You’ve probably heard of the Great resignation, but what does it mean? Co-hosts Chrissy and Nicole talk with Alpha Kappa Psi CEO Steve Hartman about its impact on industries and consulting work, as well as questions surrounding changing career paths.
You’ve probably heard of the Great resignation, but what does it mean? Co-hosts Chrissy and Nicole talk with Alpha Kappa Psi CEO Steve Hartman about its impact on industries and consulting work, as well as questions surrounding changing career paths.
Steve Hartman [00:00:00] The pandemic has hurt travel, of course, right, and people understand that from the economic point of view. Hospitality, airlines, hotels, amusement parks, things like that that have really taken a hit in the financial economic means. But but from interpersonal or just personal things, it has also restricted us from changing our perspective, right? If we're working at home or we aren't really getting a chance to get out. We're not ever really changing our physical area, and that really is not good for us to get a better set on what you value in the perspective because you're still stuck in the same environment.
Finn Lambouris [00:00:35] You're listening to Business Edge, the podcast for professionals looking to excel in the workforce. In each episode, our guests take a deep dive into their personal and professional experiences to give you an edge in the marketplace. This podcast is brought to you by Alpha Kappa Psi professional business fraternity.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:00:51] Welcome back, everybody. I know it's been a while since we've last talked to you. We have a couple of format changes. Desiree left us and so we are trying out some new things this season and so with me today, I have Nicole Klemp. I'll let you introduce yourself, Nicole, to our listeners.
Nicole Klemp [00:01:07] Hi, everyone. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, so I am an AKPsi alumni, went to Indiana State, Go Trees. Mu Omicron chapter class of 2- oh gosh, 2006. So I'm aging myself.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:01:24] You're an old lady.
Nicole Klemp [00:01:25] I am, yes. But yeah, really excited to be on the podcast. I've been enjoying, you know, the last episodes and it's awesome. Yeah, just thrilled to be part of it.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:01:38] Thank you for joining us. We're excited to have you. She lives here in Indy too, so it's nice and convenient. And today we have Steve Hartman, the CEO of Alpha Kappa Psi. You would think that he would have been an obvious guest in the first couple of seasons.
Steve Hartman [00:01:49] You would have thought at some point, right?
Chrissy Vasquez [00:01:50] Yeah, I know. So we saved him for this season. But there's this thing called the great resignation that's happening right now. A lot of people leaving their jobs as COVID is ending, although we're not sure that we have quite an ending in sight, but more people are leaving their jobs. They say an estimated three percent of the workforce has voluntarily left their position. And in the hospitality industry, that's up to six percent, which is understandable. A lot of hotels are not back at full capacity yet, and a lot of flights have been canceled due to staffing and utilization. So and it's a lot of people mid-career, but what kind of inspired this topic was really talking about changes in your career. A lot of people are leaving their job to go do something completely different. Some are leaving their corporate grind to go do something more civically driven, and others, like myself, are leaving the nonprofit world to go do something corporate. So we wanted to invite Steve today. He's had an interesting career path and has definitely made some left-hand turns in his career and jumped to different tracks. So Steve, can you go ahead and introduce yourself?
Steve Hartman [00:02:51] Yeah, thanks, Chrissy. And thanks again for hosting. As always, they do a great job and really enjoy the podcast and thanks for having me on as a guest. Nicole, also, thank you for jumping in. This is going to be fun. I think that my career path, an example of a switch I made was about in my mid thirties, early thirties. I left the consulting world, which I had really had all my career in consulting up until that point when I graduated from college and I, I took a job as a nonprofit for the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. So for the last 17 years, I've done, I've done all of my work with, with fraternal organizations, with Phi Kappa Tau and now here at Alpha Kappa Psi. For me, the biggest thing was just lifestyle. And in trying to balance travel and other demands with clients, with just having a family life. And that's partly, I think, what drives some of the the turnover that's happening right now, but we can dive into a little bit more. Do you want to jump into that a little bit now straight into the-?
Chrissy Vasquez [00:03:49] Sure, why not? You can take this conversation wherever you want to go.
Steve Hartman [00:03:51] All right. So looking at the resignation, one of the things that strikes me is that there is still a pretty low level of unemployment, right? And the jobs report from October, when you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it was about $500000 of- 500000 increase in jobs. So people are leaving, but they appear to be getting hired. So it's not that they're just leaving the workforce, necessarily, they're just leaving jobs to take other jobs. So that's something that I think is important to understand is that it isn't just they're leaving the workforce, but they're leaving those specific jobs. So that's partly what I have the curiosity about your story, Nicole, about your transition from working for a company, for an organization to your own thing and about that part. So can you tell me about that?
Nicole Klemp [00:04:38] Yeah, sure. I think like a lot of people, you know, the pandemic kind of made me reflect more on what I wanted to do. And you know what, where I want to be with my career, and I think a lot of people kind of have been doing that over the last year or so. I spent about, you know, about 10 years in the communications content marketing field, primarily as a writer and editor and as kind of my career... I might be a little bit different than some because as my career, you know, I went up kind of levels of my career into, you know, higher roles. I started to realize that what I really enjoyed was the work itself and the, you know, individual contributor roles where I'm just writing and editing and and doing the work. And I found as as my career advanced, I did less of that work and, you know, more managing day to day, you know, strategy and all of that, which is great. But I found that it wasn't what I was as passionate about. So, you know, this last year, I decided to start, you know, doing a little bit of kind of freelance writing on the side of my full time job and found that I really enjoyed that work and eventually over the summer transitioned to doing that full time.
Steve Hartman [00:05:58] It's interesting when I think about some things I've heard, and I have a funny story to tell about my sister, so it's similar to what you're saying, of course. How do you spend your time, whether it's doing what you want to do or what you've been trained for, what you enjoy, and as you get into positions of management or supervision in general, you're taking away from those things that you enjoy more and more dealing with either clients or customers or or your direct reports, or somewhere in the organizational chain. And that can be very frustrating, I think. My sister is a Montessori teacher and she and I had debated the "are leaders born or can leaders be created?" And she largely believes that even though you can teach a lot of the skills and you can get people to sort of understand it, for the most part, you either have to be driven toward wanting to lead people or wanting to be in that role or not. And I think a lot of people really looking at sort of the great resignation is, they just don't want to be burdened with a lot of things that come with all of that responsibility that doesn't come back to what they really want to do. And I think that's part of the whole process is that you have to sort of decide what balance is good for you. And it's a tough thing to figure out until you're actually in the arena. I know that you have some background there around the same questions.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:07:22] Yeah I was gonna say, Steve, that's interesting. So talk to us a little bit about how you worked through the trade offs between consulting. I know you said part of it was a lifestyle, but there's also things that come with being in that consulting life versus nonprofit associations. So how did you kind of evaluate some of those tradeoffs?
Steve Hartman [00:07:38] I think a lot of it comes down to is predictability. And for the most part, I'm not someone that is looking forward to like a predictable day, necessarily. So whereas most people that I know, I think that I've worked with or even, you know, people, I'm close to, friends. They don't want to deal with a lot of chaos or unknowns. They want to sort of have an idea about how to plan their day or their week or their month or their year, and hopefully go similar to what they're thinking. I'm sort of the opposite where I'm perfectly fine with chaos and I like problem-solving, so consulting was always really attractive to me because it was always something new. Every day was something new. But at the same time, there was always a big problem you were trying to solve or, several, so it was always challenging. But the roles that I've had, though in nonprofit and the organizations with AKPsi and Phi Tau, they are still sort of very big problem-solving roles. So I feel like I still get some of that, even though it isn't the same sort of chaos. It's still chaotic.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:08:40] I think there's still some chaos
Steve Hartman [00:08:43] More today than I think we've seen in a long time. But also too, just going back to sort of the idea of consistency or what to expect. This is probably a little bit more of a little bit of a tangent, but I think more day to day in people's personal lives, there may be a little also a little more chaos. And so when you think about the workplace, I don't know how many people I've run into that have a like "Thank God, it's Monday" sort of a thought where it's like the weekend was crazy or, you know, I've- my family. There's a bunch of things going on. We've got a pandemic and I've got relatives who are fighting on social media, and I've got all these things going on where if I could just get to work, where I can get somewhere and I know what's going to happen that day, I'm actually OK with that. So I think there's some sense of it's not just the workplace, but just everything is just sort of moving so fast. And then sort of related to that. I also think there's a technology portion of this, too, that's interesting to think about, although I think when you look at the way our standard of living in the United States, but also across the world, technology has enabled us to sustain six plus billion people on the planet through better agriculture and sanitation and so forth. But at the same time, you look at sort of how our lives are. Is it really giving us an increase in the quality of life that you would have thought it would? And what I really mean is I'm going back to that sort of idea of how life is so crazy and chaotic. You know, how many times have you opened an app or try to download an app or register for something online and like, it doesn't work. The page is broken or you can't remember your password. There's a huge tax of time that we're all paying for things that are supposedly making things easier for us. And it's sort of embedded in our time, day to day. So I think that's also part of this whole sort of frustration around, you know, looking for work to find some sort of satisfaction or, like I say, some kind of regular predictable thing. And then the more that that doesn't get fulfilled, people look to move on to the next thing. So that's sort of what I think is also driving some of this, and I realize it's a little bit of a tangent, but but I think it's also part of what's going on in the bigger picture.
Nicole Klemp [00:11:04] Steve, how do you feel like from your consulting days to your nonprofit days, how has that changed kind of your work life balance?
Steve Hartman [00:11:12] The biggest, the biggest change there really comes down to travel. When my wife, Rachel and I were first married, this was probably in the late 90s when we both were traveling quite a bit. She was also doing consulting, but then she left to go back to school and then I was still traveling. It was really every single week. So you leave Monday morning, come back Friday afternoon. Eventually, we decided we wanted to have a family and that lifestyle really wasn't going to work. So that was the main thing that drove it. It was definitely a sacrifice when it came to money because, you know, it can be very, very lucrative to be in consulting and the rewards, the bonuses and whatnot are hard to walk away from. But we just had to sort of reset our lives and just set some expectations around lifestyle. And that, I mean, ultimately was the best decision, but it was difficult.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:12:06] How was it going from being apart during the week to now you guys are in each other's space all the time?
Steve Hartman [00:12:13] We kept busy enough to not be too much. But no, I think, to your point, though, I think that's a it's really important to really at some point take inventory of your personal and professional life together. Making one decision, either way, it has to be sort of taken into consideration. When I ultimately accepted the offer to come here and work at AKPsi we moved from Cincinnati and that was a, you know, a series of conversations that we had to have about our family, about her relationship with her friends. She grew up in Cincinnati, so she left her friends from high school there, and we sort of had to reset things and get acclimated to the way things were here in central Indiana, and all those things were transitional and to some degree still are seven years later. So I think that I do think that most people do sort of take this into consideration. I think their spouse, their partner as a way to to figure it out. But it's, you know, it's a huge part of the equation. If you're not happy in one place, you're not going be happy in the other.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:13:17] Is there anything that you found surprising during this transition from going to a consultant life to association? Was there anything you found surprising either way? Like, "I really like this and didn't know it," or "I wasn't expecting this to pop up?"
Steve Hartman [00:13:31] So you and I have talked about this a little bit, Chrissy, just on our own like, you know, having coffee from time to time. The biggest thing, I think. Going from consulting, particularly with a big organization, a big four consulting firm, is that there's this really high expectation on everyone sort of being a leader in some respect, right? Like not just necessarily following a book but understanding the methods that are tried and true, but also providing some sort of leadership and being proactive. One of the most difficult transitions was that, in fact, most people are not expected to be that way. Most people are expected to to do what they are, do well and do it well consistently and move on with their day. They don't take work home. They want to leave it at work. And that whole expectation was was much different. So in some ways I had to lower my expectations. In other ways I had to raise them, but it was definitely different where the pace just was so much slower. And my first role when I left the consulting firm was still in a consulting role, but it was then within a health care organization. So, you know, having to deal with sort of all the bureaucracy around managed care and everything. It was a huge, huge change, much different from the supply chain work that I had been doing, which which was always really high paced because every single day was like money, right? You had to worry about it. So, so it was about basically the pace of the work and then the expectations that were different.
Nicole Klemp [00:15:05] What advice would you give someone who's maybe mid-career thinking about making a transition or someone who's maybe a young professional or getting ready to graduate and trying to figure out kind of what they want to do with their career path?
Steve Hartman [00:15:20] Yeah, that's a good question. I think that you probably it would have been able to answer this as well, right? Like what framework did you sort of look to try to make that sort of decision? And when I say framework, I mean, the typical thing that people normally say is to do the old plus and minus column, right? Where we say, well, here are the positives in making a change here are the negatives. Or maybe there's a more intensive exercise around "what do I value?" And sometimes you can do an exercise where you sort of do an inventory of your own time from the last month and say, Well, if I'm voting with my feet, then and I'm spending time where I want to spend time, it's telling me what my values are almost like reverse engineering your value clarification. So there's a couple of ways you could do it. I think that, first of all, I think that everyone probably goes through this a few times in their life in their careers sort of a "do I want a reset? What I want to do?" Perfectly healthy, perfectly necessary. For those, you know, trusted and gifted souls that know what they want to do from the very beginning and do it for 50 years. Yeah, that's fantastic for them. But for the rest of us mortals, we have to have some sort of process, right? So taking a variation of the whole plus minus sort of inventory and layering on that some sort of way to weight each of the pluses and minuses because they don't have equal weight. And so a lot of times when people go through this exercise, they'll just create their columns and say, "Well, I have eight things in the plus side and three on the negative. I know where I'm going to go," but the three negative ones really are much more impactful than any of the eight on the positive side. So you almost have to layer that and try to figure out qualitatively where they fit in. But it's a good exercise because at least it gives you a chance to kind of put down what you think you value and what the positives and negatives are. The only other thing would be whatever sort of personal board of directors that you may have assembled over the years. To please pull him into your circle and utilize them for advice for counsel because they know you, maybe better than you know you, and can probably be very helpful in that decision.
Nicole Klemp [00:17:29] Yeah, and it can almost change with different life stages, right? Like what you want to take on, you know, when you're twenty five, might change. I know for me, I was a real go getter. I wanted to climb the ladder and, you know, get into the tech industry and do a lot there. And it was great in my twenties and early 30s and then after, you know, having children, that kind of I wanted to slow that pace down a little bit. So I think- I feel like it changes too with with those different life stages.
Steve Hartman [00:17:56] Well, let me ask you, so how did you come to grips with what was the process that you went through to be OK with that, right? Because at some point you had to just sort of consciously say, I may be going a different path than what I have thought about for the last 10 or 15 years. I need to be OK with that for the right reasons. But was there something that you just sort of worked through personally or- because that's a big change, right? To sort of reset what your trajectory is.
Nicole Klemp [00:18:24] Yeah. I really had to kind of be real with myself because I think for so many years I was trying to, you know, get a higher position, climb that ladder and I found myself in a director position and this is where I wanted to be all these years. And I've gotten here and now I realize that now I'm not digging it that much. So I think, you know, you want to always feel like you're moving forward or moving up. And I almost had to take somewhat of a step back, although I guess it's not. It's more of just a different step. But it felt like, Oh, I have to tell people, "Oh no, I'm not doing that big job anymore. Now I'm a freelancer," and that could have negative connotations. Or maybe you don't feel like it's as important or- but really, at the end of the day, I had to decide what makes me happy. What can I make a living wage doing and how can I make those things intersect with my life? And, you know, having also some more flexibility for my young children and in my family. And so I think just not trying to always feel like what other people expect me to do and more of I had to decide, what do I really want to do and what's best for me and for my family. So that was, it was a little bit of an awakening, I guess.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:19:38] I think it's hard to kind of get that weight off your shoulders and out of your mind of what do other people expect from me and what do other people perceive? I'm on the Dean's Council of a major university. And so I walk in and the dean was like, "Hey, Chrissy, how's your new job doing?" And so I explained, you know, "explain to us what you're doing," and I'm sitting in there with a bunch of CEOs from Big Tech companies in the area as well as pharma. And so explaining it and somebody was like, "Well, what's your role there?" I'm like "Account Manager." And I was so timid to say that because I used to be an executive director, I used to be a VP. So it's hard to. "Oh gosh. Now I'm just an account manager," but I know in my heart, you know what titles really mean and what they don't mean and things like that. But it was just really interesting. I didn't realize how much it bothered me because of what I thought other people thought. Everybody in that room as we continued the conversation, at first I'm thinking, What am I doing in this room with these people? And then as we continue the conversation, it's like, no, that reminder of "I bring a certain skill set. I'm a fundraiser. I bring that to the table. They respect that." So it takes a little while sometimes to get over that stigma and what you think other people think of you when you make those changes.
Steve Hartman [00:20:47] It's such a really, really important point to make. In some respects, a lot of the information and training and so forth that we've been able to- again, I think it's a little bit unique, a little bit unique, in our generation in the workforce where we've had so much access to training and in development, and some of that training is very specific to interpersonal skills. And so we learn things like, you know, like someone make- their impression of you will be made in the first five seconds they meet you. OK, well, if you go into a meeting or a setting where you've got that in mind, well you're freaking out because you're like, "Well, I better make this first five seconds the best five seconds." And that's sort of ridiculous, right? But because of our awareness is heightened to those things, and we're more aware of those things than it tends to also like, add another thing for us to think about when really, just being who we are in our own skin is enough. But we don't necessarily believe that anymore because of all the information that we now have access to or research or training. But the point the two of you were making as far as... I don't, I guess I wouldn't necessarily want to say it this way, but it's sort of like, it's sort of like keeping up with the Joneses, right? It's a real thing in every aspect of our life. It's very hard to step back from your context and try to figure out what do you value in some respects? A great- if you've seen the movie Dead Poets Society and it's an old one, right? So talk about dating yourself. But but there's a there's a scene in that movie where Robin Williams is the is the teacher, and he tells all the students to stand on their desks, and if you remember this part of it if you saw the movie. But but he was basically, you know, he's got them up on the desk and they're all like yelling and then the headmaster of the school walks in like, what is going on in this classroom? But the point of it was, is that he wanted them all to, like, view the classroom from a different perspective and to physically put them in a different space. And I think that, you know, some things that that in some respects have have hurt us sort of, you know, generally is that the pandemic has has hurt travel, of course, right? And people understand it from the economic point of view. Hospitality, airlines, hotels, you know, amusement parks, things like that that have really taken a hit in the financial economic means. But from interpersonal or just personal things, it has also restricted us from changing our perspective, right? If we're working at home or we aren't really getting a chance to get out, we're not ever really changing our physical area, and that really is not good for us to get a better set on what you value in the perspective because you're still stuck in the same environment. So it's a very important thing to kind of think through, and I haven't really come to grips with myself yet.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:23:40] Well, I think that brings home the point of how important self-awareness is. And I think that's what sets apart the really great leaders is those people that have that self-awareness. And so I think those that have self-awareness are probably striving a little bit better in the virtual environment because they do have that. But I agree when you're in the same four walls all the time, it's just the same concept of group think, right? If you guys are all thinking the same way, you don't ever reach new horizons. I am curious, Steve, how has working for AKPsi and in the fraternal world in general changed your perspective on watching your children grow up? So you have four boys and they're all- one has graduated high school and they're all kind of getting older. And so how does that change your perspective of watching them grow up in the experiences they've had?
Steve Hartman [00:24:26] In some respects, having the four of them and they're all, like you said, they're all very close in age, right? They're 17, 16, 16, and 14. So they're all close to age and they're all sort of getting to that, you know, hopefully going to college. Although the one that just graduated from high school is taking a year off because he doesn't really know what he wants to do. But we did have a conversation. We went to a campus visit a couple of months ago, and he did say to me something around "Why would you join a fraternity?" I thought, "Oh boy, you know this is, I better answer this right, right?" It said to me, "Let me get my sales pitch out." And so it's interesting because being able to live with four teenagers and seeing how they- excuse me, how they engage with the world, and how much they really do rely on their phone for just about everything, whether it's, you know, something sports related or music related or school related, it is all in their phones and in obviously their social network is through the phone. So to some degree, I don't really know the answer to the question is that, you know, how much do they value face to face versus just being virtual, which they're used to more of now? Um, I think that there's still an importance to have a sense of community. So I would say that that's the one thread that goes through. When he did- when my son asked me about why would he join a fraternity? That was my answer is like, "Well, there's a community here," and you know, if you're going to go to a big university or even a small school for that matter, you know, one of the things you're going to try to do is reduce this giant environment with all these people that I don't really know into something that is smaller, and a fraternity is a great way to do that, whether it's within, you know, an academic discipline like AKPsi or just generally. I still think there's need for community, and in fact, I would even argue with my kids that the need for community is even greater because they do have access to social media and things that are hyperbolic. You know, and in sort of in impersonal. Where they need to get out and see people face to face. They need to be interacting and when they were in virtual school last year and when it became optional to go back to school, we sent them. We're like, "You need to be like actually seeing people and talking to them." Someone, I can't remember where I read this, but something like "It's hard to hate somebody close up," you know, like social media, you can get in these battles. But if you get sit down and you know, with somebody's face to face, it's really hard to take that the level of volume from a 1 to a 10 so fast, right? So I guess the short answer is, it's just it's reinforced the fact that we need community. We need to have a sense of well-being around our relationships. And as much as technology, social media, WhatsApp, whatever has helped us stay connected. It's just not doing enough to emotionally connect us. And I think that's the difficult part. And so whether it's like, I say, a sports team or an orchestra or a band or, you know, church or whatever the group is that you're involved in, that sense of community is still so important. And I think fraternity fits right in there.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:27:45] I would agree.
Steve Hartman [00:27:46] I'm biased.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:27:47] Well, I would hope you would be. And I think that's an interesting point, too. Like, we still don't really know what the impacts of this pandemic's going to be. Not only, you know, thinking about all the kids that were, you know, schooled at home and what basic skills are they missing that are the building blocks to the future years when they're younger and even the social. We all know that overdose and suicides are up tremendously in mental health. But what are some of the side effects going to be about missing community, how people interact with each other in the workplace? As we know, many companies are going back to a hybrid format rather than in-person. So it's just completely turned everything on its heads, and I don't think we'll see the full effect for many decades to come.
Steve Hartman [00:28:26] Well, I hope that, I hope that that will get sorted out. I mean, I know that it will. It will get sorted out, but you're right, it's all still going to be, as we go to learn as we go. There's one other point here, I think that, that I think is important going back to the issue of mental health. And this is probably--I don't know if it's necessarily a positive--I mean, I think it's- it's a positive for sure, whether it's attributed to the pandemic or the situation, I'm not a hundred percent. But I do think that there has been much more awareness around mental health that has been raised in this timeframe. Several organizations and you know, when I think about even the city we live in, there's been a huge push on awareness of mental health and trying to understand those feelings of despair or just loneliness or whatever that leads to things... That I think it's a good thing overall. And I think having that out there will hopefully fast forward to some degree, some of the things that are going on, you know, just in general with society in a personal- and just personally. So mental health, having more of a focus is- I'm glad that that is now going on now or I don't think it was as much in the past, or even stigmatized more in the past. You're seeing professional athletes come out and talk openly about it, which is helpful as far as, you know, having role models and so forth. The other thing I was going to mention was going back to the interpersonal relationships for a second. I think that there also is a need to sort of, how do I say this, erode some of the binary around relationships? What I mean is we seem to be at least a lot of the- and I don't want to blame the media, but a lot of what we read and what we see it does pit the political factions against one another as a zero-sum game and, you know, blue versus red or whatever. The neighbor that I have right across the street from us is sort of the opposite of politically of where I would be or my wife is, right? We just, we vote for the different- we vote for different people, we have a different philosophy about policy. But I will tell you this: if, you know, if I need help. He's the first one that shows up in my house, right? He and his wife are always bringing tomatoes over from their garden, right? I mean, we are true neighbors and that we are true friends and we truly help each other. Politically, we don't see eye to eye, but that doesn't really matter day to day, right? And we've had this conversation with our sons. It's like, Well, well, you know, "what's the name across the street?" You know, "how do you hang out with them?" Well, because they're our friends and they don't believe the same things we do. But if I'm going to move my position a little bit, and if I expect them to move their position a little bit, then there has to be a relationship. Otherwise, we're just going to keep shouting at each other. So I'm not sure what's going to happen there, Chrissy. I think that's going to be part of it that I hope will start to subside as far as that polarization, because I do think the only way we're goinna be getting anywhere is just the interpersonal interactions. You know, I can't not help you just because you don't see things the way I do politically. It doesn't make any sense to me, but I think that's partly what's going on, you know, that we have to sort of figure out how to spin back. Hopefully, some of that will fall out before, you know, it gets any worse, I guess.
Nicole Klemp [00:31:54] Steve, how do you feel like that's going to change, you know, going forward? You know, once we finally hopefully are fully out of this pandemic and people can, you know, be in the office and together again, like before, how do you feel like that's going to change? Do you feel like we're just going to go right back to kind of the in-office work? Or do you feel like a hybrid model or... What do you think? And then what do you personally feel for your teams would be best in the future?
Steve Hartman [00:32:22] Nicole, I don't know that I know. I don't know the answer. I guess I'll have to see. But here's what I do. Here's what I will try to do, at least with Alpha Kappa Psi and with our staff. I think that we can be more creative with the ways that we approach our work. Opportunities that we have, problems that we need to solve, how we gather the data and the information, how we make decisions and who we consider in those decisions, you know, the stakeholders that are involved. We in, you know, two years ago we would have said, well, we need everybody in the same space for the majority of the time so we can work out these things. And I think we've learned that we don't have to have everybody in the same space. We can figure it out. And I think that's probably going to be the answer is that we just need to be flexible, take advantage of the technology and the tools that we have and just, you know, have faith that people will figure it out because they normally do, you know, when they get the chance. So I think that the answer is probably more of where we are today. And just in just sort of working through the limitations and taking advantage of the tools that we have.
Nicole Klemp [00:33:27] Yeah. Awesome.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:33:29] Hey, Steve. So we wanted to ask you our signature question here on the Business Edge. Tell us about a time when your personal values have been challenged. What happened and how did you respond?
Steve Hartman [00:33:39] Yeah, I've heard several people answer this question. So, I'll answer the question with a story, right? And so it goes back and it sort of circles back to the whole idea about career transitions. When I was with Accenture, this is probably the year 2001, maybe? So that's 100 years ago. We were on a project in Detroit. I think it was with Chrysler, and I was traveling from Cincinnati. I was a manager at the time. The partner in the project was a guy that lived in New Jersey and it was a Monday and he had just flown in and he was just sort of frantic and like, you know, papers flying everywhere and he's running, throwing his stuff down and running to the meeting. And we went to lunch and we had a chance to have a discussion at lunch. And he was talking about being at Six Flags with his children on Sunday, but being on the phone with a client like the whole time. And I thought to myself, and it's funny because I had a colleague that was like the same level as I was, we sort of looked at each other when he was telling us this story and he was almost saying it in a way that was, you know, like a almost like a badge of honor that, "I'm working so many hours. I'm even in line at, you know, Six Flags with my kids and I'm talking to the client." And we both sort of looked at each other like, "Wow, that's sort of insane, right?" But it was at that point when I think I went home that- the following weekend and I was telling Rachel about it and I was like, "You know, I just don't think that's going to be for me. Like, I don't think this is what- I don't want to sacrifice, what I think it takes to get to that sort of level." And like, I'm not saying that I would have made partner. That's a, that's, you know, it's a very difficult thing to do. But I think that was at the point where I sort of decided, I need to reset my values on what I think's important versus, you know, what I'm doing right now. And the fact of the matter was, is that what I looked at what the partner was saying is that I was very much guilty of the same thing. I would say that family's important. But you know, I hadn't seen my mom and dad or my brother and sister for a year because I was traveling everywhere. And I don't see my wife, but, you know, 48 hours every week. Am I really... Is it really important to me? So that was a milestone event in my life, was that conversation and that lunch where he was talking about this and sort of joking about it and it was like, "Wow, that's just not where I want to be in 20 years." So that's the best example I can give you is that. It isn't like a moral dilemma, but it was more of a sort of like a come to Jesus moment or whatever the term would be.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:36:21] No, I think that's a great example and I love that you used a badge of honor because I think you see that so much in the workplace. And as I get older and in different stages of life, I respect people more that can get that work life balance.
Steve Hartman [00:36:33] Can separate it.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:36:33] Yeah.
Steve Hartman [00:36:34] It's not easy to do.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:36:35] No, it's not.
Steve Hartman [00:36:36] It goes back to your point about expectations. You're worried about what other people's expectations are, and sometimes you sacrifice what's good for you. And that's tough. But you're right, the people that can show you the way on how to do that in a tactful and respectful way. Yeah, check out those people.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:36:53] Yeah, most definitely. Well, thank you for joining us today. It was great talking to you.
Steve Hartman [00:36:57] Yeah. Thank you again for having me and for for doing this. I really appreciate it.
Nicole Klemp [00:37:00] Thanks, Steve.
Steve Hartman [00:37:00] Thank you again.
Finn Lambouris [00:37:04] Thanks for listening to Business Edge. If you have questions, comments, or topic suggestions for us, email, businessedge@akpsi.org.