Leading People
Gerry Murray talks to leading people about leading people. Get insights and tips from thought leaders about how to bring out the best in yourself and others.
Leading People
How Putting Workers First Helps Businesses Thrive
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Discover how putting workers first and treating them like customers can transform your business.
In this episode we chat with Stephan Meier, a leading behavioural economist and Columbia Business School professor. Stephan takes us on a journey from Switzerland to his pivotal role at Columbia, sharing insights from his latest book, "The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Businesses Thrive."
This episode uncovers the revolutionary impacts of personalisation and empowerment in employee management, inspired by success stories from companies like Eli Lilly and DHL Express.
Stephan challenges the conventional wisdom that often prioritises customers over employees. By examining the global disengagement epidemic, he argues for a mindset shift towards an employee-centric culture, much like Amazon's customer-centric approach.
Stephan also provides a fascinating exploration of remote work's complexities, the balance between flexibility and collaboration, and how these factors influence workplace motivation and trust.
Real-world examples shed light on how treating employees as valuable assets can lead to enhanced organizational profitability.
Finally, we delve into the future of work, exploring how AI and technology can uplift workplace motivation by reducing mundane tasks and enabling meaningful work.
Stephan offers a compelling vision for leaders aiming to inspire their workforce, emphasizing the importance of seeing employees as customers and strategically using technology to create engaging environments. With insights on leadership styles and the evolving role of AI, this episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to thrive in the modern business landscape.
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Join us for this insightful episode as we explore why employees are the new customers.
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Wide Circle
Welcome to Episode 60 of Leading People with me, gerry Murray. This episode is brought to you by Wide Circle, helping you make better talent decisions. To learn more, visit widecircleeu. That's W-I-D-E-C-I-R-C-L-E dot E-U. C-i-r-c-l-e dot E-U. How can we create workplaces that motivate and inspire, not just function? My guest today is Stefan Meyer, renowned behavioural economist and Columbia Business School professor. Stefan joins us to share groundbreaking ideas from his new book, the Employee Advantage how Putting Workers First Helps Businesses Thrive. During our conversation, we discuss topics such as why employees should be treated like customers and how this changes everything, how combining AI and behavioral economics can actually humanize work and the surprising benefits of personalized employee experiences. So get ready for a conversation that blends cutting edge research, actionable insights and practical strategies to elevate leadership in your organization. Let's hear what Stefan has to say. Stefan Meyer, welcome to Leading People.
Speaker 2:Hi Gary, thank you so much for having me on the show, so you've just published a book.
Speaker 1:It's so new that my copy hasn't arrived yet, but you've sent me a little preview and we're going to get to that shortly. But first, so that our listeners can get to know you a little bit better, how did you kind of get here? What person, place or an event that maybe stands out in your journey to where you are today? Or was it like an epiphany moment and then you chose a career in academia? So let's hear a little bit about who Stefan is.
Speaker 2:Okay, great, yeah. So I'm originally from Switzerland, grew up there, did all my studies there. I actually started studying history, so I have a master's in history, and after that I switched to economics. So I then did a PhD in economics at the University of Zurich and in my last year of the PhD I spent some time in London and then about nine months at Harvard, you know, with a scholarship from the Swiss government that supported me to do that.
Speaker 2:And then the question was like, what should I do next? And the options I thought were like going to an economics department, becoming an economics professor, and I didn't want it to do that. I loved economics but I somehow thought like I'm not sure I want to do that. So I left academia, so to speak. I started working at the Federal Reserve Bank as a behavioral economist in their Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Making, which was very new. I was the first economist to be hired in that position and in the whole Federal Reserve System here in the US.
Speaker 2:And while I was there and I enjoyed it a lot, and while I was there, I was teaching a class at the Kennedy School. And then I figured, oh, actually what I like is professional schools, you know, teaching students who are a little older, who have some experience. I can learn from them and they learn from me. And so that's then when I decided well, actually I want to go not to an economics department but like to a business school, where you know I can when I teach, you know I learn from them as much as they hopefully learn from me, and I I can do my scholarly work but also do teaching and and some sort of consulting, you know, talk with leaders, and that's what I find really exciting. And then I joined Columbia Business School in 2008. I came to the US in 2005. And I'm here ever since. In fact, I came to the US for nine months, so I wanted to stay only nine months. That was how long the scholarship was three months in London and nine months in Boston.
Speaker 1:And that was 2005, and I'm still here Very good, and actually I like your philosophy of teaching as an opportunity to learn. Uh, um, I sometimes use the same framing when I walk into the room. Sometimes you get this shock and horror in people's faces for a few seconds going. I thought we were here. I always say to them you know, there's going to be some amazing stuff happen between you all and who knows what's going to come out of the of that. And and you know, I think you're always learning when you're, because you put your material out there and and people respond to it, and some people respond to it in different ways than you ever thought and all of a sudden something else emerges from it. So it's a Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, Gary, I think, like you know any conversation, you know the conversation we are having here or the conversation I'm having in a classroom. For me, what is enjoyable there is I learn something. You know, in discussions with other people, and you know people are different. Some really want to tell and like, want to just educate, yeah. And others, like me and it seems like you're one of them as well, you know, actually wants to learn. You know, in the conversation, in the discourse, you're going to learn something yeah, that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, the end of 2020 was. It was an opportunity also to to just learn and to get to talk. Some of the coolest people on the planet who wouldn't want to do that? You know why, but in my world, who wouldn't want to do that? You know, in my world, who wouldn't want to do that? That's one of the things. And you mentioned behavioral economics, so I suppose Canman popularized this. You've had Dana really popularizing aspects of it. Was it the same when you went into the bank? Or is that the sort of sexy side that sells books, what Canman and Aurelie and those guys did? Or is it like that when you go into the bank and they say like, come on, stefan, you've got to tell us how this stuff works?
Speaker 2:It was actually pretty exciting at that point.
Speaker 2:I mean now it became much more mainstream, which is a good thing, that economics actually figured out that humans are not just machines who calculate their own selfish profits all the time.
Speaker 2:But when I started it was a really emerging field. There was not many. In fact, Dan Ariely was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank at that point as well, so I worked with him as well back then and it was really exciting because the bank wanted to figure out you know, we're building all those models and in the models that then define like how we should set interest rates and whatever in all those models are like those super humans who calculate and are always perfect in making the calculation. So let's figure out what if, if people are not that perfect and you know from introspection I can tell you people are not perfect because I'm not. I'm making like a lot of mistakes constantly and I'm not even learning from them. So that like really related to me and was exciting to bring this to an organization with so much power and so much influence. Whether I made a difference there I'm not sure, but I'm hoping that it at least started kind of a conversation to think about humans as humans and not as supercomputers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so for anybody out there listening who hasn't come across behavioral economics, it's certainly worth checking it out. Ariely's work is kind of humorous, predictably irrational. It was the kind of turning the economic model of rationality on its head. It's full of little anecdotes for anybody who likes to read about these things, but it has become more mainstream, as you say. But that's not what we're here to do today, because what we want to get to know is the book, and for just for the benefit of our listeners, it's called it's called the employee advantage.
Speaker 1:How putting workers first helps business thrive okay, so what inspired you to write on this topic and why write about it now? On Leading People, the goal is to bring you cutting edge thought leadership from many of the leading thinkers and practitioners in leadership today. Each guest shares their insights, wisdom and practical advice so we can all get better at bringing out the best in ourselves and others. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share a link with friends, family and colleagues, and stay informed by joining our leading people. Linkedin community of HR leaders and talent professionals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so much, Gary. I mean for the law, law, to be perfectly honest. You know, for the longest time I didn't want it to write a book. In fact, I got an agent reached out to me and said, like, do you want to write a book? And I said like, well, what does it need to write a book? And it's like, yeah, you have to be really, really passionate about something.
Speaker 2:And back then I was like I'm not, um, and and then what happened is the pandemic, where I saw, you know, I I do research on behavioral economics, mainly about, like, how, what motivates humans, uh, at work. And then I teach a lot about business strategy and for the longest time I kind of kept them almost separate. You know, go into the classroom and teach, like you know what is, why is Walmart successful? What they do, they need to do, or what's the issue with Disney, and so on and so forth, and and in my research I would like what, what motivates people at work? You know what's meaning at work, and so on. And during the pandemic I just figured there is so much wrong in the workplace and and there is so much disengagement and and and we really get it wrong in how to motivate uh people. And so that's when I started to being much more like really passionate. So I reached out to my agent again. I was like now I'm passionate, I really want to change how people think about how to treat people, people in the workforce, uh, and kind of combine. You know, my book is a combination of, like business strategy meets behavioral economics, meets the future of work, so that's like in this intersection. So there is actually a lot about business strategy, there is a lot about behavioral economics. You know what motivates people, especially what motivates them beyond money. And then there is a lot about technology. So how can our technology help in humanizing work? And and I think it's important now because I I think there is it wasn't just a pandemic.
Speaker 2:You know, some say like oh, after the pandemic, quite quitting and great resignation and whatever that's like it's coming back. But I don't think it is. It's it put a spotlight on. You know we did for decades. We managed organizations in a certain way. Hybrid work is a good example. You know where we thought like that's just how it is. You know, it's like five days in the office is like a law of nature almost. And then we figured actually no, we can reimagining the world. I mean, I'm not saying that we have to do all remote, but like now it's suddenly we can be open and think about what is actually the right way of managing organization in a way that is engaging, that that improves well-being of the workers and at the same time, makes businesses successful.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot to unpack in that. I don't know how many hours do we need. No, we'll work with the time we have available here to us and, as you probably will allude to later on, there is no right answer to this at the moment. I mean, I personally have been reading up on the future of work, the academic literature on that, since about 2011 or something, I think, when Linda Gratton started publishing books about it Hotspots or whatever it was and that and did some research myself into it because I was fascinated by it. But the thing you always a lot of things you conclude is that a lot of people don't know what the future, we don't know what the future is going to be like. I kind of like your quote in the book from Lenin John Lenin, the other Lenin. What was his name? Vladimir Lenin or whatever, the Russian guy. But what did you say about decades when?
Speaker 2:yeah, he said there were there, there were. There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happened. And he obviously didn't meant it about the pandemic, uh, but the revolution, but but it. It feels a little bit like that where in just a couple of weeks you know everything we assumed is right about the workplace. We now have to question, and obviously now, with this exponential growth in technology, you know it's like changing constantly and you're absolutely right, you know what the future is going to bring is unclear. But what I try to do in the book is to is to think about. You know, in this, in this human machine interaction, we're over indexed a lot of machines. You know we talk a lot about the technology part and and I think we forgot a little bit that in the human-machine interaction there is the human part as well. You know, this old processor, the oldest processor, the human brain, is like an important part and we need to understand how the human brain works in order to understand how can we make human-machine interaction actually work well.
Speaker 1:So let's get into this. In the book you argue that companies should put the employees at the forefront. And yet, I mean, we hear this a lot, you know, and we hear this concept that employees are assets, and I've had conversations with people saying, you know, when you reduce a human being to an asset, you're kind of missing the point. But but don't you know, is that not what everybody's kind of saying anyway? And how is this different? Now, the way you've looked at this, yeah, yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I I absolutely true. I've never met an executive who doesn't say their employees or their workforce is their most important. You know, often they use the word asset or like this is our winning whatever? Um, now if? If that were true, I don't think we would need my book, uh, however, I don't think it's actually true and you see that. And if you look at engagement levels across the world, or if you look in the US, according to Gallup, about 65% of workers are disengaged at work. Worldwide it's even higher, it's like 85%. So we're clearly not doing something right.
Speaker 2:The other thing is an indicator of maybe the employees are not the most important asset is like what I, what I did in some of my research. I looked at you know, how important are our employees and how important are customers to executives, because I also never met somebody who says like the customers are not important. But when you actually look how often they talk about customers versus employees, they talk about 10 times more on average about customers. And when executives talk about customers, they use words like you know, opportunities and growth, and when they talk about employees, it's like costs. You know risk, like costs, you know risk, and so I do think we need kind of a mindset shift to think about our employees different.
Speaker 2:And you know, I use in the book a lot talk about like the employees should be the new customers. And when you think about customers for hundreds of years, you know organizations would say customers are important. But only this customer-centric revolution that happened, you know, a couple of decades ago, that really put customers at the forefront. You know, amazon is a really good example where, like, being customer-centric is not that easy and only those who are obsessed with doing so are going to be successful. And I'm arguing that's the same for employees. Just saying that the employee is important or important to us is not cutting it.
Speaker 1:You actually have to be obsessed with the employee and their experience in order in order to be successful and amazon's of interesting and useful example, maybe as here, because, uh, the the, the unintended consequence of their customer first, maybe you want to expand upon it, and how bezos is trying to change the mindset, and that since, since, I suppose, since remote, since the pandemic. So so what are your observations on that?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I, you, amazon is my first example in the introduction where I you know they're so obsessed about the customers and not as much about their employees. You know there's many articles many, you know reviews about this and about how you know they treat their workforce in the fulfillment centers very differently. You know there's a lot of injuries there, much more than in equivalent organizations. The culture for their engineers is brutal. People are leaving. So they're definitely not putting the same emphasis on the employees.
Speaker 2:Bezos actually, in his last letter to the shareholders, said that they are very customer-centric and they don't want to change that. But they also want to become the best employer, and that's kind of where I'll leave it at the introduction and say what does that mean? How do you become the best employer? Now, amazon, I'm not sure they actually achieved the goal to be the best employer yet to be hopeful. But you know the five days to. You know the just recently announced policy that everybody has to be back in the office five days a week shows me that I'm not sure they really are there.
Speaker 1:I mean, I can understand they want people in the warehouse five, seven days a week, yes, otherwise the packages can't true, can't go anywhere, and there's certain roles. This is becoming an interesting topic of debate. Uh, you know this kind of very digital, black and white way of saying in office or out of office, um, we'll just come up with a rule, um and um. If, if you, if you've come across grattan's book linda grattan's book on redesigning work, she'll say it's just not as simple as that. You need to look at what the outcomes are, the outputs that would get those outcomes, and then you know what is the nature of the work people are doing.
Speaker 1:You know you can still have some rules, but you have this just very black and white way of dealing with it. It's a cop-out. In many ways it's just like we need to make a decision on this. We'll just decide one way or the other and I'm not really thinking through, but this doesn't surprise us in business. There's an awful lot of stuff goes on in business that then only gets thought through after things go wrong, you know.
Speaker 2:So that's right, yeah I mean, what is what is difficult about the remote work and I'm definitely a proponent of like a hybrid version, but what is hard about it? If you look at kind of what motivates people at work? And that goes to those four motivators that I talk in the book about. Like two of them affect remote, how we think about remote work, tremendously. One is the need for, or the desire to have, autonomy and flexibility. I call it a matter of trust, because that's kind of the flip side of autonomy and and and if you, if you just want to optimize that, you should give a lot of flexibility to the, to the workers.
Speaker 2:But there is another motivator that I call working together works. Being together is very powerful as well, and now you kind of have to balance, you know, this flexibility aspect to the being together, having social relationships. Now what I really like about what you just said before, gary, is we have to be very intentional about you know what tasks need like social interactions, what tasks need flexibility. You know, I often hear when I talk to executives about that they say like look, and remote work doesn't work because you know the culture. It like affects the culture negatively. And then I tell them look, I think like before the pandemic, when we were all in the office, I guess is like 50 of workplaces had toxic work culture, just because we're together doesn't make it great. In fact, when you're together you can be much more micro aggressive. So you have to be very, very intentional about this.
Speaker 1:You can aim the stapler you know in an office and I I know this sounds very, very um, this doesn't sound. This. This is I've heard of this happening where people have thrown things at each other. Oh, yeah, oh yeah, really.
Speaker 2:I mean you know the talks. There is like in the book I talk about like a study who looked at you know why minorities don't want to go back to the office. And there was this one black executive who said there are 100% less microaggressions on Zoom. So if it's terrible in the office I'd rather do it on Zoom, with all the limitations that Zoom has. So we kind of have to balance, we have to be very intentional about this. People then say well, you know, but mentoring suffers when we're remote. That might be true, but we're not doing 40 hours of mentoring during the week. If mentoring is better when we sit together and have a coffee, which is possible, we don't need to do that 40 hours a week.
Speaker 1:We do that one day a week and so on and so forth yeah, I think this is, this is this is the emerging kind of reality, and look like your own personal family circumstances can. I've got two, two my two eldest daughters. They're both working, uh, in pretty successful organizations. Uh, one of them actually is in san francisco at the moment when we're recording this, but she works in the dublin office of a big multinational tech company. Um, she likes going to the office, but when I look at where she lives in this, oh, she's moved now, but she's they had, they had a studio herself and her and her new husband they lived in a room. Uh, so it's natural you'd want to go to the office to get out of the room.
Speaker 1:Um, and you know, she did her master's during COVID, and back to the office didn't mean anything to her because before that she'd done some work in shops, and that as a retail assistant. So a lot of people didn't know what that meant. Like, what do you mean back to the office? So I think it's a question of horses, for courses and organizations are probably better off and this is probably going to relate directly to to know how do you value your employees, to actually allow the employees to to have some input into this this conversation.
Speaker 1:Coming up, Stefan dives into how AI can personalize work to keep employees motivated and productive, Plus, why treating employees like customers could be the secret to organizational success. So stay tuned for more insights that could reshape your leadership approach. Now back to our conversation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Now back to our conversation. You know, if you ask a marketing executive, you know, is it a good idea to ask your customer once a year how they're doing? They would like laugh their asses off. They're like of course not. We need like constant feedback and like focus group and like customer insight, like that's the whole game. I mean, how can you otherwise design the right customer experience?
Speaker 2:Now it turns out in organizations we ask most organizations ask their employees once a year in like the annual employee survey, how they're doing and then ignore it and everybody knows it. So nobody participates in the first place and that's what we're doing there. So there is no involvement as much as there should be. And I think you're absolutely right, gary. You know when you think about, you know any policy flexibility, you know perks and so on and so forth, how much we should meet, how often should we meet and whatever you need to involve the, the ones who are actually affected, your team, team members and getting input.
Speaker 2:I mean that's like old school, old school personalization. You know, like figuring out talking to people if they're like what does gary want? Oh, figuring out like he, you know he has constraints or he doesn't have constraints and he wants x and y, and then on the margin, you know, I can actually personalize the experience because I know you personalization is an interesting um concept, uh, because, uh, taking your point about the employee survey, which is usually, as you say, in a lot of organizations once a year, anonymous, like who'd run their customers?
Speaker 1:Which sales guy would say, well, my customers aren't happy? The first question they'd be asked is which customers? And they'd say, I don't know, I got the scores. I'm told I'm below the average. If they're using averages, it's a bit kind of strange because I mean, like always somebody's going to be below the average. But I mean no, no, no Salesforce could operate with, like anonymous feedback. You know, today, with granularity we have in the web, is we actually can track what our customers do when they come on our websites. And yet I think the reason for the anonymity is, as you said when you said the issue, the survey, I'm going then the duck for cover to hope that it doesn't come back too badly. I'm going then they duck for cover to hope that it doesn't come back too badly. But the thing is, if you were having continuous conversations, then you wouldn't be afraid of the survey results and you'd catch things before they festered into something bigger than they should be, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, I think you know when Bezos of Amazon, you know, says about his customers and I'm paraphrasing it's something like you know what is beautiful about the customers? They're always dissatisfied, and so that gives me an opportunity to improve. But, as you rightly say, gary, we're kind of worried about them. Maybe they're unhappy with something and we don't want this. But that's an opportunity to improve, to get that constant feedback and to do better. And if we take it seriously and I think that's an important part of kind of involving employees and like taps them directly into, you know, some of the human motivation, what actually motivates people? You know, they want to be empowered, they want to be heard, they want to have impact. And that to be heard, they want to have impact, and that's a way to create that impact Right.
Speaker 1:So this probably segues nicely into this notion you have in the book about that employees are the new customers. So just unpack that now and give some examples of how that actually manifests itself. If you've got examples of organizations that have worked this out like yeah, I think our listeners might be really keen to hear who's kind of worked this out already yeah, so there is.
Speaker 2:I I have a lot of examples about this, but maybe, maybe, let me pick one. So where? Um, this is, uh, eli Lilly, and it's related to what we were just talking about, like feedback and input.
Speaker 1:The pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the pharmaceutical company. So they were struggling with their DEI efforts. They just saw that in their executive suite there were just not that many underrepresented minorities they started with. Especially, there were not enough women, um and so and they thought, like you know, none of our policies are discriminated. I mean, what's going on here?
Speaker 2:And so then one executives thought like you know what, what do we normally do with our, with our customers, what do we do with the patients if we don't know why it doesn't move the needle? And it's like, wow, what we do is like customer journeys. You know, we get a team and figure out, like you know, what's the customer journeys, what's, what are moments that matter for the customer, that we can actually make, make a difference. And they decided, oh, you know what we should do Employee journeys. So they literally took the marketing team who does customer journeys and put them in charge of doing employee journeys, meaning, you know, with data, with interview, figuring out what's actually the experience that a female executive or like on the career path has and what are like bottlenecks or what are like those moments that matter that we need to change.
Speaker 2:And based on those insights, you know, they then figured out you know there are certain things we actually have to change how we communicate them, how we allow them mentoring, because it's very different from what they thought it's happening and, as a result, in just a couple of years, they were able to increase the share of female executives by like six percentage points. It was so successful that they're now on their sixth employee journey, you know. They then went from. You know then, like people of color journeys, you know, and so on and so forth, all hispanic and so trying to figure out what's the experience that those have, and that's like it's literally a tool that they had from their customer centricity or their customer practices, and applied it to their, to what happened in there this sounds like something not looking outside for the magic bullet.
Speaker 1:The magic bullet might be within our bullets not a great analogy these days but you know that magic formula might actually exist within your organization by just asking what do we do for customers all of the to all of those tools are kind of already there, or at least some of them.
Speaker 2:You know, personalization isn't the other one. You know where, like in in when we, when we think about customers, you know personally say, and especially customer-centric. You know, using the data, as we talked before, and personalize the experience is a very, very important aspect, while in, when we manage people, you know we're always like one size fits all and so. And now let me give you an example on that. So one, one of the motivators I talk about is, uh, I call it just right tasks. Um, it it's called just right tasks. It's based on a story with with my son, uh, who you know he had to when he was he's now 14, but when he, when he was smaller, you know he had in school, they, they needed to read. The requirement was to read 30 minutes a day. I mean I cannot tell you how hard that was. I mean the fights I had with him over those 30 minutes were like unreal and you know I was like dude, just read 30, come home, read 30 minutes, and then you can do whatever you. I mean I don't care, you can play FIFA the rest of the day, just do 30 minutes he would not get. I mean, we were fighting and fighting, 30 minutes he would not get. I mean, we were fighting and fighting and until one day he like dragged me into a bookstore. He said like dad, can we go into the bookstore? I want to buy a series of books. And I was like, but yes, like, of course, like what do you like it? It was, it was like I have pictures of it. Like you know, it was like this moment where, like, oh my God, so, and he found a book series real books, you know, not about football or or picture books, like real books, it was. The book series was called the weird school series, uh, by Dan Goodman, and and what it was is he found the just right book. It was just right for his level. It was not a baby book, as he would say when it's too easy, and it was not. When he was six he wanted to read harry potter, but I mean, there was no way he could understand it, uh, and and then he read a lot of those weird school and then eventually that became a baby book. And then he read a lot of those weird school and then eventually that became a baby book and then he moved on to the next series uh, spy school series. Then he read all those books. Eventually he he doesn't read that many books anymore, but for a while we had a good run. But what is very, very I mean that's how kids learn. But it's a very, very universal trade.
Speaker 2:People are very motivated when they have those just right tasks. You know when they're not bored and when they're not overwhelmed. But the problem is, you know, once you mastered something, you get bored. That's why most people actually leave organizations. You know they're stuck, they don't learn something new and then they leave.
Speaker 2:And then I sometimes joke to executives and say like, oh, now your job is easy. The only thing you have to do is to figure out for all your team members what's their just right task, match it with opportunities and constantly update. Because once they mastered it and they all laugh like, well you, you say it's just really hard and whatever. And they say, yeah, you're right, it's hard, but that sounds like a task AI can do. Because when you think about what we do with customers, you know, think about Netflix. What Netflix does is figure out you know, what does Stefan actually watch right now? And then they show me more of that stuff. But once they figure it out, well, actually you know, I've had a good run watching nature documentaries and then I'm a little sick of this. Then I move on to drama series and then they know, oh, now actually we need to show him like drama series.
Speaker 2:And if you take that concept of personalization to the workplace, you can do the same thing. So MasterCard, the payments organization, uses and they're only one of a growing number of organizations who use what they call internal marketplaces, where employees go onto the platform and say like, look, I want to learn something new, I want to be involved maybe on a project that might not be in my division or in my group, and then the AI power tool then matches them to projects somewhere else, updates the skills, because now I work, like two months also on a project which has like social media or is an AI whatever, a gen AI project, whatever I worked on that. Now the tool knows, oh, stefan now actually knows a little bit more about that and constantly learns and shows me now other opportunities, the. The result is that you know, I as an employee, and we might be in the same team, we might have the same job titles, but because I you know you were on the platform a little earlier or you expressed some other you know preferences of learning other skills.
Speaker 1:We actually learn kind of in a very personal way and that's a tool that comes directly from how we think personalization for customers and applies it to the work workplace yeah, it strikes me, because you're talking, what you you're kind of alluding to there at one stage was the work by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow and how you balance the challenge. But it's kind of conceivable that an AI can learn those principles and even be able to interact with somebody and say it seems like this is stretching you too much, do you need help? Or, you know, do you have the resources to meet the challenge? So it does seem that, although having said that you know, a lot of executives out there don't know about that work, so they don't understand some of that research that was done over the years, which is very, very useful when you talk about just right, yes, motivation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, I think you know I talk about like two mindset shifts are important for executives, and the first one is like to figure out that it's not. Either or, you know, we don't need to put the employees first motivated by money, or they don't really want to work, but there is actually, you know, people get flow or intrinsically motivated. There is actually something that motivates people at work beyond money. And now we need to optimize or think about how can we create the workplace that takes those human motivation into account and humanizes it and it and it's it's hard.
Speaker 2:No, it's not so easy to do that, but like hard is good, hard in business is good because it's hard to copy, then, um, if it's easy, you know, then like everybody does it, does it I, I call those in the book ping pong table solutions. You know, if it's, if it sounds too easy to be true, it's probably too easy to be true, um, and so that it needs, like hard work and that, what do you say? Like kind of a mindset shift and that the executives actually understand.
Speaker 1:You know what really motivates people at work you, you, you use a um well on on this whole thing about motivation. The first observation is when did McGregor talk about Theory X and Y? Was it the 50s or something like that? We don't seem to have moved a lot on some points on that one. And then you talk about this really interesting idea compared to the customer who's willing to buy. You talk about willing to. Is that right? Willing to buy? Yeah, willing to. Willing to supply? Yes, tell us how you talk about willing to. Is that right? Willing to buy? Yeah, willing to, willing to supply? Yes. Tell us how you've arrived at this concept and what it means yeah, okay, yeah, so it's.
Speaker 2:So this is like a basic strategy tool that we teach to our also our students. So what is what it? What it means is like how do you create value? You know, in order to be profitable, you have to differentiate from the competition and and and you and most, and that's where customer centricity kicks in. You know we need to to differentiate, we need to provide a better customer experience than what the competition does.
Speaker 2:If you think about customer centricity, it's not lowering the cop the price. You know, customer centricity is like increasing lowering the cop the price. You know, customer centricity is like increasing what I call the willingness to pay. You know, increasing kind of what they would willing, the maximum they would be willing to pay, and, as a result, you can actually increase the price. Uh, because you have a higher willingness to pay than your competitors and they really love the experience that you have, uh, with you, and then they're actually willing to pay a little more. When we think about, but if you, if you create value, if you, if you're in the business, there is like the customers, and then there is the suppliers. Labor, you know, is the is one of the biggest suppliers. They supply. You know, workers supply labor.
Speaker 2:Now, when we think about employees, we often think about and employee centricity. Often we have to increase the wage, but the equivalent of willingness to pay the customer experience is the employee experience. Why would I want to work in an organization now, which is one? But there's many, many other aspects and if I if I as as an organization improve the employee experience, the cost per unit might actually go down. You know, people are more productive because they're more motivated, they become, become more innovative, they're actually less likely to leave which has a direct cost implication and they're actually nice to customers. So there is no I don't think there is any organization that has happy customers who doesn't have happy employees you need. If you have miserable employees and they interact with your customer, the customer experience sucks as well. So there are many benefits of like lowering the willingness to supply or like improving the employee experience.
Speaker 1:That actually leads to more profits for the organization as a result I mean, and if you take the analogy of the customer, you you tend to listen to what your customer is.
Speaker 1:Well, they don't become customers unless you listen to, particularly if you're doing anything that involves a few interactions. They don't just, they just don't become customers if they, unless they feel that you understand their pains and their gains and what they're trying to do every day. I mean this this is the work of the guys in Switzerland, the strategizer. It's not rocket science what they came up with. They said look, if you want to understand your customer, you need to know what they're trying to get done, what the frustrations they have are, what some of the upsides they're trying to achieve, and then see can you get your product or service to help them with that? And that involves conversations and listening and trying to figure out if you can help solve these problems. So do we have an equivalent in the employee space? Because that's the? I mean, do you have an example of somebody really trying their best to look at the willingness to supply?
Speaker 2:I think there are now a couple of organizations who really I mean very few call it willingness to supply. I think there are now a couple of organizations who really I mean they very few call it willingness to supply, but they call it like you know how can we improve the employee experience? And, as you said, you know, listening, understanding what motivates them is critically important and then tailor it everything around. You know what, what makes them makes them happy. You know, like when I talk, eli lily, as I mentioned, is one example who does that, but there are many, many others. You know it's. You know you mentioned, gary, that you worked at dhl um express. You know who were actually after the pandemic for for two years like number one employer in the world on the best place to work ranking and and the history behind that comes from a downsizing in the united states, above all places where they decided ken allen decided to.
Speaker 1:He I don't, he said he kind of had to disguise what he was doing, but basically the long and short of it is he decided to invest in the employees and he, he, then he did such a good job, they, they, he was asked to take over express. Ken was a colleague, he was running the middle east when I was was there. Now he's asked to take over the whole company and he, he says I'm going to replicate the model of how I turned the US around and they were making I think it was a 1.3 EBITDA loss and two years later or three years later, they were up at 1.9 EBITDA profit. And he did that. Of course there was some pain along the way, but a lot of it was about we need to invest, but a lot of it was about we need to invest.
Speaker 1:Every one of our people has to feel that they're important because the customer this is the day-to-day reality of our customers. They created a passport system and Ken he's retired now, but Ken used to when he'd come to the country offices he would walk in through the back door if there was a sorting facility and he'd chat to the couriers and the sorting guys and say how's life here? And, depending what he heard, that might shape the the conversation with the leadership team, who would have spent weeks preparing the powerpoints to impress him. But he would walk in through the back door and say, hey guys, what's it like working here? Yeah, and I worked at the company and I'd say that philosophy was always under the surface. There were times, I'd say, when my period there where it might not have been as pleasant as it turned out to be, but you can't deny the ratings they've got internationally for the best place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, they're doing fantastic work and kind of, if you think about it, it's very much a customer. You know, exactly as you said, you know listening, investing, making sure that they're trained right. Uh, you know that they feel involved, you know. You know, in an industry which is we're not talking about tech jobs, you know they're. They're like frontline workers and during the pandemic, you know, we saw that the most extreme that they putting their life at risk for like delivering those packages yeah, I think they did a fantastic job in taking kind of the principles. I mean, I don't know whether they thought about this in this way, but it definitely looks like what you would do with customers.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure, the philosophy was always he started with uh, he needed to downsize some of the employee numbers, and it's one of the questions he asked a lot of people was how does what you do create value for the customer? So they did start very much with if you're not helping us keep our customers happy, then I'm we. You know we have to establish the link to the customer, but I think the genius of it was maybe Jeff Bezos should be sitting down with the likes of Ken Allen and others and saying so how did you manage to get the other side of the equation to work in your favor? Because you know, I must say, this is what attracted me to the company. I think I mentioned it before we came on. I'd written thesis on this idea when I was finishing my mba and then I went to work for dhl. But this is one of the things that attracted me was this sense that, um, this sense that we were doing good for the customer.
Speaker 1:I used to go out with the couriers, even though I had a job in the office, um, and the you know, and I had a job once. We were, we did all the photography at corporate photography, and so you had to go out and look at moments of truth and how these receptionists and organizations they saw the courier coming in. They knew them by name. The guy smiled. There was always a few, a little bit of a, an exchange of how's life and how's it going, and we just saw it live. It lived in the organization. You know it was, it was a, you know it was a fantastic brand. You know, on money levels it's a fantastic company, particularly the express business, I have to say over the years. But I wanted to get to one or two more things because we could go down the DHL road for a long time.
Speaker 1:We both get delivered somewhere in the world in the middle of it. So this idea that let's just get back a little bit to um, this idea that um, ai and other tool technology can possibly help, uh, improve motivation in the workplace uh, you, you spoke a bit about it earlier. Are there some other points you want to make about that? You know, apart from this idea of of the uh, just right, tasks, is there something else that you've seen that you think has potential there?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think like so throughout the book I want to. So I talk about those four motivators. So one is I call it shoot for the moon, it's like purpose meaning, then like this autonomy, or I call it a matter of trust. Then there's those just right tasks. And the fourth one is working together works, kind of social relationships, and in all of them you can think about how can you use AI not to destroy them, but actually actually, you know, in enhance the motivators and it's easy to destroy. You know, surveillance technology, for example, is uh, it's an amazing way to know exactly what people do and the perfect way to destroy motivation and and trust at its source. But there is ways to actually improve the motivation. So, like, think about meaningful meaning and like purposeful jobs, and like people do a lot of tasks that are stupid, that are, you know, tasks to for tasks way, and what it often does is they don't have enough time to actually do the more impactful, meaningful tasks. Now, now, ai tools can actually help with that.
Speaker 2:So I writing a case now and write about a book about morgan stanley, financial advisors. Yeah, you know, when you think about what a financial advisor again, not not thinking jobs, but tasks, you know. Think like what tasks do they do? You know, I guess they get up in the morning, have a coffee, I hope, eventually they take a shower, and then they, like, read the news, figure out, like, what's changing in the market, what are new trends? Then they look at the portfolio of their clients, figure out what they do, then they have lunch with a client, then they send them an email, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and so on. Now, when you then think about what can the machine do better, then a lot of the tasks it can actually do better, you know they don't get up and start reading. They already read everything. They already analyzed, like what does stefan and gary actually want to? What's their portfolio, how, what should I suggest them to re rebalance, and so on and so forth. Um, and so, morgan stan, what they can't do that well is playing golf and having lunch. No, no, or not yet at least. And so Morgan Stanley figured out you know, we can probably help our financial advisors to some of the more routine tasks with a tool, with an AI-powered tool, in order to free up capacity that they can do more after having conversations with clients. And and so, and and as a result, you know, and they implemented in a in in a very human-centric way, because they were aware, you know, financial advisors are probably worried. You know, I come with a tool and it was like oh, do they want to replace me? Uh, or I, I don't know how to work that tool and and what, but what they? They did it in a smart way so that it actually frees up capacity and they can actually do more meaningful work as a as a result. So that's one example.
Speaker 2:Or, like social relationships, you know, is another one where, like, a lot of conflicts we're having in the workplace are it's about communication. You know, I'm not using the right words, I'm not like it would be amazing if everybody had a human coach, but that's impossible. I mean, it's very difficult to scale. And an AI coach, that's doable. It might be not as good as a human coach, but it's better than having no coach at all, and so and that might improve, kind of the social, what I call working together, works, kind of having the right culture, having the right interactions. So, for all those motivators, we can then think about like, how do we actually enhance the motivators? And in the book I talk, then think about like how do we actually enhance the motivators? And in the book I talk a lot about like how to humanize it. You know low tech and high tech. How can we use those to actually make those you know humanize the work more and make it more engaging, more motivating?
Speaker 1:Okay, I was just at this thought that golf course membership goes up wherever there's a morgan stanley um office these days. But this is coming to the end. As stefan's big, it's been good fun. Um, so, um, you know the title of this, uh, and the theme of this podcast is leading people. So what sort of have you got like two or three tips for leaders to for this mindset shift? What are some of the things or insights that you'd like both leaders in our audience to take away from before they read the book, of course, because they have to read the book to get the rest.
Speaker 2:They have to yeah, they have to read the book to get like the amazing insights. I think, well, there are like three things that are top of my mind. One is, like you know, read if, if you, if you think about employees as customers, that already gives you like a good way of starting to. You know, think about, like what do we do with our customers that we probably should do with our employees, and we talked about a bunch of those techniques in during this podcast. Another one is then, you know, to personalize kind of the experience and thinking about how do we personalize. And one is the old school personalization is to actually talk to people, you know, involve them and listen to them. And then there is also ways to using technology to do that on scale um as as well.
Speaker 2:And the last, I think, has to do with the technology piece. You know, like thinking very carefully about, like not to destroy the human motivation by using technology, but actually enhancing. Enhancing it, and that's a very good, I think, a good start in the book. You know I talk about other aspects of it, but like that's basically how it follows the book is that the first part is about how we think strategically about this. The second is about behavioral economics basically you know what motivates people and how can we use that. And the third is about this very extreme personalization. You know, I call it like workforce of one, uh from, like segment of one with from the marketing concept and yeah, and I think I hope that as a result, we can actually create more engaging, motivating work workplaces that not only help the employees but as the organizations as well and and as a european you're probably we won't go there now, but the the whole data aspect of the technology is probably also on your mind because, as you say, a lot of companies using these technologies to monitor people.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've spoken to people who've gone through this and I won't name some of the companies, but they're very well known and it's they. They it's hell working there. They can't even go to the toilet, but if they take more than five minutes to go, they put in toilet break and they take longer, they're penalized and all sorts of crazy stuff and that's not motivating and I think it's an important message.
Speaker 2:That is not how you motivate yeah, that's like the best way of really destroying motivation. Yeah, very, very quickly so, um, how do?
Speaker 1:how do people get in touch with you? And I believe we had a little chat before we started, um, and you got this really cool. Uh, I think it's. It's a sort of hobby of yours, isn't it? And with lego, that the lego breaks, yes, so how did I guess? How do they get in contact with you? And then, if a few people get in contact, I think you're going to offer them yes.
Speaker 2:So let me quickly, if we have three minutes more, so I can tell you about the lego movie. So, like, when I started to write the book, uh, that was in the fall of 2022. You know, I was writing the book. I'm I'm the chair of the management division at columbia, I'm teaching, I'm researching. I was stressed out, so I needed something to like calm me down and I didn't know what that was. So I ended up in a bookstore in the airport. I found that book how to make lego stop motion. I thought like, okay, never done that, but I have a lot of Legos. We have three kids. I have a shitload of Legos at home.
Speaker 2:So I bought the book and embarked on this journey of making stop motion Lego movies about the book and concepts in the book. Now it's very meditative. If you ever made stop motion movies, you have to move those little guys like frame by frame. It's like you can't think about anything. You know it's all handmade. And so I started to make those movies and I have a newsletter that comes out monthly which and every time I I release the newsletter, it has a little movie stop motion.
Speaker 2:So there's, like you know, guys who make yoga and then it's about wellness in the office, so like remote work, and there is the guy who works remotely and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So on the on my web page, uh, stephanmeyercom, there is at the bottom there is a link to the brick by brick, the employee advantage, brick by brick, so you can connect there through the newsletter or also to linkedin. So what I can offer is, like you know, for the first. So I have let me show this um, I have like little lego books. You know, this is my book cover here and the guy here has like the red mug and the and and the book cover. So for the first people who like contact me on linkedin, let's do the first five I can send them a little. I call it the fan. It is a little package with like a lego guy and the book, uh, and if they, if they contact me and obviously send me their their physical mail address, I could send them one of one of those guys because they can only be sent out physically.
Speaker 1:These you've just you've just shown it to me, and we might even take a little clip of this and put it somewhere to promote this podcast, so that people can can appreciate the, the, the humor and the fun we have with these things and listen. Stefan, it's as ever. Thanks for sharing your insights, tips and wisdom with our listeners today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me on this amazing podcast, Gary.
Speaker 1:Next time on Leading People.
Speaker 3:When I talk about workaholism, it's not just about hours worked, it's about what's driving those hours, and so I like to talk about it as a compulsion to work that drives people to work excessively in the next, next episode, we're joined by Dr Melissa Clark, author of Never Not Working, why the Always-On Culture is Bad for Business and how to Fix it.
Speaker 1:Melissa shares surprising insights on how workaholism isn't the same as overwork, how leaders unintentionally enable toxic work patterns, and why busyness, or being always busy, might actually be harming your business. Join Melissa to discover actionable strategies for creating healthier, more productive workplaces. And remember to subscribe to Leading People wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss out. Until then.
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