When the tech bubble burst in the early 2000s, it was the end of an era.
But it was the beginning of a new career for Stephen Balzac.
An MIT-educated engineer, Balzac worked for several technology startup
companies. During the tech boom, companies rose and fell quickly. Balzac
noticed something: When companies failed, he explains, “they never failed
because of their technology. They failed because of their interpersonal
dynamics.”
Human systems are the difference between success and failure
“I got more and more interested in the dynamics of human systems,”
Balzac recalls. When the tech boom ended and his employer went under,
the time was right for Balzac to make a career out of his passion for
helping others improve. To get there, he needed an advanced degree.
“I was looking for something that would give me the opportunity to learn
the material—that would fit my learning style, which tends to be very self
directed.”
Capella fit the bill, and he enrolled in the master’s program specializing in
Industrial/Organizational Psychology. “It gave me the opportunity to pick
up a thread of research and just really explore it. And then if I ended up
turning it into the final project for that course, I had the freedom to do it
that way.”
Thinking “7 Steps Ahead”
After earning his MS from Capella, Balzac started 7 Steps Ahead, a
consulting practice to help individuals and companies improve their
performance. One way Balzac helps people develop techniques for success
is by creating live roleplaying games that force players to react and adapt to
unpredictable situations. Recently he designed and operated a pandemic
flu scenario game for business and public-service leaders in the Washington,
D.C., area.
Balzac is also an adjunct professor of organizational psychology and group
dynamics, and a prolific author. He is a frequent contributor to business
and performance-improvement publications. He wrote a chapter in the
peer-reviewed book, Ethics in Game Design: Teaching Values Through
Play. And his book, The 36-hour Course in Organizational Development,
will be published soon by McGraw-Hill.
Whether as a consultant, speaker, or author, Balzac’s focus is the same:
helping organizations—and the people inside them—achieve their goals.
“A big part of why I like working with organizations is that at end of it, if I’m
successful, I can see the improvement.”