 It's about eliminating the cost of coordination, right? I try to examine the psychological barriers to organizational change and how these barriers can be overcome. The job is easy, the people are not. Exactly, absolutely. It's my pleasure to introduce you to Professor Ambra Mazzelli from ASB Eclipse and today we're going to talk a little bit about the things that she gets to do in the executive program at ASB Eclipse. How are you, Ambra? So good to see you. Also good to see you. Thanks for adding me. So, Ambra, you have a really, really interesting background. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what is it that you do at ASB and what is it that you do at Eclipse? So my name is Ambra Mazzelli and I'm an assistant professor of management and organization at the Asia School of Business and an international faculty fellow at MIT. I'm originally from Italy and I've lived and worked in the UK, Canada and the United States. My job is my passion. We all know that. We all know that. Your job and your cat. Right, Ambra? Exactly. So, Ambra, you have a very exciting title to the program that you're teaching. It's called People Purpose Performance. People Purpose Performance. What can you tell us about this fascinating program? So the People Purpose and Performance program is part of the marketing and strategy track. And the purpose of this unique course that you'll only find at ASB, Eclipse is to help the organizational leaders to restructure their organization in order to make them, first of all, more efficient. More efficient in terms of emanating or cutting all the coordination costs that are very common in organizations. More effective in terms of providing employees with the right incentives, but also more adaptable in terms of ensuring fit between the organization and external environments that in these challenging times is very crucial. It's so interesting you said it's about eliminating the cost of coordination, right? With all of us, we know it's actually quite taxing on a lot of us. So I've known you for a long time now. Like you said, your job is your passion. What exactly makes you passionate about this subject? So my research in general is about organizational change. And more specifically, I try to examine the psychological barriers to organizational change and how these barriers can be overcome. And perhaps one of the most important drivers of change is motivation. Some of the questions that I'm trying to examine, for instance, include how the conflicts between organizational and individual goals can hamper change and adaptation in organizations and how organizations can manage multiple goals and ensure alignment across diverging goals. And in addition to this, I'm also very intrigued about the role of intrinsic motivation. So as an academic, trust me, you need a lot of intrinsic motivation to keep up with research. And as an organizational leader, I think that ensuring that you're an employee at the purpose is really crucial nowadays. I think, Ambra, you heard me say this many, many times. The job is easy. The people are not. Exactly. Absolutely. So in this course of yours, from what I understand, we're trying to understand what makes people easier in a way, right? What gives us motivation on a Monday morning to wake up and be ready for those 10 Zoom meetings? Correct. So easier and motivated to achieve organizational goals. So if you think about a specific organization or somebody who works for an organization who wants to take this program, what business challenge is, do you think you're addressing in this program? And let's say also this is an important question, who should take this program? I think that there are some common pitfalls when organizational leaders try to design their organizations. And these include, for instance, not being able to set up clear goals. Or sometimes organizational leaders reward A while hoping to obtain something completely different, while hoping to obtain B. Or maybe sometimes they reward outputs and they don't consider efforts. And again, they sometimes ignore the power of intrinsic motivation and non-monetary rewards. And so the program is designed to make these mistakes explicit and propose ways to address these pitfalls. And I believe that the program is perfect for general managers, but also senior functional managers who manage and coordinate diverse groups or groups of diverse people, individuals. And it can also benefit HR managers and staff executives who manage, for instance, employee training and personal development. So Professor Amara, this sounds really, really interesting. You taught this course before in the past. Can you tell us a little bit about what type of impact participants feel that they got from this program or what type of feedback they give you at the end of this People Purpose Performance program? So you are right. We offered a short version of the program last year and participants said that the program helped them reconsider the importance of dedicating time to clearly formulate their organizational goals but also reconsider the importance of the interplay between organizational strategy, organizational design and the incentive systems. And pleasantly and recently one of the participants reached out to me to let me know that the content helped her to restructure the organization and also ensure employees in their companies stay motivated during the COVID crisis. So this for me was like a very rewarding and a meeting achievement, I think. Oh, absolutely. And if you think about it, I don't think there's one company on the planet these days that did not have to do a rework, a massive change, finding again a lot of intrinsical motivation if you think about all the extra hours of work that we have for doing this crisis. Do you have any final words to state to people who are interested in your program? Oh, yes, of course. Let's get smart and sharp at ASB together.