“Raise your hand if you’re here because you want to work with people,” Paul Thompson instructed students on their first day in BYU Marriott’s master of organizational behavior (MOB) program.
Most of the group—the class of 1979—eagerly put their hands in the air.
“Well, you’re in the wrong place,” said Thompson, the department chair who would eventually serve as BYU Marriott dean from 1984 to 1989. “If you want to work with people, you should be a mortician. Organizational behavior is about change and how to make it happen.”
That comment grabbed the attention of Norm Smallwood when he was a student, and it has stayed with him while he’s constructed a remarkable career. Since cofounding the RBL Group, an education and consulting firm, in December 1999, Smallwood has coauthored nine books and has trained individuals and organizations around the world.
“When businesses invest the right way—in leadership, talent, organization, and supporting HR systems—it has a very positive impact on business outcomes,” he says. “That’s what we research and write about: the linkage between results and people in organizations.”
People often think of leadership from the inside out—a way of developing themselves into better individuals, Smallwood says. But leadership should happen from the outside in as leaders look to stakeholders and try to understand their needs. “Leadership from the outside in identifies those things that need to be done and then helps an organization achieve them,” he continues. “Build on your strengths that strengthen others.”
Smallwood, who was recognized as a Change Driver of the Decade by The HR Digest in January 2024, discovered the organizational behavior field—and his passion for it—just in the nick of time. He enrolled in an organizational behavior course during his last semester at BYU and found it so intriguing that he gave up his spot at Queen’s Law School in Kingston, Ontario, only months before he was supposed to begin.
Trading law school for the MOB program created the perfect path for Smallwood. “I have lifelong friends from the program. Some of the professors—including Paul Thompson, Bonner Ritchie, and Gene Dalton—have profoundly influenced my life ever since as I shifted from student to friend,” he says. “If you had told me in 1979 what I would be doing now professionally, I would not have believed it. It’s been so much more than I would have guessed. It’s been a great career, and I’ve been able to meet wonderful people all over the world.”
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This article was published in BYU Marriott's 2023 Annual Report, pages 17.
