The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 519: Dr. Mat Duerden - Designing a World-Class Experience, Transformational Learning, The Wonder Switch, & Earning a High NPS Score

Episode Date: March 26, 2023

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." Join 10's of thousands of your fellow learning leaders and receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12   https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Dr. Mat Duerden is a Professor of Experience Design and Management at Brigham Young University. His teaching focuses on experience design and design thinking. He is the best-selling author of Designing Experiences. His research focuses on experience design in both work and non-work contexts. Mat's publications have appeared in a variety of journals including Leisure Sciences, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Journal of Adolescent Research, and Journal of Leisure Research. Mat Duerden received a Ph.D. in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences from Texas A&M University and an M.S. in Youth and Family Recreation from Brigham Young University.  Transformational Learning – "The future intrinsic use of the content." Going from theory to putting it into practice. It's the implementation of the learning that codifies it. What to do at your next leadership retreat? Ask yourself the question, "What do you want them to say when they walk away from the experience?" And design the event based on your answer to that question. One of the must-have qualities needed to be hired as a team leader is humility and curiosity. Curiosity is the fuel for creativity and innovation. Having a broad range of interests is a good sign of curiosity. What do Apple, Costco, and Walt Disney have in common? A high NPS Score... What is NPS? Your Net Promoter Score is the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who scored 9 or 10) minus the percentage who are detractors (those who scored 0 to 6). They have a uniform type of experience Harmonizing Ques... There should be a narrative structure: Build rising action... -- Anticipation, Participation, Reflection, Climax. It's important to solve problems tied to the needs of your customer or your team. The Wonder Switch from Harris III The curiosity is becoming comfortable not knowing The Buc-eee's gas station restroom experience takes the ordinary and turns it into an extraordinary experience. For businesses: Need to develop a brand experience guide for the type of experience you want to provide. Write a brand theme statement that aligns with who we are. HEB Grocery Store: Here Everything's Better Hire the type of people who are curious and want to interact with customers. Curiosity is the fuel for creativity and innovation. A broad range of interests is important.

Transformational learning has occurred if it produces future intrinsic use of the content. Somebody goes home and willingly uses what you've taught them, and it makes their part of the world better. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book The Pursuit of Excellence will help you become a more effective leader text.

Hawk to 666866. Now on to the night's featured leader, super smart dude. Dr. Matt Durdin is a professor of experience design and management at Brigham. Young University. His teaching focuses on experience design and design thinking he is the best-selling author of designing experiences. During this conversation, we discuss how Walt Disney, Apple, and Costco think about the experience they create for both their employees and their customers and how you can incorporate that into your business. And then the definition of transformational learning and why that is a great ongoing goal for you to have with your teams that you lead.

Then we cover the key components of a world-class leadership retreat, including the questions you must ask yourself as you're designing it. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. It's Dr. Matt Durdin. All right, Matt, it's great to see you. And thanks for joining me all the way from London. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show. Thanks.

I'm really happy to be here and appreciate the invitation. So I'm going to list a few companies that I'd love for you to tell me what they have in common. And by the way, just to kind of tip you off on the answer here, I've had Fred Reicheld on this podcast before where we talked a lot about NPS. But Costco, Ritz Carlton, JetBlue, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix. What do they have in common? Well, yeah, you tip me off, right? but all our companies that have high net promoter scores, right, that folks feel connected to those brands, right,

in ways that extend beyond, I think, just the products or services that they provide, but the type of experiences that are wrapped around those products and services. What is net promoter score? So net promoter score, you're basically, we've all filled out net promoter score questions, even if we didn't know it or not, right? It's just this phrased in similar ways of, you know,

how likely are you to recommend X to friends, colleagues, etc., right? Zero to 10 scale. And then you simply take those at the top of the scale. Sometimes there's differences of how you do this. But usually like your nines and tens or eight, nines and tens, what percentage fell into that category? What percentage were six and below? and then just subtract the one from the other, right?

So your hope is you have a positive number, right? And depending on the industry, there's industry sort of benchmarks. And there's, you know, lots of people who interpret numbers in different ways, right? But the higher number, the better. And some of those companies that you listed have traditionally have overall and for their industry high, you know, net promoter scores. What is it about Costco or Ritz Carlton or Apple that causes them to have such a high NPS? That's a great question.

And there's probably like multiple levels. I do think one thing you can point to is that there is a uniformity in the type of experience they deliver. Right. So whether you are on their website or their app or in person, there's going to be. be a level of experience quality that you can expect. Right. So when I walk into a Costco, whether that's in the US, thinking about where I've been to Costco is, US, Canada, Australia, wherever it is, you're going to get a similar experience, right? Some of the products might be different, but you're going to get a similar experience, right?

You walk into an Apple store or get on the website, you're going to say like, this feels like an Apple experience. Right. So I think that then leads people to feel an allegiance to the brand and also comfort saying, yeah, I'd recommend, like, wherever you go, however you interact with this brand, I think you're going to have a good experience. Did I read correctly that you grew up with a rafting business and you did that? Yeah.

Yeah. So my dad started as a, he worked as a guide in the Grand Canyon, in college and then decided he wanted to be an outfitter, so started his own outfitting company in 1977, still running that company. And then me and my siblings, along with other people, worked for my dad as guides over the years on like five to seven day whitewater rafting trips.

Still get out with my family, at least once or twice a year. So I love that. What did you learn about experiential design from being a whitewater rafting guide? Well, that's, I mean, really where my interest and experiences started. You know, when I talk to people about this, I note the fact that that was not something I would have gravitated to had it not been our family business, right? I am not a thrill seeker.

I mean, I like adventure, but I'm not one that would have just sought that out, right? And so it was a space where as a little kid, dad would take me on trips and just chucked me off the boat into the river, right? To even though that's the last thing I wanted to do, right? Wearing a life jacket, of course, still terrified, right? Or I was pretty shy, especially as a young adolescent. And so interacting with strangers, all of those things that just pushed me out of my comfort zone. Right. So I experienced myself, like this growth and confidence of, yeah, rowing my own boat for

the first time at 14 on a full, you know, five-day Maine salmon trip. Which again, I wouldn't have done, but I showed up and dad said, hey, like, you get your own boat this time. Terrified me. But I survived, right? So I experienced growth just being pushed out of my comfort zone. And then as I started to guide and I'd see people come from all over the world, strangers, family groups, all kinds of different social dynamics, but over the course of a couple of days, would see relationships change, would see people open up and be like pretty vulnerable around campfires or form these friendships that you would hear from them years later still connected with people on the trip.

And so just these questions that were pragmatic at first about how can we make, you know, the experiences we provide better were really the starting point for why I got into sort of the academic research side of experiences. because questions like, well, what is it about this experience that's leading to these impacts? Is it the setting? Is it the nature of the activity? Is it that we're disconnected from society? Like, how do you tweak this to make it as optimal as possible, right? And then as I, you know, bumped into scholars and people like Joe Pine and others who were thinking really deeply about this, I thought, wow, there's this whole community of people who are trying to understand experiences.

And so yeah, it's funny when I think about it, but really my academic and current career path really started as a river guide in an experience that had profound impact on me and that I saw impacting other people. Okay, let's get practical for a second. Let's say you're hosting a leadership retreat, okay? We're gonna go to a random location,

probably stay in a hotel, maybe a big house, depending on if the group's a little bit smaller, but whatever. We're going to have two and a half, three days together. And my goal is for us to become closer and connect and to learn. What are some of the must-haves to make a leadership retreat an awesome experience? Yeah, that's a really great question. And I think what I love about thinking about experiences is the principles that make good experiences

the way they are, are pretty generalizable across context. So let's think about this leadership retreat. So usually what I'll do when working on a project or doing some consulting work, and you've articulated this to a certain degree already, Ryan, but what is it that you want people to say when they walk away from this experience?

Because for me, articulating a specific statement is a really helpful target, right? Beyond just saying, like, it was fun, right? Like, no, no, like, what was it that you really, the specific thing that you'd want people to say when they go back to work? And if you can flesh that out, and usually that's been a back and forth with whomever, you know, the experience is being provided for. And there's some groundwork that's been done there. But then walking back from that point, and this is, this is some stuff from Joe and Pine or Joe and Jim at their work. but they really talked about

the state of harmonizing cues right in an experience and also Walt Disney so Walt Disney was a was a manned just naturally thought about it's and really I think

developed ways but he was known to say that everything speaks in an experience and you want everything to speak in harmony right so if you know what people you want people to say you could then say, okay, if everything speaks in the experience, how do we assure that everything is speaking in harmony with each other, right?

And that becomes just enough filter to make decisions about how resources are spent, right? Because resources are a limited thing, right? And so you can just go big and make everything exciting and, and, you know, throw out all the stops. But a lot of times that's not going to be an effective way because that not all, everything that you could do isn't going to lead to that thing that you want people to say, right? So start with the end in mind, that thing that you want them to say. And then go back to the beginning and start breaking the experience down into a set of touch points, right?

to say, okay, what are the steps that are going to happen? Some of this is just pragmatic to say, okay, well, you know, we need to send out information so they logistically, they know how to get here and to pack and what they need to bring. And so really, I like to think, okay, I need a design the anticipation phase of this experience. Some of that's just practical logistics stuff. but also how do I get people emotionally primed for the experience, right? So they know coming in, like, this is, this is emotionally how we want you to engage in this experience. We're taking the students to a lot of shows here in London because they're a great example of experience design. And we went to a show that just opened last week.

It's a sort of a redo of guys and dolls. And one of the reason we picked it is because it was billed as an immersive, an immersive theater experience. So instead of going and sitting in the seats, you went down into the stage and were right on the stage while it was happening. The reason I bring this up, though, is, or you could sit up in the stand, you know, the regular theater seats. But the reason I bring this up in terms of anticipation phase is when we entered before the show started, usually before a show starts, you just go and sit in your seed. Maybe they're small, you know, they might have some music playing

or something sort of thematically to cue what the show is going to be about. But in this one, we walked in, Guys and Dolls is set in New York, and you walked down into the sort of the theater and the round setting, and they had people dressed up as cops, as gamblers, selling hot dogs, selling beer, spontaneous crap games were breaking out. cops would break up but they were asking the participants to sort of participate in these things right so this was before the show started before any music started they were already saying this is the type of experience we want you we want you engaged this is going to be high energy

so they emotionally primed us um to participate so thinking about like what is what do we want people to say at the end how do we want them emotionally prime coming in right um and and so think about what are those steps beforehand that are going to harmonize so that their experience registering for this conference, their experience traveling to the conference, packed into the conference, there's things that are being done along the way that they already get a sense of, oh, this is the type of experience that's going to be, right? That's harmonizing at the end. And then, you know, since we're talking about, you know, theater already, I think the best

experiences have a narrative structure, right? We were hardwired to tell stories. It's how we make sense of a sense of the world and explain sort of ourselves and things around us to other people, right? And I think we're also hardwired when someone starts to tell a story, we pay attention, right? Because we know, like, oh, there's going to be some sort of payoff. This is why, like, a good story. And the same goes to experiences, right? A good experience has has exposition. And then there's some type of inciting incident that raises the action, right? And there's this rising action, reaching to some type of climax and then resolution. And within like a, you know, a multi-day experience like you're talking about, you could have multiple storylines. But each day could be a

story where there's, you know, there's a sort of exposition and rising action and climax. and resolution. We've all been to retreats or leadership meetings where there is no writing action, right? It's just like dead and it's just information overload. And you end being like, okay, I got my CEU credits or I did the thing my boss asked me to do. But yeah, it's just like too much, right?

So anyways, you're thinking about those touch points and then thinking about are we building them, are we building in like a narrative structure? We're thinking about rising action or we thinking about climax or is that happening multiple times during the experience? And then recognizing over the course of the day, it's going to be tons of little mini experiences where you're going to be prepping people, anticipating an experience. Maybe it's a workshop you're doing. And then you're going into that workshop and actually doing it.

And then there's the reflection period after that experience too. So it's, for me, I've got to map out everything really intentional by touch points. Usually I'll have a layer of like, here's the touch points. Here's what I want people to say across all of these touch points. And then what part of the narrative structure is this touch point playing, right? Is this rising action here? Is this where I'm going to try to wrap up and have some type of like climax or resolution? So I'm thinking sort of in layers with each of those.

at each of those experiences or each of those parts of the experience. What do you say to the leader who says, Matt, it sounds like a lot of work, dude, I don't have enough time for that stuff. In fact, my admin actually plans a lot of this because I'm busy doing these other things. And let's say this is the leader bringing 20 of their senior execs to a cool location, right? And they're at two, two and a half days. And it becomes kind of an open session to have dialogue and then an information dump.

And then you have a very expensive dinner. you know, you've been these, seeing these before. And then you go home. I've been to those before as well, right? Yeah, there's some fun. You can interact and get closer to your teammates and stuff like that. Like it happens, but there's almost no intentionality put into it because that leader says, dude, I don't have the time for that.

What do you say to that person? You bring up a really good point, right? And you can get down into the weeds and the nitty gritty. Ultimately, I would then back it up and say, as we talked about before, like, what do you want people to say when they come away from this. And then let's just think about the experience in terms of anticipation, participation, and reflection, right? And what I, and that could be the overall experience or the individual experiences.

Because if we just bring people in and we're just doing one thing after another and there's never a time to like reflect on what's actually happened and as simple as that sounds, This happens all the time because we feel like, okay, we've just got to feel if we're paying for people to come do this leadership retreat, we need to just pack it from front to end. But people don't, we just don't retain information, right? We, even though we may be having a good time, right, and this is engaging. You could have great speakers one after another, after another after another. There's no, there's no retention, right? you've got to build in meaningful reflection

because that's where people actually are able to sort of process and make connections between what they're learning back to where they're going to go. There's a great definition of transformational learning which basically says you know transformational learning has occurred if it produces future intrinsic use of the content. In other words, somebody goes home and willingly uses what you've taught them, and it makes their part of the world better.

Can you repeat that again? Future intrinsic, say that again? So future intrinsic use of content. Action. Actually doing it. Yeah. And not because they have to, right? Not because their boss is like, I'm checking in, right?

I mean, that could lead to application, but true transformative learning occurs when somebody uses what they've been taught because they want to, and it makes whatever they're doing better. I love that. How big question. How do you create an experience? I mean, this show is called The Learning Leader Show, so you're hitting me exactly across the eyes. So how do we create experiences in a very business. world with lots going on that are transformational learning experiences for the people that we're leading so I think so I'm sorry this is a topic that I talked about a long time so

sorry when I get into the weeds and then jump up high level I want to have you on man that's bringing in something like a different angle you can have experiences for all kinds of reasons right and you can also try to solve all kinds of of different problems, right? But if you're not solving problems or creating experiences that are tied to actual needs people have, then you're just wasting your time. So I think great experience design starts with understanding the needs of the people that you're trying to work with, right?

And I think true curiosity, we were talking before we started. a little bit about curiosity and creativity. I think to be a good experience designer, to be a good leader, you've got to be curious about the people you're working with, right? Because if you're not curious and you just see people as a market segment or, you know, my sales team and you don't really understand who they are and what their needs are, you're probably going to miss the mark, right? I read this book a couple of years ago called The One.

Wonder Switch by Harris III. Yeah. There's a consultant who started as a magician. And now he does consulting work, really interesting guy, runs a really cool. Story. It's called Story? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he runs a conference called story. Anyways, in the book, he talks about this idea of counterfeit curiosity, right? So this is what he says is Google's fault, right? that we now live in a world where we can just Google anything or chat GBT baby now, but that we can get immediate answers, right?

And he calls that counterfeit curiosity because true curiosity is becoming comfortable with not knowing something, right? And being willing to say, like, I'm okay being uncomfortable. I'm okay not knowing an answer. And I'm willing to sit here. and if it's with a person and spend the time to get to know this person to really understand what their needs are, right? Because once you understand somebody's need, right? It's not just like, hey, I need a leadership seminar. Well, like, you know because you do this all the time.

Leadership means different things, different people, right? There's thousands of different definitions. So you've got to be like, like, wait, what type of leadership seminar? And ultimately, like, why do you need a leader? Like, what's the need behind that? And I think the best experiences are ones that have taken the time where somebody's taken the time to figure out like what is the need, right? And if the need is just like, well, because we budgeted this at the beginning of the quarter and we're supposed to do this and I got a report to somebody that we've done it, it's most likely that you might create a memorable experience where people walk away and say, no, that was fun. Like I had a good time, right?

but if it's less likely that it's going to be meaningful that they've learned anything or transformational that they're going to do anything different right so I think the need like understand like what is the need and once you understand the need then you can design an experience to meet that need right in specific ways which is going to make it easier for people to engage because they're going to say oh well actually this is really like relevant to me And then back to this part about reflection, I think thinking about the fact that I can, let's say, you know, teach a little content, but I've also got to give time for structured reflection or they're just, it's not going to stick. Yeah. When you say that to me, so the way I'm trying to design my next one and so people will hear I'm kind of spilling a little bit is if, let's say there's for the guest speakers, which I'm bringing in some.

guest speakers, though their speaking portion slash presentation portion will be made smaller and group and small group dialogue made bigger because I'm a big believer of Peter Sennjay's the fifth discipline team dialogue we learn through talking things out. I got that from Jay Hennessy, former guest in the show, former Navy SEAL, who was a big believer in Dialogos, switched into the Greeks. It's like we learn through talking it out. feels to me the way that you can actually use it as something that's transformational learning which I'm going to use that too that okay brilliant speaker presents it in a brilliant way and not only now are you entertained

and informed and you have practical application but immediately following that you're going to be talking to a partner or two or three or even to the whole group sharing this is how I'm going to implement what I just learned from that speaker you can go, I mean, you and I have both been to keynote sessions that are awesome. And as soon as it's done, like, I don't know about you, but usually, like,

I'm on my phone, check an email. For sure. I'm moving on to the next thing, right? And I may think about it during the course of the day. Maybe if it's really great, maybe I've taken some notes or things during it. But we've just got a lot of things going on. And the only way an experience happens if you pay attention to it, right?

And so we invest money bringing in these great speakers, but then if we don't help people, like through some type, I think it's got to be structured reflection because most people, especially over the last couple of decades with smartphones, we just don't have the attention span or the discipline to know what to do with content once we get it, right? To have those ability to say like, oh yeah, I'm going to reflect on this. I'm going to make a plan. I'm going to, but, but even, even just taking a time to have, like you're saying, like, turn to a partner, write something down, giving people some tools and some space to make that

happen. I think one of the downfalls of most conferences is just like content, content, content, content, and you're just slammed and you get home and move on to the next thing. Exactly. You may have taken notes, those notes may sit in a notebook because you didn't, you never had any time to employ. what you've learned. I think from a great as a keynote speaker you do it 30 or 40 times a year to me if you ask like what does success look like when I'm on stage? It's it has to be entertaining it's got to be informative so there's got to be some key learning some also some research to back up

that it's got to be informative but I think most important there has to be a practical application element to it meaning you take from this and implement it into your life and it changes you for the better again like transformational learning actually happens so if you check those three that's success i tell them if you just need somebody because sometimes like a national sales meeting they kind of want like the inspirational slash entertaining guy and i say if you just want that i think you should hire a stand-up comedian everyone will have a great time they'll laugh they'll be entertained now they won't do anything from it like they won't take any action but they'll have a good time but if you want someone who's actually going to challenge them and change behavior, then I'll go.

Because I think that's what you have to do, at least in my opinion, to say this is success, is that there's actually change in behavior. And changing behavior is hard, right? So you've got to do it intentionally. And I think about this hierarchy. Very hard. Some of my research looks at this hierarchy of experiences, right? So for any experience to occur, people have to pay attention, right?

But most of our experiences are just ordinary, right? even though we may have paid attention to what we made for breakfast two weeks ago, I can't remember what it is. Like, did it stick? But there's a smaller subset of experiences. You can think about as extraordinary experiences where some are memorable, right? There's emotion associated, like I paid attention to something and also experienced emotion. Like that breakfast two weeks ago was an anniversary or a birthday or I met up with a friend who I didn't see it in 10 years and felt like gratitude or whatever it might be. Or it might be the comedian.

Like, yeah, bring in the stand-up comedian because we just want people to laugh and have a good time. That's our goal. And so, like, meet that need more specifically with the stand-up comedian, right? But if you want it to be meaningful, there's emotion, you pay attention,

there's emotion, and you learn something. There's an insight game. That, for me, is a meaningful experience. And then transformational, emotion, insight, and change. And the research that we've done shows it's, it's very, very rare for somebody to say, oh, yeah, I experience that change in the emotion and to not also say they learned something and they felt something, right? But I totally agree with you.

And the research that we've done backs that up. Like you need emotion. You need insight if you're going to get to change, right? So you can't be a boring speaker and have great content because people won't pay attention. Exactly. But I think people need, they need. guidance on how to use that information and how to take it back home with them. I mean, I have to use the analogy that when you provide people experience,

your responsibility, provide people an experience, your responsibility doesn't end at the end of the experience, right? Because they've still got to get home and take that with them, right? In some ways, it's like planting a field and then you just move on and plant another field without sticking around to like harvest anything. And so you've got to think. about or you know another analogy is you know when people leave an experience it's like they're going through customs to go back home and if if they're not intentional about it they're

going to have to leave all of the stuff they learned in the experience there right because they didn't do the reflection work to get it's not just automatic that people take that stuff home and so thinking about ways whether it's through reflection whether it's through like follow-up contact points down the road, whether it's them making it some sort of plan, there's got to be some type of reflective opportunity to help them move the learning into application in their home context. I may butcher this word because I'm not from Texas. What is the, is it Bucci's?

Oh, Buckees? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I told you. What is the Buckees? Buckees' restroom experience. like. Apparently this is a big thing that I'm not aware of that you like. What is what is that restroom experience like? So yeah, let's talk about restrooms. So Buckees is a gas station chain in in Texas and I'm I'm not a Bucky's expert since I don't live there anymore but you

talk to anybody from Texas because they might be in Oklahoma a little bit too. So I'd see amongst students and when I was teaching at Texas and I'm like Bucky shirts and I I have to ask this little beaver. And it was just so strange to me that people felt this brand allegiance to this gas station, right? And then I went. And you'd also see billboards, right, that a lot of them talked about how awesome their bathrooms were, which is usually not what gas stations bleed with. Right. So you'd say, like, our bathrooms are, you know, you've got to pee it to believe it and all of these sort of like slogans around their bathrooms. And they are, they're huge.

I mean, the gas stations are huge. There's like 600 types of granola and beef jerky. And then they just got these giant bathroom. So going back to what I said about ordinary, memorable, meaningful, and transformational experiences, you can break down the touch points in an experience into those different types. And most good experience design, most of your time is just making good, ordinary touch point, making things easier for people because attention is a limited resource. and so if it's hard to register,

if it's hard to park, if it's hard to whatever, by the time you want them to really pay attention, they don't have any more attention to give. And so most time, like bathroom, it's an ordinary touch point, or in a lot of cases, it's a negative memorable touch point, right? You're having a great dinner.

You go to use the restroom and you're like, oh, man, this is nasty, right? Like, if this is nasty, now I'm wondering about like what the kitchen looks like or whatever. So Buckees is interesting that they strategically made the decision to say, let's take an ordinary touchpoint, the bathroom at a gas station, which is often, as I said, a negative memorable touchpoint. And let's really make it a memorable touch point. We're going to put resources in time so that people who have the need of using the bathroom when they're out on the road, they're going to in part pick us because they know we're going to have these amazing, huge, super. clean bathrooms. And so I think Bucke's is just this great example of saying, okay, how do we differentiate ourselves? We know experience as part of that. And let's really invest in the bathroom experience.

I mean, how much better could it? I've never experienced it. I have experienced a lot. I drive all over the country for my daughter's volleyball. I feel like every other weekend. So we're everywhere. We're stopping, you know, and it's always terrible. You're like, uh, you know, what, How could it possibly be that much better? What do they do? It's just very clean or what is it? So these are giant gas stations. I mean, you pull up and there's, I don't know how many pumps, but like 40 pumps.

And it's like a giant store as well, right? Which you have like Flying J and, you know, the different sort of national. So think at that scale even bigger, but never aligned because these things are just so huge. Right. So they're in terms of the space they devote to the. bathrooms, cleanliness. And then I think they also, because they talk about it so openly, right, it's usually like, oh yeah, like that you get gas, you go the bathroom, you grab stuff. They just make it like part of the overall experience that that I think going back to that

anticipation phase that we talked about, people are excited like, I don't have to dread pulling in and like using the gas station bathroom. Like this is going to be a great part of the experience. And we talked earlier about like harmonizing Q. news, right? It's just another one. Say like the Bucky experience is going to be awesome, whether it's pumping gas, whether it's going to the bathroom, whether it's buying beef jerky. You're just going to love all of it, right? And you don't

have to worry about like that one piece of it. And so they're able to do this and still run a profitable business, which is the argument, like, well, I'm not going to spend time on that, man. That costs too much money or time. We're not going to do that. Sure. Yeah, totally.

I think, I mean, they're doing a lot. It's not just the bathrooms, but I think it's a unique example of saying, hey, like, could we make this usually ordinary part of the experience really, really great, right? I mean, other companies have done that. Like, you know, I think Southwest Airlines did this. Southwest Airlines did this really well, you know, when they first started. They're going to say, we're going to make part of these, you know, the flying experience

humorous. We're just going to make it funny, right? Because people are stressed. So we're going to really lean into, you know, humor as something that's part of who we are. So you see brands do this. They like, what's something that we can make our own? And it's usually through a specific type of experience. I mean, Costco's really intentionally, they're not going to change the price on hot dogs or rotisserie chicken, right? Regardless the prices going up, because they're like, that's part of the experience. Why people come here and we're going to stick

to our guns on the price of hot dogs and Costco, right? Because it's like an institution. Let's say I hired you as a consultant Fortune 500 company and I said, Matt, I don't necessarily know where to start, but I want to make an ordinary experience, what is normally an ordinary experience at most Fortune 500 companies extraordinary. What are a few things we could do right off the bat, like quick wins or it might take time and investment, but I'm willing, I'm open, I want to do this thing. What are some places, some things you could do that are normally? normally ordinary, that could be extraordinary, that will actually make people want to put it on

a T-shirt or want to tell their friends to make it an attractive place to work? I think the first thing that I would do is back up before. And usually, like, when I'm working with companies, I don't understand the context, right? And the people there, the company, know what's most important. But I would start by saying, you need to develop what I'll call a brand experience. guide, right? So all brands have some type of style guide, right? Like use this font and this is the color scheme and we're going to do this here and you always put the logo in this location. But few brands that I've seen really articulate the type of experience they want to provide across all channels,

right? And so I'd start by saying, well, let's see if we can just come up with, let's call it a brand theme statement. Let's look at all of our. internal sort of organizational mission documents. Let's look at, you know, if we've done any experience mapping, if we've done any sort of work in terms of what we want customers to say, and can we articulate just even a two or three word, not necessarily like slogan for the company, but what is the theme we would want all of our experiences to say? Like if we, if our, if our in-store experience, if our customer experience, our employee experience, if, if, if, If they were all saying the same thing, what is that sort of three or four word phrase?

And that aligns with sort of who we are as an organization, right? It could be, you know, clean and fast, right? If I'm Buckees, right? Or whatever it is, it's just a phrase to articulate the type of experience. And then now let's go through and start evaluating all of the experiences that we provide and see which ones align and which ones don't. And when we find ones that don't, then we start making strategic decisions to say, would it be worth bringing this one into alignment, right?

And maybe, you know, I had an exec once in a meeting that I was running, say, I love to fly with this airline, but I wish I could use this airline's app to book by flight with this other airline, right? Different experiences across different channels. So first thing I try to do is like bring, identify where we're trying to create alignment. and then figure out which experiences aren't in alignment, right? Because it could be like, oh, yeah, our employee experience is great across all of these divisions. But this division, no, people would not be saying what we want them to say, right? So let's bring that one into alignment.

I think finding alignment first is a good way from a resource standpoint to think about. Especially when it comes to your employees, your internal team, like focusing on them first. People have gotten better about onboarding. I think in the old days onboarding was like, here you go, bud, good luck. Yeah, don't break these rules and here's your key. Exactly. And in the sales world where I was, it was like, here's your list, have at it. Now that has gotten better.

But almost like creating a playbook of this is the onboarding when you're new. This is what happens after 30 days. This is what happens after six, whatever you want to do. But actually creating a playbook and that evolves and is iterated on and updated based on your key learners as you go, that that person feels special in a way, like, oh, they're really thinking, they really want to make sure

that I'm feeling the love, that I'm taking care of, that they're intentional about the experience that I have, that I'm not just another one of the thousands of people who work here. Totally. One of my executive MBA students last fall was working on this exact sort of onboarding project,

but it was interesting because I'm, trying to remember the industry where you work. But it was, you know, workers who were coming, these were, these were, you know, factory floor workers. They were not being paid a ton. There weren't a ton of resources to go around. But she's like, I want to fix their onboarding. Like, I feel like I can make their experience better because so often they are just seen as faceless people in the organization. And I loved that she thought of some really simple pretty cheap ways to just acknowledge them, right? And to make their onboarding something where they felt like, hey, this company cares about me, even though I'm working not too high above minimum wage,

but they know who I am and they thought through some of those things, which I thought was awesome because a lot of times you hear onboarding of like when a new execs come in or we spend a lot of time hiring this person, but everybody's experience matters. Yes, 100%. Another point, another practical example. Correct me if I'm wrong. I read you would drive extra miles to go to the grocery store called, is it, H.E.B. There are other grocery stores closer to where you live when you're in the States, but you choose to go to HEB instead of the other ones, even though they're further away. Why? So HEB, their slogan is here. Everything's better. And so I lived in Texas for about six years. Didn't know about HEB before, but we started going there. Actually,

became friends with a manager and have had this conversation with them like what is it about heb and he said you know one of the things they really focuses on is the people that they hire and how they train them to interact with customers right beyond just you know being friendly and helpful but actually just being you know he didn't say this but i just felt the people there were curious about me after going there for a while i would go there weekly or do our family shopping and like the green grocer knew my name. And this was like in a big store. And like, you didn't know a ton about me,

but I usually go the same time. And I don't know how you are, but a lot of times when I'm shopping, I don't really engage a lot with the checkout person or things. But they always asked specific question. It wasn't just about how are you doing today, but they'd see something on the, you know, that I was buying like,

oh, what are you going to use this for? Or I've tried this before. This is great. Like they just engaged in conversation. And there was obviously, more things they did in the store in terms of like just any grocery store like you come in and there's flowers and then this and that but the experience of being there I just always felt welcome in ways that I did it at other places and then it was interesting ask the manager specifically like

what is it about this and you know there's a variety of things but I remember what stuck with me is just thinking about how they train people to engage sincerely with people not just to help them but just to be interested in them. Again, a small piece, like it didn't require more money, maybe a little bit more training and a little bit more specificity about the type of people they hired. But I had a student who was going to Austin a few years ago and I was like, hey, and he heard me talk about HEB in class. I'm like, go get me some HEB tortillas because they're the best and he brought me back some. So I still feel that allegiance to HEB. I know this is a little bit outside of what you study, but you're a thoughtful, intelligent guy,

so I'm going to ask anyway, if you're hiring for a leadership role, what would you say are some of your must have qualities in a person? What are you looking for if you are hiring for someone to lead any sort of organization? I really value curiosity. I think curiosity is the fuel for creativity and innovation. I really believe that the more ideas that you have, the better likely you are to come up with a good idea, and you're more likely to have a lot of ideas if you're curious, right? And so I think looking for people who have like a broad range of interests in the interview process, I mean, there's not a perfect indicator, but people who have a broad range of interest,

that can be an indicator of curiosity. because they're people who are going to stick with a problem and who are going to find out sort of what makes something tick. And they're going to be ones who come away with, you know, more answers in the end, right? And I think there's a certain degree of humility that goes along with curiosity because you're admitting, I don't know, but I'm interested in finding out.

I think one of the reasons many of us at times tend not to be curious is we don't want to admit we don't know something, which is why this idea of counterfeit curiosity. resonated with me. I'm like, oh, that is so true. We just want to like look stuff up so we don't know. But to actually ask and say like, oh, yeah, I don't know about that. Tell me more. Somebody who exhibited that characteristic, I want all my team. So you teach college students, undergrad and graduate students. This question probably applies even better for you, my next one. And that is, let's say 23 to 25 year old comes to your office hours.

And they're past the specific questions. They get towards the end of that. conversation like Matt, you know, I'm almost done with school and I want to leave a positive dent in the world. I want to do good. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to that person? I challenge people to write a list of 50 questions and I'm not too concerned about the categories, but just what are things that you were curious about and that you have questions about. And if somebody can get 50 questions down, I think that's a good indication too that they're that they're curious and they're thinking about things but often what happens too is they start seeing sort of clusters of things that they're interested in and that for me it's not always

career relevant sometimes it is but also just gives them a sense of like oh yeah what am i what am i interested in and then just say like figure out how to spend time in those clusters that you're that you're interested in where you have questions because i think questions really drive sort of curiosity and engagement. The second piece of advice that I'll give is pulled from a couple of different places. Cal Newport's books, so good they can't ignore you. And also some advice that I heard from an advisory board member who came to our university. And at the time, I didn't write down his name. And so I can't attribute this to an individual. But he said, you know, when you graduate, especially an undergraduate graduate degree, you're not going to have your dream job, you know, nine times out of ten.

And so don't worry about that. But what you should worry about is be put yourself in a position where you can at least have some intrinsic motivation in what you're doing. And I'll get to the reason why that's important in just a second. But to do that, he says, consider you have one stake to put in the ground, right? And that could be a geography state, like I want to live in a particular location. It could be an industry state. It could be a company stake.

It could be a work-like balance stake. It could be a job title stake. So decide what is most important to you. You're going to pick one as a freshly minted grad. And then fight to find that position. Like work defined, like you want to go live in this place? Like, okay, go find a job there, right? Because if you're intrinsically motivated,

you're more likely to be more in or hopefully all in in wherever you are. And eventually, you're going to get more opportunities, right? If there's some degree of intrinsic motivation, and at some point, you'll get two states and three states. I mean, this is the same advice I give students on the front end trying to decide majors. Like, especially at the undergraduate level, there are so many interesting majors that aren't always just going to translate over into the job you have, right? Most people are going to have six or seven or more different jobs. But the students who get the most out of a university experience is the one who are all, in. So if you feel like you could be more all in than sociology, than accounting or accounting

than physics, like do that thing where you're going to not just go to class and try to pass, but you're going to talk to the professor. You're going to get involved in research projects. You're going to join some professional organization. And the same goes for post career to us. Those people who have a certain degree of intrinsic motivation and they're going to enjoy doing the extra thing. And then those are the people that get noticed, not because the, They're necessarily better than the people around them, but they're just more intrinsically motivated in that particular space. And that's how you become so good they can't ignore you, regardless of what the thing is. So good, man.

I appreciate your time so much. The reason that I became familiar with Matt is the book that I encourage anybody and everybody to read because I think experiential design is critical for leaders to be more intentional about. And I teed you up to disagree with me 30 minutes ago and you were kindly understanding, but I think it is a lame excuse from a leader if they say they don't have time to design the experience if they're going to do a leadership offsite. If you're doing an offsite, either go 100% to make it awesome or cancel it, in my opinion. Like most things in life, either do it or don't. You know what I mean?

And I think experiences are so critical that don't just book the location in the place and have your admin then plan the rest of the thing. If you want to work with an admin, great, but do it together and be intentional about it. And I think that's what you're all about, man. And that's why I love your work because whether you want to take your wife on an amazing date night, like be thoughtful and intentional about designing that experience for her so that she's like, wow, this is great. Like, I like that challenge. I like that thought.

Like, that's something I actively think about. And I think reading work like yours has made me better at that. The book is called Designing Experiences. It is extremely straightforward as far as a title is concerned. You know exactly what you're getting, which I think all publishers would tell you that's a good idea. And it's super useful, not just for somebody who is an event planner. This is useful for leaders and humans want to make a difference that you've got to design these experiences. So I'm just super appreciative for you, man.

Hey, thanks for having me on. What a great podcast. I think the topic that you're addressing is so needed. Yeah, it's just been a pleasure of being here with you. Thanks for taking time for me and inviting me on. Thanks, Matt. I would love for us to continue our dialogue as we put in the rest, man. Yeah, that would be great.

It's the end of the podcast club. Few takeaways from my notes with this great talk with Matt Durdon. Transformational Learning. Future, intrinsic use of the content, going from theory, to putting it in practice. It's the implementation of the learning that codifies it. That's what we must do. Just like Hermania Abar's quote,

we learn who we are in practice, not in theory. It's one thing to understand and learn the theory. But the most important part is to put it into action, and that's when the real learning happens. That's when transformational learning happens. And then what to do at your next leadership retreat. And by the way, if you're a leader, you should be regularly planning these retreats,

these off-sites with your team. Ask yourself the question, what do you want them to say when they walk away from the experience and design the event based on your answer to that question? And then some of the must-have qualities needed to be hired as a leader on Matt's team. Humility and curiosity are one and two. Curiosity is the fuel for creativity and innovation, having a broad range of interest is a great sign for curiosity. I want to say once again, thank you so much for continuing to support the Learning

Leader Show and spread the message and telling a friend or two and being here for the end of the podcast club. I greatly appreciate it. And because you continue to tell a friend, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Dr. Matt Durdon. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And then you type in Ryanhawk.net, which then launches you to Apple Podcast. where you write a review, a thoughtful review, and you rate the show, hopefully five stars.

By doing that, you continue to give me the opportunity to try to create these magical experiences on my podcast and do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can we?