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.
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Appearances
is that you just told me that i'm gonna have to give up this office that i've worked for you're completely ignoring the things that matter to me the experiences that have been valuable to me you haven't for a second given me an opportunity to even offer ideas based on the let's say 20-year career i have let's say i have some expertise to contribute instead you just come in with this pipe dream of an idea you know what the solution is and you give people no opportunity to
to add to it, to make it feel like it's an idea that they could be excited about. They don't even get a chance to consider it because all they do is hear, I'm going to change your life. I'm going to change your daily experience. And I respect you so little. I haven't even given you a chance to be part of the process or to offer input.
And then we also, what I find is, because that's a regular experience, it's often like physical moving offices is like the most, like the worst case, every leader will tell you that's the worst. But I could talk to you about consolidating data or getting, switching advising from being decentralized to centralized.
Now you're telling me that I'm gonna have a different boss, that what I'm responsible for completely is changing, the students I serve are changing. You're not going to even ask me for input or like I get no buy-in on this process. I get no even, I don't even get a chance to touch it. And my daily experience every day from nine to five or whatever is going to change.
And you're surprised that I am disappointed or that I might be a little bit grumpy. We just never consider the possibility that people do not, anyone who says they like change is a liar. You only like the change that was your idea and that you actually agree with. And that is usually a change that's your idea, right?
But if you told me, if like I came into my office today and you had moved my furniture in my office around, listen, it might be a better blow and layout. But the fact that change happened, that I wasn't like, you didn't give me a second to turn the water temperature up slowly so that I could acclimate to it or that I couldn't offer input.
We just jump over these very basic things and that change is discomfort. It is shifting things around and We glamorize innovation as though it's literally lasers and rainbows. And the truth is innovation is messy. I've never seen an example where innovation, we're starting something new. that you don't, the time, it doesn't take longer. It's more difficult. You run into unexpected hurdles.
So it's bumpy. It's not smooth. It's not predictable. You can't plan your day. You can't plan. You don't know when you're gonna pick your kids up. You don't know when you're gonna do all these human things. It's the human stuff that gets in the way because these are human beings.
And I just think that too often leaders, we don't have that genuine empathy to think about that for a second, to know that at the end of the day, like if you're trying to do something where humans are involved, The very basic understanding about human beings is that they are adverse to pain. They don't like pain. They don't. And they like pleasure. They like things that feel good.
And what constitutes pain for me is probably different than you. But generally, all you got to do is be a little curious to try and figure out the things I value, the things I don't. The things that constitute pleasure for me are maybe I'm extroverted and I like to talk to people. Maybe I'm introverted and that sounds terrible if you're offering to give me a speech opportunity.
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?
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