Available June 18, 2026

Episode 028: The Trust Paradox: Transforming the Institutions Built to Stay the Same

DURATION: 61 minutes
HOST: Kevin Novak

GUEST: Elizabeth Maza Stewart

SHOW: The Human Factor Podcast

COLD OPEN

Kevin Novak: There is a category of organization that faces a transformation challenge unlike anything in the private sector. Standards bodies, credentialing organizations, and professional associations. These are institutions whose entire value proposition is stability, consistency, and trustworthiness. They exist because the public grants them the authority to certify, to set standards, to represent a profession, to say this person is qualified and this one is not.

Now imagine that institution needs to transform itself. It needs to update its technology, modernize its operations, and evolve its standards to reflect a changing profession or industry. Every signal of change the organization sends can be misread as a signal of instability by the very stakeholders who depend on it. Change your certification standards, and you risk telling every professional you already certified that their credential is now suspect. Update your brand, and you risk telling the public that the institution they trust is no longer the same institution.

Today’s guest has spent more than thirty years navigating this exact paradox at the American Red Cross, at the American Institute of Architects, and as the Chief Operating Officer of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. She has seen what happens when institutional trust and organizational transformation collide, and she has learned things about the human factor that can only come from leading through it.

I’m Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040 Digital, professor at the University of Maryland, and author of the book The Truth About Transformation: Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty, and Human Complexity, along with the Ideas and Innovations weekly newsletter. Welcome to the Human Factor Podcast, the show that explores the intersection of humanity, technology, and transformation, along with the psychology behind transformation success.

Today I’m delighted to welcome back Elizabeth Mazza Stewart. Elizabeth is a senior advisor at 2040 Digital and one of the most frequent voices on this show. She first joined us in season one for episodes three and four, where we explored decision-making bias and information overload. She returned for episode seven, The Vulnerability Advantage, which became, and still is, one of our most downloaded episodes. And earlier this season, in episode fifteen, The Contagion Effect, we had a powerful conversation about emotional contagion, how anxiety spreads through organizations during change and transformation, drawing on the research of Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Barsade. So this is our fifth episode together, and each one has gone somewhere I didn’t expect.

Since that conversation, we have explored structural silence in episode nineteen, the broken psychological contract in episode twenty, and just last week, in episode twenty-seven, I did a solo episode on transformation theater, the pattern of performing elaborate change rituals without achieving actual change. Today’s episode builds on all of those threads, but takes us somewhere none of them went. What happens when the institution responsible for setting standards for an entire profession is itself subject to the same transformation pressures it is supposed to help others navigate?

Elizabeth, for listeners who haven’t heard your previous episodes, give us the quick version of your background, because the range of institutions you have led is really what makes this conversation unique.

Elizabeth Stewart: I have a strong background in quantitative and strategic analysis, based not only on my education but also on the experiences I’ve had across different organizations and industries, whether they are B2B, B2C, charitable enterprises, or associations and professional societies. At every part of my career, which I call a circular staircase rather than a ladder, I’ve had the opportunity to work across functions and learn from them, while keeping the business goals and the organizational mission in mind and working toward them.

Kevin Novak: So it is the combination of legal training, economic analysis, qualitative analysis, and marketing practice applied across three of the most trust dependent institutions in the country. We’re talking about the CFP Board, the American Red Cross, and the American Institute of Architects. That is the lens we need for this conversation. For listeners who are new to the show, go back and listen to Elizabeth in season one, episodes three, four, and seven, as well as season two, episode fifteen. Those conversations set the foundation for where we are going today.

So let’s get into it. I want to start with the paradox itself. Research on institutional legitimacy, going back to DiMaggio and Powell’s work on institutional isomorphism, and more recently to Deephouse and Suchman’s work on organizational legitimacy, shows that institutions which derive authority from perceived stability face a unique transformation challenge. The very signals of change, new leadership, new processes, new standards, can be misread by stakeholders as signals of instability. For a bank or a tech company, change signals innovation. For a standards body, change can signal unreliability. You lived inside this paradox at three different institutions. How did you first encounter this tension between the need to transform and the need to appear stable?

Elizabeth Stewart: There are two parts to that question, because one part is how you manage change internally, and the other is how you manage your internal change externally. There is a strong connection between what you do, who you serve, and how you serve them, which is the mission of the organization.

As long as the mission remains stable, which is the purpose of the organization, that is your common ground across all the business units, across all the innovations, and across all the activities, whether strategic, business, or operational. That does not change much unless the environment shifts or there is a burning platform. In my experience, the mission remains stable, whether it is the Red Cross, the CFP Board, or the AIA.

The second part is that even if the mission remains stable and constant, the way the organization delivers on that mission has to evolve, for the simple reason that the environment changes, customers change, personnel change, and generations change. You have to be adaptable and resilient to manage all that change and transformation while keeping the mission as your North Star. The challenge most organizations have is that they forget about the mission, and more importantly, they forget about the brand promise to their stakeholders. In addition to the mission, what your brand means to stakeholders, internal or external, matters. If there is a disconnect between your brand and your mission, there will be a disconnect between your internal and external stakeholders, and change does not happen efficiently or in a timely way.

Kevin Novak: You and I have talked a lot about this with Erin Fuller when she was on the show a few weeks ago, she talked a lot about the challenge and value proposition as well as brand distinction. You’re describing a situation where the external brand promise, the thing the public believes about the institution, sometimes creates constraints on what the institution can do internally. The public doesn’t want to hear that the Red Cross is going through a transformation. They want to hear that the Red Cross will be there when the hurricane hits. Talk about that perception of instability.

Elizabeth Stewart: Let me give you a very real example. In the 1990s, there was the HIV and AIDS crisis, and a big part of it involved tainted blood, blood that was transfused to patients during surgery or after donation. There was a great deal of litigation and adverse publicity about the Red Cross. Operationally, the Red Cross was compliant with all FDA regulations. It practiced good manufacturing practices and managed blood collection and distribution the way other blood banks did. But because the brand has a higher, purposeful meaning to stakeholders, it was subject to higher scrutiny. Compliance was not enough. The brand promise was that you are going to help save lives, not contribute to the death of people. That created a burning platform internally. Some heads rolled, because at that time that was the way the Red Cross reacted. But there was also a conscious determination to rethink the way we operate, the way we communicate, and how we align internal initiatives with external expectations.

Kevin Novak: That focuses in on what research calls a dual audience, and you’ve hit on the internal reaction. When the internal workforce is already going through change, there is also the reaction to what the external audience perceives. Good manufacturing practices may not resonate with the public, or the public may not understand them. Those two audiences have fundamentally different needs and perceptions. The internal audience needs honesty about what is changing and why. The external audience needs reassurance that the things they depend on are not at risk. How do you communicate authentically to both at the same time?

Elizabeth Stewart: This is where I was fortunate, because Mrs. Dole had created a strategic marketing function that relied on data and evidence to make business decisions. One of the things I had to do was determine what the brand promise really was across the enterprise. Not many people know that Red Cross revenues are largely generated by biomedical services. At that time it was a two-billion-dollar organization, 1.2 billion of which was biomedical, with the rest in health and safety and fundraising. We were very operationally focused, and I think that was the problem. We did well at what we did, but external stakeholders, whether donors, patients, or disaster clients, do not care how well you do it. They care about the outcome and how it benefits or affects them.

So one of the initiatives I had to lead was to determine the collective promise across all business units and services. It boiled down to helping to save lives. Stakeholders already knew that was what they expected, but the organization was not willing to coalesce around it, primarily for operational reasons and because of litigation. Lawyers always come into play, and I was fortunate to be a lawyer myself, so I was able to work with them. We make a promise that we will help save lives. We are not saying we save lives.

I would go to biomedical services and they would say, we don’t save lives, ninety percent of patients who receive red blood cells die within six months, because they are largely cancer patients who need red blood cell transfusions. I would go to disaster relief services and they would say, we don’t save lives, we have a contract with FEMA to provide accommodations. I would go to health and safety services and they would say, we are not here to save lives, we train people in CPR and first aid. So I would tell biomedical, yes, but you gave those patients six months they would not have had if you were not helping to save a life. I would tell disaster relief that if they did not provide accommodation, people would be exposed to the disaster, which affects their health, safety, and welfare. And I would tell health and safety that if they did not train people in first aid and CPR, then when an employee or even a CEO collapses, someone has to perform CPR to save a life. And they said, now that you put it in that context, we get it. It’s the outcome. What you do is great, and you can focus on that, but at the end of the day you are trying to prevent death, or at least minimize it.

Kevin Novak: You hit on operations earlier. Going around to the different departments, in many ways they were missing that shared purpose. Why was there a disconnect in how they saw themselves actually facilitating the saving of lives, through those contracts, through coordination, through training? What was the challenge with them not seeing the role they were playing on the operational side?

Elizabeth Stewart: In most organizations, especially one that is iconic and highly visible, there is always a fear of litigation or adverse public opinion because of a mistake, like the HIV and tainted blood situation. So people become fearful and focus only on what they do, trying to do it well without thinking about the end in mind or the stakeholder in mind. It does not mean the work does not go well, but having the end in mind gives them a much stronger motivation to be productive and diligent, because there is a person at the end of that service.

Kevin Novak: To jump into the human factor, most people who embrace the mission have passion. But if there is a fear of potential legal issues, because someone is perhaps too passionate, how do you motivate that staff to keep pushing forward when there is almost an embrace of caution?

Elizabeth Stewart: This is where the lawyers really need to play a strong role, and it takes a very good lawyer with a business mind to understand that if you become too cautious, you cannot do your job well, and the outcome will not be good. So I worked to convince our lawyers that it was okay to communicate that we are here to help save lives. The mission does not change. We just have to be careful how we use that value proposition. There is very little case law, as I would tell my CFP Board lawyers, where people get sued over taglines or brand promises, because there is a way to recover, like what Johnson and Johnson did when they had the Tylenol problem. You show up, take accountability, and say we are going to fix it. That is what people want to hear. As opposed to denying it, the way Toyota did with the sudden acceleration issue for a long time. That really damaged their brand promise, because they had a brand commitment to safety. Just admit it and say you are going to fix it. I think that is what Elizabeth Dole did really well. When she was hit with a consent decree over the tainted blood, she immediately went into the organization and said we are going to fix it, and went to Congress and said we are going to fix it.

Kevin Novak: We’ve talked about this on the episodes you’ve been a part of, the authenticity and the trust, going back to the vulnerability episode where we really dove into that. Being trustworthy and authentic is not about being perfect. People are people. There are people working in companies and in organizations, and they want people to be honest.

Elizabeth Stewart: And accountable, Kevin. Accountable. Take ownership of the problem and work through the solution with others who have a stake in it. You can have authenticity, but if you have authenticity and still say it’s my fault but I’m not going to do anything about it, it falls flat.

Kevin Novak: Very much so. I want to go deeper into the CFP Board, because I think it represents the paradox in its purest form. You were the first person to hold the Chief Operating Officer role.

Elizabeth Stewart: Under the current CEO. I think there was one before the CEO came on board.

Kevin Novak: You were building a lot of the operational infrastructure for an organization that was simultaneously defining and enforcing competency standards for an entire profession. There is a concept in the research literature called the paradox of expertise and standards governance. When the institution that defines professional competence needs to evolve its own definition, it risks appearing to invalidate the professionals it has already certified. In episode fourteen of this season, I explored the identity crisis of expertise, how professionals fuse their identity with their knowledge. At the CFP Board, you were operating at the systemic level of that same dynamic. You were not just managing individual identity threat, you were managing an entire profession’s identity. How did that tension between preserving the existing certification framework and evolving it play out inside the CFP Board?

Elizabeth Stewart: We are accredited by the NCCA, the National Commission for Certifying Agencies, which requires a practice analysis every five years to update competency standards, mostly the body of knowledge and the principal knowledge topics. That practice analysis surveys all the knowledge topics among practitioners, with the opportunity to update or add to them as their experience with clients evolves. So we have the voice of the customer manifested through the practitioners who fill out the practice analysis. In financial planning there are a lot of technical topics, estate planning, tax, investment, and so on. Communication is one of them.

When we did the practice analysis, what came out was the need for financial advisors to have what we call soft skills, the ability to understand the client’s biases, to identify their own biases so they can communicate properly, counseling skills, things that make financial advice more humanistic than a purely professional delivery. So we brought the practice analysis back to the organization and said we have to update the competency standards. That helped the profession, because employers were saying they wanted financial advisors with a strong humanistic side, since money is a sensitive topic. Our educators were thrilled, because they could update their curriculum and add this knowledge topic. And many practitioners said they would benefit from continuing education in this domain.

One CFP narrated a story to me about his first encounter with a client. He was well-trained in every aspect of retirement and estate planning, with his materials ready. A client couple came in, and the first thing the husband said was, I am going to be dying of cancer, and I want my wife taken care of when I am no longer here. Well, that plan went out the door, because now he had to deal with a very emotional, sensitive situation, and he had to be empathetic and sympathetic, because it was very painful for the clients. Those are the kinds of skills you need to be aware of when you are doing tax and estate planning. They can be trained, but it helps to have some foundation when you start. So we were able to bridge the paradox by saying this is what our practitioners tell us their clients want. We adapted it into our certification, in both the education and the examination, and worked with education providers to incorporate it into their curricula. Employers were happy, and CFPs were happy.

Kevin Novak: This connects to something I discussed earlier this season on the broken contract. There is a written contract, the CFP Board standards and the certification professionals receive. But what you hit on so well is the very human element they need to embrace, because they are working with people, and they have to find a way for those people to feel trust, respect, and authenticity. So there is an implicit message. Before you added this human dynamic, every existing CFP could say, this is what qualified me. Now you may be telling them it is no longer sufficient. That is a psychological contract violation at the scale of an entire profession. The written contract says you met the standards. The unwritten contract says, once certified, your expertise is validated. But things have changed, and you are compelling them to expand. In managing that messaging to a professional audience, what worked and what didn’t?

Elizabeth Stewart: Before we made that shift, even before I came, the CFP Board’s positioning was, we’re the best. Beating its chest, we’re the best among financial advisors because we’re CFPs. It missed, as you said, the human element. You are only good if your clients say you are good, not because you say so. So we changed our value proposition and our positioning to say, we partner with you to ensure a good outcome, good financial well-being. It’s you and me. It is not just me telling you what to do, it is me listening to you and giving you advice until we reach common ground where the service I provide actually improves your financial well-being. That is the commitment. If you are successful, then I am successful, and my name is behind it.

Kevin Novak: Many listeners, including me, may have seen the various CFP commercials where the intent is connecting human to human, and some other financial firms do that well too. My question is about managing an internal perception, where you are moving the importance of the human factor forward, then managing the professional audience so they understand the value to their careers, and then the external audience. Was there any tension when those very successful campaigns launched publicly, with professionals saying you were too touchy-feely?

Elizabeth Stewart: When I came on board, the commercial they were using communicated something fake. It featured a person in a hostess situation talking to clients, and the supposed advisor was actually a DJ. The message was, you had better know who you are talking to before you give them your assets to manage. The CFP mark was not very evident in that whole campaign. So when I came aboard I said we have to differentiate CFP professionals from other financial advisors and from other certifications, because there are many. We had to build on that and make the mark more ubiquitous and iconic. Once it had a share of mind, we could dig deeper. So the first campaign I started was really about getting the CFP mark out there, talking about financial confidence. That got unaided awareness quite good. The second campaign was the next level up. Now that you know what a CFP is, you had better ask for one when you are talking to a wealth management firm. If you remember the advertising, you are on a ledge about to go bungee jumping, and the person helping you is not qualified, or you are talking to a doctor who is not qualified. The point is, are you qualified, and the qualification is, are you a CFP? That moves the brand up. The conversation between client and advisor was the strategy, because now you are both together, and you can trust the person because they have the CFP after their name.

Kevin Novak: Coming back to the internal audience, you were building operations from the ground up in many regards.

Elizabeth Stewart: Not from the ground up, Kevin, because it was already there. I just improved upon it.

Kevin Novak: There was a lot you had to fix.

Elizabeth Stewart: Kind of, yeah.

Kevin Novak: What was the organizational psychology like inside the CFP Board? Were there people experiencing their own transformation anxiety? For people who don’t know Elizabeth, she is an incredible person to work with. She is very diligent, she will accomplish the mission, and I know that can intimidate some people who don’t want change.

Elizabeth Stewart: Certification was not treated as the core business of the organization. Because there had been some Wall Street Journal coverage about the one percent of advisors who were problematic, there was a heavy focus on legal issues, ethics, and enforcement. So certification, the core business, felt isolated and unappreciated. When I came on board, I sensed that. We had some turnover, so we were hiring people, and I was determined to make it clear to everybody that this is the business of the organization, and that people in certification have a voice and will use it. I reminded my colleagues that we are the ones bringing in the revenue, and we are the ones certifying competency standards. Less than one percent of advisors are problematic. The majority live up to the promise and have the trust of their clients and communities. It was constant messaging, and not just from me. Everybody in certification needed to have a voice. We also became more participative in the certification and accreditation community, so we always had a presence and made sure certification had visibility in its space.

Kevin Novak: I find this so interesting, because the nonprofits and associations doing well in a challenging economy with demographic shifts are often the ones with a certification program, standards, or some official program that is valued by the constituency and the public, where the public is looking for authenticity and trust. I spoke at the marketing and communications technology conference for an association a couple of weeks ago and after my morning session I sat in another session about an organization that had created a very successful certification program. The interesting thing they discussed was the tension inside the organization while they were building it, where other departments were concerned the new program would steer revenue away from them. The talent is in communicating that more revenue for the overall organization is better for everybody.

Elizabeth Stewart: There is always tension among departments, whether they are revenue-generating or not, and that messaging has to come from the top. One of the challenges I had at the Red Cross was that talking about profitability, or margins, was taboo. But our leaders did talk about balance and margin, because you cannot be a humanitarian agency if you are bankrupt. As Mrs. Dole used to say, and I reminded her of this when I spoke to her a few years ago, she always talked about the business of the heart. Business is the operative word, because you cannot be humanitarian if you are bankrupt. The same is true for associations, professional societies, and certifying bodies. You cannot be a viable enterprise if you do not focus on growth and revenue, because as a nonprofit the revenue goes back to the membership. You don’t have shareholders or investors per se. If leadership models the behavior that all boats rise together, there is a more collective approach to working together. When I left, my last Christmas event there came after a killer year for us. We had changed the continuing education provider revenue model, updated the authorized provider revenue model, and we regularly update our exam and certification fees. It was a very good year despite the transition, because everybody worked together. I reminded the organization that the certification of professional practice could not have been that successful if IT, finance, and marketing and communications had not helped. It was a collective success, not the success of one part of the organization, even the part that is purely revenue-generating.

Kevin Novak: Let me shift to the AIA, the American Institute of Architects, because your work there illuminates a different dimension, and I directly know some of it. You directed the national advertising program and were instrumental in connecting architectural identity to public awareness. That included the America’s Favorite Architecture initiative on Google Earth during the AIA’s 150th anniversary, which was a fun project. That work was fundamentally about translating professional identity into public relevance. Professional identity theory, particularly the work of Ibarra and Ashforth, shows that the stories institutions tell about professions create identity anchors, and those anchors can either facilitate or resist transformation, depending on whether change is perceived as evolution of what the profession means or erosion of it. At the AIA you were actively shaping the story of what architecture means to the public, and I know how excited you were about it. How did that work of defining professional identity intersect with the transformation pressures the profession itself was experiencing?

Elizabeth Stewart: Again, we started with data. We surveyed our practitioners, then took the data, turned it around, and tested it with the public, so we could prioritize, identify, add, and delete to come up with the list we used for Google Earth and all our communication. It was a data-driven approach. One of the transformations happening at the time was a focus on form and function, not just form. I love the expression, form follows function. There was a belief, at least among the leadership, that we needed to show how facilities and buildings are used and what the outcomes are. So when we had PowerPoints about structure, there should be people in them. Our communication started talking about evidence-based design. Patient outcomes are better when hospitals are well-designed. Education scores are better when facilities are designed well. If you remember, we even added a video about community design, because it is not just a facility, it is the community around it, and it affects not only the people using it but the people around it. I think it was successful because everybody rallied around the purpose of making sure architecture is about places, places where people live, work, and play. That is the takeaway.

Kevin Novak: There is something really significant in what you are describing. With the Red Cross, you talked about helping professionals rediscover their purpose. At the CFP Board, you were helping a profession review its identity. Here, you are seeking to redefine or educate the public about architects and architecture. So the institution, with your leadership and others, is constructing a professional identity, and when you construct the identity, you are also constructing the boundaries of acceptable change.

Elizabeth Stewart: I’ll give you an example, and you were there. There was a focus on energy performance, designing structures and buildings that consume less energy, which is one of the biggest factors in energy consumption. The president said we needed to add two continuing education units focused only on sustainability. We also created sustainability-related material and initiatives, like 50 to 50, and we monitored the design work of large firms. That was a struggle. A lot of architects complained to me about adding the CE requirement, asking why we were adding it, because they did not practice in that space. But LEED and the USGBC were promoting themselves around good, sustainable design, and it was affecting the identity of the architect as a creator of places that are also sustainable. So we implemented initiatives that were incorporated into the way we operate as a profession, and over time we eliminated the CE requirement, because everyone else was including it in their own education programs.

Kevin Novak: Let me bring back the emotional contagion work from episode fifteen. When the AIA tells the public that architecture is one thing, and then the profession starts evolving in ways that challenge that narrative, the anxiety doesn’t stay inside the profession. It leaks into the institution and into the public’s perception. You surely experienced this. What did you watch for, and what were the signals that professional anxiety was starting to affect institutional credibility?

Elizabeth Stewart: One of the ways to measure it is your membership numbers and engagement. If convention attendance is down, or if membership attrition is high, those are leading indicators that say there is no trust with the organization, especially if there is an economic situation affecting it. When we had the economic crisis in 2008 and 2009, we did see some membership attrition because of the payment schedule. Members have to pay local, state, and national dues. But we still saw stability in other forms of engagement. People who gave up membership often became emeritus, but they still attended some meetings, especially local ones. So we were able to monitor it. The financial numbers don’t lie, because they are realistic, not probabilities. When your numbers are not doing well, you have to figure out the root cause, and almost always it is because you are coasting on the value proposition, or there is no transformation solution.

Kevin Novak: I want to go somewhere I think is unexplored in the institutional transformation literature. It focuses on the emotional labor, because we are all human, of leading an institution where trust ultimately is the product. You have described three situations where trust has to come first. Research on emotional labor, particularly Hochschild’s foundational work, shows that managing the gap between felt emotions and expressed emotions is psychologically draining, just like our contagion episode, where there is a drain on cognitive resources. In our transformation fatigue episode, episode nine, I described emotional dissonance, the fatigue that comes from projecting confidence while processing uncertainty. In your career, you weren’t just managing your own emotional dissonance; you were managing the emotional dissonance of an entire institution. The Red Cross needed to project confidence, the CFP Board needed to project certainty about professional standards, and the AIA needed to project vitality about a profession under pressure. How did you personally manage that burden, and what did it cost?

Elizabeth Stewart: It was long hours away from the family. For me, the important thing is always to communicate context and to discern what really is important and what is not. When change affects staff and they come to me and say this is not good, I have to understand what is driving that fear, panic, or discontent. Almost always it is not understanding the real purpose or the expected outcome. I wouldn’t even call it transparency, because certain information has to be confidential, but you have to be open to a conversation and able to say, I can’t tell you more, but here is where we are and here is where you play a big role. So empathy in communication, and understanding where people are coming from, is critical.

The other part is sharing their pain. In one situation, my communications staff were disappointed and demoralized because an outside consultant hired by the CEO had criticized their work, specifically the website, and reported to the board that we were not in a good space, almost suggesting we needed to change staff. So I went through the whole website with the staff, at least the key parts, because they were afraid, since I was new. I told them, and I hate to use this word, I want to show the jerk that we are better than what he says, so show me what you can do. At that moment they knew I was on their side. I said I would not accept that kind of criticism from a consultant who doesn’t work with us day to day. They did an incredible job reworking the site and our communication publications, and the board was very pleased. I had to share with them that it was not just their pain, it was my pain too. Let’s do better and show the consultant he is wrong. And that became a battle cry.

Kevin Novak: That resonates with something I’ve heard from other guests, and something I’ve written about, that this level of leadership requires you to perform a version of yourself that is not necessarily what you are actually feeling, and that performance has a cumulative cost. In episode twenty-seven last week, I talked about transformation theater, the organizational habit of performing change rituals without achieving change. But there is a personal version of that too. Leaders performing confidence, certainty, and optimism because the institution and the workforce need it, even when the reality is much more ambiguous. What are your thoughts about navigating that dynamic?

Elizabeth Stewart: It goes back to being open to conversations and providing the empathy people need, even when you feel terrible because you yourself are affected by it. There was one organization, which I will not name, where there was a reorganization and my job changed. All my functions pretty much disappeared and I was given new ones. I liked the new functions and responsibilities, but the team I had to let go to another colleague were really disappointed and upset. All I could say was, my door is open. If you need help dealing with your new boss or doing your work, come in, and I’ll figure out how to help you, and you take the credit for it. I have your back, because I trained you, I helped you, I mentored you. I’m not going to give you up just because you don’t work for me anymore. Sometimes you accept that, even when you wonder why you are doing this person’s job by mentoring or training their staff.

Kevin Novak: Looking across all three institutions we focused on today, and the others you have led, was there a moment where you felt the internal emotional climate was starting to affect external trust? If so, what did that look like, and what did it do to you, because you are human?

Elizabeth Stewart: To be honest, Kevin, because we are mostly B2B, it was not as obvious. Our purpose was to help the profession, to help the certificate holders do a good job so their clients and communities could trust them as individuals. Clients don’t necessarily know about the enterprise as a whole, the AIA or the CFP Board. They know about the CFP in front of them. The Red Cross was different, because it was such a public institution in terms of brand and visibility. When you have all this chaos about blood or about a disaster, the mission compels you to act, to go beyond duty, because you are being called to deliver. That is what is wonderful about it, but it is also very challenging, because a crisis response organization needs all hands on deck. Physically, intellectually, and emotionally, it can be a strain. But then your adrenaline rises and you feel you are doing something really good, and that is rewarding in itself.

Kevin Novak: Definitely. So, my favorite part. You have more than thirty years of experience leading at the intersection of institutional trust, professional standards, and organizational transformation. I want to close with a reflection question, my favorite one to ask. After all of that experience, what have you learned about the human factors that determine whether an institution successfully transforms while maintaining public trust? And, because I never ask easy questions, what do leaders inside organizations, and we have talked a lot about professional associations, consistently get wrong about the relationship between internal change and external credibility?

Elizabeth Stewart: It is all about people, whether they are the people inside your organization, the people you serve outside it, or the members you certify. Leaders focus too much on numbers and operations, and that blinds them to whether they are really doing a good job keeping their employees safe, content, and evolving over time with new skills so they can be more productive. You focus on serving your members so they can do a better job, and that way, the profession and the brand as a whole are elevated. When people focus only on operations and numbers and forget the human side, which is what drives the numbers and the operations, it is very hard to grow, to evolve, and to transform.

Kevin Novak: Elizabeth, what would you tell a CEO right now who has a board telling them to innovate, a staff that is completely exhausted, and a profession, a set of customers, and a membership watching every move they make?

Elizabeth Stewart: If the board told me we have to innovate, I would need a very strong plan and strategy for how we are going to do it internally and externally, with people at the center. How do you motivate staff? How do you train them? How do you upgrade their skill set, and how do you retain them? That goes beyond innovation and may include benefits, compensation, and lifestyle choices. Then you start thinking, if I have a motivated, productive staff who embrace the change, how do I ensure that what we are doing delivers on the value proposition and the promise to our current stakeholders? Sometimes we forget that people are the important factor in any organization. They really are.

Kevin Novak: That is always so powerful, and it is what each of the guests this season has talked about, with another coming up next week. The criticality of the people in a very dynamic environment of change, adding in AI, and how to navigate that for an organization, a profession, the public, and an industry. The human factor is not the soft stuff, and you and I know this well. It really is the hard stuff. It is the thing that determines whether a change, transformation, or innovation initiative succeeds or produces theater, as I talked through last week. In the institutional settings you have been part of, the stakes are even higher, because that trust extends beyond the organization to the profession and the public it serves. I want to thank you for coming back to the show. There is always an open door. From decision-making bias in season one, to vulnerability in episode seven, to emotional contagion in episode fifteen, which was one of my favorites, to institutional trust today, every conversation with you opens a dimension of the human factor that I think listeners can only get from someone who has led through it at the scale and diversity that you have. The paradox of needing to change while needing to appear stable, the emotional labor of leading institutions where trust is the product, and the identity dynamics that operate at the scale of an entire profession. These are forces that standard change management playbooks don’t address, and they are the forces that determine the outcome. Thank you.

Elizabeth Stewart: And you have to be conscious of it. It is not just something that happens. You have to be sensitized to it so you can manage it and grow from it. It is wonderful having conversations with you, Kevin. We have similar experiences and philosophies, so I am always pleased to have these conversations. Thank you for inviting me.

Kevin Novak: If you found today’s episode valuable, here are the ways to go deeper. The institutional trust themes we discussed today connect to the full arc of season two, and particularly to episodes fourteen, fifteen, nineteen, twenty, and twenty-seven, where we explored identity threat, emotional contagion, structural silence, the broken contract, and transformation theater. If you haven’t listened to those, this conversation will send you back to them with new eyes. Dive into the Human Factor Method and the Transformation Readiness Assessment, both available at TransformationAssessment.com, and measure the psychological factors we discussed today, including organizational readiness, emotional climate, and identity threat. If you are leading an institution through transformation and want to know where the invisible barriers are, those are both great places to start.

Subscribe to the Human Factor Podcast wherever you listen or watch, and leave a rating and a comment. Share this episode with colleagues who lead standards bodies, credentialing organizations, or professional associations. The paradox Elizabeth described today is one they are living through, and having the language for it changes how you navigate it. And if you want weekly insights about transformation psychology and the human factors that determine success, subscribe to my Ideas and Innovations newsletter at 2040digital.com or on Substack. Every Thursday, I share practical frameworks and research on why change succeeds or fails.

Until next time, remember, the institutions we trust the most are often the ones that find it hardest to change. Understanding why is the first step toward helping them transform without losing what makes them trustworthy in the first place. This is the Human Factor Podcast. I’m Kevin Novak. Thanks for watching or listening.

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Upcoming: Episode 029 with Deborah Patton and Justin Thorp: Transformation IN Practice Series Episode 9 of the Series 

Season 2, Part 2 began May 1, 2026

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