In this episode of the Department 12 Podcast, I’m joined by Krystina Moustakis, a learning experience designer and organizational psychologist with a knack for creating impactful training programs that align with business metrics. We dive into the art of consulting, particularly how to effectively communicate with executives and business leaders—a skill that’s often emphasized but rarely taught in depth. Krystina brings her expertise to the table in a unique role-play exercise, where she demonstrates how to handle a real-world scenario involving safety shutdowns and the challenges of leadership transition within a company. This episode is packed with actionable insights for anyone looking to enhance their consulting skills and bridge the communication gap between consultants and executives.
Transcript
This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies. Please do not quote myself or any of my guests based on this transcript.
00:00:00 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Hello and welcome to the Department 12 podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Ben Butina. Joining me today is Krystina Moustakas. How are you, Krystina?
00:00:09 Krystina Moustakis
Hi doing well and yourself.
00:00:11 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
I am doing really well. Thank you very much, Krystina. We invited you on because you create training programs with enablement and HR that improve business metrics and audience. If you’re wondering if I read that from her LinkedIn.
00:00:23 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Profile I did.
00:00:24 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Because she obviously put care into making sure that it was accurate.
00:00:28 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
And helpful, you’re also a learning experience designer and an organizational psychologist. One of the reasons that we decided we wanted to do this show is because consulting is so one of the career choices, and it’s emphasized that you really need to be able to communicate with executives and and leaders and business owners.
00:00:43 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
But you don’t really get into how to do that. What does it actually look like? Krystina has very generously agreed to demonstrate what it’s like with role play. Welcome to audio theater on department.
00:00:52 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
12 with special guest star Krystina Moustakis.
00:00:56 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
I am going to play the the role of the President of Kruger industrial smoothing and Krystina will be playing herself. Of course consultant who is coming to talk to me about a problem I’m having. Whenever you’re ready, Krystina.
00:01:09 Krystina Moustakis
OK. So hi, Dan. So great to have you on the phone today. I’ve heard a lot about the successes that you guys have been having lately and how you’re looking to take your company at the next level. So I’d love to get a sense of what you were most interested in talking about today.
00:01:25 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Well, you know, you raised a really good point and we need to get to the next level. And one of the.
00:01:29 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Things that’s the standing in our way of getting to that next level is shutdown time. We have safety shutdown time and it’s just it’s closing us down and I think we need some training here to get people to comply so that we don’t have all these safety shutdowns. That’s the bottom line.
00:01:46 Krystina Moustakis
Well, this is something that I’ve heard before about the safety shutdowns. It’s not something that’s unusual in your industry. So I would just like to understand a little bit more about how it’s affecting your business. So at what?
00:01:59 Krystina Moustakis
Point in your daily way of doing things. Does this start to become a?
00:02:04 Krystina Moustakis
Problem.
00:02:04 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Well, I mean, the good news is that even though it’s safety shutdowns, employees aren’t getting hurt, you know, thankfully, but we are taking a huge financial hit as you could imagine. And we have this previous agreement with OSHA due to some.
00:02:16
Pre.
00:02:18 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Some problems that every time an incident occurs, whether or not anyone was injured, by the way, anytime an incident occurs, we have to shut down work for a full day. And right now we’re averaging 1 lost day of work each five day work week. And that’s just it’s gotten intolerable, especially since.
00:02:34 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Some of my safety people have left, but I expected my field project managers to step up and and fill the gap because that’s what a good leader would do. But I guess maybe they don’t have the motivation, but I’m hoping that that this training will help.
00:02:46 Krystina Moustakis
So you say that some of your safety people.
00:02:48 Krystina Moustakis
Have left so you’re looking.
00:02:49 Krystina Moustakis
For these field project managers.
00:02:51 Krystina Moustakis
To pitch in, has there been?
00:02:53 Krystina Moustakis
Communication about how they can do that or the way that their job is going to be different. Now if they were to do that.
00:02:59 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
I did ask was for the safety managers to do kind of a an exit transition with their field project managers before they left the organization. And I guess I just assumed that.
00:03:11 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
They would have turned over the inspection process. I think that’s where we’re missing is we’re not carrying out those safety inspections with the safety managers gone the, the the field project managers just aren’t doing it.
00:03:22 Krystina Moustakis
You know, whenever you’re leaving an organization, being able to transition things over perfectly isn’t always necessarily top of mind. So it’s not unusual for that to happen during that that off board.
00:03:34 Krystina Moustakis
Process. So when the safety managers were exiting, was there any specific reason why you did see that exit happening? Were there any exit surveys conducted?
00:03:45 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Yes, we did. The main thing I think we saw is that it’s a a really tough market. Well, it’s a tough market for us. It’s a great market for the safety professionals. But the exit interviews did turn.
00:03:56 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
You know the safety fundamentals that that they thought were good. They did feel like they they didn’t have enough support or that they wanted more development.
00:04:04 Krystina Moustakis
So I just want to recap what you’ve told me so far just to make sure that we’re on the same page. So there’s recently been some safety for people that have been leaving the organization because you know, it’s a great market for them and they feel like they wanted to have some support or development, whether or not that’s true, we’re not sure yet. But from their impression from their perspective.
00:04:25 Krystina Moustakis
There should be more support and development, so since that happened there’s been more safety incidents that you’re losing about a day of work.
00:04:32 Krystina Moustakis
Each week. And so now if we’re able to get the field project managers to take over some of these safety inspections, then that loss day of work a week should decrease.
00:04:43 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Well put exactly.
00:04:45 Krystina Moustakis
OK, so there’s a number of different ways that you can go about this now. You mentioned in the beginning that, yes, would love to do a safety training that certainly can be a helpful way to decrease the.
00:04:56 Krystina Moustakis
Number of safety.
00:04:57 Krystina Moustakis
Incidents you can also invest more into specific safety equipment or you can look into changing the process.
00:05:03 Krystina Moustakis
So depending on what fits best for this situation, we would need to dig in a little deeper and figure out where the logistics of this where that hiccup is literally happening. When people are conducting these safety incidents, where is this you know? Is it an equipment problem? Is it a skills problem or is it a?
00:05:23 Krystina Moustakis
Just like someone needs to.
00:05:24 Krystina Moustakis
Do it. So do.
00:05:26 Krystina Moustakis
You have any insights or any data around the specific point in which the safety incident is occurring?
00:05:33 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
The main thing I know is that there is a really strong relationship between not doing those safety inspections and being shut down for the day because of some incidents. So if we can get those field project managers.
00:05:45 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Doing it, but everything you just described, it just sounds like a lot. You know it it sounds like a lot of time we don’t have right now.
00:05:53 Krystina Moustakis
Yes. And that’s I hear you on that trying to get this problem fixed as soon as possible because nobody wants to get shut down for a day a week at minimum.
00:06:01 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
You know, it doesn’t. It doesn’t happen.
00:06:02 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Every week, though.
00:06:04 Krystina Moustakis
OK. Well, any number of days sounds like it’s not a great thing to do. So where we can start is you know, certainly we can dig into some of this data and see where all of this is happening. But if we start off small just by trying to target one specific metric, which would be the most ideal metric that you would like to hit.
00:06:24 Krystina Moustakis
And.
00:06:24 Krystina Moustakis
Effect as soon as possible.
00:06:26 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
If we can decrease the number of shutdowns, then we’re going to stop hemorrhaging money due to all these fines and and loss of opportunities.
00:06:34 Krystina Moustakis
So then it sounds like if we were to test the idea of getting these field project managers to conduct a safety inspection, OK, so I just want to put this into a goal that we can align ourselves around and be 100% sure before we move forward on on what it is that we want.
00:06:42 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Yeah.
00:06:50 Krystina Moustakis
To do so.
00:06:51 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Alright.
00:06:53 Krystina Moustakis
How at this point, do you have a number that we can target, decrease the number of safety shutdowns, but is there a percentage you’d like to decrease it by? Is there a target number that you’d like to hit?
00:07:05 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Boy, yeah. I mean, the target’s always zero on that stuff, but, but let’s get that average down from losing one day.
00:07:12 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Of work a week.
00:07:14 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
To one day a month. You know it’s it’s still not something we want, but we can we can stomach one day.
00:07:19 Krystina Moustakis
OK, sounds good. And we can always do better than that. We just wanna know what the minimum thing that we’re shooting for is. And this can be a goal that you and I just keep.
00:07:28 Krystina Moustakis
Ourselves, just so that we know as we continue throughout this project, what success looks like when we started.
00:07:34
Yeah. OK.
00:07:35 Krystina Moustakis
And when would you like it to be? One day per month. Like what? When should we put a timeline by, you know, do you want this to happen by next month?
00:07:42 Krystina Moustakis
Do you want this to happen and we?
00:07:43 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Yesterday. Yeah. Other than yesterday. I’m gonna say with.
00:07:49 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
With some other organizational changes and and things that are happening that I can’t really get into in this conversation.
00:07:56 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
It’s probably going to be best to take a little bit of a longer timeline on this one, even though I do have a sense of urgency about it. I I think if we can get there by the beginning of 2026, I think if we get to to January 1, 2026 and we’re down to to one loss day of productive.
00:08:13 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
A month I’d be very, very happy and I know say that’s a minimum, but I’d be very happy.
00:08:17 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
With that minimum.
00:08:18 Krystina Moustakis
OK, sounds good. And of course, we can always go, you know, do a better job than that. We just want to be able to know what’s.
00:08:25 Krystina Moustakis
The the minimum.
00:08:26 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
All right, you probably need more information and you’ll probably get it from smarter people that report to me. I’m gonna have legal send you an NDA and have purchasing send you some supplier information forms and we can go from there. How’s that sound?
00:08:40 Krystina Moustakis
Sounds good to me.
00:08:43 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
And scene.
00:08:46 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
So, Krystina, how, how realistic did that feel for you?
00:08:50 Krystina Moustakis
Yes, there is a little bit more people wanting to swag their heels a little bit. You sometimes need to pull for information a little bit more and generally when that happens, if you just say something like oh, other companies have had this happen.
00:08:54
MHM.
00:09:03 Krystina Moustakis
For research shows that 30% of safety incidents go down if you institute like safety training like you start to give them this other information to either benchmark them with research or to say hey, other companies are doing.
00:09:12
MHM.
00:09:17 Krystina Moustakis
And that usually overcomes any sort of hesitancy to move forward, especially when trying to pull information out of them.
00:09:18
Uh-huh.
00:09:24 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
I think this was fascinating. I agree with you. I think if we were really doing it to the hilt, I probably would have gone a couple more rounds with, you know, we need leadership training because people just don’t want to lead anymore. I could have thrown in that young people can’t lead or don’t want to work. And those are some classic chestnuts.
00:09:40 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
In there. But I also don’t want to leave people with the impression that, you know, all senior leaders are sort.
00:09:46 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Gruff below average IQ reality deniers. The way I portrayed in this sketch. In reality, most of the people that that you work with this level are are really, really smart. It’s it’s kind of a minimum and it doesn’t mean that every decision that they make is really smart. But it does mean that.
00:10:02 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
You know you want to go in there with a fair amount of respect for who you’re talking to, even if they don’t speak IO language.
00:10:08 Krystina Moustakis
And I think the comment that you made about that sounds like a lot. Let’s just get this specific that I want this done as fast as possible. Everyone wants everything done as fast as possible. Throw a training out there next week, you know? So that’s definitely something I’ve gotten before.
00:10:22 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Thank you so much for for being on the show. I I think this was great. I hope people enjoyed it. I’m going to share your your.
00:10:29 Ben Butina, Ph.D.
Connection information Krystina on LinkedIn. Again, thank you so much.
00:10:32 Krystina Moustakis
Yes, thank you. It was a pleasure to be on the show.
