119: The #1 Culture Mistake That’s Costing Your Company Millions | Dr. Jessica Kriegel

Transcript

Introduction to Dr. Jessica Kriegel –Damon introduces Jessica and her expertise in workplace culture and leadership.

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the way that you get people to care is you care about themfirst and it's about getting out of the action trap because

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when you focus on the Action level what you're doing isyou're going to burn yourself out you're going to burn your

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team out to get people to take the right action so that youcan get results as a

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leader the key that we suggest is what really makes peoplecare about

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their work well it's not ping pong tables or Kucha on toptoday's guest is here to break down the myths about

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workplace culture and share surpris in research on how thepower of adaptable cultures those that can shift from

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strategy and Market demands drive four times more growththan rigid ones welcome to the learn itall podcast the

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show for today's leaders who want to get ahead and stayahead because we believe that great leaders aren't born or made

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we are constantly in the making I'm your host Damon lbytwo-time best-selling author and CEO of learn it joining me in

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a moment is Dr Jessica creal bestselling author and chiefscientist at culture Partners she is here to discuss how to

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create a winning workplace culture by shaping beliefsthrough intentional experiences and fostering adaptability

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to drive results I'm going to be asking Jessica to shareher thoughts on how leaders can shape team beliefs through

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intentional experiences why winning cultures aren't builton perks but on leadership aligning beliefs with

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behaviors in surprising research that shows how adaptablecultures those that can shift with strategy or Market

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demands drive four times more Revenue growth than rigidones I want to to start off by asking how do you get

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people to care care or as you like to say give a about thework they do

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okay well now that I know that we're allowed to curse onthis podcast I will you um I think well first of all

Why Beliefs Matter More Than Actions –Jessica explains the concept of the “Results Pyramid” and how leaders can shiftbeliefs to drive sustainable behavior change.

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intuitively the way that you get people to care is you careabout them first right I am much more interested and

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engaged and involved in the work I'm doing when I feel likethere's people there particularly my managers my higher

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ups that are caring about me I can give if I'm getting alittle bit right that give and take Dynamic is just that

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intuitive piece of it there's another framework though thatgoes deeper for

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managers particularly middle managers who I think have thehardest job in the world uh because you're managing up and

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you're managing down which can get people to care a littlebit more and it's about getting out of the action

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trap which is a phrase that we use at culture Partnersfrequently and I think it's a trap that many many people can

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fall into even seasoned Executives the ACT trap is you'vegot a result that you

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need to achieve you know that results come from actions youand your team doing something and so you focus on

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those actions and so if I'm running a sales team forexample and I need them to do a bunch of cold calls and old in

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order to drive sales I'm going to focus on them doing thecold calls how many calls have you done have you done the

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calls did you track the calls in Salesforce did you have ailisten to your calls to give you feedback on how you can make the calls betterand it's

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all action oriented and AC action focused and that's a trapbecause when you focus on the Action level as a

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leader what you're doing is you're going to burn yourselfout you're going to burn your team out you're going to be a

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nag it's going to become micromanagement it just doesn'tsustain over the long

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term to drive those results it will drive results in theshort term and and it may even drive results at the long

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term but not like these transformative growth results thateveryone wants so to

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get people to take the right action so that you can getresults as a leader the

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key that we suggest is to focus on the thing that motivatesus to take action

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as people and what motivates us to take action is thebeliefs that we hold I

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have a belief about there's value in making the cold callif there's value in

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the data entry about the cold call if there's value ingetting feedback about the cold call from Ai and so instead of

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focusing on the actions that my team are doing I'm focusingon the belief Bel they hold about their growth about the

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company's growth about their value and their role and if Ican influence their

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beliefs then I can create sustained behavioral changeinstead of getting

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them to do the thing today and then having to start allover tomorrow and the way that we intentionally Drive the

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right beliefs as Leaders is through the experiences that wecreate for them right my boss gives me an experience

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every time he writes me an email every time he calls everytime I get a text every time we have a conversation every

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time he does a town hall and I listen to the recording aweek later those are all

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experiences that he is creating for me that are going todrive either these beliefs or those beliefs and that's

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going to lead me to take either these actions or thoseactions and so as Leaders the way to get people to care is

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to focus on what experiences am I creating for people thatwill drive the

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beliefs I need them to hold so that they will care becausecarrying is a belief

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right and that's ultimately how you get people to give awell that's fantastic and um and um I think that

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also ties into they they not only need to believe in whatthey're doing but they also have to have some belief in

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the purpose of what the organization uh does as well ifthat motivates them

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right I mean I do believe that purpose-driven organizationsdrive better results than organizations that

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are not purpose-- driven and I can tell you a thousandexamples of of why and how that is and there's also employees

Stories and Recognition – Jessicahighlights the importance of storytelling and recognition as tools for buildingalignment and engagement.

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that don't really care about the purpose they're moved bysomething else their beliefs are drawn to something else and

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I mean I have worked for companies where the purpose didn'treally matter but I was following the leader there was

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someone there that I knew was someone I could trust someoneI wanted to learn from and that was someone I would have

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followed into you know it didn't matter what the industrywas I wanted to work with that person so yes and not not

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always Dr Jesco what are some of the uh experiences in youropinion that um can

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help motivate uh their team members there's so many andI'll start with

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three that I think are the most executable for people whoare listening

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that are for fun and for free right the number oneexperience and I think one of the most powerful experiences we create

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for each other as people or is the stories that we tell thestorytelling that happens in an organization

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is going to be the experience that creates a belief forpeople and the story the origin story you know for

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example John Deere is one of our clients and you walk intothe lobby and they've got the timeline memorialized in that

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Lobby that shows the original tool that was created by thisperson who was a

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what do you call the iron iron Smiths no what what is thatlet's just call them people that work with iron that was his

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job right and he came out and he saw all of theseagricultural people using wooden hose for their tools and he's

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like if this was iron it would be a lot stronger and sothen he made an iron hoe and that was the very first John Deere

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product I mean and they tell that story about Ingenuity andInnovation and

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thinking differently as a way to encourage the rightbeliefs of their employees today it looks completely

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different now what John Deere is doing is they're movingfrom a manufactur ing

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company at its heart to a technology company right the thethe cloud is now

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infiltrated the machinery and the services that they'reproviding to Farmers who buy that Machinery in terms

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of ongoing support it's totally different business modeland so they're telling the stories to get people to

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believe that these are the things we value here this is theaction we want you to take to think outside the box so

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stories is number one what stories are you telling and itdoesn't have to be about your founder a 100 years ago

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stories about about hey did you know what Susie did lastweek Susie was doing this and it was a demonstration of the

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belief that we hold true here about take accountability orwhatever the belief is

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and by doing that she's going to help us achieve ourresults you tell that simple story about Susie and it starts to

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connect the dots for people to realize well I could show upthat way here's how I could do that to help Drive results

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right so storytelling is number one number two isrecognition which

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sometimes they're the same that example I just gave withSusie was recognition of suszie and also a story for others to

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hear so public recognition can be two uh two birds with onestone and then the

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third is feedback so how often are you asking for feedbackand how often are

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you giving people feedback about how they are demonstratingthe right beliefs or not demonstrating the beliefs as much

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as they could for example can you share a practical tip onhow how do you make recognition impactful and then my second

Shaping a Culture of Accountability –Jessica shares actionable advice on fostering accountability at every level ofan organization.

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question is can you make that work in a from a large sensefrom a in a large organization throughout the organization

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yeah absolutely I mean that maybe at its core is what ourcompany helps

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facilitate more than anything is what is the framework andhow do you scale it because a lot of people are good at

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memorializing their culture they're not as good atoperationalizing it at scale

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and so here's how we we I've been basically talking about aframework that we call the results pyramid and at the

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top of the pyramid is results all results come from actionsbut all actions come from the beliefs that

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people hold and all those beliefs are driven by theexperiences that they have so it's a four-part framework results

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actions beliefs experiences so great recognition is anexperience right and

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it'll include elements of all the other levels a greatpiece of recognition will

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include the action the belief and the result all in it sogreat job Susie is

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an experience but it doesn't explain the action it doesn'ttell you what demonstration of a belief it is and it

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doesn't tie it to results and so it's not really effectiverecognition so with Susie you would say great job Susie when

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you gave that presentation yesterday and you werevulnerable with the client you

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were demonstrating our cultural belief of authenticity andby doing that you're

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going to help us drive a result of Customer Loyalty of 70%or whatever

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right so I just made all those up but it was describing theaction explaining out loud which belief it is and then tying

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it to a result that's ideal recognition best practices andso in order to do

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that at scale you have to be very intentional about makingsure everyone

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in the company knows what the results are you're trying toachieve knows what the beliefs are that you're trying to

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encourage and then the actions are the actions that peopletake so you have to communicate communicate communicate

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here's the results we're trying to achieve and these arethe beliefs that we want to achieve those results with

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and so some people have values it's kind of like that but Imean the question you want to ask yourself if you're a leader

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is how many people on my team can list the key results thatare measurable and

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how many of them can name the values or the beliefs thatwe're we've identified

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as how we want to achieve those results and if your teamdoesn't know them by heart or if you don't know them by heart then

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they don't really exist because if they don't know themthen that doesn't exist for that person and so you can't leverage them to drivenew beliefs I

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believe that your team you kick off like every meeting youdo going through that

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right yeah that I mean it gets embarrassing frankly it'sthat's the

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experience I have because I get self-conscious that my teamis bored but I think a lot of people probably feel

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that way which is why they don't do that but it's you haveto think of yourself if your manager is the chief repetition

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officer right so I like that every single meeting likewithout fail at

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culture Partners we do that we encourage our clients to doit as well so we say let's start with our purpose why are we

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here we are here to drive results by activating yourculture and the key

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results that we're trying to achieve this year are and thenwe list our three key results and then the beliefs that we

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hold are take accountability ignite change on theexperience and then and you know so we list everything and so

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we're all on the same page and also it's to help peoplememorize right because

The Adaptability Advantage – Jessicadiscusses her research on why adaptable cultures outperform rigid ones,especially in rapidly changing industries.

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not everyone is going to print out your your Mission VisionValues and have it on their desk and spend time memorizing

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it so the people who don't take that time they're going toget that by osmosis because in every call that we do

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we say it out loud and you could call anyone at culturePartners right now and ask them any elements of those the

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strategy the key results the Mission Vision Values they'llknow it you know they'll know it and I think what you're

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saying is so important here when it comes to a lot ofthings is overc communicating and I think a lot of times

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leaders just take for granted that people get the messageand that's not really the case and I really like the

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idea of the chief rep repetition officer um because a lotof times it takes six

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seven times for people to get it and if you get consistentwith it and help them memorize it because like you said it may

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not be as important to them and they may not have it stuckon their on their wall right there to recite all the time so

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yeah sure or maybe gets a little uncomfortable or awkwardbut it's probably a great practice yeah and when you feel awkward that's such au that's

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about when I feel awkward that's about me right I'm makingmyself and my

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comfort level more important than other people feeling apart of and so the

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awkwardness that gets me to not do the work of doing therepetition is kind of selfish leadership right because a great

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leader will say maybe I'm going to seem silly maybe I'mgoing to feel awkward but this is better for the team for me

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to do it this way and so I'm going to do it and ultimatelywhat we know about great leadership is that the greatest

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leaders are the least ego-driven leaders because they arethe ones that people

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want to follow people want to follow leaders that give awaycredit not leaders that take credit and so that is

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the mindset thing that I think differentiates the good fromthe great I

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couldn't agree more I mean great leaders are humble likewhat you're talking about there they're okay with being vulnerable and sayinghey you know what

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maybe I look silly here but people want to follow peoplelike that because I think it builds trust you trust the

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leader and in return they'll they'll trust you back andthey also feel like you have their back right because there

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there's somebody out there who doesn't have an ego and Ithink it's also so important like you just said if you have

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wins or successes give that to your team right there's somany bad leaders I used

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to be a a baseball player and I have this coach who's ahe's a big league manager now whenever something went well

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he always took credit for it and even worse when when wentdown he always blamed everybody else which didn't it it

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it created a a terrible culture um speaking of culture howdo you you know

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how do you define in your opinion workplace culture and whydo you think so many organizations either

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misunderstand it or oversimplify it h it's a great questionwell we Define

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culture as the way that people think and act to get resultsand most people Define culture

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as a feeling A vibe and then they describe how they feelwhen they're

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asked to describe their culture or they'll describe theunique perks that

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Google made popular 30 years ago when they started talkingabout we have bring your dog to workday or free food in the

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breakout room and kombucha on Thursdays and Hawaiian TriFridays and whatever other silly things that people describe

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being culture things right and so it gets misunderstoodbecause that's the

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way that we talk about it that's the way everyone talksabout it you know like not everyone is a cultural

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Anthropologist and so you know it's it's not on them toknow what culture is or

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necessarily but that it's on me as someone who studiesculture and is a

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workplace culture person to focus on that so I I considermy job to be

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evangelism I'm trying trying to get everyone's attentionand say there's another way of thinking about culture

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and it might actually be a win-win for the businessprofitability and people's experiences so how about you think about

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it this way and here are some tools you can do and guesswhat you might save some money on pingpong tables because

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you don't actually have to do any of that stuff doesn'treally help you know I love what you do because it's all

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datadriven and you have facts instead of like you said WooWoo or or just feeling

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so in the research you've done what are the type or typesof cultures really

Feedback and Leadership – Jessicaemphasizes the value of asking for and acting on feedback to create trust andcollaboration.

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helps teams win so this was my favorite research project Iever did was

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partnering with Stanford last year to look at which culturewins right we know

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that culture is a lever that you can use to drive resultsbut we wanted to know

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in 35 years of our company's history what is the mostfrequently requested

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culture from our client and which one actually drives themost results because we knew that just because most people

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want to be Innovative it doesn't necessarily mean thatInnovative cultures win and so that's what we wanted to dig into so we startedby

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looking at the 35y year client history that we had everysingle client it was

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thousands and what their requested culture was based onwhat the leaders were saying when they hired us at the

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front end of the engagement right and so we we categorizedthose into six themes

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and it was kind of what you would expect a people orientedculture results oriented culture accountable culture

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communication culture you know just kind of a bunch ofdifferent buzzwords so we went to Stanford and we said here's

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everything that our clients have been asking for for 35years they were excited to work with us because it was a

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bunch of data that they otherwise wouldn't have been ableto capture and it was longitudinal right so we said we

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want to now go back and look at the financial impact ofthis intervention and how it actually drove results so

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help us figure out which one really won and the professor Iwas working with

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at Stanford he has he's the culture Guru over there and hehas been there for 30 years himself and he said I've done a

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lot of research on culture these six categories are greatcan I add two other categories that aren't showing up in

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your list but we have studied in our previous academicresearch that might be

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interesting to see too I said great throw them in there sonow we had eight culture types that we were evaluating

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just to to frame it a little bit they're probably thingslike being collaborative or like you say people first stuff like

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that yeah it was people first results first accountableculture collaborative

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which also included more communication transparent cultureand I can't remember

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the other one and then the the Stanford Professor added acouple more right okay

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and so when we get the results back we were shocked andkind of excited because it's fun when the research surprises you

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you know that none of the culture types that we presentedthat our clients

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requested were in the top there was only one culture typethat was significantly correlated with more Revenue growth and

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it was four times more Revenue growth so it was waysignificant and it was one

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that he had added in which was an adaptable culture so theability to shift your

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culture in response to strategy changes competitive marketchanges economic

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landscape changes Talent Market changes that shifting ofculture is actually the

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strongest type of culture which means when you havecompanies who are like you

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think of a company like REI or companies that have veryingrained and quote

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strong cultures it can be a weakness and you're seeing nowREI is having they're

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struggling financially right they're losing money but theyhave very firm

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culture we'll call it right it's rigid almost and so thisis the culture and we don't want to lose that culture and you

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see a lot of CEOs talking about oh with covid when peoplewent home we're losing our culture well losing your culture

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might actually be the best thing for you because accordingto this research adaptability being able to shift is the

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superpower for culture so you don't want to get stuck inone type of culture you

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want to be able to shift and then maybe next sure you shiftagain and so where we were excited at first I was nervous

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because I thought oh my goodness we've never done thatright like we've never had a focus on adaptability but then

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when I thought about it a little bit further I realizedwait a minute every single engagement we ever did with our

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clients was shifting their culture from what they had towhat they requested so we were actually experts in adaptability

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we just hadn't used that label and so we were super geekedup because the

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shifting of how people people think and act is thesuperpower at scale you know

Lessons from Oracle and CulturePartners – Jessica reflects on her experiences shaping culture at Oracle andher work at Culture Partners.

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and that is the thing that I think eludes most leadersbecause it doesn't feel data driven it doesn't feel hard it

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doesn't feel simple you know it as in uh it doesn't feellike a hard skill it feels kind of how do you get people to

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change their mindset and to act in a new way it's justfeels like so complicated

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that they give up question I have for you in that 35 yearsdid that change at all or is it always been adoptable

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cultures or that drive the best results it was oh in thisresearch it was consistently across the entire 30 years

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yeah I agree with you that because the pace of change is isaccelerating it

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would see stand to reason that it's more important or morevaluable now but we didn't see a correlation in the amount

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of growth later versus earlier we weren't looking at thatcan you share an example of an organization that you

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think does this really well that's able to shift and adopttheir culture well I can tell you cuz I worked at Oracle for

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10 years that that is such an adaptable culture at Oracle Imean there's a

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company that's been around for decades in the technologyindustry and when I

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was there in let's say it was must have been 20145 this iswhen Oracle did the

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biggest shift in its culture of all time moving from anon-prem company

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to a cloud company and they hired a guy named Sean Price tocome in and help

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them he his mission was to create a cloud company out of anorganization that had non-cloud DNA at the time it

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was only 5% of their revenue coming from the cloud todayit's 70% right so they were successful in shifting but moving

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from on Prem to the cloud which so many differentorganizations are dealing with now even non-te organizations are

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dealing with it it requires not just a new product Focusit's a new business

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model it's a new customer it's a new way of thinking aboutthe solution and the

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way new language I mean it it's so wildly different andimpacts every level of the business and so Oracle was expert

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in that but they had a lot of experience because where theygot the practice they have an acquisition strategy so they're

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constantly acquiring companies huge companies smallcompanies and some of them they throw into quote quote big

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Oracle right they just kind of immerse into the largerorganization and some

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remain as entities whole within the larger organization andsome have very

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different cultures and some have very similar cultures andso the ability to shift in response to how the

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organization is organically growing has become somewhat ofa a superpower I got a couple questions here one how does

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that process work um and my second question is

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like if they say hey we want to be like this I assume youalso come in and say look you may think you want to get to be

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that but that's not exactly what you need let me show youhow or what you actually should strive to be as a

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culture most of the clients that come to us they're alreadyculture focused organizations

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right companies that are toxic and broken and uninterestedin in creating a

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thriving workplace don't hire us because they would have tospend money on culture right so we we don't get a lot

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of totally dysfunctional organizations what we get ispeople who say we're here and we want to be here and we think that

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culture is the the Strategic lever that we can pull to getthat done and we work with government organizations we work

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with Fortune 10 organizations and we work with mid-marketbusinesses But ultimately all of them have the same

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formula that we apply we call it the culture equation andthe formula is

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what's your purpose because we do start with purpose what'syour strategy your

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purpose is your why your strategy is your how right andthen what particular culture will you need in order to

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amplify and drive that strategy and that purpose to getresults and culture is

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ultimately the the way that you get things done so we helpthem memorialize

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it first we get them to be explicit about it earlier I wassaying you got to

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be really clear on what the results are you have to bereally clear on what the beliefs are you need to penetrate that and Cascade itthroughout the business

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so everyone knows what that is because if they don't knowwhat it is it's like Zip is this it is as if it didn't exist

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for them right and then you consistently through theactions of leaders and

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Frontline employees bring those top of mind and recognizepeople who live those

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beliefs to drive results you give feedback to people whoaren't you tell stories about where it's happening and

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then you evaluate systems right because not everything isabout how we show up for each other if I work at an

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organization that's trying to drive Innovation andrisk-taking but then it takes eight signatures for me to spend

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$500 that's an experience that isn't necessarily one-on-oneexperience but

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it's rather something that drives a belief which is wellthat cultural belief they're telling me isn't really

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true because if they did want to empower me then I wouldhave more permission to spend money so you have to look at the

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systems the rituals and the Norms within your organizationthat reinforce the right experiences or the wrong

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experiences and so we we create culture Champions withinyour

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organization that lead the way you know you think aboutthere's a great book

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called Cascades by Greg satel about change management andwhat he says is you do not want to create change your

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organization with some big PR campaign that you're tryingto push some kind of

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awareness campaign to get everyone on board with an ideaand then hope it takes if you really want to create

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fast-paced change start with a small group of people whoare super excited about this change and let them run with

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it and then they'll have a win that you can tell the storyof and then people will be attracted to that and you can

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pull them into the change rather than pushing it down sothat's essentially what we do with culture Champions we're

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getting a small group of people who were super jazzed aboutthis idea to lead the way and we tell the story of how they're

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making a difference and then people say oh we want some ofthat and then it it grows like wildfire without within the

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organization I'm getting into into what details a littlebit here but are those culture Champions are they usually uh

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individuals from different divisions or differentdepartments yeah must be yeah you want to find the people who think of

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your company right right now if you send out a mass emailto everyone and say we're looking for volunteers for the

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culture committee like there's going to be people that rolltheir eyes and then there's going to be 10 or 20 of them

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that will say that's what I want to do because they'repassionate about that kind of thing start with those people I

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mean get the easy win the loow hanging fruit they're goingto be super jazzed about it and when there is a roadblock

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or a problem or some kind of situation that would maybehalt their progress

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those people are going to be really excited aboutovercoming the challenge as opposed to the naysayers or the

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Skeptics who you push this on to that says see we know whatwouldn't work there's a problem already right so you

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get those people to embrace it early on and then they'llcreate the Tipping Point that 10 to 20% comes from them I

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like uh the sound of of what you do at cultural partnersbecause cultureal

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partners because I mean my organization we're small we'relike a 100 people right and I've always been big on

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culture I even took our team out to Vegas to go to thewhole zapus uh culture tour um but we've brought in a

29:34

lot of uh over the years um culture uh experts and theyalways start off with

29:40

an assessment about like what you do so wrong all the timeright you know and it's like what are what are the bad

29:46

things you have doing and then they'll give me some binderabout what a shitty leader uh or a shitty company learn

29:52

learn it as which is yeah I think the culture Consultantswho do that binder of problems assessment at the beginning

29:59

are they are trying to find the upsell before they evenknow anything about you

30:05

right so they're they're asking questions when they dothese interviews that will highlight what's broken like

30:12

what's not working how would you do it differently whatwould you improve if you could right and so you're getting

30:18

feedback But ultimately the the goal of that feedback is tocreate a larger s so for the

30:26

consultant right and so that doesn't work it's it's lacksIntegrity in my

30:32

opinion and frankly it's not effective either it createsmore political drama

30:37

than it solves so yeah we don't do that we start withresults you know we say what is it you're trying to achieve and

30:44

what beliefs do your people need to hold that will help youachieve those big new

30:50

results that you haven't achieved up until now and it'saspirational it's Forward Thinking it doesn't go backwards

30:57

and and then bring up drama for no reason it's it can dramacan be resolved

31:03

by talking about how do we need to be right as opposed towhat didn't work in

31:09

the past it's same conversation is just a different lenswithout pointing fingers and you know you could learn

31:15

from the past but you obviously I don't think you shouldlive in the past right exactly so let's kind of move on to you

31:23

know you wrote a great book called unfairly labeled aboutgenerational differences and what are some of the

31:29

biggest misconceptions misconceptions of the generationswhether it's uh a genz

31:36

millennial or even a boomer yeah I mean the greatestmisconception is that we have personalities associated with each

31:43

generation I mean the misconception is that that is a wayto classify people's

31:48

behavior beliefs that's whole thing is made up so we havedata that shows that

31:57

young people are not less loyal to their employers youngpeople do not adopt a

32:02

technology at work faster than older people young peopleare not as uh

32:08

entitled as they're made out to be there's there's so manyjust in-your-face stereotypes about each

32:14

generation and that when you actually dig into the datathere's plenty of data that will support those stereotypes but

32:20

there's also a lot of data that will deny those stereotypesand really depends on who you're studying how big

32:26

the population is the way you ask the question who'ssponsoring the research right so much data out there is done by

32:34

companies that have an agenda that want to sell somethingand they want a narrative and they back into the the

32:39

research so that they can have the headline that they werehoping to have um so having said all that the reality

32:46

is everyone is unique what makes our personality is theexperiences that we

32:52

had throughout our childhood that determined the beliefsthat we hold today right right and those beliefs are

32:59

changing and those experiences are changing as we continueto grow older and so it's not the 20year wide age

33:06

bracket that you happen to have been born within it's youknow did you have a

33:11

mother in the home did you have a rural or an urbanupbringing did you have a

33:17

teacher that cared about you did you have an aunt thatspoiled you did you have a a dad that was an alcoholic I mean these are thethings that make up

Final Thoughts on Culture andLeadership – Damon and Jessica wrap up with key takeaways for buildingbelief-driven organizations.

33:23

our beliefs about like is it a good thing to shoplift or abad thing to shop right and those beliefs are going to

33:29

drive our actions as adults I'm either going to go shopliftor not and then I'm going to get a result from that I'm

33:35

either going to go to prison or not right so the you knowthe idea that 911

33:41

made Millennials more patriotic or less patriotic I've readan article about both of those right the idea that

33:48

Vietnam completely changed everyone's thinking it justdoesn't hold up to

33:54

scrutiny it's lazy research it's head line making it'sclickbait and it's

34:00

destructive in the workplace because then what happens isyou believe the lies you've been told about each

34:06

generation and instead of getting to know the person thatyou're interacting with you've already given them a whole

34:12

personality in your head that is a bias that you hold andit's agist in a lot of

34:18

cases and and it keeps you separate rather than actuallycoming together and seeing the person in front of you what's

34:24

a piece of advice you have for individuals who have allthese different news channels or all these different

34:29

reports they're looking at that they could should narrow inon what's right and what's completely fake as a leader

34:37

the only data that's really relevant for you is the dataspecific to your team so

34:43

to read an Inc article or a Forbes article about whatMillennials want today nine times out of 10 is going to

34:50

lead you down the wrong path or in that 10th out of 10scenario they're giving you tips that are good for everyone you

34:57

know five tips for managing your Millennial employees andthey're usually just best practices for management so

35:03

it's not specific to Millennials they're just putting fivetips and they would be just as relevant for a baby boomer

35:09

population for example so all of that clickbait stuff Iwould just ignore if I read if I see an article that has the

35:16

word Millennial in it or genen z in it I don't click itbecause I already know it's full of bias so what I do want to

35:23

know is what does my population think about something whatmoves them how can and maybe I look at that through a

35:29

generational lens when I was at Oracle and we did theOracle engagement survey we did look at it through an

35:36

organizational I'm sorry a generational lens to see do theyoung people at Oracle have a different opinion than the

35:42

older people at Oracle and every generation had the samenumber one priority which was Career Development

35:49

and popular knowledge at the time would have told us thatbaby boomers are not as interested in career development as

35:55

Millennials because they're already developed veled rightand that's just not the case that's not what we found with our population so westopped

36:02

reading all of that those books and those articles and wejust talk to our population to see what they need and

36:08

what we could do to help grow them in our company yeah Ithink that that's that's that's really interesting to see

36:13

that even the Baby Boomers care as much about CareerDevelopment as the younger

36:18

generations and and I heard you speak about they also don'tadapt technology

36:24

less quickly as well right so it's like there's just allthese Mis ceptions of of you know exactly well let me explain

36:32

that because it might sound not right what's true is thatyoung people use technology more in their personal life

36:38

than older people and the way that they measure it is veryinteresting like the Pew Research Center they don't say do

36:44

you use technology because what does that mean they'll askvery specific questions like is your phone near your

36:50

pillow when you sleep at night right and then you're morelikely to say yes to that if you're younger than if you're

36:56

older so then people see that disparity and they think ohthey're techsavvy they're more techy they you know that's

37:03

not the case what we were looking at specifically isadoption of new technology at work so oh we're going to

37:09

use a new AI chatbot internally what is the rate ofadoption amongst our

37:14

employees based on generation it was the same rate acrossthe board so just because young people have their cell

37:21

phone on their pillow doesn't mean that they're moreembracing of Technology at work and that's the assumption that

37:26

people will make they leap to a conclusion that's unfairwhat advice or tips do you have for

37:33

leaders that are working with multiple multi-generationsright and they're

37:39

saying because I get asked this question sometimes like howdo I deal with these young people right you know how do I how

37:45

do I how do I deal with them what do I do uh they they comeacross as entitled so the first thing is you have to check

37:51

yourself you got to figure out when your bias isinfluencing your interactions

37:57

the easiest way to do that is to notice when you'reuncomfortable because if you meet someone new you got a new hire you

38:03

got a candidate interview that you're doing and you feeluncomfortable about something that's a red flag that you've

38:09

got bias percolating there and you want to double checkyourself and ask the question why am I uncomfortable right

38:15

now and maybe it's an age thing maybe it's a frizzy hairthing right because

38:21

we can have bias about anything oh that person's hair isFrizzy they're probably less organized that's one that I have I

38:27

don't know why I think frizzy hair is less organized but Iused to have really frizzy hair and I always used to like uh

38:32

what do you call it dry not dry uh flat iron it like crazybecause I didn't want people to think that I was unorganized

38:40

which is just a bizarre Link in my head maybe I had an antwith prizzy hair that was unorganized but it's just in my

38:46

subconscious right and so I would notice when I interviewedpeople with frizzy hair I would get uncomfortable and I

38:52

thought oh look at that that has nothing to do with thisperson that has to do with my own Bel belief so you want to

38:59

investigate discomfort as a way of checking yourself sothat you cannot

39:04

fall into the Trap of your own biases right your bestthinking and then um ask

39:10

questions and and the best questions you can ask arequestions feedback for

39:15

yourself so when you're working with people say whatfeedback do you have for me and hearing feedback that they have

39:22

for you not only will teach you about how you can be abetter leader to that person but it also helps you understand

39:27

their lens of the world and what they how they see things Italk all the time about how there's a lot of talk around

39:35

you know giving feedback giving feedback but I really thinkthe gold is in for leaders is to be great at receiving

39:41

feedback I mean it can be like rocket fuel for your ownpersonal growth um and for getting your teams to trust you so I

39:48

think that that is such a critical point right there is tobe open and uh to

39:53

receiving feedback and be being self-aware about how you doso and when it comes to agism it's on the

40:00

flip side too I see it with older people I was mentoringthis one guy he's a sales uh sales leader and he immediately

40:09

overlooked hiring somebody because they graduated fromcollege in 1995 this guy

40:14

was like 30 years old he's like you know this guy's muchmuch older yeah we did research on this last year too we looked

40:21

at the performance of organizations that had diversity intheir leadership team compared to

40:27

companies that had lack of diversity in their leadershipteam particularly this was a lens through gender diversity that

40:35

we were looking at and companies that had at least 45 to75% of their

40:41

leadership roles filled by women way outperformed companiesthat had 20% or

40:46

less of their leadership roles filled by women so why wouldthat be right intuitively I can tell you as a woman

40:53

that if I work for an organization that has more womenleadership roles I feel like I belong more because I see me in

41:01

leadership and I know there's opportunity I I mean I don'tknow a single woman out there that doesn't look

41:07

at the about us page on a company website and immediatelylook for how many white men are there and if it's all

41:13

white men then I'm like got it right this is not a companyfor me because they just don't care about thinking

41:20

differently and I was just talking to the CEO of Thrivemarket yesterday for my podcast and he was fascinating

41:26

because he was talking about he had this great idea aboutbasically allowing um

41:32

creating accessibility to healthy food to people all overthe country it was like Whole Foods in an e-commerce world

41:39

right and he went to 100 VC firms pitching the idea andevery single one

41:46

rejected him and his theory as to why was here's a bunch ofRich guys that

41:51

live walking distance if not certainly driving distance toA Whole Foods in New York and la and these City Center and

41:58

they probably don't do their their own shopping and theydidn't see the need for it they're like well if people want

42:03

healthy food they'll just go to Whole Foods why do weCommerce right he ended up getting all of his financing from

42:09

health food influencers they invested their measly fundsthat they had into

42:15

his company in the first year he had been projecting inthose VC pitches that they were going to make $15 million in

42:22

his first year in his first year instead they hit 30million doubled the projection that the VC guys were all

42:28

laughing at him about and then he went back to the VC guysand said would you like to invest now and they were like oh

42:34

my goodness yes and he got much better terms and he gotpick of the litter on who invested with him because he had

42:40

proved the model the reason they didn't see the opportunityis because they only saw the world their way and they

42:46

couldn't see it a different way which has significantbusiness impact you know you're seeing that with the

42:52

effectiveness of AI Bots being designed by a bunch of whiteguys and so there's a particular bias that exists in the

42:58

product I mean it's so intuitive and yet you know just noteveryone cares enough

43:04

to make a make a difference in that way I interviewed a guyum black guy named Elias Simpson he's awesome you should

43:10

have him on your show he's the CEO now of cart.com and hesaid that a lot of times when he goes out and and was

43:16

looking for senior level jobs he would look at the likewhere the companies were located and you say well obviously

43:23

these are just all white areas like why would I ever movemy family here you know and do things and he said that if

43:30

you happen to go about it exactly like you're saying islike you just narrow your Market

43:36

much by not just looking at things if you're only lookingat things through your own lens you're really you know

43:44

doing yourself a disservice which reinforces the point youmade about asking for feedback because we all have

43:50

our own lens right so that guy you talk to has his own lensand I have my own

43:56

lens and you have yours and so asking for feedback expandsthe perspectives that we're seeing about what's going on

44:03

and allows us to have them a richer perspective yeah askingfor feedback and

44:09

also making sure you're surrounded with a bunch of peoplewho have different perspectives who feel comfortable enough to give youfeedback to begin with yeah

44:17

and part you can encourage that too I mean a lot of peoplewhen they ask for feedback they'll say do you have any feedback for me andthat's an easy no

44:24

you know if my boss asks me that it's an easy not oh no noyou're doing great but if you ask what feedback do you have for

44:31

me it's kind of now you've got to come up with somethingand so encouraging that is really is really powerful

44:37

especially I'll double down on that if you give like aspecific example like what feedback do you have for me around

44:43

how I'm leading this team or or something like that youknow yeah so we have a a tool called focused feedback

44:50

and it's focusing the feedback around the beliefs so youhave an explicit belief that you want to encourage like

44:56

take taking accountability or igniting change so you saywhat feedback do you have from me about how I take

45:02

accountability and now you're getting feedback specific tothe belief and how it'll drive results I mean that's gold

45:08

that is absolutely gold so your book came out in 2016 I'mworking on my math here that's about eight or nine years

45:14

ago is there anything in your book that you no longersubscribe to that you don't believe in that you've changed

45:20

your mind on no uh but what I have learned since writingthe book is to

45:26

have more empathy for the labels and the biases that we uhall hold because I was

45:34

a millennial when I wrote the book it was about Millennialsjenz wasn't in the workplace when I wrote that book right

45:40

and so I was the young person feeling put upon by theseolder people that had

45:46

stereotypes about who I was and it was a don't do that kindof advocacy book

45:51

right and as I've gotten older I having literally writtenthe book I'm finding

45:56

myself doing that to gen Z like Way Beyond what I thoughtyou know I see Jen

46:01

Z and I'm like oh these J zers are just nuts I love it andthen I catch myself

46:07

I'm like like I wrote the book on this stuff book on thislike how so the fact that I can do it after devoting so much

46:13

of my time to studying this topic advocating on this topicI mean my entire keynote career came out of that

46:19

book I SP I probably gave that keynote 400 times you knowand I'm still giving

46:25

it people still ask me for that keynote today even thoughit's not really what I focus on anymore and I do it so I have a

46:32

little bit more empathy for why we do it because I don'teven know how I do it happen I think that's a great point

46:37

right you catch yourself doing it quick question to H thatwhere do you focus on your Keynotes now culture how to create

46:44

a culture that drives results that's my number one keynoteand it's really walking through the culture equation

46:50

it's it's not the woo woo touchy feely Kumbaya culturekeynote it's the datadriven how to get results through

46:58

culture and I think people are refreshed to to have thedata and not just have

47:04

that like motivational speaker Vibe because I'm not thereto convince anyone that this is a good idea I'm just going

47:10

to share the data with you and you're going to decide thatthis is what you want to do because it makes perfect common sense once you seeit in black

47:17

and white and I'm sure I'm just guessing here but I'm sureyou talk a lot about that you can focus on people and profit

47:24

at the same time yeah I mean that's my passion right I Ithink that the false narrative that it's one or the other is

47:31

it's a challenge and in fact I live that challenge as aleader I get how hard it

47:36

is and in our company we oscillate from a hyperfocus onresults to then a

47:42

hyperfocus on people and going back and forth and trying tofind the middle ground and so the tension is an

47:48

interesting place for me to live in and finding people whomaster that very thin

47:55

tight rope is what I think is kind of the best way to makea difference in the world so that capitalism can work for

48:01

everyone and it's not a matter of sacrificing profits it'sa matter of being smart about how we play let's talk

48:10

a little bit before I let you go about virtual and hybridwork and what are

48:17

what's the research on that compared to the in office so umthink of the

48:24

language that is used when you talk about going back to theoffice return to

48:30

work that is regressive language it's about going backwardsyou want to go to

48:36

the way that it used to be right and that is essentiallythe opposite of adaptability of moving forward in a

48:43

different way which our research showed was thedifferentiator for driving results so I believe that the people who

48:51

are forcing their employees back into the office to returnto the office are resisting

48:57

adaptability and they are their own worst nightmare they'relosing their culture and we've got to save the

49:02

culture well there must they must be thinking that culturehas to do with the water cooler talk and the ping pong

49:09

tables and the fancy cubicles or whatever it is thatthey've got going at the office because the way that we think

49:15

about culture if it's how people think and act to getresults well I think and act to get results in my home podcast

49:22

studio just as effectively as I would if I went to theoffice apparently we do have an office I've never been there at

49:28

culture Partners I've been there for two and a half yearsI've never been to the office and our CEO has probably only

49:34

been there a handful of times because it just doesn't serveUs in the way we think and act so um experiences shape

49:41

beliefs Drive our actions to get results you can do thatvirtually you can create

49:46

experiences for each other you can turn your real estatebudget into a travel

49:52

budget because I do think there's value in getting togetherand there's something magical about in face you know

49:57

in person face-to-face interactions but does it have to be5 days or three days

50:03

a week no I think if you do an intentional get togetheronce a quarter once every six months that can be really

50:09

powerful in and of itself and for those leaders out therewho struggle with it and a side note I never even moved our

50:17

team into the office in San Francisco because I realizedreally no it's the honest to God truth I have two floors

50:23

and I had a massive real space 10,000 square foot um beforewe bought this office building and we and learn it

50:29

pivoted to a a virtual hybrid first uh work environment andI see a lot of

50:34

value in that um because you gotta work with you know yougota you got to adapt

50:40

like you said but we work with a lot of clients whostruggle with that well you have greater access to talent in your

50:46

hiring processes you can go across geography so you have alarger pool right that's number one two you are are

50:56

giving people more time in their day to use as they see fitso there's an

51:02

increase in trust there's an increase in flexibility rightI mean my cousin asked to be able to work from home at her

51:07

employer she's been there 10 years and her boss said wellI'm just not convinced that you're not going to be doing laundry all day whatexperience

51:14

does that create for her the belief she now holds is thatthey think she lacks Integrity right I mean that's just a

51:21

terrible you know so it does demonstrate a certain amountof trust and forward

51:27

movement forward thinking because virtual environment isthe way of the future it also requires for number three

51:33

that managers focus on managing outcomes rather thanactivity you're in the

51:39

person you know there's all these markers of productivitythat we felt like we were measuring in person

51:46

together which is they're sitting at their desk they'refocused on their computer they're in early they're leaving late that's a markerof

51:52

productivity it's a symbol but it's not actual productivitymeasure right and so it's quite lazy leadership in a virtual

51:59

environment it requires more work for managers to say whatare the three I mean for every one of the people that

52:05

work in this company we asked them at the beginning of thequarter what are the three things that if you can

52:11

accomplish them by the end of this quarter you will havecalled this quarter a home run and then they

52:16

identify they present it to their manager their manageraligns with them yeah that's great maybe what about this

52:22

like maybe we can push that up maybe it should be focusedon that and then the weekly up updates that we give each

52:27

other are around progress towards those three outcomes andat the end of the quarter if I didn't get all three of my

52:34

outcomes it's not like I'm fired right because we're all inthis collaborative process together but we are focusing on

52:40

the outcome rather than on the activity and I will I willgo to my daughter's

52:46

Theater Camp I will go and take a half a day and go to thebeach I'll go to the

52:51

dog park I'll do and my boss does not care he does not givea because he knows give because you get the work

52:57

done you you hit your your results right exactly because hefocuses on the outcome and the activity is completely

53:03

irrelevant if you give them the tools and resources andeverything they need you give them the autonomy to do so who

53:09

cares if they're doing the laundry in the middle of the dayright I mean what is it what is it I mean I think the

53:15

number one way to lose top talent is either try to forcethem back in the

53:20

office or over micromanage them anyways yeah treating themlike children is not going to keep them to you and I do

53:28

believe and I mean Elon Musk said as much in his oped inthe Wall Street Journal that a lot of leaders are

53:35

forcing people back into the office so that they will quitit's an easy way to not pay Severance and so you know that's

53:42

that's also motivating it frankly they're they're hopingthat people will refuse to go back to the office well

53:48

especially in the tech industry which they are much moreagile at adapting to

53:53

loss of talent as opposed to you know an Amazon fulfillmentcenter where you need someone Hands-On at the Professional

54:00

Services level it's easier to say well we just adjust thisway we'll implement this technology and now we can make do

54:07

without those people Jessica you've been awesome and I gotone more question for you what is one thing that leaders

54:14

should think about or remember when it comes to creating awinning culture

54:20

great question uh the answer is taking accountability Icannot tell you how

54:26

many people reach out to us saying I need my team to takemore accountability

54:31

they're not accountable enough they're not right so then wehave this

54:36

accountability solution that we will sell and we facilitatelearning about

54:42

taking accountability which is a personal choice to focuson what you can control to drive key results and we get

54:48

into these sessions and the leaders are like yeah they allneed to take accountability and then we flip the script and say well what areyou doing

54:55

to take accountability and the leaders we're not talkingabout me we're talking about the employees right and that is

55:01

the the irony of the demand that we see for takingaccountability it's always

55:06

people wanting other people to take more accountability andso as a leader I think it is the hardest job and it is

55:13

because ultimately you cannot blame your employees foreverything that happens you have to look at what am I doing to

55:19

contribute to this what experiences am I creating that Ineed to adjust it takes a lot more energy A lot more

55:26

intentionality a lot more effort but when you do it rightyou can create something really magical I've Had The

55:32

Good Fortune to have conversations with and be around a lotof great leaders and

55:37

none of them are victims they all they they all have takeaccountability and

55:43

and ownership and so I think I think you're spot on rightthere so Jessica

55:48

where can our audience um connect with you well if you'reinterested

55:53

in my content my Keynote you can go to jessic cal.com Ialso have a newsletter

55:59

on LinkedIn called this week in culture if you'reinterested in getting culture support for your organization or

56:05

accountability support you can go to culture partners.comand submit something on there and we'll reach out

56:10

great and I think you have do you have a new book comingout as well yes the title we're we actually just had a whole

56:16

long conversation yesterday about the title so it's to bedetermined but we do have a book coming out next year which

56:21

is all about you know how to get people to give a and howto create a culture that gets results and and what

56:27

those leadership best practices are about coming from aplace of Love instead of coming from a place of ego

56:34

that really drives results all right so listeners if youwant your people to

56:39

give a and you want to improve your culture go check outJessica's podcast get her book and connect with her so

56:46

until next time everybody stay curious and keep learninghave a great day you're not sharing your weakness all the

56:53

time like maybe 3% of the time and the other 97% of thetime you're showing

56:58

boldness and ambition and vision and Leadership

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