Mary-Margaret Zindren, EVP/Executive Director, AIA Minnesota

Interview Description

In January of 2019, AIA Minnesota launched the Culture Change Initiative, an effort to transform the culture of the profession by examining the current state of culture, defining the culture to which we aspire, and taking a systems-thinking approach to determining the actions that hold the most promise in creating change. One of the early outcomes of the Culture Change Initiative’s work was the identifications of “mindsets” that, on balance, either accelerate or hinder an authentic, equitable, and collaborative culture.

In this Deep Dive, Mary-Margaret Zindren shared the mindset framework, an analysis of leverage points in organizational systems, and a series of transformative questions.

Speaker Bio

For more than 20 years, Mary-Margaret Zindren, CAE, has worked to further equity, diversity, and inclusion in city government, the law, the profession of architecture, and the built environment. She is a frequent speaker and panelist on organizational leadership, gender equity, and racial justice. Since 2015, Mary-Margaret has held the position of EVP/executive director of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Minnesota, AIA Minneapolis, AIA St. Paul, AIA Northern Minnesota, and the Minnesota Architectural Foundation.

Previously, she served as the executive director of the Hennepin County Bar Association and Hennepin County Bar Foundation, as director of Communications and Strategic Initiatives at the League of Minnesota Cities, and as Legislative Counsel at the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C.

Interview Summary

02:16 AIA Minnesota Culture Change Initiative
02:57 How it began - #MeToo
04:35 Primary research
05:52 Secondary research
06:52 Core Finding: Culture change is possible now
09:00 Characteristics of firms positioned for success
11:35 Culture of belonging

12:35 Core Elements of Desired Culture
13:12 Authentic
14:41 Equitable
16:38 Collaborative

19:28 Applying Systems Thinking to Culture Change
20:43 Leverage points for system intervention
24:11 The recruiting pipeline problem
27:50 Mindsets for growth and change

30:55 Culture Change is Adaptive + Iterative
31:43 Seed, Nurture, Weed, and Harvest
34:22 Communities of Practice for Culture Change in Architecture
35:06 Pattern spotting mindsets

37:35 AIA Minnesota Case Study
39:10 Foundational efforts
40:27 Setting new goals
42:08 Training + coaching staff
43:02 Intercultural Leadership program
44:15 Collaborations + Partnerships
45:30 Results
51:05 Looking back

54:35 Q+A
55:00 Creating a collaborative culture in a distributed work environment
57:43 Monitoring and measuring a culture over time
61:52 Surprising mindset pairs + leverage points
68:12 The importance of mindsets
69:57 Fears underlying mindsets
73:52 Entering into culture change work
79:37 Stories as leverage points
82:10 How did you get here?
84:19 Looking back 3-4 years from now
84:19 What’s next

Read the Collaborative Notes

Members of our team and the KA Connect community took collaborative notes during this Deep Dive using Google Docs. Collaborative note-taking helped us summarize key takeaways, collect related links, and will provide us with a quick reference when we return to this topic in the future. We've found the notes quite useful so far and hope you will as well.

Read Notes