every company I've worked with, there is a disconnect at some level where there's what the people on the ground need and what leadership, whether that be it's usually not frontline manager. It's usually like somewhere between manager and director level, or maybe it's up at the executive level. But what leadership at some level thinks the people on the ground need? When you are looking at these prioritizations, how much does that factor into your thinking in terms of and what I mean by that is, say it's a really high touch, expensive program. Maybe it's like executive coaching or something like that, which is usually extremely expensive. And I don't know if that's what it was, but I'm just giving an example of something that comes to mind. Would you ever consider keeping a program that maybe doesn't seem to make as much sense to you from when you're looking out at the ground? But, you know, it's got a ton of executive buy in. It's seen as really important by certain people, I suppose.
Steph Bertmer [00:09:30]:
Yeah, I think there's always a balance there. There's always a balance. And when I think about programs that my team builds or that we run, I always try to meet somewhere in the middle. Right. It's like, what is really important to our leadership team? What's going to drive the business, what's a priority for them, and blending it with what are we actually hearing that folks need? And I often see this in manager development. Leadership team wants to make sure we're really driving certain behaviors or competencies, and we know that there's some more specific sort of skill gaps. Right. So whenever I create training or a new initiative, it really tries to blend both the push and the pull. So I like to say that I'm a pretty balanced person, and that shows up too, in the work that I do in learning.
Matt Gjertsen [00:10:21]:
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I think you're spot on, is that it is always about that balance. It's not about dying on the hill of defending the one side, and it's not about selling out and just going with leadership all the time. It's kind of like finding that middle ground, for sure. And so as you're doing this prioritization and you're kind of deciding what to keep and what to get rid of, I'm guessing sometimes that starts to get to if, say, there's a person on your team and their whole job is this program, and you've determined that this program isn't really going to work. Now, maybe that affects their job, maybe it doesn't. But how do you go about talking to your team about that in terms of how do you keep them from getting super defensive? How do you have that discussion?
Steph Bertmer [00:11:13]:
Sure. I love to. That's my small child screaming in the background. If you hear that 1 second, you want to say, good morning.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:30]:
Hello. Hi. My daughter would be like, hey, how's it going? She'd be like, diving in from the side.
Steph Bertmer [00:11:42]:
Can you go with dad? Go get ready. Go get dressed. Hi, dude.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:48]:
That's funny.
Steph Bertmer [00:11:49]:
Okay. All right. Where were we?
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:52]:
Having conversations around with teammates who could potentially have their job be threatened by removing a specific program. How do you have those conversations?
Steph Bertmer [00:12:03]:
Yeah, this is definitely relevant. I like to engage people early and often and explain sort of what's on the horizon. Right. So I had a specific example in my past life where a person on my team focused really on targeted programs for specific audiences. So this might look like a women's leadership development program. This might look like a career development program for underrepresented talent all, which are incredibly important. But given some of budget pullbacks, we weren't going to have the budget that we had in the past. It was just a conversation. It was like, look, hey, things are changing right now. We're probably not going to have the same money that we did. What do you think about the scenario and what do you think that we should do? So it's more of a discussion to get their input rather than, hey, we're pausing these programs, we're going to put you on something else. I like to try to bring my team in early and often and let's think through this together and also help explain my thinking around the way that I'm waiting. In the past example I gave, I'm like, I think we can impact more people across the company and have a larger impact if we think about our budget and our programs differently now. So what do you think about that? So it's really trying to get alignment and their input early on because for a lot of people, that is their whole job. It's a lot of what they care about and what they're passionate about and doesn't mean we're not going to have those programs again. It just means not now.
Matt Gjertsen [00:13:41]:
Yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, okay. Yeah, I think that really again, it goes back to that proactive piece, and it reminds me of leadership tip that I heard years ago that said something like managers are not communicated to, they're communicated through. And kind of your whole goal should be to just be seamlessly passing information to your team as you receive it, rather than always seeing yourself as kind of an arbiter of information. Yeah. And so when you're having those discussions, something that just came to mind as you were talking about that, what are some of the most common things you find that you kind of have to coach people on when maybe they're newer team members? You're looking at things from this kind of 30,000 foot view of what's best for the company as a whole. They're focused on their particular program. Yeah. What are some of the more common things you have to coach people on to kind of get their heads wrapped around these larger ideas?
Steph Bertmer [00:14:46]:
For sure. I think that comes back to my role as a manager, too, communicating what's happening across the business. Right. Because your direct reports may not have that visibility into broader initiatives or how initiatives are being received. So I always try to communicate even though it might not be directly related to their role. It's like, look, here's a priority that we have going on in another sort of department that is impacting the entire company, right? So we may be launching a big new company wide sort of change. That's probably not the best time to launch a new learning program, right? We're all coming from the same team. When we think about our audience, we should be thinking about, all right, what's the right timing? Does this fit together? So what I like to do is just pass down some of the other key initiatives that may impact who our audience is. That's a lot of what I do when I'm thinking about coaching my team is just giving them more visibility. Even though it may not be directly related to what they're doing, it does impact some of the work and how some of our programs will be received.
Matt Gjertsen [00:16:02]:
I love that it kind of goes back to just that idea of focusing on the customer, really being like using that in past companies that I've worked with, that was always where we tried to draw motivation from. And the company as a whole might be thinking about that in terms of the end customer, but for us, as support teams, our customers are the people in the business. And so just reminding people of who we're really here to support, what we're really here to do, and using that as a way to kind of just simplify the conversation and focus in on making sure you're doing what makes sense, that totally makes sense. And so then when you're having those conversations too, obviously I think one of the things that can be really difficult with change is it can be super demotivating to people sometimes, especially if you have some big goal. Maybe there's a program that you've been working on for months and you're like right on the verge of rollout and then you have to like, yeah, we're not going to do that anymore. How do you think about motivating your team in times like that?
Steph Bertmer [00:17:08]:
Oh yeah, that is so disappointing. When you've worked so hard on a project or a program. Yeah, I totally understand that. How do I think about motivation? It really depends on the person. Sure, it depends on the person. It also depends on what the program is. Did they build it themselves? Right? Did they go and build the training and are facilitating it? All of that matters. So when I think about motivation, I think about how else might I motivate them? Is there another project that I can put them on that really taps into kind of their purpose, what they care about and like we just talked about how do we get focused on what the customer is, right? While we may not move forward with that program that we built, how else can we position the work that they're doing in support of the broader company, in support of employees. And I think when I think about motivation, I really like to understand what my team members care about. Have you heard of the concept called job crafting?
Matt Gjertsen [00:18:19]:
I'm not sure.
Steph Bertmer [00:18:21]:
So it's really about building roles that tap into sort of people's motivation and their skills. I really subscribe to that idea of creating roles and putting people on projects that tap into what they really care about. So for example, we might not launch that big leadership program, but we are doing something else to support our manager. So I might put the person on leadership development on that new initiative. So really tapping into what they care about and sort of their innate sense of purpose and sort of why do they show up day to day?
Matt Gjertsen [00:18:56]:
That makes a lot of sense. Now, I know I didn't prep you to say that I was going to ask this, so this might not go well. And so if you don't have an answer to it, I totally understand and we can cut it out, but it would be great. When you think back, do you have an example of maybe some point in your history where there was a change that happened that you didn't deal with very well or didn't make great decisions and kind of what lessons you learned? And then how did that turn into an example of a change that happened that you do feel you dealt with?
Steph Bertmer [00:19:29]:
Well, change gosh didn't go well. Yeah, I think a recent example is around understanding organizational capacity, like what the company is ready and has capacity for. Right meaning like learning and development may have a program that they want to launch, an initiative that they want to drive and not really consider all the other things that might be going on in the business. So it could be a specific time during the year, maybe it's budget planning or maybe it's a busy time in the advertising space where there's a lot of customer type of focus. I don't have a specific example, but I know earlier in my career I really didn't consider all the other things going on in the business when thinking about launching and delivering learning and development programs. And that really eats at people's capacity to be present. It really eats at people's capacity to take the learnings back into their day to day. So I think just like broader lesson there is really working with HR business partners. If you all have HR business partners in your organization, it's working with leaders to understand the cadence of what's going on in the company. Busy times versus not so busy times. Probably not a good idea to launch a program in July and August in EMEA when people are out on PTO. Right? So I think that's one of the lessons that I've learned over time, really thinking about what's going on in the company and their overall capacity to absorb new programs.
Matt Gjertsen [00:21:35]:
That's so great because it really speaks back to this idea of change and kind of even if the change isn't affecting the learning team or it's not affecting your budgets, if there's big organizational change, even if you could, it might not be a good time to launch that program. If there's a massive reorg happening in one part of the company or the whole company, even if you could do something, it doesn't mean you should at a super micro level. I remember at the last company I worked at, it was the first company that had a real sales team where there were a lot of AES and stuff, and so I was doing training for them, and I remember trying to schedule a bunch of interviews to get a course off the ground. Don't schedule interviews with salespeople the last week of the month or certainly not the last week of the quarter, because they will ignore you.
Steph Bertmer [00:22:33]:
Yeah, for sure. Definitely.
Matt Gjertsen [00:22:35]:
Yeah, that was a good lesson learned for me. Awesome. Well, any other final thoughts that you have around change and managing change from an L D perspective?
Steph Bertmer [00:22:47]:
Steph definitely. I think the biggest thing that I've learned, too, is to shorten your time. You know, when we think about planning, we're thinking about down years, down the road, just shorten the time horizon. It's like, all right, six months from now, what can we commit to? And just take baby steps that way? I think that is one thing that really helped my team succeed and feel like, all right, cool, we've got some wins here. We have visibility a few months down the road, and then we'll take it from there. We'll reassess six months later, see how it goes. So time horizon is shortening. That is really important.
Matt Gjertsen [00:23:28]:
That is awesome. I love that as just kind of an answer to all of this stuff. It's just like when change happens, just whether it's to help push motivation, help keep people focused, is just pull back that time horizon. I love that because you don't know what's going to be on the other side, and rather than worrying about it, just focus on what you do know. I think that's so fantastic. Well, that's a great spot to end. Steph so thank you so much for being here this morning, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.
Steph Bertmer [00:23:58]:
Sounds good. Thanks for having me.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:00]:
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you liked the discussion, make sure.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:02]:
To hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:05]:
As a reminder, if your team is struggling keeping up with the training development demands of your organization, station We Want to Help better Everyday Studios is a full service instructional design team that can help you with everything from ideation to actual content creation and delivery. Please reach out to us using the link in the episode notes below.
Matt Gjertsen [00:24:25]:
Have a great day.
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