Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, Let's Talk about Culture Index 2

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Eric Mulvin, We continue our conversation with Jackie Lord and find out about her views on the age of AI. Plus, get her insights on strategically improving efficiency with the employee in mind. 

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 Malvin, and we're back here. If you notice, I've got the same suit on again because we're in part two.

I don't go home and change. We just come back and do the next episode so I've got Jackie Lord here from culture index who is the executive advisor that works with us and many other businesses in the Phoenix area helping implement culture index so thank you for joining me again here absolutely thanks for having me all right awesome and you know we tell the last episode we talked and dug into Culture Index and kind of introduced it to our audience here. And we started talking about some of the areas that could help. And so today I wanted to get more into a conversation around AI. And, you know, it's 2023. I think since the very beginning of the year, chat GPT has just been in the headlines constantly.

And I don't think there's a day that goes by where someone isn't mentioning it to me. Hey, have you looked at chat GPT? Have you heard of this or that? And I'm like, yes. And for you guys that are trying to give me advice, we are using it in our company with some clients. So stop suggesting it.

But yeah, I mean you mean AI you know there's a lot of like excitement concern you know it's supposed to change the world I the debate I hear a lot is you know when you know why hold back technology otherwise we'd be still plowing horses you know fills with horses and doing everything. All the advancement that's happened in farming has helped get us to where we are today. How do we usher in this new world if we hold back technology like AI? Which is, again, exciting, but then scary for the people that are doing the jobs that it could possibly replace like call center jobs so so yeah I want to jump into that you know because culture index is really designed to help people make people decisions and around people it

definitely will not help you with your AI it's not going to tell you what's the right bot to install into your company and so yeah what do you what are your thoughts on this as someone that helps implement Culture Index into companies and into trying to be the evangelist for Culture Index? And then meanwhile, you've got this competing force that's saying, take the people out, put these bots in. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, AI is a real thing in reducing the people in the workforce. I think it's going to be interesting as we start to navigate this era.

I will tell you, yes, we may not be hiring as much. Yes, we may reduce your payroll expenses. Yes, we may have a completely different war on talent with the workforce that's out there. What is going to happen, I strongly believe, is that the importance of infusing human back into businesses is going to even double. It's going to double down. And the reason why is because we are still humans and we are still people operating inside a business. Some of the work is going to be automated, right? But the importance of the

people that are there and what is left, especially, which is really an interesting juxtaposition of kind of the mental health crisis we are in post-COVID. So we are in a position where the human and the people element is going to be even more important to get right as part of the equation. I strongly, strongly believe that as we navigate into this AI world. All right. So you touched on mental health, which I think is interesting because that is something that I wanted to talk about and talking about the people that's so important.

So one of the things that I noticed too that, you know, and you come from Amazon as part of your background, but I'm seeing this push to make humans extremely efficient. You're all about data. I feel like certain companies want to get 100% efficiency out of people, and they're people. You need breaks. You need time to think.

I don't feel like a human can think critically eight hours straight. You need mental rest somewhere in there. Exactly. So with this push of AI, getting more into the workplace, and then, I don't know, where do you see that going with the push to make people more efficient? So you've got the people that are still there because you still need them, but now you're turning them into bots.

Absolutely. So that is twofold in my mind. Number one, how do we make people more efficient? That actually comes back to the foundation of getting the right person in the right seat. You actually don't need to hold people accountable if they're aligned with the work that they're doing and they're being communicated to and led properly. So really it starts with how do you make someone more efficient? Well, let's check and see if they're having a complete out-of-body experience to be there.

So let's at least get the right person in the right seat. From there, we're talking about this human aspect into business. We still need community. We still need culture. It's going to be even more important with this automation and AI world we're walking into. The mental health, I just read an article the other day, it says due to the mental health challenges, the average employee is reporting five less hours of productivity a week. This is a real thing that leaders, companies, businesses need to address and need to understand. So understanding their people, understanding if they're aligned for the role,

understanding if they're checked out, understanding if they're stressed or burnt out is going to be of the utmost importance because the people you do have, the leaders need to take care of them. This isn't about being in charge. This is about taking care of the people in your charge. And if you don't have the data and the information, not only on yourself, on self-awareness as a leader, but also on your employees, then it's really just a guessing game and a flip of a coin. Yeah. And it's interesting you talk about yourself as a leader.

And I think a lot of people that you're working with, and and correct me if I'm wrong they're probably not thinking about themselves necessarily initially they're like this is for my team this is for my company and they're not thinking about like oh wow there's a lot of stuff I can learn about myself how many times have you seen a leader we go through some journey of self discovery with you once they start you start uncovering this stuff. 100% of my leaders and managers that I've onboarded over the past two years, I'd say over a thousand leaders and managers go through a complete process of self-discovery and self-awareness, right? Understanding their tendencies, understanding that, you know, they are only, 95% of the world

will not operate like them. So how do you navigate that? How do you understand someone's compliments? How do you understand your own weakness? It's a little bit of a reality check. It's a little bit of self-awareness. It's also kind of a beautiful process of understanding what is that superpower magic you bring to the business, you bring to the world, you bring to your employees, and then how do you complement the offset. you bring to your employees? And then how do you complement the offset? So as part of my onboarding process, I spend two days with my leaders and managers. And most of the time, over 90% of the time together, I am harping on self-awareness, right? That is where we get to

infusing humans back in. This is how we increase leadership effectiveness is starting with the leader and their behavior and their tendencies. Yeah makes sense you know for for me I mean it shifted the way I think about things and the way I think about our people because now like it's part of the language I talk about I'm like you guys like we want you to be yourself we don't want you to hold back and you know we're not just talking about that in the workplace, but, like, in life. And it's interesting. I've gone through going through the culture index results with some staff,

and I've seen it myself with some of my leaders where they're like, wow, I did not know this about me. I've been holding that back this whole time. And I'm like, no, don't hold it back. Don't, like, that's who you are. Like, share it with the world. And, you know, there's maybe some good and bad that comes with that sometimes. But, like, we need people.

I think the bad is really when people are holding themselves back and then you see the stress. You see the, you know, your famous phrase that I hear people say all the time, that out-of-body experience. And which I'm starting to hear people in our company starting to repeat that now, which is kind of funny. Our culture director, Keisha, who's, I don't know, it could be on a previous episode or a future episode, depending on where this lands, but she did a whole talk in our company just recently about that whole experience. So we did an exercise where you have to write your name a couple times with your dominant hand and then your non dominant hand and that whole experience is like opened it's interesting Keisha's like I realized my whole like life I've been writing up differently and now she's like it's just like this representative of this whole thing in her life and

she's one she's the very first person I hired. She turned it into a talk in her company already. And so it's kind of interesting, the ripple effects. Like, not only because, you know, we're talking about business here, but it also has an impact outside of work. This is absolutely a personal journey. Yeah. It starts with individual humans. That's why I kind of take a little bit of a different approach.

This is a personal journey, and we all come together to build a business, create impact, and then, right, grow revenue and profit. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, we're out there with our core values and trying to find businesses that align to that. Because some, there's businesses, obviously, that are not a good fit for culture index. Like, they don't care about culture. They don't care about people.

obviously that are not a good fit for culture index like they don't care about culture they don't care about people and I don't know if you ever come across that where you're trying to work with them and they're just not implementing anything because they're like no this isn't what we do and I don't know do you ever see anything like that yeah absolutely I mean it's a couple things um are they in enough pain right are they enough pain with people challenges with their own wearing too many hats too stressed out are they understanding what the actual core issue is right if you have a cash flow problem we actually have to look at hardwired behavior of the people driving and impacting that cash flow

so really understanding the source some folks are so overwhelmed they don't know where to start and then also some people are hardwired to take this program and really drive it to a business. So we're dealing with a multi-faceted approach here, but really the folks that want to get their people engaged and aligned, and as a result the business grows indirectly, that's really the leaders who care about their people, who are taking the responsibility as a leader, and who are working on their own self-awareness to drive. Really, it's about employee engagement. It's about making sure your employees are happy and checked in. It is the

single most important thing. One of my favorite quotes from John Mackey, who's the founder of Whole Foods Market, he says, you have a moral obligation to make sure your employees enjoy coming to work every single morning. Pretty profound. And so to really have that type of mentality and to really have that amount of passion for ensuring the employees that make up your business, the employees, right, that are even more important than your customers, are happy and engaged and kind of, right, look forward to coming to work in the morning. Yeah, and I remember that quote. I think I wrote it down when I heard it because I was like, ooh.

Because that hits home when you're the leader of hundreds of people because you're like, that's on me. It is. I've got to make sure that we're doing that all the time, and it's a big goal to have out there. Because I don't think there's a lot of business leaders that look at that as their responsibility they're looking at maybe I've got to drive profit I drive growth and I think from for me like from day one it's always been about people and so I think that's why this was just such a perfect fit and I think it could

really accelerate where we're going but yeah it's interesting's interesting that, you know, it really comes down to the kind of business, like what's their focus, right? Exactly. What's their core values? What's the leader, right? It all starts with the leader and the leadership team. Yeah. And if you had to predict the businesses in like 10 years from now, like the ones that are using culture index versus the ones that are not thinking about people, they're like focused on profit and all that. Where would you say the ones are going to end up? I mean, I guess that's a biased question. You're going to, of course, say culture index versus the ones that are not thinking about people. They're like, focus on profit and all that. Where would you say the ones are going to end up?

I mean, I guess that's a biased question. You're going to, of course, say culture index. Culture index, 100%. But I mean, like, yeah, I don't know. Well, where do you see culture index heading over the next five to ten years? Because data is getting crazier and crazier, and we're able to make better decisions. And I don't know. I'm excited to see where Culture Index can help us out with that too. Exactly. Culture Index has grown 40% every single year, year over year for the last three years during

the world pandemic. So the need to get this right, the need to take care of people, the need to grow businesses from a data perspective on people, right? This is our whole, our whole world is data driven, but yet we don't use any data to make people decisions. So the need for this and getting this right, and the people that we do have, they're not automated by AI, AI roles. The need to get this right is even more important. Why would we not have data on people? What would be the downfall, right?

This is to understand how we make sure they like coming to work in the morning. How do we make sure the value that they bring to this world aligns with the value they can bring to PACBiz, can bring to any business? So it's really about getting that data. It's a different form of data. Just like you look at your P&L and just like you look at your balance sheet every single day and your KPI reports, this is another piece of data, which is actually the most important piece of the data. Yeah. And for me as a sports person, I know we both connect on the basketball. I mean,

there's so many stats in basketball, like so many ways you could drill down the efficiency of an athlete. And I feel like you've got a tool that can help you get and kind of get like that for your own business, which is pretty amazing. Absolutely. Being also that sports fanatic with you, this program has often been termed money ball for CEOs. How do you win that World Series with with the right people in the right seats making sure you have all a players on the team instead of twice as many B and C players really really depleting that payroll depleting your budget so how do we really moneyball this to get that ideal team from a data perspective yeah and I don't know we could probably go all day with

sports and I like yeah I mean you're building a team on a sports team, how many times you're complaining on the couch like, why is this person on the team? Why do they trade for this person? Like this should, this coach is horrible, they shouldn't be on the team. And then, you know, we go back to our own businesses and we tolerate like this horrible behavior from someone that, if you saw them on that basketball team, you're like, why are they here? They need to be fired. Almost every single business I work with or walk into, the leadership team is settling for good. They are settling for mediocrity.

They are really settling for below great performance. And it's because we're all used to B and C players. We're all used to mediocrity. I tell people they don't even know how impactful, if you had an A player in this position, what the business would even look like. They don't know at that point, right? When they say the worst enemy of great is good, right? So it's really me having to educate

and change the perspective on hey we're good now you are growing your business let's get to great let's get your employees checked in let's get a players on the team let's rock and roll let's grow this business yeah awesome well I think that's a great way to end this episode in the two-part series so Jackie want to thank you for being a guest thank you for sharing some of your wisdom with uh about culture index with our listeners and uh if people wanted to learn more because i think you're not limited to working with people in arizona do you have

any clients outside of arizona yeah i've got clients um actually across the globe i've got clients in canada um and really all over the united states i do have a significant amount in arizona as well cool so if people want to learn more or get a hold of you, how do they get in touch? Yeah, absolutely. They can go on to cultureindex.com and request a kind of free diagnostic or look into their team and just reference my name, Jackie Lord. All right. Perfect. And we'll get some information in the show notes so you can connect directly but thank you again for being a guest

and and really appreciate it and catch us next time we've got more episodes we're talking about call centers outsourcing managing call centers and how you can help grow your business so thanks again for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode.