Bridget Burns
speaker
389 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Bridget Burns’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
There are ways, though, if leaders will just care about the people that they are trying to lead and And again, empathy is the first step of design. If you'll just learn about these people, you can structure an experience that feels good, that actually meets their needs.
And so all that to say, I hope those have been like slightly tangible in terms of relatability, but I can give you a real example of what... the best case scenario, like a good example is, and that's, we do all the time. We do, we use something called process mapping.
We didn't invent it, but how the Alliance works is I bring campuses together and we do the professional development and build them as a network and a community. So they trust each other and talk about the things that are getting in the way. And then they help each other out by here's something that worked for me. Here's something you can do.
In one of those experiences early on, Georgia State University shared about process mapping, which is one of the things they do before they do any new system. Because you have to understand the system that you're bringing a new idea into so that you don't just bring a new idea into a toxic system.
And two people who were at that event are a professor and a person who's been working at the university for, I don't know, a couple of months, early stage, early career person. And they got stuck in the airport and they decided that the idea of process mapping was pretty profound and they were going to figure out how to take it back home to Michigan State. That's where they worked.
So they went back. They first they got the person who we call a UIA fellow, which is an early career professional. They got her training process mapping. It's like a weekend experience. You go away. And they decided to invite everyone at the university who works on student success into the same room for the first time, which has never happened at the university.
And they were going to just target one period of time. They were going to map out the day the student gets admitted to the day they show up on campus. And they invited everyone who works together. And so the process mapping is basically you put a post-it note on the wall for every step in a process, right? You want to actually see the system for how it is instead of our fantasy of it.
Anyway, so all these people are in this room. These people who work very individually, they all feel like they have a different lane. They interact with students not very often, but they all work. They care about students. And this is the first time they've ever been invited to come together to see their work connected to each other.
And the way the day goes is people start putting post-it notes up for these are when we send emails to students. This is when we ask them to do this or that. And throughout the day, there's things where people are like, hey, we should stop doing this system right here. This seems like way too much or redundant or an overlap.
And because the people are in the room who oversee that system, they say that reports to me. Yeah, 100 percent. We should stop doing that. And I'm going to make that happen. Another example is someone in the room says, hey, I need this. Clearly, I need access to this data. I don't have access to this. The person who someone else in the room raises their hand and says, what's your email?
I have access to that data. I'm going to send it to you now. And so what's happening is this magical thing where people are experiencing real collaboration and a sense of community. They're feeling like they're on the same team. They're actually being reminded of the purpose that they work for students. They care about students. It's activating. It's very exciting.
They're getting inspired because they're feeling like they have permission to actually solve problems in real time. And it's just a palpable sense of enthusiasm. Like it feels like this is, oh my God, this is like the kind of experience we want to have.
And at the end of that day, they take a step back and they look at the post-it notes and the headline is they discovered that in the email line that in those three months, they were sending every student at Michigan State 450 emails in three months from the day you get admitted to the day you show up, which is overwhelming and obviously not what anyone knew and not what anyone would want to do.
And most universities have no idea that they do that. And most of them are sending more than 450. And it's got to stop because it will stop students from registering. It will stop them from being successful. It's overwhelming if you're a first-gen student. It's just like, ah, you know how it is. You unsubscribe from emails. Like, gross.
They also found that there were 50 types of holds a student could have on their account that they didn't know could exist. The university didn't know. So if we don't know, how are we expecting? The net result of this is... The institution is wiser. They're able to solve problems in real time about what the student's experiencing.
The community of people in that room feel like they actually own it. They get to decide what's happening. This is exciting. The president's not in the room, right? But since then, multiple Michigan State presidents have heard this story and it lives on. It's a legend.
It's also inspired the other UIA campuses to map all the other things they do, whether it's major change or graduation or any college to career, etc. So it's an example of... how you can make change feel good. Play music, choose a room that's well lit, invite people together to be a part of a process that feels good.
As opposed to a mandate that comes down from on high, where you individually are going to be negatively impacted and you get to have no input on the process. And frankly, the idea is rarely good. It's rarely actually the right idea. Because we know that collaboration brings better ideas. So that's an example. It's just human beings.
And if we could just have the most basic level of acknowledgement of that and care for people, we would create experiences that give them a chance to be their best selves and to give their best work and to this work should be fulfilling. And it can, I think change is incredibly fulfilling work when well done.
Yeah, invite your people into the problem that you need to solve. People love to solve problems. People love to be helpful. But what they don't want to be is a cog in a wheel told to do X or Y. And they also literally work in that area. They might have some ideas. Listen, I know that you can have employees that you're like, oh, they're just not going to want it.
Showing 241–260 of 389 · page 13 of 20
← Previous
Next →