Reading, writing, speaking and listening with joy and engagement

Jen Burkart: 
Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, I wish I had a hobby or I wish I... Honestly, I wish I could travel more." I think when you work full-time as a mother and you are crazy about your kids, which most mothers I know are, that just becomes the only extra thing you get to do. I interviewed someone once and they had asked them like, "What do you like to do outside of work?" And they're like, "I'm a principal, and I have two children. I work and I engage with my kids." Yeah, it’s a challenge. It’s a real challenge. I feel like I still miss out, even though I try to be super engaged.

Dave Weich:
Hi, I’m Dave Weich, and you’re listening to Work-Shaped Life.

[introduction]
So much of your social circle depends on work when you’re young especially. A lot of the people I hang out with now, for instance, I met because they used to work with one of my friends. 

Other lasting friends I met through my own coworkers. And that’s always fascinating, right, when you meet your coworkers’ friend group outside of work for the first time. A vision of their life starts to come into focus.

Jen was Hanna’s friend. Hanna being my coworker. At the time, I knew that Jen was a teacher, but the details were fuzzy. This was more than twenty years ago, before anyone we knew had kids or a career to speak of.

My favorite picture of Jen from those days shows her looking down at me through the glass coffee table in her living room. I’d crawled underneath to conduct an impromptu photo shoot of our friends at the party, and she’s posing for me—hands out, smiling—as if that decision to get down on that rug and skootch under the table needed no explaining at all. 

[interview]

What do you do, Jen?

Jen Burkart:
Well, it's funny because people always say don't talk about your title, but say what you actually do. So, I'll start with what I think I do at the core.

Dave:
Okay.

Jen Burkart:
I think at the core, my ultimate job is to ensure that 17,000 students can read and write, speak, and listen with joy and engagement.

Dave:
Okay. And who are those 17,000 students? What are we talking about age-wise?

Jen Burkart:
Preschool through 12th grade.

Dave:
Okay.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. A little bit of a span there.

Dave:
And how long-

Jen Burkart:
Pre-literate.

Dave:
... would you say this has been your job?

Jen Burkart:
Two and a half years, I guess, at this point. However, I've been kind of working at this before I even got the job, which is I think how I ended up with this role. So, I was hired as the early learning coordinator to onboard preschool and align the practices preschool through second grade. And that kind of snowballed. We started seeing some increased gains that was pretty promising and exciting. And then I stepped into this role to be pre-K through 12th grade, which is-

Dave:
So, it's a natural progression?

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. Yes. It's my dream job. It truly is my dream job.

Dave:
And you were a teacher previously. What were the steps to get to where you are now?

Jen Burkart:
I started at Michigan State and then university. And I got an undergrad in elementary education, which is not typical out here in Oregon. Most people get an undergrad in something else, and then they go back for their master's in education. So, I have an undergrad in elementary education, and then I came out here and I taught... Well, I actually taught for two years in Michigan first, fourth grade. And then I taught sixth grade when I moved out here, kicking and screaming. I did not want to be a middle school teacher and then fell in love with those kids. And then I got my master's in reading endorsement in literacy. And then I became a literacy coach at a school, two schools. We had really some pretty exciting success there. One of the schools I worked with went from the bottom third of the district to the top third in one year.

So, that was pretty exciting. And because of that, I was pulled up into the district office to be the district office literacy specialist. And then I got my admin endorsement, I guess, not really a degree. And then moved over to North Clackamas to do the preschool work, and then now preschool through 12th grade. Yeah. So, I’ve kind of done all of the positions along the way, which is kind of cool. And I think that's really... I wasn't a school secretary. That's the one I missed. But other than that, I've been pretty much everything, including a paraeducator, classroom volunteer, all the way up now to director..

Dave:
And you have three kids who-

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
... all can read.

Jen Burkart:
Thank goodness. Two of them like it.

Dave:
We'll work on that third.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
So, how would you say, again, that sounds amazing and you have your dream job.

Jen Burkart:
Mm-hmm. I do.

Dave:
Do you have your dream life?

Jen Burkart:
Great question. I think for the most part I do.

Dave:

Yeah.
Jen Burkart:

I do think that the most part I do.

Dave:
I mean, your job supports the idea, like how you want to live, you feel like?

Jen Burkart:
Oh, well, that's a different question. That's a different question. I think if I would've known... I don't know how I could do another job because I'm so passionate about this job. I think I was born for this work.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
And I just don't know how I'd do another job and get to work at this. So it's hard to compare because I'd like to have a more flexible job. I'd love to work from home. I'd love to work part-time, part of the year, all of those things. But the job doesn't allow it. So it’s almost like asking me to choose between freedom and my job, and I don't know if I could do that. I really love my job.

Dave:
Yeah. Well, what-

Jen Burkart:
Wish I could do it less, but I love it.

Dave:
What about that though? I mean, not everyone loves their job. Why are you passionate about it? Give me an example of something that might happen or something like you must feel gratification, for instance.

Jen Burkart:
Well, I think it started much younger. My passion for it is because I was raised by a single mom and we were in pretty deep poverty for many years and school was such a happy place for me. I was good at it and it was surprising to many people that I was good at. It was surprising to my teachers. It was surprising to some of my friends who were from wealthier homes. And so, just from a very young age, I really felt that I wanted to make sure that all students had access and all students were seen in the light that I was lucky enough to be seen at a very early age. So, it's really just closing the opportunity gap for students, racial opportunity gap, poverty. Poverty is an opportunity gap that we have in our outcomes for students. We have many gaps right now in education.

So, in closing those gaps so that you cannot determine a student's outcome or their reading level based on their ZIP code, their gender, their race, all of that. I think that's what... And just the love of reading and writing is so... When you can get a kid hooked on drawing comics or that next series of books or writing their story with humor, and it's so fun to see. And I don't know, I think I'm just passionate that all kids should get to have a great teacher.

Dave:
When you think of that, was there someone you said you felt seen? Is there someone in your memory? Was it more a generalized thing?

Jen Burkart:
I think it was more generalized.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
It wasn't one specific teacher. I just had a series of great teachers from an early age that sort of elevated my status in the class, even though my status based on my clothing or the way I appeared or many other elements may not have been elevated. But yeah, my abilities academically brought that on. So, yeah, I just want that for all kids. I mean, this is a cheesy analogy, but I think of this movie, I hate animated films, but I'm going to go there because there were some years that I had to do it, but there's that Monsters Inc movie where they live on children's screams. I feel like mine is the opposite.

I am propelled by seeing a kid's chest puff up, so that seeing that kid that's hunched over their desk and they look like they're kind of shy and they're kind of hiding their work because they don't think they're as good as the other students. And then finding one little thing that they're amazing at, you see them literally puff up their chest and stand up a little taller and I just live off of that. And I don't get to see that as much anymore. And I'm in the district office-

Dave:
How is it different than being in a classroom?

Jen Burkart:
It's so different, but I get to go to a lot of different schools. I have 17 elementary schools, and so I go around and see... I lead instructional coaches in the district, so I get to go and visit them and see what's going on in the classrooms. And it's really exciting to see something that started as... Most of the ideas and the work that we do and the shifts that we make start from something we see in a classroom. We really try not to have ideas removed from what we're seeing happening in actual classrooms, but to see something that we worked on actually happening in a classroom and bringing joy and engagement to students, I get to have a few of those chest puff-up moments.

Dave:
That's cool.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. I love that.

Dave:
Do you think that you are, you seem more gratified by your work than I think most people?

Jen Burkart:
I think so, yeah.

Dave:
I mean, I think so. I think it's one of the reasons why I was curious to talk to you, because like you said, you're passionate about it.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. I love it. I think about it all day long, my bedside table is filled with books about teaching kids how to read. Yeah, I'm obsessed.

Dave:
Your path feels pretty linear in a very satisfying way.

Jen Burkart:
Super linear. Yeah.

Dave:
Did you recognize this? I mean, at Michigan State, you got a degree. I mean, you were 18, 19, 20 years old, and this was already how you saw what your professional life might be.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah, that's true. I would say though, my passion for literacy didn't come until later. I think I want to be a teacher because honestly, I came from a very small town. So, I'm guessing if you would have asked that 16-year-old girl who decided that she wanted to start volunteering in classrooms, like, "Why are you doing this?" I'd be like, "Well, I can be a nurse. I can be a teacher, maybe a doctor, maybe a lawyer. That sounds like a lot of schooling." And so, I started volunteering in classrooms and I think I started out just loving kids, thinking they're hilarious and liking hanging out with them. And I thought I was going to be a science professor for a while. So, it wasn't always literacy.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
It wasn't until I was in the classroom myself and I realized, "Oh, shit, I don't know how to teach kids how to read." Honestly, your undergrad doesn't do a very good job, especially if the student is striving or struggling to learn to read. So, it's linear in terms of its education, but where my passion came from, I think was a little bit more winding, if that makes sense.

Dave:
You've always liked to read?

Jen Burkart:
I have always liked to read. Not so much write, but I've always loved to read. Yeah. And I didn't grow up in a house with very many books. So, I often will cite that research about how many books are in the home and a student's ability to read and write later in life. And whenever I... It is true research, but it's actual research has been done about that, but that wasn't my path.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
If you had a bunch of money, would you still work?

Jen Burkart:
That's such a great question. That's a great question. Oh, I think I've been working since I was 19, right? I mean, earlier than that, right? I started babysitting when I was 14, and I've had a full-time job that's rare. I don't have any siblings that have had a full-time job while raising multiple kids. I have very few friends that have had full-time jobs while raising multiple children, any children. And so, when I think about my whole life, I feel like I got to do my dream job. I really won the lottery right now. I'm not sure. I'm ready to travel. I'm ready to try other things, but I probably still... I think I'd probably do that for like a year or two, and then I'd have to get back into it some way.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. I always used to say as a teacher that I would still be a teacher, but I would hire an amazing personal assistant who would do all the grunt work that I didn't want to do, but I actually would get to stay in front of kids every day. And I think there's probably some element of that to be truth to that, that I would take a year off and then come back in some element.

Dave:
Yeah. No, I mean, that makes sense. I don't have kids, so I have no real basis of comparison, but you have a very demanding job and you are... I don't know, a more to me from the outside, you are as or more actively engaged in your children and their lives than really any other parent I know. I mean, you're not a single parent.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
So that's a different kind of challenge, but you are not... Yeah, you work a lot, but if I didn't know anything about your work life, I would be like, "Jen, oh my God, what a mom. Well, she's like..."

Jen Burkart:
That's kind of you. I think it's really interesting that it's like I don't... Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, I wish I had a hobby or I wish I... Honestly, I wish I could travel more." I think when you work full-time as a mother and you are crazy about your kids, which most mothers I know are, that just becomes the only extra thing you get to do. I interviewed someone once and they had asked them like, "What do you like to do outside of work?" And they're like, "I'm a principal, and I have two children. I work and I engage with my kids." And that’s hard. I’ve missed hanging out and chatting with you and other friends. We try to carve out those little bits of time, but my kids are also super active, which I love. I believe just keep kids busy, keep them off screens, keep them away from drugs, keep them busy.

And that's kind of my philosophy there. But yeah, it's a challenge. It's a real challenge. I feel like I still miss out, even though I try to be super engaged.

Dave:
Well, and it's like we all miss out in a way. Again, I don't have kids. I mean, this is part of why I marvel at it. And on the one hand, I know plenty of people who have jobs and kids. It's certainly possible. On the other hand, what excuse do I have?

Jen Burkart:
What do you mean? For what?

Dave:
I have all the time in the world, theoretically. I mean, I guess I don't because I have a business, but I don't know. I just feel like trying to work in the number of hours that you do seems Herculean. I don't even know how that would be possible, and yet you've always done it. I mean, I think it seems like your job is probably more demanding in the last few years than it was previously.

Jen Burkart:
Oh, yes.

Dave:
And maybe that helps because your kids are at least a little grown now.

Jen Burkart:
Yes, yes. No, that does help that they're getting a little bit older. Although sometimes that means they're involved in more activities. But Mike started working from home almost at the same time that I started this more demanding job. So, that has been... I really just work and engage with my kids.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
I mean, he does that so much.

Dave:
Yeah. Well, and we've talked about that. I mean, you happen to have a husband who loves, loves, loves to spend time with his kids.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave:
Which is-

Jen Burkart:
And he's super at his-

Dave:
... a huge bonus, really, really smart in getting him.

Jen Burkart:
And he's also just super... We do not follow most gender rules in a marriage, right? He cooks and does the laundry and signs kids up for doctor's appointments. All the things that my friends often complain about they're doing, and I have to sit quietly and be like, "I've got a really supportive partner." So, that's helpful. But no, but it's also exhausting. Let's not pretend it's not, right? I wake up at 4:00 in the morning, I run because I need some sanity and then-

Dave:
What time do you go to bed?

Jen Burkart:
Well, I go to bed pretty early because I wake up at 4:00-

Dave:
You get up at 4:00 in the morning!

Jen Burkart:
Yeah, I try to lights out at 9:00. Yeah.

Dave:
Okay. And you mentioned your friends and I'm curious about that because you don't have to name names. I just mean, has your passionate and very determined pursuit of a career affected some of your relationships with other moms or dads for that matter, who are more focused on sort of family? They don't have that other outlet and focus and passion?

Jen Burkart:
Yeah, I would say it has affected it. I wouldn't say it affected the relationships I had before kids though.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
I think I could draw a line there. The relationships I had before kids, those have been maintained because we were friends before all that chaos began and many of us started that chaos together.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
But I will say, I didn't realize how important it was to become friends with the other moms of your kids in that same grade, because then you're not or are invited to birthday parties and play dates and all this stuff, right? And so, as a working mom, you miss that pickup and drop off time at school, and you miss the volunteer and the bus ride to the play and all that stuff where all those little relationships get brokered. And there's, people will say that it's not true, but there is a divide when you show up to the play and you're wearing a nice outfit and you clearly just came from work and someone's sitting next to you with yoga pants.

I'm clearly jealous of them. I mean, I am, maybe I'm not clearly. I feel jealous that they just got to go to Pilates and roll into this and I had to leave a meeting and race over to maybe make the second half of the play. But there's just this unspoken thing and I'm sure they're just thinking I'm judging them. I don't know, but there is a divide. People try to say that they're not and, "Oh, women support women." There's just a little weird vibe there when you work versus not working.

Dave:
For sure.

Jen Burkart:
So, I've seen some of my friends who don't work as much or have more flexible jobs, they're able to navigate that better than I've been able to. And so, yeah, I think it has affected those relationships.

Dave:
Right. I mean, I know you through all these people that you don't know from work.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
Do you have close work friends?

Jen Burkart:
I do. I've got the best work friends.

Dave:
That's amazing.

Jen Burkart:
I do. I mean, right now I would call my team my friends, which is probably terrible leadership. I often tell them I haven't read any leadership books that everything I get is from Instagram. So, let me know if-

Dave:
This is literacy.

Jen Burkart:
Yes. I read about teaching reading, but I don't read about leadership. It's so boring to me, but yeah. So-

Dave:
What is that? No, but I mean, I think that's exactly the kind of... So, is it just a natural, you're operating on instinct there? I don't read about leadership either. I run a company, so this is not a judgment. What gives you the confidence? Is it confidence or is it just a genuine like, "I cannot read that book because it is boring as hell to me," or some kind of combination of the two? Because you would do professional development. You're not averse to professional development.

Jen Burkart:
No.

Dave:
No. You go to conferences.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. I find it interesting if I learn about improvement science.

Dave:
Okay.

Jen Burkart:
So, that I guess is a form of leadership, but it's more about, I don't know if you've read much about improvement science. A lot of what we're doing in education is managing complex change over a large system. So, I do love, that's actually, I'm obsessed with that. So, yeah, there's this, I think it's out of Harvard there, the implementation science group that looked at really how does an organization get at the core of what their issues are and then how do they figure out what are the root causes and then how do they figure out which causes are causing the other, you can get down the line on this one pretty deep. So, that kind of leadership around managing complex change over a system, super engaged and interested in that. I think it's some of the same things that you do, right? Empathy interviews with constituents and looking at data across the system and all of those things. And then really thinking about what's the psychology behind shifting someone's mindset about so many things.

The first thing we have to do is shift people's mindset about what kids can do, what they're capable of. So, that kind of leadership I find interesting, but like leading my team and like all of like Brené Brown's Dare to Lead and all these different... I'm just not interested in that. I mean, and I think that I'm doing okay. My team and I are killing it and I really just, I hire well. I hired well.

Dave:
That's key.

Jen Burkart:
They're amazing.

Dave:
And hiring well is actually a really good example because what that made me think was no person has the bandwidth and almost certainly the interest. I mean, maybe there are some unicorns out there, but you have to pick and choose how you're going to learn and what you're going to focus on. You only have so many hours in the day.

Jen Burkart:
100%.

Dave:
And so, there is some sort of innate, like that is not what I'm going to do with my time because somehow I either have the confidence or I just don't have the problems. I'm not seeing if you were suffering in some way that Brené Brown was potentially going to help, you might go there and be more open to it, but that is not your experience.

Jen Burkart:
I know. And that's the whole game, right? You have to figure out where you're going to put your focus because you can't do everything. And as a recovering perfectionist, I would say that was a hard lesson to learn. Here's the plate of things I could focus on, right? And I think that's just not one that I've decided that hasn't needed as much attention.

Dave:
With getting older and having done whatever you're doing for longer, there's also this sense of like you start to understand what actually helps you and what doesn't. I think when you're younger, it's harder to know because you haven't tried any of these approaches or tools. And so, it feels like you need to because otherwise you're slacking. And then you get to a certain point and you're like, "Number one, I can't do everything. And number two, I'm bored to tears when I do that particular thing and that's not necessarily a productive use of my time."

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. I think that's how we kind of get into where we land in our careers, right? At least those of us who've had the opportunity to kind of follow that passion and move away from something that they're losing interest in.

Dave:
Right.

Jen Burkart:
Right.

Dave:
I am very interested in talking to people with all sorts of different, not just vocations and work lives, but also it's not success exactly. It's more gratification. There are lots of people who from the outside you would judge as successful, but they might be miserable. They might hate their jobs. They might feel like, "I can't believe I got into this particular line of work and here I am 20 years later because it's what I do and I wish I'd done that other thing."

And I think that's part of it too. I don't know if it's for you, maybe it's... I feel like there's similarities in that I never knew what I wanted to do, but I always knew what interested me and had no hesitation to pursue it. I was always passionate enough about something and I don't know, some combination of disciplined and lucky enough to do something that resembled it, to do it and then you get experience and then people believe you can do it and it leads to some other thing, but it wasn't as if I decided 30 years ago that I wanted to do this when I was in my 50s.

Jen Burkart:
Same. Right. But I'd be a teacher forever.

Dave:
How does this translate? Like you have a son who just went to college. What do you think you would tell your kids, or what do you tell him about how to find a satisfying…?

Jen Burkart:
That's a very relevant question right now.

Dave:
Right.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah, because my oldest is really struggling trying to figure out... Now college is so expensive, right? So, everyone knows what they want to be right when they go there. It's so strange.

Dave:
But no one knows what they want to be.

Jen Burkart:
But no one really knows.

Dave:
They just think they know what they want to achieve something.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah, exactly. So, he's getting this idea that everyone has a path and the passion they're going to go forward and you're like, "Oh, half these kids are going to do something."

Dave:
There is so much pressure because it looks like other people are so-

Jen Burkart:
Yes.

Dave:
... focused and smart.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. Totally. And he's feeling very much like, "I don't even know why I'm here. These classes don't even like... Why am I taking classes if I don't know what they're going towards?"

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
So, that's interesting. I forgot my thinking. What will I tell him about... I guess, it's kind of like what we just talked about is follow what lights you up. I'm just scared what lights him up is fishing, eating sushi and although maybe that's the thing, right?

Dave:
Right. Now you're going to be like, "Huh, I made it into a career."

Jen Burkart:
Yeah, great, great. Please, please, let me have that be the problem in 20 years that I was wrong.

Dave:
I do believe no matter what people do, they will be better at it if they enjoy it, no matter what it is. If you like it, you're probably going to be better at it.

Jen Burkart:
Totally. I also think that the feeling of agency is often overlooked. And I don't know if that's something everyone has and that it just needs to be lit up. But for example, I often think about when I grew up on 40 acres in the woods and we would come up with an idea and we would execute it tomorrow.

Dave:
For example?

Jen Burkart:
A tree fort. I know it's a cliche, but it's true. We had an amazing tree fort. One time we decided to follow this crick, not a creek. We called it a crick in Michigan, crick and follow it to Lake Michigan. Newsflash, we did not make it there, but found lots of great swimming holes and just spent the day exploring. Just yeah, you had an idea and you did it the next day. And I think that's kind of that and curiosity and passion mixed together is what has perpetuated me to what I'm doing now. And I would guess that's similar for you. Thinking about your work and I've got to witness some of your trajectory, right?

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
And you just were like, "I'm going to do this thing." And then you did it. And the more you do that, but I think that that tends to lead people down a path.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
And so, I worry that some of the kids today have not experienced enough of that like, "I have an idea, let's go do it," because their lives have been so micromanaged by their families, including myself. So, I do think it's like a combination of those two. You have to have that agency that like, "I can do this thing."

Dave:
Right. And it's not going to... I mean, so much of it is, it's a little cliche to say you have to be willing to fail, but it is true. And also failing is a very kind of, there's a spectrum of failing like you didn't find Lake Michigan, but it was a valuable activity.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah, exactly.

Dave:
Failure is kind of in the eye of the beholder in a lot of cases. There are some cases where it's like, "You set out to do this thing and you didn't do it." But even then, I mean, part of the lesson is that sometimes that's just what happens.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
And then because you did it though, you met someone or you learned something and you had no idea that that was actually going to be valuable in the long run. But three years later, it's a lot of running a small business. It's like for some reason I was, I don't know, I always had the perspective that it was a long game. It was like you can't... Most things in life are about relationships and very few relationships are built in a day. That's not how it works.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
And so, to do anything successfully, you needed a larger scope of time and that comes with its own compromises. Like I wasn't going to make a lot of money for a long time. I was just going to, can I make enough to pay my mortgage to go out to dinner now and then kind of thing? And that was fine because I got to do what I wanted to do. But the larger point is that my life is not a series of successes. It's more like what you're describing. I've just always been doing something.

Jen Burkart:
Well, I even think about when you started this business, did you have any idea that what you do now was going to be kind of like your central, I don't want to say mission, but like what you do. I don't think you... I don't know. I don't think this is what you would've named that this business was at the very beginning.

Dave:
No, I mean, it would've been interesting. Unfortunately, I did not like to journal all that.

Jen Burkart:
So, you like to read more than write, too?

Dave:
Yeah, kind of. I like to write what other people say, hence interviewing.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
But no, I mean, my whole life has been like that professionally. I've always just followed, again, my passion, but in a practical way. The best example is I moved to Portland and I had a telecommuting job at the time, so I didn't have to immediately get a job because I had an income. I was looking for a full-time job though, and I found, through an ad in the classifieds of The Oregonian, my job at Powell's.

Jen Burkart:
Oh, really? That's how you got that job?

Dave:
Honestly, I still remember, I can see the newspaper. I wish I'd saved it, the ad I circled. It was the end of an era. And I had never worked in a bookstore, but I had an MFA in creative writing and a bachelor's in English, and so I'd been around books a ton. But I found that ad and I took the job. I remember saying, "I'm not that interested in running the affiliate program of a bookstore website," which was specifically what they really needed someone to do. But I was the first person hired by the Powell's web team, aside from a webmaster and two programmers. So, essentially the only people working there were technical and I had no interest in being a coder. That wasn't my brain and my interest.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
So, I was like, "Well, there's going to be opportunity to advance because there's literally no one to jump over." There's no one else there. So, if this internet thing that people keep talking about is… actually turns out to be a thing, there's going to be opportunity. And I feel like that's kind of been a model of my life. It was just recognizing the fact that I think I'd be good at this and it would lead to other things that would probably be more interesting. 

The only thing I knew after Powell's was that I didn't want a desk job that I had to go to every day. It was literally the only criteria at that level of must-haves. I'd been 11 years, I've been going to a desk every day from 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever the hours were.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
Yeah. Not I'm never going to do it again.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. Yeah. I just need a break.

Dave:
Just I need a break. I just don't want to do that for this next thing. And I started a business and here we are in my basement.

Jen Burkart:
I know. It's pretty amazing.

Dave:
Yeah.

Jen Burkart:
Just following one idea after another.

Dave:
Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about while we still have a recorder running?

Jen Burkart:
I guess the thing I'd like to talk about most, I already chatted about a little bit, is the idea of managing complex change in systems. And I think that's kind of similar in our jobs if you really think about it. If you're trying to change something, otherwise people wouldn't hire you.

Dave:
Sure.

Jen Burkart:
Bringing more people to the table, bringing more awareness. Think of a client that you're working with right now. Obviously there's a problem they're trying to solve, right? I know that's at the end of the day, everyone's waking up to try to solve a problem, I think. And so, I'm curious, I actually have a question for you.

Dave:
Okay.

Jen Burkart:
All right. So, when you're thinking about managing complex change, and I say complex, because it's usually got multiple factors, right? Do you have a system that you go about when you do that? I was talking to you earlier about implementation science as a whole system. You do a root cause analysis and then you go do empathy interviews and you bring them back and then you figure out what the problem is and then you find one tiny solution and you test it out in the system so that you can manage that failure thing that we were talking about earlier. We can't fail on a grand scale when we're talking about students' learning. So, we can try small things and test them out and then expand them into different systems. And so, what do you do when you're trying to make a major shift? Do you have a system that you follow?

Dave:
Yes and no. I mean, I think that the value that we bring to clients is that we have worked with, I counted recently. I think as of, I don't know, a few months ago, we had billed like 86 different organizations over the course of 15 years and multiple departments within some of those organizations, but 86 on that top level. And so, the value we bring is often just that we've encountered communication-related opportunities in so many different contexts that we can offer a range of solutions to any given client based on what they're trying to do. 

In the work that we do, it's usually about educating an audience to a situation and helping them understand how an action on their behalf can help address that situation.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. I absolutely see a million parallels right now.

Dave:
The very first step is let's define the outcome you want as specifically as possible. It could be five outcomes that are all related, but at the end of the day, how are we going to know that we're successful in helping you?

Jen Burkart:
Yeah. Identifying the criteria.

Dave:
Start there.

Jen Burkart:
... criteria.

Dave:
And then, right. And then there's a matter of not buy-in necessarily, but making sure, Does your team understand that so that it's not the director who understands the objective and no one else? Again, because if it's communication, that's the other part of it, is that if you have one person who is effectively communicating, but the whole team isn't either bought in or doesn't understand, then it's not going to work.

Jen Burkart:
Yeah.

Dave:
It's not going to go anywhere.

Jen Burkart:
You have to buy in, too.

Dave:
We're trying to essentially change people's ideas about things. If you can't convince your own team and your inner circle of those ideas, then you are never going to convince the rest of the world. 

Again, if it's about helping people understand what the problem is and how to solve it, first they have to understand that there is a problem, then they have to understand what the payoff is in addressing it, and then they have to understand what role they might play.

Jen Burkart:
I encourage you to look at this chart that I keep talking... Well, I've been calling it managing complex change, and if you Google it, you'll see an image of some researchers who looked at it, but it just listed many of the things that you said like if you don't have vision, then you have confusion. If you don't have incentives, then you don't have results. If you don't have an action plan, then you have chaos. So, it looks at all of the elements that are required to move something forward. And when they're missing, you can actually sometimes identify it by the feeling of the organization. If the feeling of the organization is anxiety, they may know the vision, they may have the resources, but they may not have the skills to implement, right? If it's frustration, they may have the skills, they may have the vision, but they're missing the resources.

So, it's really fascinating to think about how we shift and a lot of it is mindset. And we know we just said teaching kids how to read and write, but ultimately the one who can influence that more than anyone else is the classroom teacher, right? And that's changing mindsets and beliefs and actions, right? So, yeah, it's fascinating.

Dave:
So, we're doing the same job.

Jen Burkart:
We're basically doing the same job.

Dave:
We should trade roles for a day and see how that goes.

Jen Burkart:
Oh, I don't think I'd be very good at your job.

Dave:
Ditto. Thank you, Jen.

Jen Burkart:
This was fun. Thanks, Dave.

[outro]
Dave:
Work-Shaped Life is produced by the team at Sheepscot Creative. It’s hosted by me, Dave Weich, edited by Bailey Cain and Michael Nipper, with production support from Benna Gottfried, Rosie Struve, Amelia Lukas and Kate Sokoloff.

Next time on Work-Shaped Life:

Sam Stanton:
I'm like the typical millennial that got told, you know, if you're doing something you love, you never work a day in your life. I don't know, I'm just like too intense a person for that. I need something I can put back on the shelf when I go home. There's nothing wrong with chasing a job that provides me the money and time to do what I want to do with my life outside of work and that's what this job has done. Working seven, 12-hour days in a row lets me concentrate on my work there and then seven days off lets me concentrate on the other stuff I'm passionate about when I'm off.

Dave:
Visit WorkShapedLife.com to find every episode. And say hello. Or even better: tell us a story about your own work-shaped life. Maybe we’ll feature it on the podcast. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to hear new episodes as they drop. Thanks for listening.