Life at V+C: Lauren Statman, Senior Consultant and Operations Lead for North America

Lauren Statman is passionate about driving positive change through Veldhoen + Company’s unique approach to organisational change. As a working mother, Lauren has found surprising parallels between being a parent and an organisational change consultant, such as the importance of trust-building, being truthful, and fostering a supportive climate during times of change.

Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn.

V+C: Hi Lauren, please introduce yourself and your work at Veldhoen + Company to our readers!

Lauren: I joined Veldhoen + Company in 2019 after a decade-long career in social impact consulting. Having grown up wanting to be a “do-gooder,” I was eager to expand my understanding of how I could influence positive change.  

I jumped at the chance to work with V+C because of its unique approach to organisational change through the lens and lever of the workplace. We know that one of the most effective ways to change your behaviour is to change your environment. Here is a company partnering with leaders and employees to shape a future environment that will support their aspirations for a better future of work.  

At V+C I play two roles – as a Senior Consultant I lead client engagements focused on developing and implementing new ways of working strategies, and as the Operations Lead for North America, I oversee our internal infrastructure and team development. As I see it, both roles require the same outcomes: uncovering evidence-based insights, developing and using a framework for values-based decision-making, and delivering high-quality, human-centred experiences to foster learning and collaboration.

Beyond my life at V+C, I live with my partner and two young children in Columbia, MD – one of the United States’ first planned cities. We enjoy the hiking trails and lakes at our doorstep and many city adventures. I’m also a yoga practitioner, Broadway fan, amateur houseplant mom, an active Buy Nothing member, and a native Californian who makes an annual pilgrimage home every summer!

V+C: What inspires you?

Lauren: I’m most inspired when a group of people come together to work toward a shared ambition and deliver something greater than the sum of its parts. It happens on both a mundane and miraculous scale - it’s how my preschooler builds a metropolis out of blocks with classmates; it’s also what delivers achievements that defy the odds, such as the U.S. Constitution, Underground Railroad, and Apollo II moon landing.

I am continually curious about what makes this happen, and how can I best serve as a catalyst for this level of team, organisational or even social collaboration.

As I have learnt on my quest, one key is for team members to bring a range of strengths and skills, and another is for the team climate to be psychologically safe so they can fully bring themselves to work. V+C’s holistic model for workplace transformation is a great example of the potential for breakthrough collaboration just waiting to be activated in organisations. 

V+C: As a working mother, do you draw more links between being a parent and being an organisational change consultant?  

Lauren: Definitely. I joined V+C when my first child was one, so my career growth has run on a parallel track to my growth as a parent. Six months later, while guiding our clients through the disruption of the pandemic, I was personally navigating the loss of childcare, an out-of-state move, and having my second child.

Through these parallel experiences, I’ve been surprised to learn the type of change leadership that helps organisations stay resilient overlaps with what children need most from their caregivers during times of change and disruption:

• Telling the truth in an accessible way about what’s changing, what’s not, and why
• Openness when things are uncertain or unpredictable, and how we are prepared to handle whatever comes our way
• Someone whom they can trust and respect, even when they don’t like or agree with what they’re hearing
• Having the patience and time to hear feedback, concerns, and disagreement without judgment  

Thanks to the near-constant feedback I receive from my children on my own (in)abilities to display these leadership behaviours, I am learning even faster about the demands that our clients face. Gratefully, I get unlimited chances to practice these at work and at home!  

V+C: As a working mother in a remote role, how do you balance your time between work and family?

Lauren: As an individual employee, I can only do so much to try to balance my time. My take is that rather than putting the focus on mothers and how they can achieve success in balancing work and family, we ask companies to what degree their organisational culture and team climate support and empower trust and flexibility. If that’s high, the rest is (almost) gravy.

Globally, V+C has been a champion for trust and flexibility for decades. In North America, we have taken several steps to translate those values into explicit norms that help the whole team maintain balance and well-being:  

• As a distributed team working virtual-first, we have established explicit team agreements about when and how we communicate to ensure that everyone knows when and how to succeed regardless of their time zone or location.
• Our consistent core working hours form the heartbeat of our collaboration time together and with clients.
• We support choices for when and how you can do your asynchronous and deep-focus work. One option is to take advantage of Fridays. It’s almost meeting-free and includes a teamwide focus time that is free of disruptions.
  

Together with Veldhoen + Company NA colleagues in our recent in-person gathering.

 Within that context, I feel empowered to make more choices that help with my specific needs:

• Full presence over multitasking
  Nobody wins from the 50% version of me. I’m clear about when I’m online vs. offline, and I hold my family mornings and evenings as sacred. It takes energy to maintain the boundaries but is worth it when I get to fully sink in at work or with family.
• Embracing my night owl ways.
  My schedule is shorter work days plus 1-2 evenings a week. This ensures I get some downtime with my family during the day, and it lets me plan to do deep focus work at night – which is when my brain wants to do it anyway!
• Taking walking calls outside.
  I still never feel like there is enough time in the day. Taking walking calls in the wooded paths of my neighbourhood makes a difference. I get the benefit of being screen-free and really listening, plus I get to move my body outdoors. I’ve even done them in the rain!  

Of course, all of this hinges on having reliable childcare you can trust. I’m privileged to also have a partner who is both an active co-parent and a mostly remote worker. Even with all this in place, sometimes the systems break (usually at a high-stakes time!). For example, the kids are sick while one of us is on a work trip. So, we lean into the high-trust teams we’re on and ask for additional flexibility and understanding as we work around a 1-2 day surprise. Then, we pay it forward for our colleagues when their next unexpected conflicts arise too.

V+C: The North American team has recently launched the Hybrid Working Toolkit to better support hybrid ways of working. Can you share a little about how the program can be utilised to provide better support to organisations and employees at work?

Lauren: The Hybrid Working Toolkit can benefit any organisation shifting to a hybrid way of working – and that is most! It came out of our work with a large Canadian insurance company that shifted from in-person first, to remote-first during the pandemic, to hybrid as part of its return-to-office strategy.

The toolkit focuses on the aspects of hybrid work that are make-or-break for team performances based on research, including:      

• High-trust teamwork
• Managing based on outcomes
• Optimising communication tools and practices
• Developing and maintaining team agreements 

It’s practical and accessible for people who have had no management training, and yet relevant for people who are already well-versed in hybrid concepts. It’s also action-oriented. By the end of the program, you and your team will have developed your team agreements spelling out how, when, and where you will work together, what success looks like, and how you will hold each other accountable to these commitments. 

V+C: What are some tools you recommend for organisations that are struggling to define their hybrid work strategy and execution?

Lauren: There is such a high level of uncertainty and noise related to hybrid and return-to-office right now. In this context, the best tools that organisations can use are frameworks that help make sense of the vast amounts of information and guide strategic decisions:

Everything in the hybrid strategy should have a clear throughline back to the business strategy. However, our clients often feel these are at odds with one another, rather than mutually reinforcing.

If hybrid presents new challenges to achieving the business strategy, then the hybrid plan should identify ways to mitigate these challenges. For example, one main risk of more remote work is the weakening of ties between distinct teams and functions. What can organisations do to not only strengthen existing relationships but also to create new ones to foster better collaboration?

2. Scenario planning:

Rather than focusing on getting the hybrid policy perfect from the get-go, spend time ideating on potential future scenarios and answering all of the what-ifs for each one. This is not just a one-time exercise, but a regular planning practice to help project teams clarify what matters most.

Especially for Real Estate teams tasked with scenario planning around future office occupancy, identifying the range of potential scenarios can help organisations prepare a strategy for each, and test their current and draft plans against it. The future is unpredictable and the scenarios can still be wrong, but having clarity and alignment in decision-making enables teams to act fast when needed. 

Our clients have been in a data quandary. Pre-pandemic office attendance data feels moot, and surveying employees about what they need and want in the future will all but guarantee disappointment across the board.

Rather than look forward or back, ‘right now’ is the place to get the best read. You can study current behaviour patterns through tools like our Work Dynamics Scan and Utilisation and Ethnography studies. Together, these will complete a picture of what work activities people are doing, where they are doing them, and the degree to which the environment supports them. Then, you can look at the organisation's future direction and what changes to how people work might be needed. This combined data helps organisations make informed decisions about what work to prioritise on-site and why. This helps build the business case for your hybrid strategy towards employees.   

V+C: Lastly, what does a better world of work mean to you? 

Lauren: It is a world in which individuals can contribute their greatest talents unabashedly to make a positive difference.

Lauren joined Veldhoen + Company in 2019 with a background in social impact consulting and a master’s degree in Organisational Psychology and Change Leadership. She leads client engagements and oversees team development, focusing on evidence-based insights, values-based decision-making, and human-centred experiences. To find out more about how Lauren and our colleagues can help support your organisation with hybrid work strategies, get in touch via lauren@veldhoencompany.com.