Fostering Quality Experiences for Employees and Customers Alike to Win in Today’s Business

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FORCY Radio, its employees, their affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show, program, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FORCY Radio, its employees or affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FORCY Radio. What's Working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor release Quartez, Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program. Great to have you. We have been on air since February twenty fifteen, so appreciate you being along for the ride. I'm your host, doctor Elias Cortez to a new live from Dallas, which is home based for me. If we have not met yet and you don't know me, I'm a management consultant, organizational logo therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Least Cortes and Associates help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by articulating their purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated by meaning and purpose to turn those companies from

1:30 a flatline EKG to a vibrant destination workplace. There, people are intrinsically motivated to perform with their best, grow unto their fuller potential, and are committed to stay and help deliver on the company's mission. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at atlist Cortez dot com. Now, let's get in today's program with us. Today is Tiffany Boba, the global customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce. Over the past two decades, she has led large revenue producing divisions at businesses ranging from startups to the Fortune five hundred. She hosts the podcast What's Next with Tiffany Bova and recently publish The Experienced Mindset, Changing the Way You Think about Growth, which will be talking about today. Tiffany, welcome to Working on Purpose. Oh, thank you for having me, Les. I'm excited to be here. You are so welcome. It's so great to be to have you. And now you get to be on the other side of the MinC Yeah. Yes, apparently that is the requirements when you launch a book. Yes, it is, it is. And let's just look at that beautiful book that you put into.

2:30 Thank you. It's gorgeous anyway, So we are going to dive into it, but before we do, I really want to just start here getting a little bit acquainted. And I think it's absolutely remarkably wonderful and incredibly telling that someone like you was a customer Growth and Innovation Evangelists has written this book on the experienced mindset, which heavily factors in the employee experience. How refreshing. Well, it was a happy accident. Let me just put it to you that way. Okay, this is my second book. My first book was called Growth IQ and it was ten Paths to Growth, and I was like, these are the only paths and this is what it's all about. And that was written in twenty eighteen after a very long sort of career in tech and being a leader and advisor. And I missed employee in growth IQ.

3:16 Almost it's a complete I said it a couple of times, like I don't want to act like I totally missed it, but let's just say, and you know, in the sixty thousand words of growth IQ, I think there was you know, five hundred that were about employees, so that would be a miss. And then I joined a company, as you mentioned, Salesforce, and I saw from the inside kind of the power that culture and people had on innovation and growth. And so, you know, not a new statement, I said. I didn't think it was a coincidence. Salesforce was a great place to work, one of the most innovative companies in the world, and then the fastest growing enterprise software company, and I went, m I wonder if I could prove it. And then the result of that entire journey across two and a half years is the experience mindset wonderful, how delightful to hear that story. And I appreciate you know that, you know, life is a journey, so is being an author, a thinker, a thought leader. Right, it's a journey and we we we grow and elevate along the way. So I'm thrilled to hear as you could see. You know, I had I could shore up something here, and you did it beautifully in the book. And I think it's really important that we situate just kind of what I what you and I agree on anyway, of what a large part of what's under this, you know, the need to change and to adopt the growth or the experienced mindset. And that's this thing called COVID M. And so you talk in your book and you say, for all its tragic effects, COVID nineteen opened the door to rich, vital discussions about the unmet needs of employees across a number of key areas. Absolutely completely agree.

4:44 And now what's happened, of course, is the world is fun. The workforce is fundamentally altered, and it's never going to go back. Correct. So saying more about your perspective on the matter, because I think, you know, you and I could probably have a whole separate show just about that phenomenon and how it's altered the workforce in society. But I want to hear a bit more about your perspective on how COVID altered the workforce. There's a couple of things I'd say. One, this is the first time, as you know, at least, that we've had five generations working at the same time, So that in and of itself has its own set of challenges and opportunities. So I'll put that aside for a second. The second thing is is that we collectively, as organizations and companies around the world, have been chasing the ever increasing customer expectations by putting in place digital technologies or omni channel marketing to use some of the buzzwords, right, or you know, enabling commerce to be seamless and frictionless for your customers. Once again, lots of buzzwords, but it was really about reducing the effort of a customer in their engagement with you, yes, in order to increase the customer experience, right, like if I can. Originally, you know, many years ago, all the way back in two thousand, when I was working for a company that was very very early in this thing called the Worldwide Web. We were trying to get businesses to not place ads in the Yellow Pages and to place a website on this thing called the Worldwide Web. I remember those times.

6:14 Yeah, people would look at us like why would I do that? Like I've a yellow page ad, or I've always done nailers or inseputs in the newspaper, whatever it might be been. Back then, it was like, let's say I'm making up these numbers, but let's say it was ten clicks to buy something. Because there was not a lot of integration and technology products and things out there to make that be seamless. Fast forward, we're not. We're down to you know, single click or voice and two hours later it shows up at our house. Right, So in twenty five years, that digital you know, digital revolution, the fourth Industrial Revolution sort of shows up and shatters the way businesses conduct themselves. However, during that same amount of time, unfortunately, the unintended consequence of chasing that ever increasing customer expectation is that the effort for the employee has gone up, and during that go up time, the experience has gone down. So you know, I would do one thing, I did it the same way all the time, and you know, while it might have not been exhilarating, I didn't have to produce a lot of effort to do it. Now, it's like, go through five ten applications on your desktop, get up from your desk, do a manual process, Go get approval over here, put something in there.

7:39 We'll pulled on. The name is different in three systems. You know, it takes twenty minutes for me to do something that takes me one minute in my personal life, but it takes me twenty minutes to do it at work. You know, effort high, experience low. And the employee satisfaction scores from Gallup have remained fairly flat over the last decade, even gone down a little bit, right, So that means sometimes seventy five percent of the employee basis not extremely satisfied with what they're doing. And so that's sort of the second side of it. And then you have the pandemic hit and all of the sudden people were working from home. Now, I mean to carve out those that were required to be in the office, right, they were considered that you know, it was critical for people essential, right, that's the word, thank you to be in the office, or you were a healthcare moved those aside for a second. But you know a white collar job that you know, I did you accounting and now I'm doing it from home.

8:39 All of the sudden, you realize this lack of investment that had been happening by companies for their employees. And the Edelman Group does a trust barometer every year. It was the first time in a decade that employee became the number one stakeholder for long term customer success. It had been customer for the decade prior. So the only thing that's changed based on everything I just said, right like, we've been chasing employee expect our customer expectations increasing. It was the pandemic, right, all of a sudden, This black Swan event debatable if you agree it's a black Swan event, but a black Swan event sort of shows up and all of a sudden it cracks open this lack of investment and shines a spotlight on it. And I think that's where the employer employee relationship has forever changed. I agree that was beautifully articulative. Me I love it. I also talk about that is that it's you know, you talk about the great reflection. The reason I call my book the Great Revitalization is of course it's combating the Great resignation, And so you know this whole idea of people. The way I look at it is, before this all happened, everyone was really forced to live a life that was centered around their work. Everything was centered around the work. And now what's happened is people want to like that's at least harmonious with their work, if not, their lives are the center and everything factors into it or comes into it, and that is a huge seismic shift. Yeah. Listen, I've worked from home for seventeen and a half years, so the pandemic was not my catalyst to working from home, right, But yeah, but what changed for me was

10:11 I was working in a you know, a third bedroom that was my converted office, and I traveled quite a bit for work, so I might be in it two days a week, three days a week, maybe sometimes one day a week, sometimes not at all. But all of a sudden, when I was home five days a week working in that third bedroom, which was my converted office, it was not used for anything else, all of a sudden, I was like, oh my goodness, like I have to get out of this space. And I can't imagine not having that third bedroom and it being your kitchen table. Right, So I'm complaining where many people are like, I wish I had a third bedroom to try that in. So I literally converted my garage. But what I found happening in the first six months was I was working all the time, Like I could see my computer from the living room and hear the day calling me right, and so all of a sudden, I was like working longer and harder, and I was like, wait a second, Now I try to be really good about you know, at a certain time, I say, you know, I don't unless there's something happening right, Like, I'm like, I really just at six o'clock, I need to walk out of this office and lock the door. And now I don't have that quote unquote computer calling me to the third bedroom if you will to work. But it also that's why I call it the great reflection. Not everybody had the same opportunity to do that.

11:30 Not everybody has high speed internet in their homes. I mean, I remember when the pandemic first hit and I was driving to a CBS and there's a Starbucks like three doors down, and of course everything was closed at the time, and all these people were sitting in their cars and I was very confused, and they were sniff and Wi Fi from Starbucks because I've done right, and so we toss around this new way of working and it may never go back, but we can't forget that evenness of having the ability to do that is not there. I mean, there was just an announcement I think today or yesterday from the Biden administration that they were going to invest I think it's a little shy of a billion dollars on going out to rural communities for high speed internet, because that's sort of like water, food, electricity, high speed. If we're going to now have this work from home generation or hybrid generation or educate remotely generation, you have to make sure everyone has access.

12:28 Yeah, the infrastructure has got to be there, exactly. Okay, Well let's go on here because a few things that you say in the book have such a compelling edge to them that I want to situate for our listeners and viewers. And this is curated content, so whatever we talk about here is just adding on to what's already been discussed. So I pulled out things in your book that I think are really interesting and really speak to allow us to build. So I love how you talk about in your book. You say employees carry the torch every day for the values and mission of their company. They are the facilitators of every moment that matters, the positive connections and negative pain points encountered by customer or a fellow employee interacting with a brand or employer. And so then you talk about your friend Hubert Jolly, who's the former CEO and termined at the Best Buy, who said one time on your podcast, he said, the heart of business is the idea of pursuing a mobile purpose, a noble purpose, putting people at the center, creating the environment where they can release that human magic, embrace all shareholders, and treat profit as an outcome. I'm not sure how many executives who would comfortably describe their business this way, least because it spotlights and often overlooked but critical piece of any company's success, the day to day experiences of the people who work there and serve its customers. Yes, and once again, I would have never written that in Growth IQ. Yeah, it just wouldn't have happened. And so I was exposed to salesforce and action, living setting the purpose, living the purpose, living the values, setting the values like from the top all the way down. So I was experienced it in real time. Yeah,

14:01 but you know the thought that I have sat through probably hundreds, if not thousands of presentations over the thirty years i've been in tech where people promise that they are going the best product, or we are going to be the most customer centric organization, or we care about you, or we will go that extra mile or whatever that tagline is. That PowerPoint presentation does not deliver that service. That PowerPoint presentation does not keep that promise. The people do, the cleaning crew, to the receptionist, to the delivery driver, to the person who packs a product, all of those people, they are the ones that deliver on the promise that a business makes to its customer full stop.

14:52 Right. And if they aren't happy, it's not you know, sort of happy, love your job, purpose, empathy. Those things sometimes make leaders uncomfortable, right because it's it's the soft stuff that people feel like they can't manage. But if your employees are not happy, trust me, your customers know it. If your call center agent is rude and short and not interested in your problems and isn't laughing and isn't engaged in the story that you're trying to tell, your customers know it, and when someone goes the extra mile, we all remember it, like, oh my god, I had this person on a you know, one of my wife, you know, my wireless provider or my cable provider, which doesn't always have the best customer experience, but I got I was so lucky. I got this person who like stayed with me through this problem, right and when the extra mile and got me everything I needed and then you know, thanked me and then followed up and like, I just I only want to talk to that person every time I call. They're they're, they're they're the company to me, yes, um okay, So that is a gorgeous And then you take all of that and I completely aligned with that, this is the engine here. Then when I was reading your book, as you can tell, I read it cover to cover. That I host this show because you are my learning You, my guest, are my learning catalyst. That's why I read this than cover to cover. And I have twenty pages of research notes. If I can say the crux of your whole book to me, I think what you're really saying here is and this is what it speaks to you say Ultimately, the experience mindset is about fully maximizing the leverage points between a strong employee experience and

16:26 customer employee experience and customer experience to create a virtual cycle of momentum that leads to significantly better growth rates. It is a new operating model and an intentional, holistic approach that considers both employee experience and customer experience when making decisions for the company. And stop. That's it. That is this not your central message. It is my central message. And I worked really hard on that two sentences or three sentences right, because there was a few things in there when I started to so I made the comment a few minutes ago that I was standing on stage. I said, you know, great place to work, you know, and I'm going to go prove it. And so I went to our CMO at the time, and I asked for some money and we went out. We proved it. We went, huh, maybe we're onto something. But what we found was companies that did very well on customer experience got a little bit of a lift on their KPIs for employee. I think it was like one dot three x, so one dot three x times sort of better improvement. The reverse of that, like if they were really good on ex they had a lift on their KPIs on CX not as big, not as big. Right, when they did them both in a harmonious way, there was a one dot eight times faster growth rate. So that's that virtuous cycle. So we went into it thinking it was sort of like you know, the infinity right, the infinity sign. But on the second set of research that we did with Edelman that we did globally, we learned very quickly that it has to start with employee. It can't start with customer.

17:56 So while virtuous, it has to start with employee, then it becomes virtuous. If it starts with customer, it doesn't give you enough lift frequently enough to get customers to make your employees happy. It's because, right the warehouse person isn't talking to a customer, so it's impossible to have that happen. So when I said that was the first thing when I started to socialize this research with roundtables with executives from around the world, and it was like chief human resource officers, chief marketing officers, chief officers, maybe a couple of CFOs but not many. And then it was small, medium enterprise business across industry I heard the following, if it's so obvious, wise in everyone doing it? Of course happy employees, that's novel about that. And then I'd start walking through the research and they'd be like, huh, I wonder if our employees would say that, right, Like all of a sudden, I'm like, look, I'm not saying you're not one of a small fraction of people and companies that are getting this right. But we hold the Uber Joe, best Buy, or the Nordstrums, or the Zappos or the we hold them up as the ones that get it right. And it's not a blanket statement that everyone gets this right. Otherwise we wouldn't have had the great resignation and quiet quitting that we're dealing with now. And a side part of that is low unemployment rate. I don't know if that's a good thing, because it doesn't mean we have more people quiet quitting and they're just not happy and they're putting up with it, or that all of a sudden, all

19:27 these companies got employee experience, right, I know it's not the letter or also wouldn't have clients. I know it's not the latter, right, And so our first break really quick here tivan hold that thought. Okay, I'm Elis Quartez. Your host Leavent on THEO Tiffany Boba. She's the author of the Experienced Mindset Change in the Way You Think about Growth. We've been talking a bit about where her book came from and why it's so important a novel. After Rak, we're going to get more into what's under this whole mindset experience. Stavis will be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise A. L i Se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to work

21:00 on purpose. Thanks for daning with us and welcome back to Working on Purpose. Before we get back into the program, I want to share with you what we've been up to on the Purpose and Joy Tour. This is a collaboration between Joylie and organization that teaches mindful practices to build a happy, healthy, resilient world and my company at Las Cortes and Associates that activates meaning and purpose and company culture and leadership to increase fullfilm met performance and retention. Together, we are going to various cities in the United States, having started in Dallas in March, finishing in Virginia Beach in October to find our tribe and build a community of people who who care to elevate their lives and businesses by cultivating meaning, purpose and joy. Next stops are Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

21:41 You can find a list of cities, dates, and planned events at Gusto dashnow dot com. If you're now just joining the program. My guest is Tiffany Bova, the global Customer Growth and Innovation evangels at Salesforce and the host of the podcast What's Next with Tiffany Bova. I'm your host, doctor Elis Cortez. So you're trying to finish a thought before I stopped you so rudely, did you want to worry something else? That was my bad. I should have known better. I knew we had a time stop at that. It's great. Yeah. So the third thing I was going to say is the third question I got if it was so obvious, and then kind of how do we measure it? The third one was are you advocating for a new role in the C suite? For like chief employee experience officer?

22:22 And part of that quote that you read before we went to break why I worked so hard on it was I am not advocating for a new role in the C suite. It is intentionally a mindset. The whole thought was, if you are going to do something as a company, as an organization, I don't care if you have three employees ten three thousand, thirty thousand, doesn't matter to me. If you're going to make a decision to improve the experience of your customers and reduce their effort and all the things we talked about at the beginning of the show, I just want you to take a pause and say, hold on, it's the intended or unintended consequence to your people if you made it easier for the customer and it became harder for the employee.

23:07 Was that on purpose? If you deployed new technology and they don't know how to use it? Was that on purpose? If you said, our customers can contact us and these ten channels, right, do your people know how to do that and do they have what they need to make that successful? Etc. Etc. Like I just want you to pause. And that can happen all through the organization, from an individual contributor all the way up to the top. And so I was very purposeful on those words that I used in that because it was a way to have this become a new operating philosophy, not about a new role, not about command and control, not about a sphere of influence, but really about approaching your business differently, which I fully applaud and so happy to have you on the show and share this message. It is critical. So another thing that I want to just celebrate here that you also wrote about is you're quoting here somebody from Unilever, which they say we can't promise anyone a job for life, this is on their website, but we can do everything possible to equip our people with the skills and awareness to pursue meaningful work, whether at Unilever or elsewhere. That's the type of organism, that's the type of experience employees are seeking today. I completely and wholeheartedly agree with that, Tiffany, and if we did do that, it would revolutionize the way people experience work and the output that we had in the world. Absolutely, And you know, the World Economic Forum has a stat out there the fifty percent of us are going to need to reskill by twenty twenty five, and that was actually predicted pre pandemic. So I

24:42 was at the World Economic Forum in November actually on Thanksgiving this past year, and we were talking about this whole conversation that reskilling being a really critical part of company's success. But most of the time, and also one of the things I consistently heard back from executives to in those roundtables was well, what if we invest in our people and they leave? Which is a very different approach than what Unilever said. And you know, the response, the classic response not mine, you know, sort of an isum if you will, is well, what if we don't invest in them and they stay, then they don't have the ability to do it? And when we did the research. We actually found employees were saying, like, I want you to invest in me, like you're asking me to commit one third of my life to you this employer for this kind of okay paycheck and no benefits and no training and no education in all these things. That for the norm is the case.

25:41 Right. Not everybody works at a fortune five hundred company. Small businesses employ everybody, right, it's not the large enterprises that do. So you have to think that if we don't invest in our people, that they're not going to be able to be successful. And if you're going to eliminate a division or close a store, or close a plant or get rid of a team, what if you could re educate them, rescale them, and put them in another role. Now what is that? Just told them I'm cremated to you, care about your success. I want you to run this business someday. Like I hope that's the case, right. How many CEOs here right started at the bottom and work their way up and now run the business.

26:23 You have a much better handle on what's happening in the business versus warning it from a spreadsheet. So there is so much to be said for making those investments en if you're a small company and you're listening to this, you're gonna say, I can't afford to make it, Like I'm either going to make payroll, I'm going to pay the rent, I'm gonna put food on my table, I'm going to invest in my employees. And that's a tough decision, right, So maybe it is you work with free online classes, or you partner with a local community college, do something, get creative. There are ways in which you can continue to educate your people for very little money, if any at all, and it goes a long way to show that you care and that you're committed to everyone going on this journey with you.

27:10 I love that, Tiffany. Of course, you know just because I, yes, I get paid to train people, So yes, I do endorse that anyway. But I do meet all the time when I'm working with a well established company and they've got people that have been there for twenty years, twenty five years by a lot of those people are there really that is a static set of skills right there, and they're the ones that are making decisions for the company and other things. And so I love you say. Also you say, if you do not invest in developing people, and they stay their static skills cannot evolve even when their current position requires them to, causing the rest of the teams and customers to suffer exactly that. Yeah, and look, you know, I'm a huge fan of coaching right, especially for leaders to navigate through some of these things like is it really an or decision I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that, or is it an end decision? And you need help on reframing that. Look, we're kind of all. We all rise to the level of our incompetency, right, the Peter principle, we all we all rise to the level of our incompetency. But you have to have a beginner's mind to be open to new ways of doing things. And the only way you can do that and do that successfully is growth and comfort rarely coexist. That's a quote from Jay Remetti, the former CEO and chairperson of IBM. It was the opening quote for my first book. And I would say that that is where training coaching right. Consultants like that's where the value is because they can speed you up on that journey instead of you're trying to hunt and peck your way through it.

28:42 It's finding the right coach right or the right person to help you and give you that advice. And they may not have the answer, but it's really about helping you with the process more than telling you the answer. I completely agree with that, especially the acceleration piece. Especially that. So why for the longest time I used to call my business stimulus that we've evolved since then. All right, so I have to have you talk about this because this is my lane. So you say, right, I can't wait here what you have to say about this, because I've been writing about this and talking about this for a good eight years. You say, organizations in which employees are primarily motivated by shared values and have a commitment to a shared purpose are far more likely to have high customer satisfaction than those who don't. Completely agree. Yes, and I would tell you this goes back to what I've said a couple of times. Now. I didn't have an I didn't have an inside track on that statement. And please, this is by no means a salesforce commercial, not the intention of this conversation. But I will tell you the founders, Mark Benningoff and Parker Harris, they set out on day one of the business with a one one one model, one percent of the time of the employees. It was easy. It was sort of the two or three or four of them. It was a handful. One percent of the equity of the business would be reinvested and percent of the software would be donated. Fast forward twenty four years, we've donated almost eight million hours of volunteer time through the employees. We power some almost fifty five or sixty thousand not for profits and we've donated I don't know, I don't quote me on

30:17 the number, so I'm not even gonna say it millions of dollars worth of equity. I don't want to get that wrong case there's somebody on here who's an investor. Yeah, I don't want to get in trouble. I like my job. Millions of dollars reinvested back into the business. So that was a very purpose overprofit foundation. Yes, and listen, when I do executive briefings with customers, a lot of times it's about learning salesforce on salesforce, like, how do you do that and scale it and operationalize it? We want to try to do that. They're already established, so making that change is very difficult. So the story in the book from Ubert Jolie, you know, around best Buy, really shows how he did it. And I talk a little bit about how we do it. But I will say to you that this is not a big bang approach. Right. You may start in a division, or a team or a group, and then and then we have an architecture called V two MOM. The letter V the number two and then MOM, and it stands for vision, Values, Methods, obstacles and metrics. That's our V two MOM and the second side of that coin of salesforce and salesforces. We want you to run us and this project through a V two MOM cycle. And then we want to roll out V two moms in our own organization so that we're all aligned around the vision and the values, that everyone knows what they're planning on doing. And for example, if I was going to have a meeting with you know, let's just say Mark Bennioff, you know, I can actually go online and click his V

31:49 two MOM and read it so before I sit down and meet with him, which, by the way, you know his is the corporate one, and we it clicks double clicks clicks all way down to an individual contributor, and all our V two moms feed into the corporate V two mom and so we're all faded in the same direction. Everybody has to do it. You can't get out of doing it. Everybody has to do reviews on it. Everybody has to put in obstacles for it, like there's no getting around it. And that keeps us very aligned on our purpose. Oh that was gorgeous. That was worth it. Admission right there, price of admission right there, Tiffany, thank you. Let's take our next break then on that note, so people can listen and chew on that a little bit. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez. We've been on aero Tiffany Boba, who is the author of the Experience Mindset, Changing the way you think about growth. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies engineer for a greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This

33:23 is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with a lease, send an email to a lease a l I se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I mentioned in the last book that we're launching and have been on tour for the Purpose and Enjoy tour. The last two books that I wrote in twenty twenty three are part of that event. One is called The Great Revitalization, How activating meeting and purpose can radically enliven your business, which helps leaders learn how to build elevating in high performing leadership and culture. The other recently released book is called Coloring Life, How Loss advices to live more vibrant lives.

34:08 And that's for people who are navigating loss and want to transform to growth and vitality through it. I'm your host, doctor Elias Quartez. If you're just joining us, it's Tiffany Bova who's with us. She's the global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangels at Salesforce and the host of the podcast What's Next with Tiffany Bova. All Right, so we bus is our little bit of stretcher that we we get to crack on a couple of other things that I thought were important, not the least of which, of course, our culture and measurement. So the first thing I want to go to is you say in your culture chapter, you say, the analysis that identified five key elements of employee experience as clear statistically strong drivers of employee experience, and they are trust, c suite, accountability, alignment, recognition, and seamless technology. If you could just speak very briefly to each one of those, or some of those, so that we can give our listeners in viewers something that they can really chew on and maybe start to leave investigating their own companies, that'd be great.

35:01 Sure, I'm going to start with seamless technology, because I think that businesses use technology and hope that technology will fix the ills of the things that they don't do potentially correctly. Fifty two percent of the C suite that we surveyed. This is globally, cross industry, multiple sizes, so not just enterprises, believed that the technology they had delivered was working effectively and efficiently in the business. Only thirty two percent of employees agreed. So there was a twenty twenty point gap between what the c suite thought and what employees thought.

35:42 But the one that was just earth shattering to me was that only twenty percent of customer facing employees agreed that the technology they were using allowed them to collaborate and well work efficient efficiently, and effectively out Wow. So remember we were taught this is I am not a people expert. I'm not a purpose or culture expert. Like I focus on the moment that matters when an employee touches a customer. That is what I'm talking about. So if you as an organization have a goal of creating these amazing customer experiences and eighty percent of your employees believe you're not giving them the right technology to actually deliver upon that promise, you have a problem. Yes, so you know, technology is a big one, but that comes down to you may have the technology, but you have to develop your people, which we've already talked about. So that was one of the other sort of levers You've got c suite accountability, does the c suite do what they say and say what they do, right, Like we get to work from home and then all of a sudden, okay, now no one can work from home. That breaks trust, which was another one, right, And so there are pieces and parts of this that are sort of the spider web that they're all interconnected. The one thing about the experience mindset, it is in one thing. So that's why I hit on people, process, and technology, which is a lift from m Herald Leave. It came up with that in the sixties. I didn't come up with that. That PPT framework is not mine, but I added culture to

37:15 it. So PPTC because people and culture, to me are different. People is about some of the things we're talking about, right, the training, investment, recognition, pay comp all of those kinds of things. Culture is that V two mom purpose over profit, like how does the organization operate? Those are different things. So I think that if you can get a handle on what is your culture and what would your people say about it? What would your customers say about it? And does it actually match up with what you think is happening in your business? Gorgeous, beautiful? All right? So then you we've been talking about how swishy some executives seem to think this whole space is, you know, the employee experience, and you know all this stuff meaning purpose, culture, all this stuff. So let's talk numbers.

37:57 And one of the things that you do in your book, which I think is great, there's two pieces that I want to cover when it comes to measuring. One is the idea of the employee net promoters score. Yeah. I'm going to guess that many listeners and viewers who are watching this have not heard of this before when it comes to employees. So would you speak a little bit about that? And then I want to actually reveal the actual question that's used to determine that. Sure, so you know I'm going to once again follow my sword here. It was back in two thousand and eight. In my previous role, I was a research fellow at a company called Gartner, and we had made a prediction in two thousand and eight that we believe the chief marketing officer would spend more on technology than the chief information officer. And everyone thought we were crazy, by the way, but Microsoft, sap Oracle, and Salesforce all went out and bought marketing technology companies get their hands on that technology because we weren't talking about it from a technology standpoint.

38:47 We were talking about it that we believed the experience was going to be that next space that companies would compete with each other on. As price commoditized, as access to you know, products and services was more available, the Internet was getting mature. You know, all those things were happening, and we really advocated for the CMO to have a seat at the executive table to put out KPIs that were customer oriented. We saw a lot of that happen, and you know, we've already sort of talked about it, and I want to give away the question, so I won't say it. But what happened was those KPIs started to get very mature on the customer side. And if you get a little text message after you check into a hotel or have a meal and ask you one simple question like how likely are you to refer this business or likely to do it again? You get a you know, one to five. That sort of generates the net Promoter score, which is NPS.

39:43 And so that became the standard gold standard for companies to measure how their customer experience was actually doing. So now I'm going to toss it back over to your release, go for it. Well, this is powerful, you know, and imagine listeners and viewers. If you actually ask this of your employees, on a scale of zero to ten, how likely is it you would recommend this company as a place to work. Then you say, the answer immediately reveals employee sentiment, making ongoing measurement much more feasible. What a simple question to ask, yes, And so when I'm in front of an executive, I'll ask what are your top five metrics that you measure customer experience in your business? And they may not use those terms right, they might be low on the maturity curve of looking at CX, but just you know, what do you use to measure the business? You very quickly will start to see that it may be oriented around the customer predominantly and not much for employee. And that goes back to where we started this conversation. If they leave, I'll just replace them. Well, now we have low unemployment, we have lots of people working. You know, there isn't a lot of talent. We've got skill shortages, we've got we need to reskill, we have a lot of things happening. So people leaving and just replacing them is not as easy as it used to be. Well, besides that as expensive is I'll get up and that too, right, So balancing what you're measuring on both sides, so that very simple question will give you the are they likely to refer? But I want you to double click. I want you

41:14 to then swap that. And by the way, that net promoter NPS is now e NPS or employee net promoter, which which at least mentioned. So you know, what I want you to do is ask him a question like how easy was it for you to do whatever it is you just did as an employee? Check someone out of there? You know, your cash register at a retail store, you know, find a product in your store closet right in, to ship a product, to take a return, to answer a question, to find something on the website, whatever it is. One question scale of one to five, scale of one to ten, ten gets a little big, So let's go one to five, five being it's you know, fantastic, one being it's horrible. You could find out fairly quickly where the pain points are in your business for your employees. One of the examples I game in the book, which is a fun one. It's a CEO out of Canada for a company called Clearco. Her name is Michelle Romana.

42:14 She's a dragon on Dragon's Den, which is the US's version of Shark Tank, or the Canadian version of the US show Shark Tank. And she's a double unicorn. So a two billion dollar business. It was about one hundred and fifty employees, and she started to notice that the sentiment was, you know, declining. People didn't seem as joyous and happy and sort of engaged at work. And she's like, look, we don't have time to hire people and do a multimillion dollar, multi year project. Like I'm going to just send out a message to all the employees and I'm going to ask them one question. Please tell me the stupid and she used to swear stopped in your book, the stupid stuff we do at company name dot com. And she set up an email box and that was the name of the email box. Sure enough, she got a lot of feedback and it was things like I can't believe we're doing this. Why are we still doing this?

43:00 Like so very quickly, it goes back to those five layers. It's trust. You asked, I answered, you fixed yes, sums up right? You asked. I answered, you're going to get me trained. You asked, I answered, right, you're going to fix that technology problem or that process problem. It very quickly lifted all the morale, the engagement, the willingness to do things of purpose, all of that very quickly, super simple, by asking one question. So, you know, one of the things you said at the beginning is sort of overcomplicating all these things, right that we just need to keep it really simple. You know, there's so many things can be can be solved by having a conversation and doing something about it. Yes, Wow, what a concept. Who knew talking was actually so valuable? And listening and listening and then acting on what you want you learned?

43:49 Um, okay. So the other piece of measurement that I want to talk about, which is a little bit more sophisticated, is the employee Satisfaction Index, and it has to ask three questions, one of which I think is incredibly critical. Do you want to you want to go ahead and steach? Don't go for it, Please go for it. So the three questions listeners and viewers are you would ask how satisfied are you with your current workplace? Okay, how well does your current workplace meet your expectations. And I think the zinger is how close is your current workplace to the ideal? One? Boy, you get the answers to those three questions, you get a lot to work with. Yeah, And this goes back to what I was saying a few minutes ago when I said, if it's so obvious, why isn't everyone doing it? And then oh, I'm one of those few, you know, I'm one of those fifteen companies that gets this right. You know, And whenever someone says that, look, you know, my fingers are crossed with bated breath. I'm waiting for them to absolutely nail it right.

44:43 And I'm like, I hope you are, because I need new stories. Right. So it isn't always the case, but it is. It is really in this simplicity and and that whole concept of sort of asking the question requires you, as as as a leader or an individual, contribute to become what I call a master asker, Like, get really good at asking better questions and don't listen to answer again, right, you listen to then say okay? And you know, Undercover Boss is a great example of when leaders don't actually get out and ask those questions. That they're completely surprised or flabbergasted by what they find on that TV show in an hour, and you're like, I don't know how you didn't know this, but you know Tom Peters wrote about it in Search of Excellence in the early eighties, and he wrote the foreword to my book, and I've really followed his work for so long. And it was management by wandering around or wa And so the answers to whatever challenges you are trying to solve, any opportunities you want to take advantage of anything you've heard from this today that you want to change. The answer to how to do it is not for me. Maybe it's from release.

45:57 It's definitely not for me, but it most definitely sits with your people. They know the answer to these questions. You just have to have the courage to ask. That is so crisp and so compelling. We just have a couple of minutes left here, so I think what I need to do is just let you close with what you what you want to, what you want to leave us with. Keep in mind that this show is listening to my people around the world, Tiffany. What they really care about is they're trying to create workplaces where people can actually thrive. We can do business that betters the world, and we can have the greatest impact. What would like to leave them with? Oh, you know, I aspire that any piece or part of my work helps you do what at least just said. I mean, that's the goal, right, The goal is to help businesses be better for their employees, for their customers, for the communities where their employees work, for the global world that we all live in. You know absolutely, you know that is that is what I aspire to do. So I would love to hear back from you. I don't unfortunately have any ability to take any more connections on on LinkedIn, but you know, give me a comment, tell me what you agreed with or disagreed with. Like I'm always open to feedback. I'm a lifelong learner and I'm curious about, you know, how I can continue to improve what it is I do and say.

47:12 So, you know that that's what I would leave with, no words of you know, pearls of wisdom to end on just day, just day. You know, I'm super grateful to have had spent this time with you, and I appreciate all the wonderful questions that you asked, thank you, Tiffany. So just to be clear, so you're saying that on LinkedIn, you you can actually receive messages from people, and you're encouraging and inviting that they just can't connect with you. They just can't connect with me. That you can follow me, I just don't have any connections left. Yeah, and you know, or Twitter or Instagram sort of whatever your preferred platform is. LinkedIn. I'm just a little bit more active on on these kinds of conversations. But I'm always looking for examples. If you work somewhere or you're a leader, and you have a company that you think you're nailing this, I want to hear from you, Tiffany. I have. It's been delightful to get to know you. I read your book cover to cover. I learned a lot were very much alignment on these sort of things. And now that I've met you, smashing, just smashing. You're compelling, you're interesting, you're funny. It's just really delightful to know you. So thank you for being on working on purpose. Thank you for the kind words. You're welcome, listeners, viewers. If you want to learn more about Tiffany Bova, her book The experience, mindset, or anything else she's working on. The best place to go is just simply her website, Tiffany Bova dot com.

48:22 Let me spell that for you. It's tiff A ni Bova, So Tiffany dot com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you a sketch it be recorded podcast. We were on the air with William Eggers and Don Kettle talking about their most ambitious and elevating book, Bridge Builders, How government can transcend boundaries to solve big problems. It was really amazing compelling. The stories they told about how big problems got solved in this fashion was incredible, including the COVID vaccine and other things like that. Next week, we'll be on the air with Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley talking about their new book, The Empathy Advantage, Leading the Empowered Workforce. See you there, and remember that work as an integral and important part of our lives and can be one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact.

49:05 We crave. So let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host doctor Elise Cortez each week on W four CY. Together, we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on purpose.