Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, Let's Talk about Culture Index

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

Check out Eric Mulvin's interview with expert specialist and strategist Jackie Lord. They dive into the impact your business puts on everyone and placing the right people in the right position. pac-biz.com/podcast

All right, welcome to the show. Welcome back. There's a reason why I just did a bit of thing. Local knowledge is translated and never forgotten. We started to really identify areas that we can improve in our company. So I want to introduce this to the listeners and then make the difference. Welcome to the Contact Center Cactus Chat Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Malden, and I'm back here in Tempe, Arizona, and I've got a special guest today.

We've got Jackie Lord here from Culture Index. So thank you for joining me. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. Good morning. Good morning. All right. Yeah, right in the early.

Got a busy day today. Yes, we do. And we've got a lot to talk about. So Jackie comes from Culture Index, and there's something that PacBiz has been working with for about a year and a half now, but we've only been working with you for just a couple of months. I think December is when we actually started. Yeah. So we started, you became our executive advisor and we have been off to the races since then. So what I wanted to do is introduce Culture Index to our listeners and to the guests here,

but also get into your background a bit because we've been part of Culture Index. And I don't know, I just feel like it's been really amazing to work with you. Everyone seems to know you. You bring a different kind of energy to this. And we've started to really identify areas that we can improve in our company. So I want to introduce this to the listeners. And then maybe if there's potential clients that are listening, and because I've been talking about Culture Index more, hey, check out this episode, you know, I'll send them a link. So you guys, if you're listening, because we talked from that, hello. But yeah, let's get

into a little bit. So tell me about your background. How did you get to where you are today with Culture Index? Yeah, absolutely. So I coined myself as a recovering corporate executive, had a career in operations and financial strategy for over 17 years. Companies of Amazon, Boeing, Make-A-Wish, JP Morgan Chase, and a handful of startups. So I've really kind of seen the full gamut. About five years ago, I had quote unquote, made it in my career and it was completely miserable. I also found out I was virtually unemployable and needed to be the captain of my own ship. What really drove me is the impact I was having on people throughout my career. I wanted to help as many people, as many businesses, and as many companies as possible. Quit everything one day to really start that journey. So this is a little bit of a personal story for me. I was the wrong person,

a right person in the wrong seat for 17 years. Very expensive on myself, emotionally draining soulfully. And then also, if you think about it, very expensive for the businesses I was working for, right? They're paying me X dollars. I am 50% checked in just due to the nature of the work or my management structure or the leaders above me. So really wanted to help as many people as possible. So I focus a little differently with Culture Index. I focus more on the people than that leads to the profit. So really, really focusing on the people at the core. And again, kind of a personal story for me. Yeah. And how did you come across having that as your goal?

You wanted to help as many people, businesses as possible. Absolutely. So I started to really focus on outsourced interim COO work when I started my business. I would build out these beautiful technology roadmaps, process re-engineer, streamline, reduce expenses inside businesses. And when I went to go implement it, I would realize they have the wrong people in the wrong seat and everything was falling short. So I would naturally start restructuring, insourcing, outsourcing, coaching, moving, training folks. And so it really became my passion, extremely passionate about people. I tell people I wish I sometimes had a different passion or a different hobby, but I truly obsess with people and getting alignment. And so about two and a half years ago, I decided to switch into the people portion. I was looking for a tool that was the strongest, most powerful, accurate data that allowed me to collect information to really move the needle and really help people. And I found it. Yeah, it makes sense. Your data focus coming from the background you came from, like,

how can you work at a place like Boeing or Amazon and not think about data? Like it's impossible, I would imagine. It is. And I majored in statistics. So I love people and I love statistics. So really, this is the foundation of what we're doing. And we're using it to get employees engaged. And then as a result, we are severely growing businesses. Yeah. So let's get into culture index a little bit. So introduce that for the, I'm imagining that a lot of the people listening, probably all of them never heard of culture index. So set it up for us. Tell us how. Absolutely. So there are over 1200 behavioral assessments out there. That is the new reset number. You can find your friend's character, your Harry Potter character all the way to eHarmony, right?

So what we have here is we have one of the most powerful and the most accurate in the shortest amount of time. So that is one part of the equation. So we are getting down to the core of how someone is hardwired to navigate the world with very accurate data, right? If you have bad data in, you get bad data out. So we're just able to have laser accurate data, right? If you have bad data in, you get bad data out. So we're just able to have laser accurate data to make good people decisions. From there, we are quite

different in the fact that only current or former CEOs are licensed to use this tool. So we are a very strategic growth oriented program. It is quite different than kind of anything out there. So what we do is we do 10% of what we do is hiring. A lot of folks want to think of behavioral assessments as just hiring. 10% of what we do is hiring. We need to get that equation right. But 90% is the every single day stuff we're working with waiters and managers on. We're working on how do you motivate someone? How do you make sure they're engaged and checked in? How do you make sure they're productive and happy? How do you make sure you manage versus lead them if that is what they need? How do you

understand where their confidence comes from? How do you know what they need from you every single day? We're also building up team dynamics. We're building out the talent strategy. We are focusing in on leadership teams, making sure responsibilities are accurate and making sure everybody's on the same page. So really, it's really a tool and it's what, and then it's what we do with the tool. Yeah. Now you covered a lot of challenges that this solves. In fact, I wrote down some notes here, like some of the things that you mentioned to me that it could help. Creating a world-class high-performing culture, how to align your people with profit. These are some topics you get. Strategic hiring 101, feeling empowered, the motivation, mindset, and processes to create the success you want.

Now, between the list you gave me and this, that's a wide range of solutions. How can something like Culture Index help in so many parts of your company? Because it seems like it's like the magic pill, like there's no way that this one solution can solve all these problems. Absolutely. Well, a company's made up of people. So your EBITDA comes from your people.

Your growth comes from your people. Your challenges, right? Your cashflow issues, your lack of revenue growth, your profitability, your challenges, right? Your lot, your cashflow issues, your lack of revenue growth, your profitability, your turnover, your leadership team, it is all a result of people. So we are going to the core, right? CEOs tell us these days, 80% of their challenges are people related. I would argue it's a hundred. Yeah. Right. So I, you know, cause if you dig down, if you dig down behind it, if you deep down, right. It's funny. I work with some companies that are in the M&A space or private equity space. And I tell them when they go to buy a company, they're buying an EBITDA, right.

They're buying a factor of an EBITDA, but what they're really buying are the people that contribute to that EBITDA. Without those people, it is nothing, right? A company on the weekend is just a building. So it's really amazing how many aspects of the business, both opportunity and challenges we are touching by just looking at who is the person in the seat. Yeah. And yeah, that's really incredible because now we're starting to see it. You know, we we did that 10 percent, that hiring process. And that's how we use it, which is really valuable. I think, I mean, you can get your return out of this program just from that alone, especially, you know, for someone like us and we're hiring how many people a year. Then, you know, I think we interviewed over 100, 200 people last year. So that obviously helps. But even for, you know, like people like year so uh that obviously helps but even for you know like

people like okay that makes sense you got 200 people at pacvis but what about smaller companies because it's a little bit bigger of investment per person or they're not hiring as many people and actually it's funny i was i was having this conversation with the tech ceo and they have a smaller group and they're like well we don't don't really, I don't know, like I could see how that could help, but we don't have as many people. So what do you say to people like that, that, uh, where, I don't know, I feel like the smaller the company, the, those hiring decisions and the team is even more important. Absolutely. Um, for, for my current client base, I have a handful, over a handful of companies that have less than 10 employees. I also have global companies across the world with, you know, 200 leaders and 1,500 employees.

What is significant and where I'm a little bit more biased and more passionate about is the smaller companies. Number one, one hire, even if it's an executive assistant, is key. It completely will make or break the owner or the business. So every hire is even more significant at the size of the business. So if we put one person in the wrong seat,

especially at a leadership position, you can make or break a business. And also the company is so small, the team dynamics are essential especially at a leadership position, you can make or break a business. Yeah. Right. And also the company is so small, the team dynamics are essential to understanding one another. There's usually one leader that is wearing 17 different hats when they're that small of company. Turnover is the single most expensive thing that doesn't show up as a single line item

on your P&L. And we've talked about this, right? That the conservative estimate is five times the salary after one year. This includes interviewing, lack of productivity, onboarding. This also includes opportunity costs. If you got this right, how much more productive and value add would this have been to your P&L and to that person, right? So what we're talking about is i love working with small businesses because of the impact as well as the proactiveness now we're being proactive instead of some of the companies

i come into there's sometimes some cleanup yeah right there's that we have to check in on every employee and say is this person engaged is this the talent we need to get to the next level is this someone we should promote into the COO position? So these are exciting strategic decisions, but it's really fun to take that proactive, right? So getting ahead of the curve, not taking two steps forward, two steps back, because you make the wrong hire. And really, really building out the business from a strategy perspective rather than a reactive perspective. Yeah. And I mean, that's the kind of stuff that we're working on, which I'm really excited about as well, because we've got really important roles in our company from supervisor, account manager, you know, the people on the phones, but we've specialized those roles now. We're eight years

in and it's not like there's just one person on the phone. That's it. There's different tiers and different levels. And depending on what tier you're at, you need different skills, different behaviors. And that really comes down to like certain personalities are really designed for like, for example, one thing that I'm really excited about, we're doing more virtual assisting than ever. And we're getting ready to train the two account managers on this program. We only had HR and we've had some other leaders in our company, but this is really a big step for us because we want to make this like the forefront of how we do virtual assisting, connecting the business owner or the client with that virtual assistant and making sure that it's a perfect

match. Because before we were just looking at skills and like, okay, we think this person has some skills that can transfer. Now we've got all this data to make these decisions. But that's just one of like many examples of things in our company that we're putting this in place. Exactly. And, you know, between, you know, you and I, especially working together since December, right, we're starting to tackle the other 90% of the program, the value here, right? So how do we understand who we promote

in the business, right? Who gets promoted from the phones up to a lead or, right? And oftentimes, we will promote based upon loyalty, or we will promote based upon performance. But is that person really hardwired now for people management? or are they supposed to be rock stars? We also see this a lot in sales organizations. You take your top performer, your rock star, and you move them into people management. And now you take a huge hit to your revenue

and the entire team is in distress because now you put a leader who is great at outside sales, but is not necessarily great at execution, people management and holding the sales team accountable. Yep. And being in the sales organization, many different ones over the years, I can tell you, yeah, there's definitely some people that aren't in the right seat.

And yeah, I mean, really like people quit because a lot of times they don't have a boss that they like, right? So. Absolutely. You can have, we can work our butts off and get the right person the right seat, which is not which is not entirely easy to find that person. So we can work our butts off, get that right person, right seat, get them in the door, and then we can completely mismanage them and force them or cause them to uninform or leave.

So it's two parts of the equation here, working with that leader and manager to make sure they understand how to manage and or lead that person. And then also making sure from the other direction that we do have those hardwired traits to meet the needs of the role. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, I think we're getting close to the end of this first episode here. So I hope you guys got a good foundation of understanding a culture index.

But we have more to talk about. In the next episode, I want to talk to you about AI because I think, especially these last couple of months, it's been really in the news. And for a company like mine, that's a people company and AI is talking about replacing jobs. So I want to talk to you about that because you talk about culture index helping bring people back into the business. So I want to talk to you about that because you talk about Culture Index helping bring people back into the business. So I think there's a good conflict there we can discuss.

Before I go. Yeah. And yeah, we'll just continue the conversation about Culture Index. So thank you guys for listening and catch us in two more weeks. We'll come back with part two with Jackie Lord from Culture Index.

All right, until next time, see you guys later.