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TRANSCRIPT

Four key quotes:

“By everyone knowing our purpose statement, it creates a golden thread—so no matter where you are in the world, what culture you have, whether you're a new employee or a tenured employee, what service line you're in and what work you do you come to work to do every day, we are all connected by the fact that we are all building a better working world.”

“Purpose alone is not a magic bullet and it never belongs in a conversation by itself; purpose + vision + long-term value, when you look at that equation, that is the power equation.”

“If you want to be an organization that claims to be purpose- and vision-led, you need to be led by leaders who themselves are purpose- and vision-led, which means developing a platform and program around personal purpose and vision.”

“We view the role of L&D as having a role in helping people become better, right? Better performers, better colleagues, better leaders, better people, and helping people discover and activate their purpose and vision almost immediately makes them better in all of those categories. And of course, many complementary ways outside of L&D to also activate purpose. But you know, your question is about how the role that L&D teams play in bringing purpose and vision, it's helping people become better people.”

Chris Pirie:

You're listening to Learning Is The New Working, a podcast by the Learning Futures Group about the future of Workplace Learning and the people helping define it.

This is an episode in our ’Is Purpose Working?’ season—a collaboration with Dani and Stacia from RedThread Research. This episode is sponsored by NovoEd: global enterprises rely on NovoEd's collaborative, cohort-based learning platform to deliver high-value programs with real business impact. With NovoEd, you deliver powerful and engaging learning that activates deep skill development and drugs and measurable business outcomes.

On March the 11th, at 10:00 am Pacific time, NovoEd is hosting a live webinar where you can join RedThread Research founder Stacia Garr, Dani Johnson and myself to discuss what we've learned in our season exploring the implications for learning and talent management of purpose aligned organizations.

We can't wait to meet you and to get your questions and observations and experiences on the topic of purpose alignment, as well as share our own reflections and research. We're really looking forward to it; to register for your seat, submit questions and access lots of bonus material around all these episodes, including transcripts, please go to www.NovoEd.com/purpose.

“Purpose alone is not a magic bullet, and it never belongs in the conversation by itself. Purpose + vision + long term value—when you look at that equation, that is the power equation. That's the one that if you really want to make a difference in the world for all of your stakeholders, that's the equation that's necessary when you think about high strategy.”

Chris Pirie:
In this episode, Stacia and I interviewed Tal Goldhamer and Jeff Steir. They’re both in the professional services firm, EY. Jeff has led the ‘purpose plus vision’ practice for EY Americas since 2014, where he and his team help organizations and their leaders articulate what they stand for and implement purpose at scale. Tal is the chief learning officer for EY's America's division of over 80,000 individuals across 30 countries.

As you will hear, Jeff and Tal work really closely together in a unique partnership that revolves around the power of purpose. Their work forms a sort of virtuous circle that helps both customers and employees understand their personal and organizational purpose and where the insights gained from the customer-facing work that Jeff does informs employee facing programs that Tal runs and which in turn are made available to those customers to help them define their own and build a better working world.

Tal Goldhamer:
Hi, it's Tal Goldhamer; I’m the chief learning officer at EY for the Americas practice.

Jeff Stier:
And this is Jeff Stier: my job title is the lead for the ‘purpose and realize’ solution within people advisory services at EY.

Chris Pirie:
Well guys, welcome to Learning Is The New Working and thank you so much for your time and sharing your insights with our audience today. Today, I'm joined by Stacia, and we're going to talk to you about purpose driven organizations, and I know we're going to have a really interesting conversation, so welcome to the podcast.

Tal Goldhamer:
Thanks, Chris, and thanks, Stacia. You know, one of the things that I'll share a little bit of why I'm so excited about this; I wake up every day inspired to make things better for others so that they can thrive and in turn, make things better for others. And we've been on a purpose-envisioned journey for a few years, and we've learned a lot and we're excited to share all of what we've learned with your listeners, so thanks for having us.

Chris Pirie:
Could you start by telling us what part of the world you live in and work in and why?

Tal Goldhamer:
Well, because of the pandemic, it's a trickier question, but I was born and raised in New York City, technically work in New York City, although I’m right now physically in Denver, Colorado—I made a pandemic getaway and escaped with my family out here. So it's a two-pronged answer; my heart is in New York City, but my heart is finding a home in Denver, Colorado.

Stacia Garr:
Those mountains will do it to ya!

Tal Goldhamer:
The mountains and the skiing, so yeah.

Jeff Stier:
So I was born in Connecticut, but spent the last 26 years in New York City, raised a family in the city; right now, sheltering in place in the Northern Catskills, in a town that I love to say the name called Cornwallville, lots of farmers. It is 12 miles from a ski mountain, so we get a lot of skiing up here as well. And you asked the question why I never thought I was going to raise a family in New York City—I grew up in the country—but my wife is from Queens, New York and she is an only child and her mother lived in Queens, so she tricked me to moving from Boston to New York city so that we can be close to her mom. And it was a great decision and we've been very happy raising our family there.

Chris Pirie:
Can each of you tell me what your job title is and sort of briefly describe the scope of your responsibilities?

Tal Goldhamer:
So our team works every day to develop programs where people are so inspired by what they're learning and they're experiencing that they feel compelled to pass it on to others. And as the chief learning officer for EY in the Americas, we try to create that world for over 80,000 people in about 30 different countries.

Jeff Stier:
I look over a practice called ‘purpose vision and long-term value realized;’ we help organizations transform around those three foundational elements that I call high strategy. When an organization is looking to create what they stand for, what they believe in, and then use that as filters in decisions for how they run their companies, we help them create high strategies around purpose, vision, and long-term value. We've been doing that for about eight years, both internally with EY and externally with clients.

Stacia Garr:
I love that focus on long-term value. One of the things that we've seen here with the podcast is how a potential impediment to purpose is short-term thinking—you know, not knowing when you're going to get the return on purpose. And so I love that you are combining those two concepts and kind of helping people think about that longer term in what you're ultimately trying to become.

Jeff Stier:
About three years ago, we had an ‘aha’ moment—that purpose was one element of high strategy, but vision looking to the future was another. And of course, when you look to the future, what you want to become, and the impact you want to have on the world, those things require some measurement that so you know, you're progressing on that journey. And so long-term value, purpose envision where the natural mix is in the equation for us.

Chris Pirie:
I think what else is really great about having both of you in this conversation is both the internal perspective and responsibilities that you have, Tal, and the insights that you bring into the dialogue, Jeff. For anybody who's not familiar, and that can't be many people, but it's good to just cover our bases, can one of you introduce the EY business and business model?

Jeff Stier:
About nine years ago, we had a new CEO take office and he looked to the future and realized that the consulting business was something that was going to grow significantly. As part of EY, we had primarily been known as a tax and audit organization, and we were called Ernst & Young at the time, with a tagline of ‘quality in everything we do’—very inward-focused.

And he had the vision to say, what got us here won't get us there. And so as part of our own transformation and the legacy he wanted to leave, we changed our name formally from Ernst & Young to EY, that tagline ‘quality in everything we do’ to a purpose statement of ‘building a better working world,’ and we began to transform ourselves around that high strategy.

As we began doing that, a lot of our clients had interest in purpose as well. The leaders at Davos were starting to talk about that. And so we started getting requests in the strategy practice where I sat at the time saying, can you help us take the lessons you've learned—positive and negative—and transform ourselves?

And so that's the journey we've been on. And, and now that's the business model, at least Tal and I work on together, both through the internal and the external client-facing side.

Chris Pirie:
What's the talent landscape look like at EY?

Tal Goldhamer:
We hire tens of thousands of people each year as both we, as we continue to grow and as we expand our portfolio of services. And when we look at the overall demographic of our people, you look across the 300,000 people we have globally, or the 80,000 people we have in the Americas, it may be surprising to you or maybe not but the average age is in the late twenties—it’s around 28 years old.

And so as an average workforce age, that probably skews a bit younger than many other companies; perhaps it's because the number of people we hired directly off college campuses each year, among other things. And of course we have people that are younger and people that are older than that, so everything we design, everything we do for our people as part of the talent organization is incredibly focused on the diverse workforce, whether it's the age, ethnicity, backgrounds, gender, and so on.

Chris Pirie:
We've alluded to this a little bit, but it'd be good to know where you each fit in the sort of organizational model and how you collaborate and in what context you come together and work together.

Tal Goldhamer:
Our team is part of the EY Americas talent organization. So we have the pleasure of being part of our L&D team or learning team. And so we support all of our professionals, both our internal facing professionals and all of our external facing client-serving professionals.

Jeff Stier:
And I sit within the Americas consulting practice. There are different practices, as you've heard Tal allude to, and in the role that we play, we actually work across all of the practices, all of the service lines, because every organization, no matter whether you want tax, audit, or consulting, has a vision for the future, whether it's articulated or not. And many of the organizations, I would say about 30% that we're working with right now, also want to become purpose-driven. So we cross service lines, break down silos and work across the Americas.

Stacia Garr:
I know you mentioned, Jeff, that a few years or a number of years ago now changed its tagline, but I'm curious about purpose specifically, and if EY has an explicit purpose statement, and if so, what it is?

Jeff Stier:
We do have an explicit purpose statement, and it is ‘building a better working world.’ But the reality is, and this is true with most organizations, purpose comes from your past purpose is why you exist, it's the DNA of your organization. And the fact is for 150 years, EY has always served the capital markets or Ernst & Young before it became the why and helping to use the capital markets to build a better working world.

So it was unstated, but it was there. And as part of our exploration to become a purpose-driven organization, we excavated, if you will, that magic from our past and brought it forward to modern future, thus building a better working world, which is a phrase and a feeling and a belief that 300,000 of our people across the world now all know and can all articulate.

Stacia Garr:
So the tagline is the purpose statement.

Jeff Stier:
Well, I’d never call, but I'd never call a purpose statement a tagline, but the moniker with which we've come now is our purpose statement; the purpose statement has replaced the traditional tagline.

Stacia Garr:
Can you talk to us a little bit more about this focus on purpose? I know you just, you kind of went back into the past and pulled some of that forward into our purview, but what's the history behind it? What was the rational kind of argument for a greater focus on purpose?

Jeff Stier:
We've always been a purposeful organization, although without the clear purpose statement different people articulated our purpose in different ways. In different words, you could ask 300,000 people and you might've gotten a different answer—all rooted in the same concept, but not clearly articulated.

And that's the thing: purpose is that thing that gives us a feeling of great fulfillment and provides us with meaning and keeps everybody in the organization aligned and focused on what that is. So when you create a consistent vocabulary for all of our professionals, in this case a clear declaration of 'building a better working world,’ you know, every one of our professionals, regardless of where they live in the world. And regardless of what part of the business they're in everyone's using that consistent phrase with each other, with our clients and in our communities. And there's great power in having that crystal clear articulation and a set of words, that's common and it's meaningful to all of our people, our clients and communities.

Tal Goldhamer:
Can I add something there? By everyone knowing our purpose statement, it creates a golden thread–so no matter where you are in the world, what culture you have, whether you're a new employee or a tenured employee, what service line you're in and what work you do you come to work to do every day, we are all connected by the fact that we are all building a better working world.So you could go into a dining room in Japan, or in Brazil, or in Michigan, and begin to have a conversation, because that golden thread, the glue that connects us all, there's one thing we can say that does that is that we work at a company called EY that believes in building a better working world. And that is very powerful.

Stacia Garr:
One of the things I was most excited about when we were first talking about having you all on the podcast is that you all have been doing this for a while, but not necessarily as long as some of our other podcast folks, who have been doing this, like literally since the 1800s. And so what I want to know a bit more about is kind of twofold. One is, is this overall purpose journey, and then specifically something we've talked about a lot on the podcast, which is the Business Round Table statement in the fall of 2019 and how that's impacted your journey.

Jeff Stier:
I suspect that if you went back and asked the original founders, Mr. Ernst, Mr. Winnie, Mr. Young, whether they form their accounting company with a purpose and a vision of mine, the answer would be yes, of course they did—almost every new organization, every startup is founded in that manner.

And the fact that we have rediscovered and re articulated it is important now, particularly at this time in the evolution of business. I would say that if you look at a purpose maturity model with zero if you're just starting out in a hundred percent, if it's fully activated, the journey, it never ends. So I would always question if anyone claims that they're at a hundred percent and for EY, perhaps we're at 75%, we've realized that articulation is the start, but activation really is what matters. I call it the ‘say-do gap’. You could say the words, but if you're not doing it, there's know authenticity where we are truly being authentic and drinking our own champagne, when we talk about it, when we bring it to our clients.

The BRT statement, it was really nice to see; it was very natural for our current chairman to sign it along with about 200 other CEOs. And it validated for us that we were no longer, at least when it comes to big organizations, really big organizations, on the journey alone. And that there was really now a commitment to change the way people looked at, and accounted for, purpose.

In our journey, there were a couple of recent ‘aha’ moments that we realized that are very, very important. I alluded to one earlier that purpose alone is not a magic bullet and it never belongs in a conversation by itself; purpose + vision + long-term value, when you look at that equation, that is the power equation. That's the one that if you really want to make a difference in the world for all of your stakeholders, that's the equation that's necessary when you think about high strategy.

The second thing that we've noticed in our journey, the ‘aha’ moment is that if you want to be an organization that claims to be purpose- and vision-led, you need to be led by leaders who themselves are purpose- and vision-led, which means developing a platform and program around personal purpose and vision. And I really believe that Tal and EY are leading innovation globally around this, both how it fits in or what we call is nested organizational purpose envision, how you do it using digital, virtual technology at scale, and in embedding it into the DNA of how we build and train leaders and all of our people.

Stacia Garr:
I love that you mentioned that part, because we've spent a lot of time talking about the importance of connecting individual purpose to the broader organization. But I think you had mentioned this idea of kind of nesting, and that there's an intermediary, there's the team and the nests that you're in, if you will. And that's so important to connect the purpose as well.

Jeff Stier:
We do. Just on that point, we actually have data through our own internal surveys that show that pre some of the creation of nested purposes of our service lines and divisions, at some point the enthusiasm about being a purpose-led organization wore off and there wasn't as much incitement and or enthusiasm.

As soon as we began to create this nested idea, you felt that you belong to a unique tribe within the organization, and you could really connect your everyday work to building a better working world. How did someone in the customer practice come to work every day and do customer things—how were they building a better working world? That connection was really hard to make, but when you create a nested purpose at the functional level, and then more than that, understand your personal purpose and can align that with the daily work that you do in support of building a better working world, you really get employee engagement—you get employee productivity, and it drives innovation because now suddenly you could see how, no matter what role you have, even if it's at a junior level, the things you're doing are helping to build a better working world.

Stacia Garr:
I love how you're, you're basically sharing pretty practical advice on how to make this come alive in a culture and to come alive for individuals. Can you talk to us a little bit more about how you do that and kind of in the operational running of your business?

Tal Goldhamer:
Yeah, it's a great question. It comes down to a little bit of what you were just talking about, Stacia, that’s really, the way we look at is proximity, proximity to the individual, you know, at the macro-organizational level our purpose is building a better working world. And we know that discovering and activating each person's personal purpose and personal vision is also important, but there's something in the middle there, right? It's how do you get closer proximity to the individual in the work that they're doing? And so what we were just talking about—of having nested purposes—many of our businesses and practices have articulated their own nested purpose, and that helps our people connect from their personal purpose to the nested purpose, and that's all in service to the overall purpose of building a better working world. Jeff had mentioned this golden thread idea, and there's also a really nice golden thread when you can articulate your personal purpose and personal vision, because we talked about personal vision is we think it's a really important dimension here, connecting that to a nested purpose of what your team, your broader team is doing, and overall connecting that to building a better working world.

So we think that's really important. I’ll just mention a couple of other things, which is we've had a lot of amazing support from some of our more senior, most senior executives, many of whom have discovered and articulated their own personal purpose and vision. And they've been using it in their communications and in their decision-making and talking about the fact that they've been using their personal purpose and their vision in their decision-making. And as we know, people's social model, right? Those around them and their leaders, so there's this natural movement that we see beginning.

And last thing I'll mention is we, a few years ago, we reimagined and challenged ourselves around what the attributes are of the best leaders. Many organizations have leadership models, so we took a step back. Our ours was good and it was fine a number of years ago, but less fit for purpose these days; organizational culture and workforces have changed.

And we said, we need to reevaluate. Imagine our leadership model and we put purpose and vision at the core. And we did that because we wanted it to serve as a reminder to everyone that it all starts with your personal purpose envisioned, because how do you lead others if you don't know how to lead yourself first?

And we use this in lots of ways, we use it from career conversations to feedback and even to promotion evaluations. So these are just a few examples how we're using our purpose operationally, influencing how we work and how we operate.

Stacia Garr:
I know that you've both mentioned a couple of times the purpose and how it's a little bit different than vision. And so I'm wondering, it seems like a good opportunity to kind of dive into that. So can you tell us a little bit about how you will see those things differently and related?

Jeff Stier:
Purpose? Whether it's personal or organizational, purpose is about what gives you great fulfillment. It's what gives you great meaning it's that, you know, that feeling that you get when you come home after a very difficult day and you still feel good: you might have had even a tough day, tough conversations or bad news or whatever it might be, but you still feel a feeling of fulfilment.

And the question is why do you feel that fulfilment? Well, probably because the work that you had done was very much aligned to your purpose, or as part of your organization, you accomplish something for your customers, your clients, or for the world. And that's rooted in your past—purpose is generally rooted in your past. It's based on origin stories.

Now by contrast, vision is generally a forward and future looking thing. It's a description of the impact that you as an organization or you as an individual want to have in the world. And that impact in that world is different for everybody. For some people, it's the immediate circle around them. For other people it's a bit of a wider circle and you know, yet for other people, it's the entire world, right? I mean, we can all think about people who we consider visionaries in the world and they truly are impacting the world. But you don't have to be a visionary to have a vision: you just have to have a view and articulation of the impact that you as an organization or you as an individual want to have in the world.

Tal Goldhamer:
For years, this idea of fulfilment has been questioned and what makes up fulfilment. And we think that personal purpose and personal vision and organizational purpose are part of what gives daily meaning to the work that you do daily. So in many ways, personal purpose is about daily meaning and daily fulfilment while I'm sorry, purpose is about daily, meaning daily fulfilment, and vision is about daily inspiration, inspiration about what that we have a hopeful or optimistic future.

And when you understand that you can wield these two tools, right, in the proper way to create the cultural mindsets, to create the strategies. But they're two very different tools when wielded.

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. I've never seen it described in that sort of temporal forward-looking backward looking where, but I really get it. There was another sort of definition question that it might make sense based on something you said, Jeff, something like purpose alone doesn't get you where you need to be. There's long term value and business operations. I can't remember. Could you repeat that piece for me and just maybe unpack it a little bit?

Jeff Stier:
So what I'm about to say might be a little heretical coming from a guy who built his career at EY by being the purpose guy, but here's what we now have come to believe. And I alluded to it earlier. The future is inevitable tomorrow. You and I, all of us will wake up personally, and we will be there tomorrow and tomorrow. Every organization has another day in the organization. It's unavoidable. It's inevitable planning for the future if you want to be successful is required, right?

Any CEO who's ever hired by the board, I guarantee you, although I've never been in any of those conversations has been asked, where can you take us? What can we do to get there? Purpose is completely optional, right? You can be a very successful person or organization if you plan for your future effectively and build the roadmap to get there. And we all do that in our lives, whether we know it or not. If in high school, you decide, you want to go to medical school, you know, you have to study certain topics, you have to get certain grades. You have to go to certain schools and you build a plan to get there. It's the same thing with your personal life now, each of you, all of us, and also as a business. But purpose is optional.

We happen to believe that organizations that will be the most successful over the long-term build both a purpose and a vision strategy—a future strategy because you have to, and a current strategy around purpose that is really important in today's age. Why? Because given the way Millennials and Gen Z value purpose, if you want to attract and retain those employees, you really better have a purpose strategy.

Given the fact, and I know we may talk about this later, but we're in the middle of a pandemic where the meaning of work and the meaning of life and the meaning of relationships has completely changed. People are looking for more meaning in their lives; people are looking for purpose in their lives today in a vision for the future, you better be an organization in our opinion, that has both—and that the best organizations balance being purposeful/cause-related/meaningful with having an optimistic view of where they're headed and what they want to accomplish.

Stacia Garr:
One of the things that we've talked about a bit with the research is how with these changing workforce dynamics and particularly some of the things you mentioned around the social justice movements and others, but also around things like gig work, where you can work any time, any place.

The question becomes what is the value of an organization to an individual? By joining an organization and putting on some level of the constraints that you have, particularly with a big organization, what do I get? And I feel like my answer, at least, to that question is, if it's a purpose-driven organization, you become a part of something that is much bigger than yourself that enables you to accomplish your kind of same purpose-driven approach, your personal purpose, but at scale. And to me, that seems to be one of the big reasons, one of the most compelling reasons to join a high quality organization.

Jeff Stier:
I think that's true, Stacia, if the company is doing their purpose gig, as opposed to just saying it. Because purpose is so popular today. Tal and I have coined a phrase, there's a lot of purpose malpractice that's going on. And purpose malpractice is when you'll attract an employee to go for the reasons that you just described. But when you get there, it's just not true, right? The covenant doesn't exist between the company and the person to deliver on the promise. What's the promise? You’re going to work hard for me as an organization, and I'm going to care about you, and I'm going to do things that demonstrate I care about you and how this is different from a gig networker, a gig worker typically they'll do the job for the organization, you’ll get paid and you'll move on. You know, companies with employees have a real opportunity—and this is one of the things that Tal’s team does in learning and development—is beyond my agenda. It's helped me learn things that I care about that are advancing my personal purpose, my personal vision, right? A work with clients who align with building a better working world. But the things I believe in helped me get in on projects that align that.

So I believe that we believe that the covenant between the company, when that exists and you join a purposeful company and they do for you what they promise and you do for them, what they promise, then you can really begin to change.

Stacia Garr:
Let's turn a little bit to the relationship between you two, and how you all collaborate and what opportunities are really created by aligning Tal, your internal perspective and mission with the customer-facing mission of Jeff.

Tal Goldhamer:
Yeah. I mean, I think it's a really great and unique collaboration. We've built programs, whether it's to help with organizational purpose envision that we use internally for the various businesses within EY, and we've built personal purpose and vision discovery programs that we offer to all of our people.

And the key here is that with any programs, what often makes programs stronger is continual feedback. And the more feedback we get the stronger a program gets, and we've been running the programs internally for a few years. And then collaborating with Jeff, we began offering the same programs to our clients and with each offering of the program, whether it's internally or externally, we get more feedback and makes the programs that much better and that much stronger. We have the benefit of running the programs with thousands of people within EY which provides us with great insights on what works and what could be better than when we iterate the program, and we've done that many times and then offered it to clients and get even more diversity and more range of thinking around what works and what works well and what could be better.

And so we have the EY culture that informs the design, and then we have now the benefit of running the programs in many other organizational cultures and with each offering, we strengthen the program and continue to strengthen the programs. We learn something every time. So it's Jeff, I will share here, but it's fantastic.

Jeff Stier:
I agree. It's been an amazing personal journey for me and getting to both work with Tal and make an impact both ways. It's not usual that you can make the impact inside and out in that way, and both of us do that.

The other cool thing is this creates a huge competitive advantage for us and talking with clients. Why? Because when we're in pitches, there are very few organizations that are pitching or responding to purpose and vision and long-term value work that can actually say authentically and credibly, we're doing it ourselves, right? And we're going to be able to help you because we've stepped in mud before you, we've also done other things great before you, and we can help you both avoid those missteps, and accelerate the things where we know it works.

And so that is a real competitive advantage that this collaboration has been able to bring to our pitches and to our conversations with potential clients.

Chris Pirie:
Do you invite your customers to come in and experience your programs—do you go that far?

Tal Goldhamer:
We generally don't intermingle sort of participants meaning that when we offer for our people, we typically offer them as cohorts for our people. But the cool thing is we have an infrastructure in place, so when we're working with clients on, on projects and they have an interest in some of our programs, we're able to easily turn on and, and run programs for our clients. So we typically run them as separate cohorts. But the cool thing is it's essentially the same program.

Stacia Garr:
You had mentioned a few minutes ago, Jeff, that, one of the benefits is that you all can help folks understand what mud is not to step in and from some of the lessons learned that you all have had. So I'm wondering if you can share with us what are some of the challenges or some of the toughest problems facing organizations in the immediate future as they think about this? Or what are some of the things that you've learned along the way?

Jeff Stier:
Yes. So the things that I see personally, given the practice that we lead and the work that Tal and I are doing together, and particularly at this moment in time, as you ask, it's about wellbeing, it's about morale and it's about mindset and mental health.

It's a really, really tough time when many of the things that people thought were important to them and the perks are stripped away. So for example, for organizations like ours and others, where you have people who traveled a great deal and were on client sites, think about what you get from that. Well, when you travel and you stay in hotels, you get frequent flyer miles, and you get frequent hotel miles; when you travel and on your road, your company's paying for your food. When you travel and you're on the road, there's usually a group of people who you can hang out with and bond with, and it's usually a lot of fun. And if you are moving from engagement to engagement or client to client, you might also be paid to explore and experience new cities.

That no longer exists. And so it's stripped back to, I'm sitting in my apartment or my home. I'm on virtual calls all day. I'm being asked to perform in a world where I've never been taught to perform this way before, by having relationships. What am I doing this for? And so we're seeing both within and outside of EY, a real challenge to morale and motivation. And so the reason Tal and I are called in on this is because, if the organization doubled down on their vision for the future.

The natural state of human beings is to hope for a better future. And when we are in tough times, we always hope for a better future. The best CEOs of these times today are balancing being pragmatic about making money and doing things currently with optimism for the future. People need that as well. So doubling down on the purpose of your enterprise or your function, and then helping people understand their own personal purpose and vision, and then maybe having your leadership double down too, getting on your people's agenda, to help them understand that being within the organization, we can help you with your morale because we're going to move your personal agenda forward. Those are the biggest challenges facing us today.

And that's why the work that Tal and I are doing both together and separately is really, really called on more and more.

Stacia Garr:
It's interesting, because I was at Deloitte, I'm still in one of these social networks, Fishbowl. I don't know if you guys are, you know, I'm sure you do. And it's so true because I've been out of it long enough that I hadn't really thought about, you know, all the kinds of consulting perks and benefits and, and just the litany of people who are like, I'm not on the road anymore, I’m not seeing people! It’s so true and it's widespread across the industry. I really like how you're thinking about reframing it.

Tal Goldhamer:
And every organization that has a B2B Salesforce, right, is in the same boat, every single one and it's sector agnostic. So this is affecting a hundred percent of clients across a hundred percent of the sectors.

Chris Pirie:
What do you think about the role of L&D in the shift to a purpose focus? We talked about some very specific programs that you land, but how important is the role of L&D in a purpose-aligned organization?

Tal Goldhamer:
L&D could be a really great Trojan horse in serving up many different types of great development programs. From my discussions and travels with other CLOs, generally speaking, most organizations and the people in those organizations are well, they're learning organizations and learning people: people like to learn. That's a human thing, right? In general, people like to learn new things and explore new things and realize new things and find insights. So there is for the most part built in demand at organizations for L&D to come to the table with great content and great programs and purpose-envisioned discovery are interesting because they're not really learning in a traditional sense, we're not teaching people knowledge. I mean, there's a little bit of learning that's happening, but this is about self discovery; this is a more of a working workshop or working session. Cause we're not training people.

We view the role of L&D as having a role in helping people become better, right? Better performers, better colleagues, better leaders, better people, and helping people discover and activate their purpose and vision almost immediately makes them better in all of those categories. And of course, many complementary ways outside of L & D to also activate purpose. But you know, your question is about how the role that L&D teams play in bringing purpose and vision, it's helping people become better people.

Chris Pirie:
Tell us something about those programs and maybe some of the human impact?

Tal Goldhamer:
Sure—I mean, it's, it's one of the things that we actually love talking about, you know, it's the understanding that humans are the center of a purpose-driven organization. And if we unlock the power of personal purpose and personal vision within each of our people, it naturally supports and connects to an organization's purpose. In our case, you know, building a better working world.

Many people spend good chunks of their life, doing what we call ‘chasing purpose’. When we talk to most people at the average age of our professionals are somewhere in the late twenties or early thirties. And so they've grown up and they've come to the workforce, knowing that purpose is important in some way, but in having conversations with them they know it's important, but they don't know how they're going to go and find their purpose: you know, it's almost like they're going to stumble upon it in some way or come across it and something's going to click for them, and suddenly their work and their life is going to have a different meaning.

And then to tie it all together, you know, we talked about vision. Most of them probably haven't really thought about vision. You mentioned some, even the Red Cross, there's certainly a vision there that attracts people based on the impact that it wants to have. So we describe it as people are chasing purpose: we view it as our role as helping people be more efficient about it. We've developed the programs that help people articulate their personal purpose, their personal vision, and then figure out a way to actually activate it, put it into use and tie it into whether it's the nested purpose of the organization or the macro purpose, the overall purpose of an organization, the vision of the organization and a vision for their life, instead of people literally jumping around and hoping one day they'll stumble upon it; we're making it more efficient for them.

You asked about, you know, human impact and, and stories around people. I mean, the cool thing about the role and the work that Jeff and I are doing together is that we, if, if we do it well, we think we do it well. If we do it well, people are really excited because they've learned something about themselves that they otherwise didn't know.

In my case, I finally articulated my personal purpose and vision in my early to mid-forties. All right. Well, it would have been much more efficient for me to know that when I entered the workforce, and I would have been able to align more of the work and choose projects and do things. Sometimes you don't have a choice of what you're going to work on, but to the extent that you do have a choice, or you have the ability to influence it, it's much cooler to know that early on.

And so, as I mentioned, one of the cool things that Jeff and I have the opportunity to be the recipients of, is that as people go through these programs they love to come back to us and to our teams and share what they've come up with and how it's impacted their lives. So with your permission I'll share one or two stories, which you know, just recent stories.

So, the story of a woman that we heard recently of probably 80% of her job was unfulfilling, you know, 20% of her job. She really liked 80%. She didn't like so by all accounts, that's probably not a great ratio in terms of how you're going to spend a large part of your waking hours for most people. And so, you know, she went through the program, articulated her purpose, articulated her vision, and suddenly had a language and vocabulary that she was able to then use as a lens to look at the work she was doing, and then realized that the 20% is what really fulfilled her.

She realized why a filter, because the vocabulary gave her language to be able to use as a lens, and then sat down with her team leader and said, look, you know, here's the stuff that I really love about my job. I feel like I do it well. I feel like it gives me great fulfilment: I want to do more of it. And here's the stuff that I like less.

And she didn't say, I'm not going to do 80%, but she just said, here's the stuff that I really enjoy, and here's the stuff that really drives me. And here's the stuff that really doesn't drive me. Well, it turns out the team leader said, well, you know, it's funny that you should be bringing this up, because I've been thinking about expanding this part of our team, and it really aligns with what you're describing is your purpose, your vision, the impact that you want to have, would you like to take on more of this kind of work?

Of course the answer was yes! So suddenly, she reported that 80% of her job was incredibly fulfilling, incredibly meaningful to her, incredibly impactful for her and impactful for her team. IT totally aligned. And 20% was still stuff she wasn't really thrilled with, but it went from being 80% to just 20%. That’s an incredible story.

I'll give you one other one, And this is really about people feeling empowered. When you go through the process of discovering your personal purpose and vision, we've talked about, it gives you a vocabulary. And that vocabulary gives you a little bit of empowerment and confidence to share with others. And so we just recently heard a story of another team leader who went through the process, was inspired by it. Didn't know exactly what he wanted to do with it—not everyone has a clear view of how to put into use, but he sat down with his team and said, Hey, I want to share with you, we know a lot about each other, cause we worked together for a few years, but here's what really drives me. Here's what really motivates me.

And instantly, what happens when people share their purpose, even if they don't describe that it's their purpose or their vision, but when you begin to share it, its authenticity shines through in the conversation. You have no choice, but because you're being vulnerable, you're being authentic. You're sharing what gives you great personal fulfilment and the impact that you want to have. And the people on his team then went through the program and discovered their vision. And then they sat down and had a meaningful conversation, the most authentic conversation they'd been working together for years, and they came back to us that we now understand each other. We now appreciate each other.

The team leader said, you know what? I know when I have work that has to be delegated out. I know who I'm going to delegate what work to, because it's aligned with their purpose and with their vision. So these are two stories, but the great thing about one of the pleasures that Jeff and I have is being the recipients of being able to hear so many of these types of stories, because that's really what we were interested in is human impact.

Chris Pirie:
We have this whole poets versus quants sub-theme going through our podcasts, Dani, our engineer is not with us today, but I love the fact that this is really about language and giving people the constructs to have conversations around the stuff that's so important to us. It really is, you know, thinking about the future, collaborating effectively with others, telling stories—they’re deeply, deeply human traits. And I think that's why this is all so powerful.

Stacia Garr:
Yeah. One of the things that occurs to me as you've been talking is if you think about the ‘I’ and the ‘B’ of that—the inclusion and belonging: if you have people who are like Tal’s story, be able to reform their work or to at least make the meaningful connections with others to understand this is who I am and this is what really drives me. That can only have a positive impact, I would think, on both inclusion and belonging.

Jeff Stier:
It does, Stacia. And this is where part of my personal purpose is to give everyone confidence to reach for their unique, remarkable. On the belonging side of it, and the inclusion part of it, if you understand that, no matter who the person is, they have a unique, remarkable and they have a fundamental right to exist in the world with their unique, remarkable. It almost should be built into the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence: then you understand that. I need to make room for these people to belong. Because frankly, and I remember when I was a kid when I was bullied, because I looked like I didn't belong. I went from a religious school to a secular school and I look like it. And who are you to tell me that, what do you know about who I am inside? Right? Nothing is the answer. This allows you to have that insight and to recognize that everyone has a place, everyone has something to contribute, everyone has a right to belong. And the companies and teams that appreciate and act on that are better off.

Stacia Garr:
I'm going to jump in and channel Dani and her engineering/quant side, because I want to be sure we get to this question–which is, we've been talking about all the amazing, in many ways, quality to have benefits of focus on purpose, but many organizations want to know, you know, what are kind of some of the metrics, what are some of the accountability measures that we might have: like Tal, you mentioned to knew that we've moved the ball forward on purpose, that some of the things we've done have actually worked. So I'd love to understand from, from either of you, how were you thinking about measuring purpose and the impact of it?

Tal Goldhamer:
People go through a program and discover their personal purpose and personal vision. We know when they've done that, and we can see on a timeline the before and after. And as you can imagine, as a professional services firm, we have lots of data; we love data and we analyse data—we’re analytics, or many of us are.

And so we can look at things like performance reviews, how their leaders view them, and people who have gone through and discovered their purpose and vision before they've done it. And after we have questions in our people survey, we do a periodic people survey and a question that we've asked is, do your leaders inspire you? And we can see whether or not people have changed their answer, or the trends in answers before and after somebody's gone through a personal purpose and personal vision discovery. Jeff, maybe you can jump in with some of the things that you've been working on.

Jeff Stier:
So for example, and Stacia, you talked about long-term value and you identified that earlier. In the EPIC report—and this is a global report that was contributed to about 40 organizations that manage assets of over $70 trillion—its goal was to create financial, quantitative metrics assigned to the creation of long-term value, of which purpose was one of them.

So let's talk about two of the drivers. One is employees. An employee is a driver of long-term value. And if you think about going back to the idea of fulfilment, when you understand your personal purpose and personal vision, and you feel like you're working for an organization, someone bigger than you, you are more engaged: and when you are more engaged, you are more productive, and when you're more and more productive, you lower the cost of labor. And when you lower the cost of labor, it drops directly to the bottom line, and globally, it's been agreed by these 40 organizations, and now everyone else who is sort of accepted at, by lowering the cost of labor and if you back it up, and if you work all the way back, you can get to organizational personal purpose as ingredients in helping that happen. There's a direct tie.

When you look at another driver, which is on the customer side of it, people who believe in what you believe in as an organization—customers, right—are more likely to purchase your products. There's also statistics that show that they're more likely to be loyal to you. And there's a whole bunch of statistics about what loyalty will bring to you: so for example, it lowers the cost of acquiring a customer, because you don't have to spend as much money with a loyal customer, very loyal customers, customers have the heart, emotional loyalty. And so there are clearly direct benefits when you believe in whether it's the case of an organization or the organization's leader and what they stand for, and you remain loyal to higher margins, lower cost of acquisition, higher retention, all drops directly to the bottom line.

I could go on about that in each one of the five categories that have been studied by Epic, there's a tie to purpose, long-term value, which means including vision, and a direct benefit to the bottom line.

Stacia Garr:
Did you all do any of this analysis internally? Have you been able to kind of show and see the impact of your journey?

Tal Goldhamer:
We have, and I would call it a journey, so we are doing it. And we're starting to see: we launched the program at scale about a year and a half to two years ago, so it's not something that flips and you start seeing the trends immediately; you need time. So we are starting to go through it, and we're starting to see things like the impact to leadership skills in performance reviews. We're starting to see the impact to retention. Cause again, as you discover purpose and vision, and you're able to like the stories I shared or one of the stories I shared, you're able to to adjust the work that you're doing. And sometimes it's just a matter of looking at your work differently and realizing why you enjoy your work and realizing what you'd be giving up if you were to change.

So we're starting to see the impact of retention and we're continuing to work on some of the other metrics, but we're, the trends are showing that they actually are having the impact we think it should have.

Chris Pirie:
We ask everybody who comes on the podcast this question; let me pick on Jeff first!

The question we ask is, why do you do the work that you do? Was there somebody or something that inspired you to focus your professional life on this topic?

Jeff Stier:
I started the story with you when I was in grade school, and I came to a school where I was different and my English class—I loved English—I read a book called Grendel, Grendel's of character in Beowulf, the epic poem. I don't know if you remember, but Grendel was a monster on the inside, but a human on the outside, but a human on the insight. And I, I love the story about Grenville because Grendel lived in the time of the Vikings and Grendel lived alone with his or her mother and only wanted to be human. And when he or she heard the Vikings celebrating would come and knock on the Mead Hall door because they wanted to celebrate and be with other humans, because it was human on the inside. And of course, when the Vikings opened the door, all they saw was this monster on the outside and would chase Grendel away.

And the thing that I appreciated was I felt like Grendel. I felt like I joined the school and they didn't look at the insight. And the thing I appreciated about Grendel was Grendel was tenacious; chased away always came back, knocked on the door again and again and again, and never gave up. And so my personal purpose is about being tenacious—that when people say you can't do something, I get the spark inside of me that says you can do it, and that to recognize, and I shared this before that everyone has unique, remarkable. You just have to look for it and you can't tell from the outside.

So that is my spark. And frankly, I did not discover that until I came to EY and stumbled into this role net tall and then began building the personal purpose program that what I do every day is to help people have confidence that they are unique—that don't worry about what people say, what they don't know, who you are. Let's discover who you are, look into, who you are, and then you can become really remarkable and make remarkable contributions to your team or organization.

So I love the work that I do everyday. It's very personal to me, because it goes way back in my story as a development of a human being.

Chris Pirie:
Great, just thank you Jeff for sharing. Thank you, Tal?

Jeff Stier:
I look back and I would say I didn't pick the role in the job and the things that I'm doing. I think, I feel like it picked me and you know, like Jeff you know, I shared my purpose earlier, which is to make things better for others so that they can thrive and in turn, make things better for others. No matter what I was doing throughout my career, I didn't have those words, but no matter what I was doing throughout my career, I felt great when I was making things better for others—whatever it was, whether it was in my personal life, my work life, I was feeling great when I felt like I was contributing to the world and get meaning from it. When I was helping make things better for others and they were thriving and they in turn can make things better for others.

And what you hear in that, hopefully, is a bit of a ripple type of effect. I like doing things at scale, doing things that will impact lots of people. I feel great when I'm having a one-on-one conversation, I'm making them feel better; I feel incredible when I do things that I know will have a ripple effect and help many, many people, because I love scale, and I love big impact and making things better.

And so when this role came about and this opportunity to be in this role, there wasn't a moment of hesitation. Why? Because I knew in the role that I had that I would be able to make things better for others. At the time, I didn't know that I'd be doing it through purpose and vision; I thought I'd be doing it through lots of other L&D initiatives and programs, which I still do. The purpose and vision is just a part of what I do.

So I feel like it chose me and I wish I didn't know about it, but I wish I would've had my purpose and vision earlier on in my career, because it would have helped me get probably to this path, into this role, that much quicker.

Chris Pirie:
Great! Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for the conversation today—I’m really thrilled that we managed to get you in our season: you bring a really interesting perspective to the conversation. Is there some way where people can tap into your work and find out more about what you do?

Tal Goldhamer:
Yeah. I mean, you could certainly find us on LinkedIn so you can look for us on LinkedIn. You can also email us directly. So my email is [email protected] and Jeff, you’re [email protected].

Stacia Garr:
Wonderful, thank you both; this has been inspiring, and I think folks will also be able to say, I can do that, which I think was one of our goals.

Jeff Stier & Tal Goldhamer:
Thank you very much.

Chris Pirie:
We're very grateful to the team at NovoEd for their sponsorship of this season. Global enterprises rely on NovoEd’s collaborative, online learning platform to build high value capabilities that result in real impact. With NovoEd, you deliver powerful, engaging, learning that activates deep skill development and drives measurable business outcomes.

You can access the research that we discuss here and a ton of other great research and insights at www.redthreadresearch.com—and you can subscribe to the podcast, of course, at www.learningisthenewworking.org.

We are very grateful to Workday for its exclusive sponsorship of this season of the Workplace Stories by RedThread Research podcast. Today, the world is changing faster than ever, and you can meet those changing needs with Workday; it’s one agile system that enables you to grow and re-skill your workforce. Workday is a financial, HR and planning system for a changing world.  

TRANSCRIPT

Stacia Garr:
My name is Stacia Garr, and I'm the co-founder and principal analyst at red thread research, along with Dani Johnson, who is also co-founder and principal analyst at RedThread and Chris Pirie of the Learning Futures Group. We're excited to welcome you to our first podcast season: this episode is part of season one, ‘The Skills Obsession,’ in which we investigate the current preoccupation with all things skills. We talked to thinkers, writers, leaders, and practitioners about the current state of thinking on why and how we are managing skills at the people and organizational level.

Chris Pirie:
We are very grateful to Workday for its exclusive sponsorship of this first season of the RedThread research podcast. Today, the world is changing faster than ever, and you can meet those changing needs with Workday; it’s one agile system that enables you to grow and re-skill your workforce. Workday is a financial, HR and planning system for a changing world.

Workday will also host an exclusive live webinar towards the end of the season where you can meet the team Dani, Stacia and myself, and join in a conversation about the future of skills and skills management. You can find out more information and access exclusive content at www.workday.com/skills.

Stacia Garr:
To launch the season. Dani and I talked to our collaborator and podcast partner, Chris Pirie, to share our objectives and our aspirations for the season and introduce some of the research and people behind it.

Chris Pirie:
Dani, can you tell me why you chose the topic of skills to launch your very first season?

Dani Johnson:
We've been following the skills space for about four years and nothing interesting has been said until recently. And we think the reason that nothing interesting has been said is because we've always been looking at skills in isolation of everything else. So we need to upskill, we need to re-skill—but there's never been an impetus to do so, until this year when we've seen everybody jump on the skills' bandwagon (And with that a little bit, the mobility bandwagon).

The reason that we think that is because we've realized that skills in and of itself is just a thing, but skills in relation to some of the other challenges that we have becomes an enabler: so skills with relation to mobility, skills with relation to DEI skills with relation to performance: skills affects all of those things in a way that hasn't necessarily been defined until now. And we want to further define that and talk to the experts and get down to the nitty-gritty about what those intersections are and how they matter.

Chris Pirie:
I think when you talk about skills, you're talking about a way of articulating at an appropriate level of granularity, what work needs to be done and who is capable of doing that work.

Dani Johnson:
I think that's pretty good. And I'm not even sure I'm still debating the granularity; we’ve seen it have much more granularity. I'm not sure that's a piece of it. I think it's that second part of your definition that really resonates with me. It's a way to describe what needs to be done to get work done.

Chris Pirie:
Hmm. And then connecting the people who can do that work.

Stacia Garr:
Exactly.

Chris Pirie:
Got it. I feel strongly about the granularity piece because I've really been at the coalface on this stuff on a couple of occasions and failed miserably, because I think it's so complex to describe the capabilities that an individual human being has and the capabilities that are needed to do even the simplest of jobs. At what point does the effort to describe the atomic elements of that get diminishing returns sort of granularity? And then it's just like, exhausting. What can you do with that?

Dani Johnson:
Well, it's exhausting, and I think it's a waste of time. This is another reason that we haven't necessarily talked about skills before, because people have been approaching skills as role-based granular pieces of ability, which I don't necessarily think it is. And it's all been wrapped around this idea of taxonomy, like this job family has these skills associated with it and this job family has these skills associated with it.

I think some of the most promising things that we've seen in the last year is this idea of ontology versus versus taxonomy. And the ability to just sort of take the whole discussion about roles out, and just talk about skills and think about the work differently by deciding, you know, what skills are needed to do a piece of work and then put those skills together once we know who has those skills and a team to get that work done.

So I think this is like a gigantic step in the future of work discussion that we've been having for seven or eight years about moving away from roles and moving into utilizing those skills and organizing the people around the work instead of the work around the people,

Chris Pirie:
I think that’s how it works in real life is you sweat over a two page job description, you interview 50 people, none of whom kind of match that perfectly. And then somebody comes in and they make that job their own.

Dani Johnson:
Exactly, yeah. And if you think about like, we're doing this study on, I'm actually writing the final paper right now on mobility. If you think about skills versus roles and how people move around organizations right now, it's mostly they move into different roles, but in some industries, like the consulting industry, or like the advertising industry, more in the tech industry and in the medical industry than we have seen in the past, we are doing exactly that—we're understanding the skills that people have and then we're putting them together to do a project or a bit of work, and then dissolving them back into the workforce to be reconfigured into another team that does work.

But if you think about the challenges associated with that, one of them is understanding the skills that you have, one is understanding the skills that you need. And then there's a whole bunch of challenges around how you account for head count and the messaging that you provide and what success means and succession blends.

Chris Pirie:
It's interesting, isn't it, because a lot of the systems, the people systems revolve around that job description, right? So this kind of blows a hole in, in that… I wonder, is AI a part of this conversation? Is this akin to the conversation we have about say sentiment analysis?

Dani Johnson:
I think so with a couple of caveats. First of all, I would, I would hate all the good work we've done on becoming human in the last couple of years to go away. And so I think to remain, and we know that AI algorithms are often biased, because they absorb data that exists already, and a lot of the data is already biased. So making sure that those algorithms provide equal opportunities and clearly articulate the skills that people have and the opportunities that they have because of it, it's going to be a big challenge.

Chris Pirie:
I think that's true, but it's also a known problem and smart people are working on it and there is a healthy dose of skepticism and some good missteps that we can learn from.

I guess I see a little bit more of a metaphor here is that we used to organize labor and our work days around the third normal form of a job description, and we could be freed up from that. If our systems could look at the work to be done and the skills that we have without us having to kind of fill out a bunch of forms—maybe that's from a conversation, or maybe that's from the work that we've done in the past, like going through our portfolios.

Dani Johnson:
So that's the other thing that I think is interesting is this new way of working relies heavily on reputation, formulas, and portfolios. And those types of things, I think, will become much more important to the individual as they are judged and offered opportunities based on what they say.

Chris Pirie:
Yes, and these, these organizational network analysis systems kind of, you know, they identify nodal points in a system, people who are the magnets for questions, so you know, where expertise lives in a system, because you can see how that system is interacting.
The other example is the film industry, right? Where people come together on projects and then disperse at the end of the movie project, and yet they've built a network of connections and another movie gets funded.

Dani Johnson:
Yeah, and that's a really interesting one, because most of them are free agents: they don't actually belong to an organization–they come together for a project run by an organization, but most of them are free agents. And so I wonder what happens to the community that we build within organizations right now… I just think the walls of the organization are becoming more permeable and more transparent.

Chris Pirie:
In your recent session finding and using skills data, what were the things that you learned?

Dani Johnson:
Well, first we learned that there's a core connection between the talent and the work; the skills are the connectors, so then the more organizations understand about the skills they have in the organization, the better they can apply them to the work that needs to be done.

The second thing we learned is that there are lots and lots of potential sources for skills data. The challenge is going to be integrating them meaningfully, rather than just relying on one source. The third is that to use skills effectively, organizations are thinking really carefully about the use cases associated with skills versus competencies; it’s one of the biggest conversations we're hearing out there right now. We're finding that orgs need a lot of help verifying the skills that their people may have and assessing proficiency levels easily and effectively.

Chris Pirie:
And what's the role of tech?

Dani Johnson:
Tech can play a pretty big role, and it can enable skills usage in organizations by integrating data sources and making it really fun and easy and sociable for employees to manage their skills data.

Chris Pirie:
Were the key questions that came up?

Chris Pirie:
Yeah, we asked leaders five questions about how they're finding and using skills data. The five were first, why is skills, data is such a hot or important topic right now? Second was how does skills data differ from competency data? Third was what sources of skills data are organizations using; fourth was how are organizations using skills data? And the fifth was what do you imagine skills tech will enable organizations to do in the future?

Chris Pirie:
Dani, I really look forward to digging into some of those questions and exploring some of the findings from your research, with the conversations that we have lined up. So, I think that's a great framework for us to start with.

Chris Pirie:
Stacia, what are your aspirations for the podcast?

Stacia Garr:
I see the podcast as an amazing opportunity to bring the conversations that we have with leaders throughout the year to light for a much broader audience.

We are so lucky, because we get to talk to people who tell us these incredible discussions about changes that they've made in their organizations, and how they've been able to really impact both people, as well as organizational results. A lot of times those conversations just stay with us, stay within the RedThread research team, and so a podcast like this allows us to bring those front and center and allow leaders to really tell their stories—stories backed by data, because we love our data, but really tell their stories in a way that we hope will help others be inspired and aspire to some of the amazing impact that we know that we can make as people leaders.

Chris Pirie:
Now you've called the podcast 'Workplace Stories.’ Why Workplace Stories, and how does that fit with the broader work that you do at RedThread?

Stacia Garr:
So it's a research organization, I think sometimes our bias is towards data, always data, always data, but I think we all know that people remember stories. They might remember an occasional data point, but people remember stories.

And so I see this as a way to amplify that part of what we do at RedThread, because we also believe that stories and showing the connection between people is really important: we see this as an augmentation to what we do on kind of the quantitative side.

The other thing that we have an opportunity to do—and this is something that Dani and I have talked about since we launched RedThrea—is we want to provide a platform for people to share amazing things that they're doing: for them to build their own brands and to strengthen their own careers. And with Workplace Stories, we're able to do that, we’re helping people tell their stories in a way that's compelling and will be shared more broadly.

Another thing with this title of ‘Workplace’ is we have been speaking about how we don't want to talk about just HR leaders. HR leaders are incredibly important, but we all know that it's not just HR leaders who do the leading and organizations, it's leaders broadly. So we're talking about the workplace and what happens there, but it's not just HR leaders, it's leaders of all types that we hope will find some insights and inspiration from the stories that are shared.

Chris Pirie:
Got it. It's interesting, of course, that in Dani's and yours research on what differentiates humans from robots and other species, storytelling was one of the four kinds of key elements that a lot of research identifies as being the sort of secret sauce of humanity. So I love that tie back to your research as well.

Stacia Garr:
Thank you. There's I think a high level reason, which is that we were hearing a lot more about skills and we're hearing about skills on the Learning side, as well as on the people analytics side in particular, because of what we're trying to do with RedThread, which is make the connections across organizations in terms of things that are happening, that people should be seeing more holistically, that made sense for this to be our first episode.

But I think if we step back, there is a bigger reason why we're hearing about skills right now. And I think it is the future of work becoming the now of work. What I mean by that is if you're thinking about the gig economy, you're thinking about automation, all those types of aspects of work that are shifting, I don't think you can really actualize that without thinking about skills.

So if you thought about roles in automation, let's say, yes, there's going to be some roles that will be totally automated, but it's much more likely that we might automate 30% of a role. Or it might be likely that with a gig worker we'll have them do 25% of a job, but unless we understand the skills that are needed to accomplish the work, we're not going to actually be able to break these jobs apart, and have the most efficient resource or the best aligned resource do that work. And I think skills are bringing this all to a way for us to actually do this as opposed to talking about it as something that's going to happen in the future.

Chris Pirie:
Interesting: so almost like a language or an API that we could use to restructure the way that we exchange our labor for value and the way that companies access talent and skills

Stacia Garr:
And access, getting the work done.

Chris Pirie:
How does it fit with your other research areas?

Stacia Garr:
So this is learning and within the learning and skills portion of what we do, but we also do research on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and experience and engagement people, analytics performance, and then HR technology broadly. So skills, in so many ways, touches on all of those other aspects of what we do.

In this podcast, we ask folks about how skills can impact diverse populations, how it differentially impacts diverse populations. If you think about experience and engagement and how people will be, as you just said, exchanging their labor for value with the organization, skills is a key component of how that happens and how people experience an organization and how they can even tap into their own purpose and their own value in terms of aligning the skills that they do in the work they do to what they're hoping to be, or become.

On people analytics, this is a key part of what we're talking about on this podcast, by understanding and quantifying skills, aligning people in terms of their skills and capabilities with their job is key to performance. So it touches there, and then HR technology is a big part of how all of this will actually come to life. It's not necessarily the most important part, but it's a very big part of what's going to happen. So this feels topic aligned with all these other areas and is I think, germane to everything that we do at RedThread.

Chris Pirie:
Stacia, who do we have lined up for the season?

Stacia Garr:
We've got some amazing folks! So we're going to kick off with a wonderful friend of ours and academic Lisa K. Solomon. She is at the d.school at Stanford and really shares, I think, some thought-provoking ideas about skills and the role of skills and skills and design that I think sets a really nice tone for our session.

We then speak with Matthew Daniel, who is at Guild Education, and he kind of takes us from this amazing high level perspective that Lisa shares down to the practicalities of skills in the workplace skills, especially the need to focus on building those.

We have some other folks, we have a Michelle Deneau from Adobe, who's bringing a strong people analytics perspective. We have Nuno Goncalves, who is sharing with us the perspective from Mars and how he's changing his learning function. Satnam Sagoo who is with the British Red Cross is also sharing a bit of a learning perspective. And then we have Karen Kocher from Microsoft, Rob Lauber, who was formerly with McDonald’s, and we have some other people that were working.

Chris Pirie:
Who is the audience for these stories?

Stacia Garr:
The primary audience is anyone who's associated with designing and informing people practices within their organizations. So in many instances, that's that we'll be learning leaders: we have a few chief learning officers who are speaking, and that's important.

Also people analytics, practitioners who are thinking about the quantification of skills and how you think about that as it applies to the future of the workforce. More broadly, I would say it is the head of HR who is thinking through all of this aspect of skills and the future of work from that big picture perspective, and then leaders more broadly who may be asking themselves, you know, do I have the skills in my organization to do what I want to do? How would I think about re-skilling my workforce or upskilling my workforce, whatever language you want to use.

Our hope is that by telling these stories of how organizations are thinking through this we can help them feel their way towards the future. I think one of the things about this podcast is we don't purport to have the answer on this one: we’re actively doing research on skills, but this is a journey for us. Everyone’s at the beginning of this journey of skills and what it's going to look like. And our hope is that as we go through this podcast, we will all learn an incredible amount and be more prepared for the future by the end of it.

Chris Pirie:
For people who are not familiar with the work of RedThread, what’s the story about the organization?

Stacia Garr:
RedThread started about three years ago with Dani Johnson and myself founding it. We had both been with Bersin by Deloitte immediately before that, and then before that, Dani was actually with RBL group with Dave Ulrich and I was with the corporate leadership council, now part of CEB Gartner.

We had been in the industry long enough to understand the issues that people are focused on in so many of the people challenges, but what we wanted to do was to really change how research was getting done and to make it faster, to be more innovative and more varied in our approaches, and to really be at the cutting edge of what people cared about.

The challenge with some larger research organizations is that you can have this amazing agenda, but you can get dragged down by it. And as a smaller organization, more nimble, it allowed us to really stay on the cutting edge of what people cared the most, so as soon as COVID happened, we were writing about COVID. As soon as Black Lives Matter had happened this last year, we were writing it. And that is really the thing that I take the most joy in the work that we do now is that we're able to just go to the topic, the thing that people care about and provide both data and stories that help people understand what's happening and to make better decisions in their organization.

Chris Pirie:
How can people get engaged?

Stacia Garr:
They can join us at www.redthreadresearch.com. You can join the membership, if you're joining as an individual or a small team, you can actually just swipe a credit card right there and just get right in. If you're with a larger enterprise and want to have an enterprise membership with more folks, just reach out to us at [email protected] and we will get you signed up.

Chris Pirie:
And if I just want to understand the quality and scope of your work?

Stacia Garr:
We have a number of things that are available for free on the site—so we have shorter research articles, we have infographics, we have some of the presentations we've done in the past, we have webcasts that we've done, a whole range of things. And when new things happen in the industry, particularly on the tech side, we blog about that and that's for free on our site. So everything is marked with a member content, if it's not for free and everything else is for free.

Chris Pirie:
Well, I love your work and I've used it extensively over the last couple of years in my journey, and it's really fun to partner with you guys, so I'm looking forward to the season!

Dani Johnson:
Well, this has been a good conversation; it’s been really fun.

Chris Pirie:
We are very grateful to Workday for its exclusive sponsorship of this first season of the RedThread Research podcast. Today, the world is changing faster than ever, and you can meet those changing needs with Workday; it’s one agile system that enables you to grow and re-skill your workforce. Workday is a financial, HR and planning system for a changing world.

Workday will also host an exclusive live webinar towards the end of the season, where you can meet the team Dani, Stacia and myself, where you can join in a conversation about the future of skills and skills management. You can find out more information and access exclusive content at www.workday.com/skills.

Global enterprises rely on its collaborative online learning platform to build high-value capabilities that result in real impact, with its customers working to deliver powerful, engaging learning that activates deep skill development, from leadership to design thinking and digital transformation, as well as driving measurable business outcomes.

TRANSCRIPT

Deborah Quazzo:
It's Deborah Quazzo, managing partner of GSV Ventures and co-founder of the ASU+GSV Summit. It's hard to remember what day it is these days, but it's October 14, 2020.

Dani Johnson:
Hi, I'm Dani Johnson and I'm here with Stacia Garr. We're the co-founders of Redthread Research, and we're collaborating with Chris Pirie on this purpose-focused season of ‘Learning Is the New Working.’ And today we have Deborah Quazzo with us. Deborah, thanks for your time. And for sharing your insights with us today.

Deborah Quazzo:
Thank you.

Dani Johnson:
We've had the opportunity to participate in your conference, your ASU+GSV conference for years. And this year, I know that the conference was virtual, but I heard you say that something like 27,000 people registered.

Deborah Quazzo:
We had a large registration, yes.

Dani Johnson:
It was great. I was thrilled to run a session on coaching, and Stacia and I both had the opportunity to listen to your Ladies Lunch session with Gloria Steinem as well, which we thought was amazing. And so you've introduced us to some really fabulous and interesting technologies over the year end, where we're thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with you today throughout the year.

Stacia Garr:
So, Deborah, we're going to start off with some quick questions to introduce you and your work practice to the folks who are listening. We're also going to be touching on your organization and career history. So just to kick us off what part of the world do you live in and work in and why?

Deborah Quazzo:
I live in Chicago most of the time. I don't think I've ever been here this long. I live on an airplane two or three days a week minimum, but I've been very much here with my husband and the cat, occasionally my children. And we also have a home in San Francisco, so we do go back and forth a little bit in normal times. But we moved here many decades ago. Downtown Chicago is a great place to raise children for someone who wants to be in an urban setting, which I did. And we did. And so our three kids all grew up here on Lake Michigan and went to school here and one of them moved back.

Stacia Garr:
Well, that's a success, right? To get one of them back?

Deborah Quazzo:
It is. Yeah.

Stacia Garr:
So then can you tell us, what's your current job title and how would you describe the work that you do?

Deborah Quazzo:
Yeah, I think that my current job titles are two things. It's a, the managing partner of GSP Ventures, which is our venture fund focused on education technology, primarily early-stage investments, although some portion of the funds later stage investments, and co-founder and sort of general manager of the ASU+GSV Summit that you all referenced a little bit earlier. We view them as part of a platform where we're singularly focused on the education technology sector globally. And we view the ASU+GSV Summit as a flywheel for our investment activity and vice versa. So we typically would have 5,500 people live in San Diego for the summit. As you pointed out, Dani, we had, ended up with 33,000-some registrations for the summit we've had. So the virtual move was really actually fascinating and fun. And we do view them as the two organizations is sort of inextricably linked although they’re separate teams and all that sort of stuff. But they do drive each other all around education innovation.

Stacia Garr:
And we have a lot of learning or HR professionals who may not have much exposure to kind of the venture capital and the investor world. Could you just kind of simply introduce what you all do and kind of how that then flows through to something they might see like a degreed product, for instance?

Deborah Quazzo:
So we look at the education space as a Pre-K to Gray arc of our continuum of learning and workforce skills. So we look for investment all across that spectrum. Obviously, there's only a part of that spectrum that's relevant for HR leaders or L&D leaders, et cetera. And that would be both higher-ed and adult learning, workforce learning, enterprise learning. We are investing in companies, in Seed and Series A companies, in all those sectors although we have plenty in the, and I say higher education and workforce, because I think as most everyone at this point who is in those important jobs realizes that there's a very much a coming together of the higher education and the workforce sector.

Deborah Quazzo:
These are continuums, they are not siloed on the historically. They've been very siloed, K-12 silo, higher ed silo, workforce siloed. I think it's a very positive development. The siloing is being, you know, very much broken down and, you know, one feeding into the other and vice versa in a lifelong, in a movement to lifelong learning which I think is also something that was not embraced for a long time and is very much been embraced today. So we're looking at, we're biased towards platforms. So Degreed, for example, in the enterprise space is a platform. They're content neutral. And they sit in the enterprise and they help companies and their employees look at, you know, make skills, assessment, personal skills assessments, and then direct them to personalize learning pathways that can enhance their career mobility actually at the end of the day. But it's an open-ended, you know, platform in the enterprise market around learning. We're also in Guild Education, which I think is a really important provider of this sort of creating this continuum between higher education and the workforce. They have an enterprise platform that is basically supporting enterprises and delivering higher education to their employees and in this case, frontline workers.

Dani Johnson:
Kind of along those lines, Deborah, I mentioned that you have introduced us to some really interesting technologies over the year. What are some of the broad trends you're seeing around learning technology and especially for the workplace that CLOs and talent leaders should be paying attention to?

Deborah Quazzo:
What are we're seeing? We're seeing all kinds of trends and I'd actually say this one trend, the continuum between formal education and the workplace, and that, you know, we actually view the workplace as sort of art today or fourth education system, and that you have early childhood or K-12, higher education, and work is now school and vice versa because of the need to upskill and reskill and address all these things. We're seeing other trends like we have a theme called ‘Hollywood Meets Harvard,’ which is just about driving better learning engagement. I mean, how do people improve learning experiences so that employees are more engaged and more likely to learn? We're staying at modernization. I think I've introduced you all to Athena, but that's in the compliance space around harassment issues.

Deborah Quazzo:
And it's a very, very modern delivery of learning. It's received incredible uptake by some really great companies. So I think they're very big trends around things like that. Knowledge as a currency is another theme we've had for a long time, which is really that you know, your sort of formal degree or whatever that you got out of our traditional system is no longer enough. You've got to have lots of other things that flow liquidly, whether it's certificates, whether it's badges, whether it's whatever, that people are going to need other learning credentials and to give them additional professional currency as they move forward. So we're seeing a lot of I think very fruitful trends.

Stacia Garr:
So a lot of what you shared in many ways could be seen as purpose-driven, you know, this focus on education Pre-K to Gray, et cetera. But does that part of how GSV Ventures operates? So do you all have an explicit purpose statement? And if so, what is it?

Deborah Quazzo:
Yeah, so we have a very formal, the way we look at comp– We've always had a framework for the way we looked at, look at companies, we call it the Five Ps, something we've used for over 20 years. And it's basically our framework for evaluating every investment that we make. So the first P is People. Obviously, there's no shortage of great ideas, but if you don't have the right people executing, you will fall flat. Product: the products obviously got to be differentiated and an important. Potential and Predictability. And then the fifth P is Purpose. So we are actually not an impact fund. I mean, we don't label ourselves as an impact fund, but we do believe very, very strongly that every investment we make has, if it doesn't have impact, it's not going to have financial return.

Deborah Quazzo:
So, and that's particularly relevant in the education market. And if you aren't addressing enough learners and then you aren't having the kind of impact that's going to really change things. So we do have a strong commitment. We also believe that companies with purpose have stronger cultures and are going to inherently have stronger outcomes. And so it is a very explicit commitment on our part. And certainly there are plenty of companies in the education technology space that basically, you know, address a very small part of the market and perhaps a very high-income part of the market. And lots of people will make very, have made and will make successful investments there, but that's not an area we pursue.

Stacia Garr:
And just again, for our listeners’ sake, would you mind just clarifying kind of the difference between an impact fund and how you characterize yourself?

Deborah Quazzo:
Impact funds are now a very formal and growing category of private capital, and they can address a whole host of areas. They could be green technology, they could be ag. food culture, they could be–but education is an area where there are a number of funds that are impact funds. They have stated returns that they have to deliver against impact that are provided by the funders of those funds. Sometimes impact funds have delayed longer, longer time horizons for returns and lower returns thresholds. The important thing for us is that we want to be a market-return-driven fund. So we want to be the most successful education technology company fund in the world, but certainly our objective or, you know, on behalf of the people who who've supported us and backed us through their LP investments. And we do believe that if there's an extenuated return profile or a term profile, that's longer than a market return profile, it's then perhaps the organization's not having the kind of impact we need it to have. So we want to be a market-return-driven fund. So we want to be, you know, comped against venture capital funds that are doing the same.

Stacia Garr:
And that's the reason I asked you to kind of clarify that is one of the themes we've had going through the podcast has been this question of organizations or in your case funds that are directly focused on purpose versus those that kind of incorporate purpose into all of the other things that they do. You know, more akin to the stakeholder capitalism model versus the shareholder capitalism model. So I think it's really interesting to kind of see that you're thinking about that in a similar way to what we've been talking about across all these different organizations that have been on the podcast.

Dani Johnson:
So Deborah, we know that a lot of your technology, I mean, almost all of your technology is education focused. You've also introduced us to a few that are more diversity and inclusion focused. We know that's very intentional. Talk to us a little bit about how your organizational purpose shows up in the work you do. And I'm thinking specifically, because I just participated in the ASU+GSV conference. It's always very aspirational. You work very hard to make it inclusive. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Deborah Quazzo:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. We have worked really hard really the whole, for the whole 11 years that we worked on the summit. So our mantra is that all people have equal access to the future through innovation, scaled innovation in education. We believe that equity and access are critical threads that have to run through that, or we're not going to get to, you know, we're not going to get to the end goal of all people having equal access to the future. So we leverage the ASU+GSV Summit to really talk about many of the, talk about lots of themes and we have artificial intelligence or whatever. But one of the really important threads is equity and access. So this year we had a full day dedicated to truth and reconciliation and a series of conversations, and actually two full—a day dedicated to it and the second day, it was one of the channels. And we had everyone from Isabel Wilkerson who just wrote the extraordinary book ‘Caste’ that Oprah is actually very focused on.

Deborah Quazzo:
And if you haven't read it, you ought to read it tomorrow. It's just such a one of the best books I've read in a long time, to Eddie Glaude, a Princeton professor just wrote a fantastic book called ‘Begin Again’ about James Baldwin to Michael Sorrell is the president of Paul Quinn, a HBCU has actually been ranked as the best HBCU three years in a row thanks to Michael's leadership that had fantastic talk. So we really are incredibly intentional. We want to make sure we will keep getting better, but we had 153 panels and every single panel had a woman or person of color on it. And that number of those panels had all women or all people of color. So those things are really important. It's really important that we're reflecting real life, and it's real important to the conversations that we're reflecting real life.

Deborah Quazzo:
And then we hold a host of other events. Like we gave two amazing men, Nate Davis and Carlos Moreno, the Innovator of Color Awards this year. They're both incredible people who've done a great work. One’s a CEO of a K-12 dot com public company, the other is the CEO of Big Picture Learning, which is a very extraordinarily progressive school, global school manager. And then we have a Power of Women awards. And so we really do work very hard to elevate issues of equity. We're also really fortunate in that the sector does attract entrepreneurs disproportionately in a positive way who are women and people of color. So we invite, you know, 400-ish companies, CEOs, or founders to present every year at the summit. Actually this year, we had a competition where people applied and got the position through a competition. And every year, a third of those companies are founded and/or led by women, a third to 40%, somewhere between 34 and 40% is where it kind of moves between. We'd love to get it to 50%, but we feel very good about the 34 to 40. And then about, about a quarter of the companies are founded and are led by people of color. So, you know, very proud of our sector that it's got that kind of diversity, that those numbers reflect in leadership, of innovation leadership.

Stacia Garr:
I want to move this on, Deborah, to talk a little bit about some of the changes that we've seen with regard to purpose, and I kind of alluded to this shareholder capitalism versus stakeholder capitalism. And when talk specifically about the Business Roundtable statement of purpose from last fall about delivering greater value for all stakeholders and the move away from shareholder primacy. So when we get your perspective on that statement, you know, either then, or in the year that's happened since then.

Deborah Quazzo:
You know, there's certainly recently been a lot of criticism of whether that was just–not enough actions followed on that recently I feel like. But I think, you know, it's interesting to me, I mean, I actually think it's not unlike what I said about, we're not an impact fund, but if we are, if every investment we make is not high impact, then we're going to fail financially. I actually think that, I mean, the way at least we were, we think that you should be able to address you, you have to be able to address all constituents in our organization to have, you know, to have successful financial outcomes for all the constituents in the organization, whether you're an employee or a shareholder.

Deborah Quazzo:
And we're fortunate to have companies in our portfolio that actually really support things like, you know, support elements of that, like Guild Education actually. Where companies like Wal-Mart and Disney and Chipotle and Waste Management and others are really making massive commitments to educate their frontline workers who either, you know, have from everything from a high school equivalency certificate up through full college degrees and then through certificates and skills related to skill accretion. So I think elevating learning within a corporate setting is a really important piece of this because it's such a fundamental way that companies can show their commitment to their employee stakeholders, but it's also going to have benefit for their shareholders stakeholders and their, you know, all the way around.

Deborah Quazzo:
So I think there is a path here where you can elevate financial outcomes through doing the right thing for all of your stakeholders, and, you know, it's just delightful to be able to sit in the seat that we all sit in where we can watch learning be applied as sort of a weapon in a positive way by corporate leaders to get at those objectives. It's an important weapon and we're seeing for the first time, and we can see it in right now, we have exposure to a lot of corporate learning companies, and we're in a recession, depression, whatever you want to call it.

Deborah Quazzo:
And typically, corporate learning companies would see massive degradation in their revenues during down economic downswings because it's the first thing that companies cut. We're not seeing that. Obviously, if you're laying off half your workforce, you're just not going to have as many people in seats to take learning, to you know, to consume learning. But learning as a furlough benefit has come into play for the first time ever during this pandemic. People are working on learning as a layoff benefit. We'll see where we get there, that will probably require some other, you know, additional structuring like government help and things like that. But I think it is, really it makes me feel optimistic that as opposed to being the thing, you know, the thing that was dispensable, you know, easy to dispense with first, when you had to cut things, it's actually being now viewed as, at least by many companies, increasing numbers of companies, as a weapon to improve overall outcomes.

Stacia Garr:
And can you explain a little bit more what you mean by learning as a furlough benefit? What does that look like?

Deborah Quazzo:
So, through tuition reimbursement, tuition benefit plans that support, you know, that provide tax advantage support for delivering learning to your employees. Those have been, you know, actually Guild sort of led the way in creating a similar, you know, because furloughed employees are still, technically employees are on furlough, but companies like Disney when they went, you know, because they had to furlough such a massive chunk of their company, actually elevated their learning benefits to those furloughed employees. I mean, they elevated the visibility of them and they encouraged their use. So it's extending the concept of learning through tuition reimbursement, tuition benefit plans into the furlough cycle.

Stacia Garr:
Yeah. With the idea being that they can take advantage of this time, where they're not working to learn and to develop.

Deborah Quazzo:
Precisely. Yeah.

Stacia Garr:
I want to kind of zoom in a little bit on this more specifically for you as an investor. So as I understand it, when we're talking about stakeholder capitalism, it means, you know, we're not putting the shareholder first we're at least equally considering employees, customers, suppliers, partners, even society at large. Has that influenced you when you've thought about investing in companies that are kind of explicitly stakeholder capitalism companies because it, it might mean that other people get kind of benefits before you as a shareholder in the company?

Deborah Quazzo:
We're typically investing very early, right? So we're investing in startups. And so that probably makes a difference because we just, you know, we don't, number one, they're not making money for the most part, they're losing a lot of money. And I do, you know, one thing that we do believe passionately in—startups give you an interesting case. We had this in our recent investment where, you know, someone was, you know, the team, the founding team, it was white men. And we raised, and other investors that came along with us, raised the need to address issues of diversity now. And that is hard when you're starting. If it's not obvious or easy and because your team isn't it, it's hard to add one more thing to early-stage startup menu, but you have to.

Deborah Quazzo:
Because if you don't start early, it's very hard to recover later. So we had a really good conversation about it, and the company went out and took immediate action, which was great. When you're dealing with early-stage companies, it's really about how are they building their culture to address issues of equity and access out of the gate because that will make a very different company down the road. So it's hard. The Business Roundtable obviously is big companies, so they're thinking differently than our business, you know, they can think differently than our businesses do. So what we're trying to do is help companies think about exponential growth. What we strongly support is the idea that exponential growth can be best accomplished with, you know, through not only a great idea and a great technology and everything else, but it can be best accomplished through diverse teams and being very intentional about our support of that and in our monitoring of that, frankly. So I think that's kind of how we as early stage investors have to think about it and act on it. And we're pretty active. I mean, we're active in the whole area of female VCs getting funded, female startups and people of color startups, founders getting funded. All of those groups are still underfunded. The category I sit in is a woman, a female, we're a female-owned firm and a majority female-run investment or equal 50-50 equal investment committee, female male. So we're pretty passionate around these topics and carry that over into our portfolio company, construction and management.

Dani Johnson:
We love that, Deborah, about you and the organizations you pick. I'm kind of curious about, I mean, we talked to a lot of startups as well, and we have noticed that they skew white and they skew male. There is about how much of a luxury purpose is when you're doing a startup. And I know you might be a little skewed because you look for those that are actually going after purpose as well, but sort of, as you look at the broad landscape of things, is purpose something that most entrepreneurs are considering?

Deborah Quazzo:
From where we sit, you know, I've picked an area where purpose is so important, right? And so I'm a bad person to ask because we're operating in places where entrepreneurs are generally trying to change the world and have big impacts. They’re certainly trying drive financial returns, high financial returns, but they're, but they really are trying to have massive impact at scale on learners, across this Pre-K to Gray spectrum. And certainly there are entities I referred to before that within the education technology sector, they're not going to have purpose. That's just not where we operate and it is hard for me. A long time ago as a general investment banker at Merrill Lynch, it would be hard for me to get out of bed every morning if I didn't align with founders who really had, you know, had purpose at their core.

Dani Johnson:
Do you have a sense for purpose-driven organizations versus maybe the rest, as far as success goes?

Deborah Quazzo:
We believe that and we believe this has become more relevant this year. It's become more relevant over the last few years, you know, it's generationally more relevant that purpose-driven organizations are and should have higher performance. And because it's just going to mean that you've got a better culture, you've got people who are more committed in your culture. They're going to work harder. They're going to, you know, I mean, we see, we actually see it in recruiting our companies can often you know, ed tech is hot these days. It took a long time to get here, but it's, hot, and people on top of being hot, people really do love it. And by the way, one of the reasons it got hot is because you had great founders coming out of other sectors. Having had success at Google or wherever, and starting companies and wanting to start companies in an area they really cared about because they had kids or because you know, something. So we do believe purpose is going to drive higher, better outcomes for a whole host of reasons. And I think it's very much, you know, generational change that's happening. It’s very actively happening.

Stacia Garr:
You mentioned purpose in particular, around attracting people to this space, the ed tech space, but then also in terms of attracting talent, do you have any other perspectives on kind of the role of purpose, particularly within a startup where everybody is so small, everyone's working so hard, the role of purpose in enabling, developing, retaining talent and how important that is in those startups where you think purpose is very clear versus maybe those words a little less clear.

Deborah Quazzo:
I think, you know, startups are really hard, right? They're really stressful situations. And even if it's great, it's stressful. I mean, even if nothing goes wrong, which is almost never the case. It's impossible not to have something go wrong, and in some cases, something go really wrong. And I think that, I mean, I can give you two situations I certainly can't talk about, but in our own portfolios where, you know, at the end of the day they weren't purpose-driven and when things went wrong, they really unwound or they weren't serving enough. So I do think that in a highly stressful environment, and you can look at outside of ed tech and look at, you know, like Airbnb and I have so much respect for Brian Chesky and I don't know him, but I certainly have watched. But that is a company with purpose. He's been able to instill purpose in something you wouldn't naturally think about as having purpose. Education's a little easier to think about as naturally having purpose, but I do think in a world of high stress the fact that you've got purpose and you've got a real feel, you're in an environment with purpose, you feel like you're doing something that's moving the ball forward for mankind, yourself and mankind, it just makes that stress so much more manageable.

Stacia Garr:
And what about the flip side of that? So are there any unique challenges you've seen in startups as they're trying to scale up if purpose is a big deal for them?

Deborah Quazzo:
Companies shouldn't be confused about whether they’re a philanthropy or a company. And I think sometimes companies in education get confused about that. And they ended up not doing, not having enough market mechanisms in the back of their cover—sorry, commercial instincts, probably a better term—not having the adequate commercial discipline and building out the business. And I had a call today with a wonderful, lovely set of really smart human beings. But if you want to build a philanthropy, build a philanthropy, but if you want to build a company, it's got to have, you know, the undergirding of, you know, a real commercial viability. It has to be viable. It has to be sustainable, has to be viable. And I think sometimes people get mixed up. Purpose has to be about viability at the end of the day. And it has to support viability, I guess, is the better term. So yeah, I do. We certainly do see that that problem in the education technology sector.

Dani Johnson:
We want to move to our favorite topic, 2020.

Deborah Quazzo:
When is it over?

Dani Johnson:
It's a good question. COVID happened obviously. A lot of social inequality happened. We're just really interested in how those events have affected your operations and how you guys work.

Deborah Quazzo:
COVID was the tragedy that it is, and it was, and will be, what it's done in terms of learning loss for low-income kids is something we won't know for, you know, probably—it will affect us for years to come unless we can find aggressive ways, accelerated ways to address it. I think actually digital learning will be one of the ways you'll have to be used to address it because you're going to be doing more learning than just in the physical setting. I think that we pivoted, you know, we took our event virtual. We did a whole series of events. We were able to take the conversation. We have great partnership with the Gates Foundation that we've had for a long time and Henry Hipps there. And Henry has been such an inspiration and mentor for me around making sure we're having lots of dialogue around equity and racial equity and everything else. And so we had a series of conversations in the spring. The first one actually moderated by Henry and with four leaders of the black community across the education spectrum and who called themselves the elders, even though one of them is younger than I am, but it was an incredible conversation. In fact, Harvard Business School is going to teach a case study using that panel discussion as the read in, and then have Henry come in and participate in the Zoom class this fall, which we're very proud of.

Deborah Quazzo:
And then we had two more conversation, one with white leaders moderated by Carlos Watson. And then we had one with younger leaders from the education sector who've been extremely involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, which was fantastic conversation, really hard, but really incredible conversation. All of them were hard. So I think that what we've tried to do, what 2020 did to us like, took something that we always cared about and tried to push for. We've tried to make it more real. We tried to make it more central, we tried to make the dialogue, we tried to have it be actionable. So that's been good. I mean, really good is discouraging as the things that have happened this year have been. And yeah those are the changes. Those are the big changes of one just to move virtual. You know, the other is just that our companies for the most part are exploding in a good way. And so the silver lining for us of COVID is that, you know, digital learning has become front and center. It's important. It's what people are talking about all over the world across the Pre-K to Gray spectrum and that has made us pretty busy.

Dani Johnson:
I love your mission. I love the fact that you're, you're trying to make the future equal for everyone, equal access to the future, I think is how you said it. Earlier on, you mentioned the two areas where you work that probably have the most impact on organizational learning and development is probably just stuff you do for organizational learning and development, as well as college. So secondary education. The more, the more I look at this problem, and this is sort of an aside, Debrorah, but the more I look at this problem, I mean, it's broken from Headstart programs. It's broken from preschool on up, and I'm just wondering, you know, how can organizations, do you have any ideas for how organizations can help solve this massive problem? That's going to take 20, at least 20 years to work its way through the system?

Deborah Quazzo:
Well, I think that organization—I am encouraged by, you know, the silos breaking down, right? I think that the fact that many universities who really used to repel the involvement of corporate, of the employers are now embracing employers. So we have so many great online, whether it's Western Governors or Southern New Hampshire or Arizona State or Purdue, we have so many great universities with their online programs that are serving working adults, right? And they're working directly with employers to understand and embed in curriculum what those working adults need in order to have equal access to the future. So, very encouraged by that. I’m also encouraged by, you know, even reaching down into high school where we're beginning to see, and we actually had a lot of this program at the ASU+GSV Summit this year, where we're seeing a lot of companies, I mean, places like Microsoft have been doing this for a long time with their P-TECH high schools model, but really seeing an active engagement by employers in the educational systems. Because, you know, again, if learning isn't relevant, I mean, particularly for low-income kids, if there's, I mean, you know, the abysmal results we've shown, part of is just like we've failed to prove that it's relevant to be sitting in a class or now on Zoom or whatever, to the future. And so we've got to create relevance, and I think the engagement of employers and internships and things that make it tactile are really encouraging and exciting. So I think that the more that employers get involved with higher education, with K-12 education so that we've got these, that these are a continuum as opposed to silos, I think the better. And I think, you know, bringing younger people, high schoolers, et cetera, into the realization of what work looks like and the understanding that learning is lifelong, and you can learn new things and you're going to have to learn new things for the rest of your life.

Deborah Quazzo:
It's just no more taking your degree or your high school diploma or your four-year degree or your two-year degree and filling up your gas tank, and as my partner, Michael Mel will say, you know, driving off into the future, that that's all she wrote, right? I mean that ain't gonna happen anymore. So I think the more that we can help instill that earlier and make learning fun, make it engaging and fun and real. I think that's what businesses can do. I think it's actually been—COVID interesting because employers have been sitting at home with their children. I mean, employers and employees are now very actively part of the K-12 learning process, you know, good or bad. And so I think you're going to have a lot of parents who are also employers and employees coming out of this with new views on what they should be doing. So I'm hopeful for a level of sort of employee and employer activism inspired by what they saw at home.

Stacia Garr:
I think that's an inspiring and optimistic take on what's happening. And I, and I absolutely hope you're right, Deborah.

Chris Pirie:
This is having a terrible effect on, or appears to be having a terrible effect on women in particular. There was a report out from McKinsey, I think last week that said, you know, there's been an astonishing sort of knock back of progress we've made around women in the workforce. It's pretty, that's pretty sad, but any silver linings we can find out of this year is good. Sorry, sorry to butt in!

Deborah Quazzo:
No, no, I agree. Hopefully that will even itself back out. It does prove that women do all the work, which we've always known. But I do think once it gets back to—I do have a husband who actually does half the work, but it depends how you define work—but it will be interesting to see what parents, I mean, we're already seeing, and we just invested in a company called ClassEDU founded by Michael Chasen, who was the co-founder of Blackboard and longtime CEO of Blackboard. He was at home watching his kids do Zoom, realized that Zoom is not a teaching and learning platform. So he's building on the Zoom SDK that the product that is going to, to make Zooming a teaching and learning platform, not just for K-12, but actually for higher education, actually probably has great application in the enterprise. And he will get there and it's been fascinating, the attention that's gotten. Everyone he’s showed it to has been like, the product is just rolling into beta, but everyone who has seen it is wanting to buy it. So I think you are going to see some creativity come out of this. That is good. And some innovation that will be very good for the future.

Chris Pirie:
I can hold my tongue no longer. Sorry, Deborah, who would you talk to if you were doing a series of conversations on this topic of purpose and its relationship to talent and learning? Are there any startups that you, that are doing this really well?

Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think there's a startup called Remind in the K-12 market that we invested in our first fund. The CEO there came in, he was not a founder. He came in really to turn around the business, which he's done really nicely, Brian Gray and Brian's very experienced. He ran Bleacher Report, was a early Yahoo! Executive, really talented technology and tech-talented CEO. His statistics on what they've done, he and his head of talent to turn that company from a company that was not adequately diverse. It's a decent employee for a startup. It's a decent employee size. I mean, his numbers are just jaw-dropping in terms of what he's been able to do to create a workforce at Remind that reflects racial and sexual equity. He's great at it because it is hard to come in and do that, you know, when the car's already running down the highway. Yeah. It's changing all the tires, but he's been great.

Deborah Quazzo:
I think Rachel Carlson at Guild is another great example. Obviously female CEO, female chief, her head of engineering is of woman. I think it helps when you're a female leader. I think you attract great woman probably more easily, but they've had incredible intentionality and building out, and this is a company that has grown extraordinarily quickly for an enterprise SAS business. And that has seen incredible growth over just four and a half years. And they've done that with an incredible commitment to equity and access. I think she would be great to talk to.

Stacia Garr:
Great. Well, I know where getting close on time. So Debra, I have two personal questions for you, one that we didn't share before. So you mentioned several times within GSV, you know, that you have a 50-50 representation on the on the board and a number of other statistics, but yet obviously, as you also mentioned, the percentage of female venture capitalists is very small. So I'd love to hear a little bit about kind of how you think your approach and the perspective you've brought has influenced GSV and also what you might hope to see more broadly in the VC industry.

Deborah Quazzo:
Yeah, I think that what would I like to see more broadly? I think that I do believe in the power of diversity. We actually, as a firm, while we've done incredibly well with racial diversity, we've not—sorry with sexual diversity—we have not done as well with racial diversity. That's something we've got to reverse. But I think so it's really important to be also transparent about what you've done well, what you've not done well. I think that there is, and I've been on enough boards and things that are both diverse and not diverse. And I think the quality, and I think it's just indisputable. The quality of your decision-making is better when you've got, you know, when you've got, you know, voices represented around the table that are different. Hopefully that's kind of what we've brought to the table. I think it is still a struggle to, you know, doing things like—it's still hard to raise money. We've done fine, but you know, we have a very, really nicely high-performing portfolio. It should be, you think it would get easier. It doesn't get easier. It's just human nature. It's just easier to fund or whatever people who look like you. And I think there's been a lot of lip service to this topic, to the topic of, of putting support behind female VCs and also putting support behind female founders. But I don't think the lip service has translated into reality.

Deborah Quazzo:
And I think you find that a lot of women female VCs would agree with that. There are a lot of great initiatives going on. A group called All Raise has gotten out there, you know, very visibly to support equity women and people of color in, in fund management and in venture and in funding ventures. So I think there's really good energy around it. And I don't know how long it's going to take to translate. It's hard to, if you're a limited partner, it's hard to go away from the traditional models that are successful to put, to allocate resources into new, newer, and perhaps untested people just, you know, who are, who happen to be diverse. So that's a challenge. And hopefully that challenge changes or evolves over the next, you know, afraid it's going to take 10 year. But if you look at it, for example, university endowments, you know, they don't disclose it. A number of them have done studies, including my own alma mater and, you know, their female representation and their managers—and those are not just venture, you know, all kinds of fund money managers—is like, you know, low single digits. Wow. I think pressure needs to be placed on organizations like that who are there to serve diverse students. Therefore, that should be reflected all the way through their organization.

Stacia Garr:
Yeah. Well, my final question, and this is a related, in some ways, I think, is what inspired you to do the work you do? So was there a person, an incident, an observation that inspired you to do this type of work?

Deborah Quazzo:
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I got involved, my porter in Silicon Valley, Michael Moe had written a bunch of research starting really in the mid 1990s before we worked together really identifying this education sector. So I really, I totally credit him with getting me hooked on why this would be a great area to work in professionally. And then I went from there into also doing my sort of philanthropic energy also goes here, goes into education. And it was a commitment. He had a commitment very early on that it was in this massive chunk of GDP, highly fragmented, incredibly dysfunctional, very little technology in a week management teams, and yet a really critically important problem coming back to the issue of giving all people equal access to the future. I give him, you know, incredible kudos for identifying what ultimately took longer than we would have liked, but clearly identifying why this sector should be a sector and why it should be successful and why that was important to the world that it was successful. So I think Michael inspired me there. I grew up in a family with two incredible parents who were incredibly committed in their own personal work and philanthropy to educational advancement for everybody. And so that helped, that was a lot. And then I just loved it. I mean, you know, is it more fun to go call on a company that makes breakfast cereal or is it more fun to go, you know, call on a company that's really trying to change people's lives meaningfully? And I don't mean to demean what anyone does, but it was just, in the roles that I was in as an investment banker and then ultimately an investor, it was just a lot more fun and inspiring to get out of bed. And yeah, so that's kinda how I ended up there.

Stacia Garr:
Great. Thank you. Well, if people want to learn more about you and your work how can they connect with you?

Deborah Quazzo:
You can go to the ASU+GSV Summit website if you want to watch any of the videos from our amazing summit that occurred that last two weeks, that's incredible and it's free, so you can go on and it's also pulling into—anyway, they're incredible talks. Jon Meacham on John Lewis, on his new book on John Lewis is to die for, for example. And you can get me through, I'm just [email protected] and, you know, I'm on LinkedIn and all that sort of stuff, but I'm happy to connect with anybody. We you know, we care a lot about the workforce space and its importance to the future.

Dani Johnson:
Thank you so much, Debra, thank you for your insights. It's provided a really unique point of view and we really, really appreciate it.

Deborah Quazzo:
Awesome. Thank you, guys. Talk to you later. Bye.

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TRANSCRIPT

Chris Pirie:
You're listening to ‘Learning Is the New Working,’ a podcast by the Learning Futures Group about the future of workplace learning and the people helping define it. This episode is part of our season seven, called ‘Is Purpose Working?’ It's a collaboration with Dani Johnson and Stacia Garr of RedThread Research in which we talk about purpose-driven organizations and the impact of purpose on all aspects of talent management. In this episode, Dani Johnson and I interview Celia Berenguer. She's the chief learning officer at Sanofi. Sanofi is a global life sciences company, committed to improving access to healthcare, the healthcare of communities, and to finding new solutions for patients by combining breakthrough science with advanced technology.

Celia Berenguer:
You know, was it perfect and polished and beautiful? Probably not, but it was authentic and it was real and it acknowledged what was going on. And, you know, I think it kind of made it more human. I think that that's created an opportunity for us to say what really matters and what do we really want to focus on.

Chris Pirie:
In March of 2020, Sanofi simultaneously went to work on the critical effort to help develop and manufacture an effective COVID-19 vaccine. While at the same time, flipping 110,000-strong workforce to the new realities of operating in a global pandemic. At the same time, Celia and a team had to weigh the decision as to whether to continue with a planned worldwide launch of the brand-new Sanofi University. This was a journey that involved a new CEO, a deep reflection on Sanofi's purpose and its business results, and perhaps some rethinking of what is the purpose of a corporate university in a time of great crisis. Sometime after recording this interview, Dani and I sat down with Stacia to reflect on the conversation. You'll hear some of discussion before we go into our interview with Celia Berenguer of Sanofi University.

Stacia Garr:
What I loved about it was how thoughtful and really just honest Celia was about the journey that they're on with regarding purpose. That purpose is infused within their organization, that people really believe in it. You know, she talked about the pictures of colleagues in the manufacturing sites during COVID. I think that she was really thoughtful and kind of sharing that, but then saying, Hey, we, you know, we, when I first came here, this was not a big thing. And it's increasingly a big part of how we're thinking about the learning and the resources that we're offering, but we are on this journey. It's here, but we're on this journey and bringing it into our processes and practices.

Chris Pirie:
Definitely on a change journey. And she talked about there's a new CEO there, and she also talks a little bit about how his observation was this strong sense of purpose that he picks up in the culture as he comes in and starts to go around and meet everybody, doesn't seem to be kind of resulting in the right kind of performance outcomes of the business. And so the journey is how do we connect those things more effectively?

Stacia Garr:
We've talked a bit about this dynamic of top down versus bottom up. And so it sounds to me like there was very much a bottom-up focus on purpose and that it was clearly pervaded the culture, but there wasn't kind of the, necessarily the leadership at the top to give it an embodiment of language, a vision, and that structure. And so this new CEO has kind of enabled that and then that's hyper-powering the rest of their efforts to, to reinforce and to bring it to life. If you contrast Sanofi with, you know, one of the other organizations we talked about Medtronic, you can kind of see a little bit of that, that distinction, whereas Metronic also had it baked in from the leadership at the top and that's been consistent. So you kind of feel like in some ways, maybe Sanofi is just a little bit farther behind on the journey, not necessarily less purpose-driven, but farther behind on the journey and getting it integrated. There'll be interesting if we could talk to Celia in a few years to hear where they end up.

Chris Pirie:
The other story that really popped from this conversation was you're bringing to market a brand-new corporate university slap bang in the middle of the first wave of COVID this year. And I thought it was great Celia talked about how it forced them to be more authentic, more real, and more human versus being very polished, which might have been the culture beforehand. And I thought that was really interesting.

Dani Johnson:
I also think it was interesting that she pointed to purpose as a way to make decisions about what they were going to do. So she very clearly says there are these things that we want to do, you know, but there are also these things that we need to do and these things that we really do well. How do we sort of sort through this long laundry list of things to focus on the right things, to get us to our purpose?

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. Once again, clarity in decision-making. She definitely talked about that aspect as well.

Dani Johnson:
I also liked that the way that she talked about it as sort of a unifying force, and those are my words, not hers, but working with the rest of the organization to solve much bigger problems, instead of trying to handle it just with learning or just with, you know, messaging or some of the other things that we've seen in other organizations.

Chris Pirie:
Also a good thread here on skills and talent mobility. Again, a foreshadowing of our next season, Dani, is helping people really connect to developing skills that make sense for them and their own purpose.

Dani Johnson:
I actually think that's a really interesting topic. And as we've started to do some of the research and mobility on skills, how much sort of purpose plays a role? A lot of leaders are terming it as values instead of maybe purpose, but they do it not because it's necessarily, I mean, there is a financial aspect to it, but most of them are doing it to provide a better experience or to ensure that their people are okay if they radically changed directions.

Celia Berenguer:
So my name is Celia Berenguer. I'm the chief learning officer at Sanofi, and today is the 25 of September, 2020.

Chris Pirie:
Celia, thanks so much for joining us on ‘Learning Is the New Working,’ Friday night, your time. We really appreciate that. And as you know, I'm joined by Dani because we have this amazing joint project going on to do a whole series of conversations with people around the topic of purpose-driven organizations and the implications of that for talent management. So welcome.

Celia Berenguer:
Great to be here. Happy to take part.

Chris Pirie:
We are going to start with some quick questions just to sort of sketch out what you do for people. And then Dani is going to pick up there and we're going to dive into a couple of sort of deeper topics. So first question, what part of the world do you live and work in, that might be complicated, and why?

Celia Berenguer:
So that is a complicated question for me. So I live in the UK and I've been here for the past 10 years, but I work in France. Sanofi the company I work for is based in Paris, and I travel between the UK and France on a regular basis, except for obviously under current circumstances, it's been a different pattern. I guess I grew up kind of between cultures and between countries. So it feels quite natural actually to be in a global organization like Sanofi and, you know, sort of spending my time across multiple cultures countries, et cetera. So I love it. I love where I work and I love where I live.

Chris Pirie:
This is an aside I cannot nail down your accent for probably obvious reasons. Where did you develop your accent?

Celia Berenguer:
I was born in France. I grew up primarily in Spain, and I did spend a lot of my time growing up in France and in the US, so my English is heavily influenced. I would say probably I spent a lot of time, at a lot of summers in the northeast of the United States, but I've also spent time kind of in other parts of the US, but I don't know, I guess that means that between my US time and being now 10 years in the UK, I probably have a bit of a bizarre mix.

Chris Pirie:
I can hear all those threads in there, which is great. So could you tell us what your job title is and how would you describe the work that you generally do?

Celia Berenguer:
So I'm the chief learning officer at Sanofi. And I guess what I do is try to help people grow and evolve in the way that's right for them. And for Sanofi, of course, because as chief learning officer, it's about kind of meeting our people's needs to develop and meeting the organization's needs to develop. So it is about learning and development in the organization, but it's with a big spotlight on, you know, how are we identifying what we need for our people and for the organization.

Chris Pirie:
Sanofi is a pretty well-known brand name, and we're all experts on the bio-pharma healthcare industry now, anyway, but could you just describe the business model of Sanofi and the kind of work that it does?

Celia Berenguer:
So we are a global healthcare leader. Of course, we have over 100,000 employees actually representing more than 140 nationalities across the globe. So we're a pretty diverse organization. We have 73 manufacturing sites in 32 countries. So we have, you know, quite a broad presence across the world and across our products. Our products cut across 4 major businesses: our general medicines business, our specialty care, our consumer healthcare, and of course the one that everybody's looking at at the moment, which is vaccines. And then we have obviously a big manufacturing and a big R&D function with 4 major R&D hubs around the world. So we really kind of cut straight through the value chain of the healthcare industry.

Chris Pirie:
And I assume that creates a really diverse set of skillsets of people who work for you. Can you just talk about, a little bit about the talent landscape and perhaps what's going on demographically?

Celia Berenguer:
It's really interesting actually to see how our talent landscape workforce across the world is evolving. And what's interesting about it is that you're definitely seeing different pace of change and types of changed depending on where you're looking around the world. So if I take for instance, or European workforce, you know, you have a lot of people who have been with the company for years and years and years, you know, a demographic that's more sort of traditional possibly leaning towards an older generation. And if I compare that to Asia and in particular, China, you know, there's a much higher turnover rate in somewhere like China. And obviously the demographics are very different as well. So it is quite diverse from one part of the world to another. There's a big factor at the moment, you know, with the changing landscape, how is our talent needing to evolve and what is it that we need to kind of move towards?

Celia Berenguer:
So we talk a lot about like, you know, other organizations, upskilling, reskilling our people. The organization is changing in so many ways for external reasons, you know, external factors and internal factors. So it's kind of like, how is our talent moving at the pace of all of that? I guess what's really clear is that as we think about how our talent evolves and develops, if there ever was a rule book, COVID has definitely fully thrown it out. So it's just accentuated how we, you know, we really need to think differently about what experience people need to be exposed to and how that experience contributes to things like agility and inclusion and perspectives that, you know, we're just not part of the reality. So we're now looking more at things like, you know, how are we getting clear on our skills taxonomy, that types of skills we need in the organization, and using that to be smarter about knowing what we have and how we want to evolve then than relying on kind of traditional jobs and career paths in the organization.

Chris Pirie:
Yeah, definitely. I'm sure Dani is going to want to jump into that topic as well in time. There's a couple of interesting things there. One is having a future orientation. I'm hearing that very strongly as well as this notion of the job to be done rather than job definitions that are fixed. So that's definitely an interesting trend. Can we talk a little bit about this concept of purpose? Does Sanofi have an explicit purpose statement? And if so, do you know what that is?

Celia Berenguer:
Yeah. So for the last couple of years, the sort of purpose of Sanofi has been explicitly shared as empowering life. And you'll see that if you go into our website and kind of engage with a company, that's something that's pretty present. Still, I guess, one thing to say about empowering life is that, you know, I've been in the organization for almost 3 years now. And I guess one of the things that I've definitely picked up from my colleagues around me and other people I've gotten to know and work with and visited around the world is that there's this common thread in the organization about real passion in the people, in the patients that we serve, you know, that we're here to make their lives better, longer, stronger. And that is a truth. You know, that's something that I felt empowering, like I started before I joined the company, but it's certainly something that I felt exists in the organization.

Chris Pirie:
Well, we want to get into how that all helps or hinders you in your kind of day job. Let me hand over to Dani and see if we can talk a little bit about how companies with purpose organizations, with purpose operate differently around people, if at all.

Dani Johnson:
And I would really like to start with just maybe a little bit of a broader question. You talked a lot about how the purpose is sort of felt and you're there to make lives better, longer and stronger. Can you give me some examples of how that manifests itself in sort of the day-to-day of Sanofi?

Celia Berenguer:
That's a good question. For me, one of the places I felt at a lot is actually been with the COVID crisis. So obviously, you know, we have part of our business, which is focused on vaccines, and we have a couple of vaccine candidates in the pipeline, but we're producers of a lot of other medicines for, you know, a lot of other indications. And, you know, it was amazing to me to see the dedication with which people kept, you know, our production levels really high. And we did a great thing inside the company, which was to capture that and share pictures of our colleagues and the manufacturing sites working through the pandemic while many of us were staying at home. So there's been a lot of imagery through this last crisis that I noticed. You know, I joined at a time where there was a real interest in making learning work for the organization.

Celia Berenguer:
So we did a lot of great learning in the company, but it wasn't necessarily really focused. And it wasn't clear, you know, what we were prioritizing and how it was aligned with the strategy. And as I started kind of working on this idea of Sanofi University and you know, I worked with different colleagues around the business and the people involved to kind of come up with a model and an approach. It was so interesting to me that whenever I spoke to people and we talked about, you know, what do we want learning to do for the organization? And, you know, just to get a sense of, you know, where the energy was and interests and the need, often people talked about, you know, we're here to serve the patients, you know, to get our products out there and helping others. So that, to me, Dani was what I felt personally in my day to day that it was something that, you know, when we asked questions, it consistently came up, you know, and not a lot of people connect learning with, you know, how we're making, we’re helping people get better and stronger and, you know, and live longer. So that for me was a very tangible example.

Dani Johnson:
I think that's really interesting. This is a broader talent discussion, but I'd love to dive that just a little bit. Do you think this mission or this purpose helps you prioritize and focus the programs that you go after?

Celia Berenguer:
So I would say that while empowering life and the sense of not losing sight of the patient is something that you feel in the organization. I don't know that it's been consistently used as a point of alignment and focus and prioritization. So let me explain what I mean by that From a performance perspective, Sanofi over the last few years has been, you know, struggling a bit to sort of find its place, I guess, is the best way to describe it and great products, great people. And we had our CEO arrived about a year ago, actually last September and, you know, came in with great enthusiasm and kind of spent the first hundred days going around the business and really getting to know, you know, getting to know us and getting to know the business and getting to know our customers and the environment.

Celia Berenguer:
I mean, and he's a very seasoned sort of healthcare industry professional. So obviously he knew the space, but it was fascinating because he kind of came in and said, look, I, you know, this is an incredible, he talks about hidden gems in the organization. He talks about the fact that, you know, he just sees such incredible opportunities and potential in the company and some real expertise and just an ability to do amazing things. And that doesn't always translate in our performance. And so I guess what I would say, Dani, is that there was a purpose there that was clearly alive. Were we using it in a way to really drive our strategy and our business? I'm not so sure. And I think with Paul Hudson, our CEO, has done since he's joined, has really picked up on that and said, we really need to drive our culture and our strategy and the direction that we're maximizing what we have in this company.

Celia Berenguer:
And so he's actually kicked that off at the beginning of this year to really translate that into where we focus and how are we prioritizing our business going forward. And what's the underpinning culture that we want to have to really support it. And we've become a lot more explicit about that in the last month. So it's still quite new in the organization and it's, you know, and it's being felt because it's resulted in some restructure and also in some sort of reshifting of mindsets, but it's created a lot of energy. And I think that's at least for the moment, that's something that has been tangible in the company. And now I would say, yes, we have a lot more. Like if I look at, for instance, my agenda around learning and development and, you know, how we're supporting our people in our talent in the organization, I can say I'm much clearer about, you know, how are we supporting those behaviors, where are the growth businesses, and how we're making sure that we're supporting that consistently, but also doing it in a smart way, right? It's not just, you know, kind of going after the little things, but really thinking holistically about how we want to support the business. So I guess that's the long answer to your question. And the short one is I don't think we were doing such a great job of prioritizing and achieving focus through our purpose, but I think now we're starting to.

Dani Johnson:
I love that. Yeah. It sounds like you've sort of now started to align some of those internal practices to make sure that the overall purpose of the organization is met. I'm really interested also in if you had a couple of conversations with other leaders and they talk about purpose of the individual, as well as purpose of the organization, I'd love to understand a little bit about what you all are doing to help individuals connect to that larger purpose or to align their purpose with that larger purpose.

Celia Berenguer:
Yeah, that's a really, really good question. And one part of my answer is going to be, we are focusing very strongly at the moment on helping people understand and sort of bring to life for them individually, where the organization is headed and the behaviors that underpin that. We've tied it to individual purpose because we talk about the fact that culture and thinking and feelings and beliefs that people have driving those behaviors and actions that then give you the results that you're trying to achieve as a company. So when we speak to leaders, we kind of make that distinction. And while the visible part tends to be that action or behavioral side of things, we tie it to values and individual values as much as organizational values.

Chris Pirie:
This sounds a lot like a focus on the culture of the organization and perhaps driving a shift in the culture of the organization. Would you say that's part of your kind of role as chief learning officer?

Celia Berenguer:
So it's definitely part of my role because I think everybody plays a role in shifting culture in the organization. My role is to help ensure that we can get any of the support mechanisms, development tools, et cetera, out there that can really kind of bring it to life for people. That's what matters. So I have some incredibly talented people in my team who spend a lot of time thinking about the different ways in which we want to engage with people. And I tend to talk about people more than leaders, because I think all people are leaders in organizations. So I really, you know, I think it's something that really needs to touch everybody. I think lots of people play a role. And of course at the end of the day, you only shift culture if everybody's part of it.

Chris Pirie:
All oars in the water, as we said at Microsoft.

Dani Johnson:
I think it's really interesting that you talk of culture is something that is a result of the actions that are existing in the organization, rather than the thing that you control. I think a lot of organizations think about culture as it's defined. It's on the wall, we all know what it is, therefore it's going to happen. But I love the way Sanofi is thinking about it as we need to change the internal people's systems and help people get to those behaviors that actually will change the culture here. Obviously COVID has been a huge disruption over the entire world, and I'm interested as organizations are making these changes sometimes they have to make some pretty difficult tradeoffs. Wondering if your purpose alignment and your core talent functions have had to make any tradeoffs or have had any challenges with that.

Celia Berenguer:
I guess it will probably depend who you speak to in Sanofi about tradeoffs. I would say rather than tradeoffs, I would talk about priorities and focus because I think, and maybe it's my glass-half-full approach to life where, you know, there are definitely constraints. Yeah, there's definitely constraints and not least of which, by the way, is the fact that we are in the middle of realigning our organization to be more focused from a business perspective. So that's obviously had implications on our structure. We're trying to shift culture as a company. And at the same time, you know, we have the same problem everybody else has, which is we're trying to contain costs. And especially this year, you know, where it's an exceptional year. So there's constraints we have to work with. And I think that has, Dani, forced us to make decisions about things we want to do versus things we need to do, and that we want to do really well, rather than having a massive laundry list of things that we want to kind of get out there.

Celia Berenguer:
And I'll tell you one thing that's been really interesting. Historically, we're an organization that likes to do things really well, really polished. Everything is beautiful and shiny and, you know, and it looks fantastic, and then COVID hits and suddenly we're scrambling to get stuff out there. And, you know, we launched Sanofi University, our corporate university, and literally, in a week's time had to shift from an original plan to a, right, everybody's going to be dialing in from their part of the world at home. So what are we going to do to kind of engage people? And, you know, was it perfect and polished and beautiful? Probably not, but it was authentic and it was real and it acknowledged what was going on. And, you know, I think it kind of made it more human. And so I think that that's created an opportunity for us to say what really matters and what do we really want to kind of then focus on? And so when people tell me, you know, we have to reduce our budget in L&D, I say, okay, well, how can we be smarter about where our L&D budgets even sit and who's making decisions about them and how are we making choices for Sanofi rather than leaving things to happen at very sort of, you know, local levels. And, you know, some people would call that a tradeoff. I call it an opportunity to look at the problem differently and see how we can make it work for us.

Dani Johnson:
The other thing that I really like about that statement, Celia, is you're working with the rest of the organization to solve a much bigger problem than the one that you have right in front of you on your plate. And I think as the pandemic has washed over the world, we're seeing more and more of that. The statement you made about some things being sloppier than you would like them, or maybe not as polished, definitely, definitely resonates with us.

Dani Johnson:
We’d love to go into maybe a few more questions about COVID because we think it's very brave that you launched a corporate university during COVID. Tell us what that was like.

Celia Berenguer:
So, first of all, we're sort of in the middle of transitioning towards a holistic corporate university. So there's a couple of principles that we hold for Sanofi University. The first is to help you build the skills that you need for today and for tomorrow. So it's very much focused on skills and how you use the corporate university to kind of identify what's going to help you in your career in your life, you know, where your interests are. The second principle is learn where and when you want. So obviously this is all about it being multi-channel and digital and mobile and all of that good stuff. And the third one is for Sanofi by Sanofi. So it's learning that reflects what the company is liking and needing, but it also reflects our own voices. So in some respects, we've been working on those three principles since before COVID, but it almost kind of made them resonate even more because with COVID, everybody's realized the world is changing at an unprecedented pace, but now it was like a flip overnight.

Celia Berenguer:
So it really kind of put a spotlight on how do I think about my skills and, you know, digital skills being kind of one of the things that really started bubbling up in the sense that—or virtual skills, right?—in the sense of how do I suddenly work in a 100% virtual team or the reality of that change. The learn everywhere, you know, when and where you want just became a reality, right? And we have pictures of people waiting in the line to get into a supermarket in Indonesia, you know, listening to podcasts or doing an e-learning on their mobile. So it just totally became a reality. And then, for Sanofi by Sanofi, really, it was about making it real for us. And, you know, it's funny because one of the trends we've seen in L&D is, you know, there used to be a lot of custom-built learning that was being done.

Celia Berenguer:
And we think about the early days, and then we went from there to curation. So we bought a lot of off-the-shelf stuff and tried to weave it together. And now it's more about democratizing learning and letting kind of learning come from anywhere and everywhere. So, I mean, we're definitely on that journey and still figuring out how that's all going to fit for us, but at least it's now kind of a tangible thing that we want to aspire to and bring different voices in. And so all of that, I think made it really relevant to launch a corporate university in the middle of the COVID pandemic. And then another magical sort of alignment of the planets happened, which is, you know, when I did a little heads up to our executive committee saying, Hey, just a reminder, next week, we're going to launch Sanofi University’s series of webcasts for all of our people around the world, you know, really excited, and it'll be great to get the offer out there. And, Paul Hudson, our CEO sends a little note saying, Hey, how can we really do something exciting for our people learning? And so we kind of had a chat and, you know, I said, look, if we really want to stretch the idea of investing in yourself and investing in learning, especially if you're stuck at home and maybe you have more time on your hands for some people that wasn't the case, invest in learning.

Celia Berenguer:
And so we launched this challenge to the entire organization, which is, this was in March. We said, Hey, do we think that by June accumulatively, we can achieve a million hours of learning between, you know, all of our people around the world. And we got to, you know, I think the last number I heard when we were looking at the numbers in June was 860,000 hours, which wasn't the 1 million, but I gotta say, I was like floored by the level of dedication and investment that we saw from our people. And we had a Yammer community and people were posting their certificates and taking pictures of what they'd done and talking about what they learned. And it was just phenomenal and exciting. And so I think, Dani, what seemed like a really scary thing when it was like, do we really want to lunch Sanofi University, actually turned out to be the perfect timing and we got incredible visibility and support around it.

Chris Pirie:
That's a great story. Amazing. Congratulations on that. And that's good. And I think that, I think your timing turned out to be really impeccable. I mean, we've seen engagement levels around learning, as you pointed out, people realized that the world is changing. And one way to prepare yourself for that is to, is to smarten up. And I think we're seeing all kinds of data on all kinds of learning platforms that really illustrate a similar trend. So I think your timing was just great. I'm interested in a couple of things that you said that one, I like this ‘for Sanofi by Sanofi’ idea. And I want to just kind of probe on that a little bit. To me, that means culture of learning people, learning from each other, collaborative social forms of learning. How do you think about the future developing? And let's just pick ‘for Sanofi by Sanofi,’ for example, how do you see that playing out? What experiments do you want to run around that principle?

Celia Berenguer:
So that's a great question and something that actually I'm very passionate about. So there's a couple of things for me in the ‘for Sanofi by Sanofi’ that are really critical. And the first is that, as you said, there's a today and there's a tomorrow around that principle. The today, for me, is explaining to people that things like what learning is available is going to become more and more reflective of what people are actually using. So I realized that it's like a really basic concept, but you know, a lot of organizations aren't sort of tuning their learning offer to where the interest and the time is being spent. And I want people to be able to engage with what's available to them because they know that it's something that's reflective of what the organization is using. And I also want it to be filled with voices from within the organization.

Celia Berenguer:
We hold lots of expertise inside Sanofi. So, you know, why would we need to go other places to learn from, you know, the people, the great people that we have inside Sanofi? So what that's translated into is we're now being a lot more deliberate at looking at where people are spending their time and what are the areas, what does that start telling us about the areas and interests that people have? And that's, you know, one lens that we're applying. We're also making it a lot easier for leaders to create podcasts or create videos that they want to share with a broader organization. So there's sort of support tools and little how-to's to help people do that so that we can really start mixing in different voices. But as you said, Chris, for me, the real, the real opportunity is that sort of full democratization of learning and that learning is happening between people within communities and that we're creating ways for people to find each other and learn from each other and share with each other that start aligning to kind of the different needs that start bubbling up in the organization.

Celia Berenguer:
And also, you know, that we can make really explicit how it connects to things like our strategy and our culture. So we're not there yet. We're actually starting to take an even deeper look at our sort of learner-centric approach in learning and how do we want to move into different technologies to help inform that, but it's still early days. And the message at the moment is really about making it tangible and real for Sanofi. But I do want to move in the direction of kind of social learning and connections and community learning, because that's what makes a learning organization really agile.

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. It's really interesting. I think about the, just like, I mean, you're a science company, right? And science is about community solving problems together and learning together. And I'm sure there's a lot that you could pull on from the sort of scientific aspect of what your company does that might provide some models for you. Very, very interesting.

Chris Pirie:
I was going to ask a little bit about how you connect generally with the rest of the talent functions in Sanofi. Are you part of a talent system, or do you think of learning as a discreet thing? What's your point of view on that?

Celia Berenguer:
I definitely think we're part of a system, whether that's happening explicitly or not. You know, there's a connection because the moment you're talking about a talent, you're talking about talent development and the moment you're talking about talent development, you know, you're talking about learning. So it's all connected. At the moment, the way the system works in Sanofi is we have our talent management system and definition. So our high-potential definition and all that good stuff owned by our talent team. And that intersects with us in the way that we're two things probably very concretely. The first is we're getting data from our talent teams about sort of profiles, needs, et cetera, to help inform, you know, how we're fine tuning, what are the different development solutions that we're trying to achieve the second way is specifically how we're making explicit the idea that you own your own careers.

Celia Berenguer:
So as part of our talent narrative, we really want people to kind of step in to how they want to develop as talent in the organization and really kind of making lots of things available to people and seeing what's helping them because the underlying principle there, and we've created a lot of virtual and sort of self-driven learning solutions, which can, you know, can take lots of different forms like e-learning, but sometimes it can be synchronous sessions with different members of the community. But the thinking there that, you know, different people might have very different needs and it's actually better to have a lot available and have people start choosing and seeing where they gravitate rather than being prescriptive of, ‘Oh, you know, you're in this part of the nine box. And so we're going to put you on this program.’ So those are the ways that we're explicitly connected to the talent system today. And obviously the idea is that we'll continue to evolve that particularly as our skills definition starts becoming more explicit. We're in the process of trying to create a more aligned skills taxonomy across the organization. So, you know, how do we use that to inform us what we have, what talent we have, where and how it can move? You know, where are the opportunities?

Chris Pirie:
Do you see a future with the talent kind of flows a little bit more easily around the organization and L&D playing a role in that?

Celia Berenguer:
Yes, I guess there's two. I'm hesitating because one of the things that's really interesting about what I'm starting to see when I look at skills taxonomies that are bubbling up in Sanofi is that we're starting to look for really deep expertise in certain areas. And, you know, like data analytics is one of those areas, but data analytics applies in a lot of parts of the business. So today, it doesn't feel like the flow is there. And I'm really interested in seeing how we can help movement happen across parts of the business that have historically not been, you know, we've not seen that type of movement happen before. I think the pace of how things are changing is so fast that I do believe it will become more possible to do that. And L&D roles in that? I mean, to be honest, for me, it's two things. I think L&D plays a critical role because I think we need to make it easy for people to choose, to develop skills in skills that may not naturally sit in their current role.

Celia Berenguer:
So there's something about just making that possible that I think is a critical role for L&D because we won't know, we won't have everybody on our radar and we won't know when people have the desire and capability to kind of really build another area of knowledge or, you know, reskill in a particular way. And at the same time, I think given how the organization is shifting, I think, L&D plays a really important role in saying we have a massive gap in these types of skills. What do we need to do to close that gap so that we don't have to rely a hundred percent on buying versus building talent in the organization?

Dani Johnson:
This is my soapbox right now, Celia. I'm talking a lot about skills and mobility and sort of the connection between them. And I think it's great that you made that connection between making sure that people have access to build the skills that they want, and not just the skills in their current ladder and that mobility, it seems like. I love that you're there, you're starting to understand the skills that you have in the organization so that you can also understand the holes that you have, which gives a better idea of, you know, where people can move. And I love how this is a discussion about purpose, but we're talking about skills mobility, because you've connected sort of the individual purpose of the individual—that sounded weird—but the purpose of the individual to the purpose of the organization. And I think that's where we're going to see organizations go, but also, where we are going to see success come is when we can overlap the purpose of the individual with the purpose of the organization.

Celia Berenguer:
And I think this is where I'm quite curious about how we can take L&D one step further. And, you know, there's a lot of tech out there, you know, using artificial intelligence and lots of mechanisms to read people and read organizations and try to make, you know, connect dots. Because my belief is that I, as an individual, may not be thinking all the time about my skills. I mean, that's initially the thing I do, I think about that a lot, but I guess it's my role, but you know, most people don't. And so obviously we talk a lot about now things like learning and the flow of work or learning in the flow of life, or, you know, how the intersection between what I'm explicitly doing to learn and develop versus what I'm doing in my sort of day-to-day activities is blurring.

Celia Berenguer:
I feel like people need help to connect those dots and it comes from my value, like the value set that I hold, right? Because depending on what I want in life and what I think in life is going to drive choices that I make around development. And I think that if we can use tech to help make that sort of real and tangible and possible for people, it will be awesome. And right now, the best opportunities are probably using things like learner experience platforms that are making some of those connections between skills and individuals and opportunities. But I hope it will continue to evolve even more than that.

Dani Johnson:
Yeah, I really do too. We've seen some really interesting technologies that are connecting data from everywhere to give the individual and the organization much more information about the skills that they have. And I think you're right. I think data is empowering. So when we push it down to individuals, they're the ones that are one, most motivated to do something and two, most empowered to do something about it. And so I'm really excited to see where that goes.

Chris Pirie:
I, on the other hand, worry about taxonomies because I think they can be huge time sinks. And I think there's a lot of complexity around the appropriate level of granularity. I do think AI can pick up on trends, you know, just looking across unstructured data and activity to pick up on trends that are useful, but I think it's still immature.

Dani Johnson:
Yeah. I think there's a big discussion now out there in the data space and in the learning space about ontologies versus taxonomies, and Chris, I've got lots of papers to send if you’re interested in learning about sort of theory behind that.

Celia Berenguer:
I'm interested in that too. Because we're in the process of building this huge creative skills library and I'm like, and you know, I get it because we need to kind of have alignment, but I'm with you, Chris. It's kind of like, you know, you've done all this work and the moment you hit send, it's already outdated. And then you hear, ‘Oh, now we can't touch it for the next whatever years,’ and you’re like, ‘Really? because, you know, next week we're going to need different skills.’

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. That's exactly the pace of change.

Chris Pirie:
We always ask people on the podcast about their personal sense of purpose, even before we started to talk about the purpose economy and purpose as a factor in organizations. And I'm just curious, Celia, as to why you do the work that you do. Was there somebody or something or some experience that got you on this track or are you desperate to get out of it?

Celia Berenguer:
No, I love what I do. There wasn't anybody in particular, Though I think because I grew up being put in really different environments and different countries and having to kind of learn my way around those different environments in different countries, I think it just automatically made me fascinated with the ability we have to learn and grow and have a richness as individuals from that development. And I've worked in several organizations, global organizations, and different industries. I have had the luck to be a consultant with companies, you know and worked for companies across the world. I've worked in business schools. So I've seen like lots of different environments and, you know, one of the things I've seen is really fantastic leadership and the impact it has and not so fantastic leadership. And I believe that is something anybody can learn, you know, in that specific to leadership, because I feel like, you know, there's a massive opportunity there, but I guess that's still with me. And, you know, it's to the extent that I actually spend part of my personal time as a trustee of a nonprofit in the UK called Ambition Institute, which is focused on developing skills of all sorts, including leadership in our teachers, because you know, great teachers with great leadership skills create great opportunities for the kids. So I'm pretty passionate about it.

Chris Pirie:
That’s crystal clear. Hey, thank you so much for your time today and your insights. Great job on launching the university in the pandemic. That's a story, and get back to work on that vaccine, if you can, for us, that would be awesome.

Celia Berenguer:
Absolutely. Thanks so much. It's really great speaking to both of you. Thanks for inviting me.

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TRANSCRIPT

Chris Pirie :
You're listening to ‘Learning Is the New Working,’ a podcast by the Learning Futures Group about the future of workplace learning and the people helping define it. This episode is another of our collaborations with RedThread Research in a season that we call ‘Is Purpose Working?’

Clint Kofford:
Johnson & Johnson has long been a purpose-based organization, and the story of our founders and what they were trying to achieve and to accomplish was certainly much more about purpose and broad impact in the world than it ever was about profits.

Chris Pirie :
That was Clint Kofford. He's the global head of the Performance Institute at Johnson & Johnson. Johnson & Johnson is the largest, most broadly based healthcare company in the world and one of only a handful of companies that's been successful for over a century of operations. Their story illustrates that being purpose driven is by no means a new or recent phenomenon. We're starting this episode with the debrief conversation by way of an executive summary for you. I sat down with Stacia and Dani to talk about the conversation we had with Clint. And I started by asking Statia to give us some context regarding Johnson & Johnson and its significance to a conversation about purpose and talent.

Stacia Garr :
J&J is in many ways, one of the best-known organizations when it comes to purpose. They have their credo, which started in 1943, which was developed in 1943. And it was developed by Robert Wood Johnson the Second, and really came from this place of kind of human dignity. He actually said when he first developed it, that he thought that the whole matter of dignity and employment boils down to every worker from the chairman of the board to the office boy or sweeper is a human being and that they are endowed with this ego. And that in some ways modern business had reduced the size of that ego, but that it was actually critical for an organization to enable that ego. Then that sense of I am a person who matters. And so when he developed this credo, he was thinking about that concept starting first with the patients, doctors, the nurses, the mothers and fathers, but then going through all the different stakeholders and really fundamentally coming back to the sense of dignity and that their purpose as an organization was to connect back to that sense of dignity.

Stacia Garr:
I think it's also interesting, you know, he even anticipates the idea that some people might say, well, you know, this isn't what a business is about. And the credo was actually developed before J&J went public. And so it was a very clear statement to potential shareholders that this is where we stand. This is, these are our values. And then he actually put into the end of the credo, he said, if we put our customers first and followed through on our other responsibilities, I assure you the stockholders will be well-served. I think it's a beautiful way to kind of pull it all together. And again, to recognize that dignity of people.

Chris Pirie:
We think of this purpose as being a new concept because of all the recent news around the Business Roundtable. But in fact, organizations have operated from this point of perspective for many years. And if anything, the ’70s and Milton Friedman focus on shareholder primacy is kind of a blip that I find that very interesting and comforting maybe.

Stacia Garr:
Yeah, I think it is interesting and comforting. That said, I think that there has long been a focus on an efficiency mindset of capitalism. So if you go back to a book that we started the series talking about, Chris, ‘The Enlightened Capitalist,’ James O'Toole makes the point that, you know, these purpose-driven organizations have often been anomalies, whether you're talking about Robert Owen or the founders of Unilever. So it hasn't, the idea isn't new, but the idea that it should be widespread or widely adopted is not necessarily firmly established, shall we say, even, you know, starting with the 1700s. But I do think that this ultra focus on the shareholder is a blip because I think that the general mindset in many instances, certainly not all is particularly when you look at the industrialists with the 1920s, but in many instances, it isn't over-focused. And I think maybe we're correcting back.

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. And also, this idea that they're in opposition, that you can, you know, you can't have both together and that's clearly being reexamined. A couple of things from our conversation with Clint that was really interesting to me. One was this Human Performance Institute that he runs and how the physical, emotional, and mental energies come together. And he talked about spiritual energy as really quite amazing.

Stacia Garr:
When he said spiritual, he immediately then said, ‘which for me means purpose.’ He came immediately connected spiritual to purpose. And the point that he made, I think there was that you can have these other capabilities, you know, the mental, the physical, et cetera, but until you align them and have that already, you don't achieve that next level of performance with those most successful people were doing. And that was in some ways, a beautiful way of explaining much of what we've been talking about, which is that enablement and that alignment of purpose is that thing that enables that higher level. We've been talking about organizational performance and he was talking about individual, but really that higher level of performance.

Chris Pirie:
He also said, this is another theme that I'm getting from all of these conversations to keep coming back to this is, that is the credo comes in super handy when we have to make decisions. Purpose brings clarity.

Dani Johnson:
I thought one of the interesting things that he's doing with that Institute is he's not just focusing on the mental. So most organizations think of sort of purpose as a mental exercise, but he brought in this idea of paying attention to diet and paying attention to weight and equipping the people in the organization with tools to take care of those things as well. So they're not just worried about the mental aspect of their folks or the people that they serve. They're worried about the entire person.

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. Shipping out these advanced tools to people's homes in the COVID in order to keep that focus on your physical wellbeing as well as your mental wellbeing.

Stacia Garr:
I think this was one of the clearest examples we saw from somebody of a connection between individual purpose and what the organization was enabling. So that career planner that he mentioned, and then tying all of that back to the credo. So we say in the credo that we need to have a sense of security and purpose in our jobs. And so we're having this conversation with people about their purpose and then connecting that to their career aspirations. I just found that so remarkable in almost like the Holy Grail of what we've been looking for in these conversations of how do you take a concept and make it rigorous and something individuals can actually connect to.

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. And a very clear role for L&D in this whole conversation and this argument, that real clear tactic. The one other thing I thought was interesting in the conversation was a little bit countertrend to what I see, and that is they're taking this performance Institute and they're focusing it inwards in and quite a lot of companies right now are taking their learning engines and using them to engage with external stakeholders, customers, and partners. They're obviously very, very focused on turning this to get their own performance and where it needs to be. I thought was kind of interesting too.

Dani Johnson:
What do you make of that, Chris?

Chris Pirie:
I was surprised. I think he says in the conversation that they're going to offer it to some strategic partners. And like I say, it's a little bit countertrend, and it'd be interesting to see how that plays out.

Dani Johnson:
I think it's countertrend, but I wonder if that's where we're going. I wonder if the pendulum is swinging back and they're just a little bit ahead of the curve.

Chris Pirie:
Could be. He does also talk about access to talent and more, less traditional ways to access talent at one point in our conversation, which I thought was quite interesting that he's thinking about that too, when he's thinking about the future.

Dani Johnson:
Yeah. I've actually talked to a couple of people from J&J since then, and they mentioned the same thing. They're trying to figure out how to not just take care of the talent that has a W2, but also the talent that they borrow from external sources.

Chris Pirie:
Well, this is all about our next season, isn't it? And skills and skill models, skill access models.

Stacia Garr:
May I ask maybe a counterpoint? Because you both were saying that it's not on trend, but maybe a different interpretation. It says very on trend in that Dani, you and I have been talking about the integration of learning performance engagement, et cetera. And maybe because they combined their talent function with this Human Performance Institute. And as you said, that Institute is looking at the whole person. Maybe it's actually just a little bit more forward-thinking in that holistic view of what's happening with employees and bringing it all together in a meaningful way that also includes, you know, leadership and wellbeing. So maybe in that way, it's very, very on-trend. Yeah.

Chris Pirie:
I completely buy that. And I just think that generally this notion of having a learning function that is customer or partner focused and then turning it to point almost exclusively internal that's what's a little bit different from other models that I'm seeing.

Stacia Garr:
But it's kind of an interesting leverage question, isn't it? Because if you think about external, there's a limit potentially on the leverage that they're getting from those resources being externally focused and that being the amount of revenue that they're bringing in through that team and effectively, they're saying if we turn that inside the revenue that we're going to be able to generate by making our own people more effective is much greater than we were with this as an externally facing unit that have to run its own P&L. So maybe it's just a really big bet on them.

Chris Pirie:
Yeah. Very, very, very good point. And I think also the trend towards engaging customers and partners is not necessarily driven as a revenue generating activity, which this was, right? So that might be something that's a little bit different.

Stacia Garr:
Yeah. I bet you it's not at all. I think that's entirely a kind of a relationship thing and maybe an extension of purpose, you know. When you think about back to their credo, you know, all these different groups, these strategic partners are very clearly a part of their community. When you talk about we're responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well.

Chris Pirie:
Great conversation, a very interesting guy and clearly purpose-driven organization. Exemplary.

Stacia Garr:
Yeah, I think we were, we were lucky to get kind of, one of—we started this season talking about who we'd most like to talk to. And I think any of these kind of standard bearer organizations, a purpose was at the top of our list or it should have been. And so I feel lucky that we were able to have the conversation.

Clint Kofford:
So my name is Clint Kofford. I am the global head of the Human Performance Institute at Johnson & Johnson. And today is September 24.

Chris Pirie:
We all start with a question about what part of the world you live in, Clint, and why do you live and work there?

Clint Kofford:
So I live in north central New Jersey, about 60 minutes from New York City. And I live here, you know, predominantly because of my job. So I work for Johnson & Johnson. That's located in New Brunswick, New Jersey is where our headquarters are.

Chris Pirie:
How would you describe the kind of work that you do?

Clint Kofford:
I have the responsibility and privilege really of leading all of our enterprise development efforts. And so what that primarily focuses on is manager and leadership development at all of our levels. So everything from our individual contributors that would come in and need learning to grow and develop in their careers all the way up to our most senior executives. And again, would be focused in the areas like growth programs or capabilities and skills that would help people grow, management capability, leadership development but also enterprise skills like digital and data science where we're leaning in. And we don't own those exclusively, but partner with a number of our kind of stakeholders across the enterprise to bring to life these capabilities for Johnson & Johnson.

Chris Pirie:
Now, there can't be many people on the planet who are not familiar with the brand Johnson & Johnson, but can you just kind of in case someone's been under a rock, could you describe the business model and then how the Human Performance Institute sort of fits into that?

Clint Kofford:
Johnson & Johnson is the largest and most diversified healthcare company in the world. And we have three big sectors that we operate in and that's the pharmaceutical sector, the medical device sector, and consumer health caresector.

Chris Pirie:
And the Institute's role in all that?

Clint Kofford:
Yeah, so the Human Performance Institute was originally founded over just over 30 years ago by two individuals, Dr. Jack Groppel and Dr. Jim Loehr. And at the time they were at the forefront of their fields and sports physiology and sports psychology, and they were studying tennis athletes. And what they realized was what separated the number one tennis athletes from the rest was, you know, a combination of practices that help them really hone their, how they use their physical, mental, and emotional energy to bring about their spiritual energy, which is their purpose. So these kind of guiding principles of energy management of resilience of character have really launched into opportunities to develop corporations in what they called for many years, the corporate athlete, and the Human Performance Institute was a standalone entity. It was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2008. And for the first 12 years, in Johnson & Johnson, was a commercial business for us.

Clint Kofford:
It operated as part of our healthcare sector as part of our health and wellness set of businesses and has done a tremendous job for us in building brand equity with other companies, helping to teach and broaden the skillsets of energy management and resilience across many, many companies. So we have clients that span all industries and nonprofits and for-profit companies. But we made the decision, the strategic decision, early this year to make the Human Performance Institute really focus much more internally than ever before. And while obviously we had been taking advantage of its programs, we merged the legacy Human Performance Institute with our talent development function, so that it became truly our new brand for learning and development at Johnson & Johnson. And now provides us with this holistic view of what leadership really is and what leaders need to do and how to develop not only the capabilities, but the capacity and the character to lead. And so that's what we're really focused on now is focusing primarily on our employees internally with all the amazing things that the Institute has done. And then our strategic customers will continue to be served as we move forward. And we're ending our commercial operations, our general commercial operations, at the end of 2020.

Chris Pirie:
Oh, that's really interesting. So, so you are flipping from having an external focus to being a hundred percent focused on J&J employees.

Clint Kofford:
Correct. Well, I mean, not a hundred percent. I mean, we, again, we'll still service our strategic customers. So these would be, you know, in the pharmaceutical space, these would be some of the insurance groups, medical device space. This is a hospital systems in the consumer space, this is, you know, the CVSs and Walmarts and Walgreens of the world and so on. So there's still some external focus for sure, but I mean, it's kind of the equivalent of, you know, the Disney Institute flipping from being focused externally to coming inside and really trying to drive massive culture change within the business.

Dani Johnson:
Just out of curiosity, Clint. This is Dani. How, why was that decision made? What drove that decision?

Clint Kofford:
Well, I think there's a desire for us to better, well, one—I think in this war, the future, with the future of work and all the trends that drive around, you know, are kind of showing, you know, the importance of purpose and the importance of leadership development. We realized we had an amazing asset on our hands that was not doing as much good internally as it was externally. And at the same time we had an opportunity to some of our internal programs and the positioning of our offerings. And so being able to combine these gives us a platform that allows us to do, you know, a lot more good when we've got now a facility based in Orlando. So in some ways, you know, it's to use the GE analogy, right? This is, it's kind of a smaller version of Crotonville, but it's all geared around, you know, the holistic person.

Clint Kofford:
So it's not just facility with a bunch of classrooms. I mean, this facility is designed to be able to allow us to run our performance program, which requires, you know, that people participate in, you know, exercises and, you know, we help guide them through different ways and means that they can increase their physical energy. We talk and teach a lot about how to eat right and how that drives energy and the quality of energy. And also, you know, some of the health assessments that we're able to run through that facility. So there's a lot of, you know, benefits that we're going to get internally by having the intellectual property, the facilities, the brand, the process excellence of that the Human Performance Institute brings.

Chris Pirie:
Can you talk a little bit about the population in J&J? How many people work there, kind of job roles and what are the demographic trends that you have?

Clint Kofford:
Yeah, so we have about 135,000 employees across the world. Roughly half would be in our supply chain organization. We're in all the major countries and all regions. So, I mean, we are truly a, I would call it a global organization, not just a multinational organization. And in terms of demographics, and then I think the reality is that we're, I feel like we're very similar to other global multinational companies in the sense that we are moving, and I've seen evolution from, you know, this focus on the full-time employee to growing numbers of, you know, contractors. And I see in the future, you know, the move towards, you know, gig workers and kind of more flexibility as our talent wants and expects different opportunities and flexibility from Johnson & Johnson. And certainly the business wants to take advantage of that.

Clint Kofford:
So, you know, I see us moving from the talent management space or the traditional talent management space into something more like talent access, right? And how do we always make sure that we're finding that the best and the brightest for the work that's at hand? And that may come directly from Johnson & Johnson, and it may come from partnerships and relationships that are adjacent to Johnson & Johnson.

Chris Pirie:
Oh, that's really interesting. And you alluded to this a number of times already. It's pretty clear that the company operates with a clear sense of purpose and mission. Can you just lay that out for us?

Clint Kofford:
Yes. So Johnson & Johnson has long been a purpose-based organization. And I would venture to say, we're probably the original purpose-based organization. I don't have data or facts to kind of back that up, but the story of our founders and what they were trying to achieve and to accomplish was certainly much more about purpose and broad impact in the world than it ever was about profits.

Dani Johnson:
We’ve been talking to quite a few people who've done some research on purpose over the summer, and especially how COVID has affected that purpose. We found that purpose is a little bit flexible in some organizations when it comes to large, large disasters. Your credo is really interesting to me. It's always been really interesting to me, but just hearing you talk about it where you're basically saying, we must do this, we must do this. We must do this. Doctors, employees.

Clint Kofford:
Yeah. So it's our doctors, nurses, patients, and our employees that are the communities, and then our shareholders.

Dani Johnson:
If you do all those things, then shareholders should be taken care of, which I think is a really interesting way of looking at it. We see a lot of organizations proclaim to be purpose-driven, but when it comes right down to it, profit comes first. Talk to me about how that credo sort of makes itself known in the culture.

Clint Kofford:
Yeah. So when I interviewed three years ago, I mean, that was a big question that I was asking as well, because I think all of us have been in or have friends that work in companies where they have, you know, grandiose mission statements and whatnot, but they kind of live on the wall and that's about it. And I mean, I will say that it's hard to find a facility in a room where you are not going to find the credo hung prominently on display. But no, our credo really comes alive in how we make decisions on a daily basis. And, you know, I think front and center in everything that's going on in 2020, both from the health pandemic, as well as the pandemic of social injustice and racial inequalities, Johnson & Johnson has, you know, made decisions that are based in our credo around what we need to do.

Clint Kofford:
You know, we a line from our credo says, you know, we must respect the diversity and dignity of our employees. And I think it's, what's happened this summer, you know, with the social injustices has forced us to have, you know, more deep conversations with ourselves and with our vendors around what are we doing and how do we ensure that we are living up fully to our credo. And we are one of the best and constantly recognized in the world of diversity and inclusion for the efforts that we're making, but we're not satisfied with that, and believe that the continued need to live to this line in the credo, as well as many others. And, you know, another piece of work that I can cite this year is that we've come up with a purpose and career planner. So it's a body of work that allows our employees to be able to step back and think about what is their purpose and how does that really align with Johnson & Johnson, with their jobs.

Clint Kofford:
And we believe that that is helping us fulfill the credo as well. You know, we have a line again in paragraph two, it says our employees must have a sense of security, fulfillment, and purpose in their jobs. You know, so on top of traditional methods of engagement surveys and things that we would do to be measuring these, we’re out there actively trying to have conversations with our employees, help our managers have great conversations with their employees around what their skillsets are and how do we help them navigate this giant organization, but an organization with a big heart that wants to help people find this fulfillment and purpose. And, you know we're not naive. We know that the greater productivity, greater results happen when people find meaning and purpose in their roles. And so it's really kind of a win-win.

Dani Johnson:
I think this is particularly interesting because engagement has been such a big discussion in the last five or six years. And most of the engagement surveys that I read are, Hey, are you happy? The whole goal is to determine whether an employee is happy or not. I'm imagining that because of your credo and because of your purpose, your engagement survey may look a little bit different than others, getting to the heart of, you know, how do you feel purpose in your work rather than are you happy with what you're doing?

Clint Kofford:
No, I'd like to think so. I mean, I think we also have room to continue to tweak and fine tune, you know, how we ask some of these questions, but we definitely are interested in more than just the kind of typical engagement questions.

Dani Johnson:
And kind of, along with that, Clint, the, I mean, HR is involved in putting people practices into place and organizations. How does your purpose drive some of those aspects differently than they would in other organizations?

Clint Kofford:
That's where probably the credo comes in the most because we have our priorities in terms of what we need to do and how we need to do that. And so I think, you know, really just you having, you know, that people lens on our business and being able to use that as a kind of a balance to some of the business decisions that we make is really kind of what role HR plays. And, you know, I don't think anybody would say that we've always gotten it right, but we probably get a right most of the time. And certainly, I've learned from, you know, times and moments when we haven't got it as right. And I think part of the purpose of something like the credo is that there's also no clear-cut answer, right? And we use it as a set of guiding principles that help drive debate and discussion around what the right path forward is. These things do have to balance out, and I don't know that one shareholder or stakeholder in the credo can outweigh the others. And so it's awesome weighing out.

Chris Pirie:
It's not like a simple tool to help you make complex decisions really simple, but I'm interested in sort of coming in as a talent professional from the outside. And you think about the kind of suite of functions that a talent professional does in a hiring and retaining and developing and performance managing and all those kinds of things. What's your take on how this strong sense of purpose and in the culture of this organization, does it help any of those things particularly? Is there one of those functions where it makes a huge difference or even in functions where it makes things more complicated?

Clint Kofford:
I think we're trying to fully live into a lot of that a bit more. So I think, you know, I mean, certainly you can come to get into functions like HR and, you know, there may be probably very stereotypical of many HR functions, people that are very passionate about developing and growing other people and helping them to be their best. And they could go to our global community impact team. And I'm sure, you know, find people that are extremely passionate about how they represent Johnson & Johnson and how Johnson & Johnson can help, you know, some of these nonprofits and, you know, expand our influence and in parts of the world that maybe not be able to afford or as readily afford some of the things that we do. But I think, you know, one of the opportunities that I saw was coming in from the outside was that we talk and you feel so much about purpose, but you didn't see it as much in our processes and strategies as I would have expected.

Clint Kofford:
And so we have been on a journey to do that. And so, you know, one of the big strategies that we have in the, in the development space is this notion of a personalized career path. And how do we help create genres of careers or career archetypes that our people can begin pursuing? You know, I think with the democratization oof information in social media and mobile phones and whatnot, I think people have more occasions to question and to learn and to try and decide like what they want to be when they grow up. I think we're all kind of trying to continue to answer that and those questions and, you know, in a company, you have so many different avenues that you can be pursued. And some people are very clear from the very beginning about what that is and that North Star gets set out and, and they just want to know what is the path to get there?

Clint Kofford:
And others are looking for, you know, a variety of experiences and trying to kind of navigate the organization. So what we're trying to do is provide some avenues for those that are cleric can pursue those, whether that's being an expert and being valued having that role of an expert being valued across the enterprise, or being a very broadly based commercial or enterprise leader or somewhere in between. And that, you know, there's also the opportunities to kind of declare where you were at based on what your purpose is. And if that also necessitates a change. There are implications. You can't automatically go from having a depth of expertise to being a broad, you know, enterprise commercial leader. And so there, there may be other experiences that are required to get there, but if your purpose is changed, who are we not to be able to help you achieve that? And I think as we’re more honest with our talent and their aspirations, I think they could be more honest with us about what it is they want and how we can help them find that purpose of meaning.

Chris Pirie:
How are people responding to this?

Clint Kofford: I think people are excited we're in the earlier stages of trying to truly scale this. So lots of work ahead of us in truly kind of making this a big part of the fabric of development at Johnson & Johnson. But I mean, so far through the work that we've done on these on the purpose and career planner and some associated workshops like we are getting you have we have received a tremendous response and are struggling in some ways to keep up with the demand that is coming from that tool.

Chris Pirie :
It's really interesting. We talked to a gentleman called Aaron Hurst, who wrote a book on purpose, and as I've been researching this, a lot of companies have come to this sort of purpose-economy thinking driven by the aspirations of their individual employees. And it's something that a lot of people associate with millennial generation and after that. Your story here is almost kind of reverse it that, right? It's like the foundational principles of the organization embrace purpose. And now your job is to kind of put that into personal terms for the people who work there. Really interesting.

Clint Kofford:
Yeah, no, it is. And, you know, and I think that's probably part of the goal of any learning professional really is to, you know, take what are the unique assets and capabilities that come with an organization and harnessing all of that to really bring to life, you know, the best of that organization. And, you know, certainly in very fortunate that that purpose has those deep roots at Johnson & Johnson.

Chris Pirie:
Can we talk a little bit about this year, 2020? And one of the things we're interested in is how the disruption and the sort of acceleration in some ways towards a future of work where we're maybe more digital and more distributed and so on and so forth, but it's obviously driven a lot of change in people's sort of work habits and environments and activities. How has the pandemic, and you also mentioned the social unrest, impacted the world of work in your organization? And how has it made you think about your role perhaps in the future? And by the way, thanks for working on the vaccine. I read an article this morning that said you have a one-shot vaccine that’s progressing to stage three trials which is just aewsome.

Clint Kofford:
It is. It's amazing again what can be done and what the talent in our organization is able to do. I think this year, obviously for anybody, has been a year like none other and, you know, has challenged assumptions, has challenged our ability to work in new ways and to change paradigms. I think for us, and probably for many others as well, there was a path that led to more virtual-type of engagements and the use of technology. I mean, I think for us specifically, it has shown a light on the need for that. And, you know, frankly it can be as effective and I think it has to be done differently. It's not just putting everything into virtual formats and whatnot, that there is a great place for virtual learning, for the digitization of content.

Clint Kofford:
And I think if anything, it's accelerated our roadmap into more technology-driven learning experiences that is digitization of our content. But I also believe that it's also helped kind of reinforce that from a cultural perspective. As much as we do value some of the scale that would come and, you know, the ability to scale programs that would come through technology and the digitization, our culture really is about relationships. And, you know, a lot of I think a big part of our core programs. I mean, yes, they're there to build capability and individual leaders and in groups of, you know, high-potential leaders and not. I think part of it is about building culture and reinforcing, you know, who we are and how we lead. And those aspects, I think are still a little bit more unique and the value of the networking of the nuances that, you know, of a culture that come alive in a face to face are still going to be important. It's still going to be valued. And it's still something that we're planning on while trying to also take advantage of all the amazing benefits that technology can give us.

Chri Pirie:
It's amazing, isn't it? Because you, I mean, you know, medicine is a technology and obviously you are a technology company, but also a lot of your language and things that you've been talking about is physical, corporeal, right? And it's about the body and the physical health.

Dani Johnson:
I’m really curious. So you talked a lot about sort of marrying the body with the technology as we move forward. And you've also talked about the importance of relationships as you move a lot of things online. I'm just wondering if you have specific examples of things that you're doing to ensure that those relationships are maintained. And the reason that I ask is because this seems to be something that many organizations are struggling with.

Clint Kofford:
Yeah. I mean, I think maybe, you know, a simple example would be our program that we call our executive orientation. And so it's for all of our newly hired or newly promoted vice-president talent and above. And, you know, typically this is a four-and-a-half-day event in person, in New Brunswick that brings together these new leaders from all over the world into a room. Our executive committee spends a great deal of time with them over the course of this week. And they get exposure to other top enterprise leaders that help brief them on kind of what the expectations are of a senior leader and the resources available to them, you know, indoctrinate them in our philosophies around talent and leadership and whatnot. And there's a lot of networking, right? I mean, this builds the relationship. It's a lot of, you know, dinners and events and credo-based, you know, service, community service opportunities that connect them.

Clint Kofford:
And, you know, obviously pulling all those things off is very difficult in a virtual environment. And I think, you know, we've done a very nice job and all the kudos would go to my team. You know, they've, they've done a nice job, really being able to streamline the content. Then I think in some ways, it's a more effective format for we're laying some of the content and then they're just straight up downsized. You're not able to follow up and build any or connect with any of these executives that come in in a more one-on-one format. And I think we just have to recognize that's one of the downsides to this, and we're not going to make up for that, but we have created breakout opportunities for small groups to get together, set up one-on-one meetings. So there's a lot of things happening on the periphery of the core agenda that are attempting to help mitigate some of those senses of loss around, you know, relationship building and whatnot, you know, and I think the tension is the scale, and we normally can only get about 45 people through this program just because of space in a hotel.

Clint Kofford:
And we were able to get a hundred people through the program when we ran it in July. And so neither solution's perfect, but I think we were trying to emphasize on the merits that each brings and, you know, when we're able to, I see this again as a program that probably goes back to being a face-to-face type of event, but with so many learnings that we'll probably be able to be used and help us continue to get really effective at how content is distributed.

Dani Johnson:
I actually really love that. I think when COVID hit, most organizations were like, Oh no, how do I get all my ILT online? How do I make sure that that's all accessible to everybody? As the months have gone on, I've actually seen people really take advantage of technology to do completely different things and address things in completely different ways than they would otherwise. So I'm hoping, you know, as you mentioned, I hope other companies do the same thing that they take a look at maybe at what wasn't working as well or things that worked better in the new way and incorporate them once we sort of get back to normal.

Clint Kofford:
Yeah. I can give you another quick example. So we at the Human Performance Institute, we have our flagship program, which is called Performance. It’s a two-and-a-half-day program that takes place in Orlando. It's an absolutely amazing program. I've been very fortunate to have been exposed to lots of different development experiences in my career. And you know, this is the program that has impacted me the most. And I would have said that 10 years ago, along before I ever came to Johnson & Johnson, or got to work with the Human Performance Institute. And that was when the program was called the Corporate Athlete. But this performance program takes you to Orlando, puts you in a bubble, right? Our building creates this bubble. You're away from your family, you're away from the office. And you're able to kind of be in this perfect environment where we make sure that you are able to exercise and get, you know, help build up that quantity of energy physically, that you need.

Clint Kofford:
We're able to help educate and teach you around the things that you should be eating and the quantities that are going to help you drive that energy. We're able to give you time to step away and reflect on the quality of your energy and the relationships that you have that drive that meaning and purpose in your life. So it's this amazing bubble, right? Well, COVID hits. And, you know, we're still a commercial business this year and have some targets that we need to meet and contracts that we're expected to meet for customers. And so the team went back to the drawing board and said, well, if we can't actually create a, you know, the same bubble, like there's just no way we can do that. How do we use the environment that we are given, this absolute sense of real life that people are in, to our advantage?

Clint Kofford:
And so they rethought the program from the ground up. So it's a completely different experience. Instead of this perfect ideal bubble approach, it's the real-world approach. And now, instead of bringing you in and having you sit in one of the bod pods, we send you a scale. It's a very sophisticated scale that is extremely accurate that gives you a great readout around body mass index. And, you know, some of these factors that are really important to watch in terms of your health. And now you have that as a tool in perpetuity, you know, in your home. And instead of time away to sit and contemplate, you're right there with your family in your real-life environment. And you can go to these people in your life, friends and family, and have conversations with them about how are you showing up and bringing your best energy or not into conversations with them.

Clint Kofford:
We're able to ship you some food, you know, through one of these services like Blue Apron. And instead of, you know, this amazing, you know, high quality, healthy food showing up for you magically at our facility, you order it, you prepare it, and we make that a social experience. So we take all these factors that played against us, and we've turned them into assets for us because of the way we've flipped our content to meet the same need. And so, you know, that program is scored extremely well with our external clients. And I think it is a great example of how you can take the same intent and content, and just flip it to really be advantageous for you in a different environment.

Dani Johnson:
I really love that. I especially love the fact that you're focusing on the physical, not very many companies do it. It's not something that's generally thought of, but I love the fact that you're focusing on the physical. I want to ask two more quick questions before Chris asks his last question. The first one is, what do you think the toughest problems facing talent management or talent in general are in the immediate future?

Clint Kofford:
I'm going to go back to that comment I made around talent access. I mean, I think this is a really, you know, personally, a really messy and interesting space, and I don't know, you know, who's going to really crack the code on this first because from a sheer benefits perspective, people are willing to be contractors and they'd love the flexibility, but every contractor that’s worked for me, and this is, you know, whether I was at Mars or Nike or now J&J, they want the benefits. They want the perks, they want security, and they want the recognition that they actually were part of the brand, that it wasn't just, they're not just working for some staffing agency. I mean, they were doing work for Nike or for Johnson & Johnson. And, and I think that's a big deal, a big, big point of pride.

Clint Kofford:
And you have these co-employment laws that then also get in the middle of this and force us to go away from good talent, so we can find good talent, but we can only use them for so long. And we're not going to, and when I say we, I think this is all big companies, are just not, you know, extremely agile to be able to move kind of with the talent. And so I think figuring out what talent access really looks like, and how do gigs really play out because there's a lot of gig workers, but our enterprise procurement processes and stuff, they like big contracts with a global vendor, not these individual, you know, sole proprietors. So I think, figuring that out and how we can truly access. There's a lot of big talk, right? I think in this space, but making that really practical is one of the most exciting kind of horizons in this space.

Dani Johnson:
We actually agree. We just kicked off a study on mobility, like how people move in and around and out and in, how do you borrow talent and all that good stuff. So I'll probably be hitting you up for some ideas later on Clint.

Clint Kofford:
No, that'd be great. I would love your ideas.

Chris Pirie:
I agree. It's a massive challenge. And basically the regulatory system has not caught up with what people want. And I think it is going to be a huge challenge. And I'm really interested in whether, you know, this was a challenge that we faced at Microsoft too. We have a massive third-party network of resellers and partners of Microsoft. It dwarfs the actual population. And yet we were very heavily governed around how we could engage with people that worked with our partners.

Dani Johnson:
The whole idea that, you know, they can't attend certain things or they don't get certain trainings, or it's kind of heartbreaking.

Chris Pirie :
It breaks the model, but I just wonder, I want to put this thought out there and then you can ask the next question is whether this notion of purpose and the brand itself can be the glue that holds talent together for, you know, either in the short term or the long term. And I wonder what role purpose will play in that.

Clint Kofford:
I mean, I think it absolutely can. And I think, again, what's probably got to shift is some of our internal paradigms. And, you know, I think that's true of Johnson & Johnson, but I think it's all, you know, big, large companies. So it's our paradigms. I think it's a lot of, you know, the systems that are in place that incentive, you know, the behaviors and the rewards that come with, you know, full-time employment versus a contract or a gig or that sort of thing. I think purpose can play a big role there because that's what resonates with people. And, you know, I think the more we're able to engage people and have them feel like they're part of Johnson & Johnson and that they contributed directly to, you know, certain projects and that the company can also be comfortable knowing that, Hey, we have access to great talent and that talent may or may not choose to be with us for 5 years, 10 years.

Clint Kofford:
They may come in, and again, that could be coming in for a project that could be coming in for two years before, you know, spinning out to go do something else. And purposes really are aligned, then hopefully they'd be back. And, you know, really kind of building on that almost tour of duty concept that was, I think really well articulated in the book called ‘The Talent Alliance.’ But I think it's more of that type of mentality. That's going to bring purpose and as leaders can get more authentic and transparent about what is best for an employee, what the company can provide, and company and employees can be more clear about their purpose, you know, I think it's going to help drive a better mutual understanding about how to help develop and grow and accelerate careers that could be tied to, with purpose both from the company side as well as the individuals

Chris Pirie:
Looking at the time we got a couple of quick questions left. Do you want to go first, Dani? And then we'll wrap.

Dani Johnson:
Yep. That sounds good. So the final question we have is what advice would you give to other talent leaders who are trying to lead with a more purpose-aligned organization?

Clint Kofford:
That's a great question. I'm not sure that there's an easy answer because I think it's so hard if the company doesn't value purpose as much, right? And I've been very fortunate that at all the companies that I've been able to work for, purpose is baked in there somehow, right? And to varying degrees and whatnot, but it's there. And so I think I've been lucky and fortunate that there's been a bit easier way of making that happen. I think that could be very hard and probably the best advice would be just aligning with what the business is trying to achieve. And as they're able to do that notion or that part of the purpose may be able to come about. And I think, you know, just helping people be their best selves and bringing to light all the talent that is within the individuals and their organizations, that that's a very noble purpose in and of itself. I don't know if that's a very good answer.

Dani Johnson:
That’s a great answer.

Chris Pirie:
A great answer. Why did you choose to do the line of work that you do? Was there somebody or something or someone who inspired you to do the work that you do?

Clint Kofford:
So I can just share kind of succinctly my purpose is to bring hope to every employee at Johnson & Johnson. From my Nike days, I would put an asterisk after hope and define hope as being meaning and momentum. Really the objective that I have is to bring to that meaning and the momentum in a career to every employee at Johnson & Johnson. And for me, it actually stems back. I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I was 19 years old, I lived in Russia and I have developed a deep love for the Russian people. I had the chance to live in the St. Petersburg area. And I think one of the things that just was so powerful in my time there was realizing, like I was on the streets, you know, daily interacting with people that had PhDs in economics, but we're working in a bread factory and, you know, people that had, you know, great musical talents, but the only jobs that they could find were at that time were, you know, an auto mechanic stores. And so I think there's just this need in all of humankind to achieve the best that's within them. And both, I think that is manifest in both being able to learn and grow. And so sometimes that's experiences like school or programs, but it's also momentum. It's just a feeling of forward progress in my career in it. And it doesn't always have to be upward, right? It can be, it can be lateral, it can be new, you know, in different areas of a business or of life. But I think people want to find that meaning and that satisfaction and they want momentum. And I think when people experience those two things, then they're going to do amazing things for the world. And you know, that those were some similar experiences for me in Russia that's kind of driven what I'm trying to achieve in my career for the companies that I've been blessed to work with.

Chris Pirie:
Thank you so much for sharing. Meaning and momentum. It's really good. Is there somewhere that people can connect with you or learn about your work? Either personally or through J&J?

Clint Kofford:
I'm more than happy to connect with people. You can find me on LinkedIn, talk about J&J or other things.

Chris Pirie:
Awesome, great insights. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

Clint Kofford:
Absolutely. No, thanks. Thanks for having me.

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TRANSCRIPT

Chris Pirie:
We're about halfway through our season and there's lots going on in the world relating to the topic of talent and purpose. So we have a two-part episode for you this time. In the second half of the hour, Dani, Stacia, and I will discuss a couple of recently released reports and some public statements that have a material bearing on our topic, but we're going to start the episode with a conversation that Dani and I had with Dan Pontefract. Dan is a leadership strategist, author, keynote speaker, and his bestsellers include ‘Lead. Care. Win. How to Become a Leader Who Matters,’ ‘Open to Think,’ ‘The Purpose Effect’ and ‘Flat Army,’ great title for a book. Dan was chief envisioner and chief learning officer at Telus, a Canadian telecommunications company with revenues in excess of $14 billion and over 50,000 worldwide employees. He launched the transformation office, the Telus MBA program, and the Telus leadership philosophy, all initiatives that drastically helped to increase the company's employee engagement. We started as usual with our set of questions designed to help sketch out Dan's work and career.

Dan Pontefract:
Dan Pontefract founder of the Pontefract Group, author, speaker, leadership strategist based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. And today is the 19th of October, 2020 vision. Well, I'm in the capital city of one of Canada's 10 provinces, British Columbia, that city, Victoria named yes, after the queen, moved here about eight years ago from Vancouver, where I spent 17 years in Vancouver. And prior to that, I grew up a bit in Ontario and Quebec in Canada. Born in England, Blackburn, Lancashire.

Dan Pontefract:
I am a leadership strategist, I like to refer to myself as, which is someone who's trying to help people, teams, organizations become better versions of themselves, which revolves around a three-legged stool. One of those legs is purpose. Another leg is culture. Another leg is how we think. And what unites it all, the seat, is this thing called leadership. I thought I was going to be a doctor. And then I realized that I didn't like blood, so that was bad. I dropped out or I guess I switched out of pre-med, at McGill University in Montreal and switched into the bachelor's of education and bachelor's of arts program. So I thought I was going to be a teacher. I lasted two years teaching high school of which then I morphed my way into higher ed, spent about six years at the Institute of British Columbia. and then the corporate world beckoned, and between 2000 to 2018, between SAP and Telus, so a high-tech company and a telecom, I was both a chief learning officer and something we call the chief envisioner, which was a totally made-up word to freak the press out.

Chris Pirie:
You have written four books. Is there a sort of core underlying theme that ties these ideas together?

Dan Pontefract:
Indeed, the way I looked at it, and there's a fifth one in the works incidentally, is that book one was taking a look at culture, like, what is corporate culture? What is organizational culture? How does it manifest? How's it suck? What's the link to employee engagement, if you will? And then I recognize there was no plan really to write another book, but I thought, well, there's something missing to culture. And that was the yin to the yang. And that's where I stumbled upon, back in 2014, this notion of purpose. And so I wrote a book based on kind of an investigation into some organizations and just my own thoughts, really about what we were doing at Telus at the time, which is a 50,000, $14 billion telecom, about how we might serve others basically was the premise. So book two was the yin to the yang with culture.

Dan Pontefract:
So ‘Flat Army’ being in the book was a culture. ‘The Purpose Effect’ was about purpose, but then the epiphany also rang true such that I recognized, ‘Well, we're not doing a very good job on culture change and certainly no one's, you know, deploying a sense of purpose or higher meaning. What's wrong?’ And so effectively I narrowed it down to one of several ailments and that was the way in which we think, and ‘Open to Think’ the third book, was me waxing lyrical, if you will, on how we've lost sight of marinading in the moment, Chris and Dani, how we don't creatively or critically think and how we're just addicted to busy-ness and distraction and social media and, you know, overburdened calendars. So that became a bit of an antidote and recipe for, well, if we want culture change to happen, if we want purpose to happen, maybe we need to take a look at our thinking.

Dan Pontefract:
And so that happened, that came out in 2018, and then I immediately went into work on book four, as soon as ‘Open to Think’ published incidentally, because I wanted to create, if you will, a book that was a field guide about leadership and the first three books were traditional hard cover, you know, 85,000-word books with tons of interviews, tons of research and, you know, thick, cerebral even. But I wanted something to be paperback, 35,000 words, and just sort of chock full of techniques and lessons on how to become what I call a leader who matters, which does pay homage to culture and does pay homage to purpose and does pay homage to thinking. But there's some other bits in there that ultimately help the user and the learner and the reader become a better leader.

Chris Pirie:
What kind of work are you doing today, Dan?

Dan Pontefract:
I left Telus, the offer mentioned telecom, full-time on January 1, 2019, and went out on my own. I went on my own and started the Pontefract Group, which is in Paul Jarvis's language, a company of one, but I'm out there helping organizations and/or individuals who are interested in, you know, how their organization operates, if they want it to be a little more transparent, open collaborative. If they're thinking about, you know, this fad, Chris and Dani called purpose, what do we do here? And again, so based on the books, I'll do talks, I'll do consulting, you know, I've done organizational redesign, you know, typical CHRO CLO, you know, experience officer type stuff to help others.

Dani Johnson:
So I'm super interested. Was ‘The Purpose Effect’ your first book or your second book?

Dan Pontefract:
It was book number two.

Dani Johnson:
I'm fascinated with it. Well, we are fascinated with the idea of purpose, and I’m really interested in what prompted you to write that.

Dan Pontefract:
It really, as I kind of began to, you know, dig into the work of Roger L. Martin and the work of Charles Handy and the work of Clayton Christianson and just like greats before us, it really struck me as a practitioner inside an organization of how culture is supposed to be working, that we were missing out on something at Telus. Don't forget as its chief learning officer, I was helping to create back in 2008, 2009, 2010, this something called the Telus Leadership Philosophy. And the TLP as we affectionately called it was our North Star. It wasn't just, you know, values on a wall. It was a working, operating behavior guide for how we were supposed to interact with each other. But the first thing that we did was we defined our target audience, who are we leading? You know, it took about a year and a bit to put the TLP together and to launch it into the organization in the summer of 2010.

Dan Pontefract:
But one of the things, which we weren't calling it purpose at the time, incidentally which, which we've now gone back and refined it as social purpose, nonetheless. We were very clear from the get-go in the TLP that we would affect our leadership toward four key audiences, and the four audiences that we ended up defining as part of the TLP, were as follows. I mean, obviously customers. So our customers we serve, our team members, the business—so that would be those due a fair return from a financial means perspective, so shareholders, investors, et cetera—and community. That became the launchpad for me, because as an organization, we said, ‘No. Community is the word we're going to use, and that's how we're going to serve.’ And what landed on me was, well, actually, that's the who, that's who we're serving. How do we do it? The how was where the word purpose came in. And so then I started trying to figure out, well, what is purpose? And that's where I then found that there's actually three types of purpose, which if you want to go into that, I'm happy to.

Dani Johnson:
How did you guys land on purpose? I mean, in a world where everybody really is focused on, you know, shareholder value and profits, how did you sort of wrap your organization around the idea of purpose?

Dan Pontefract:
Shareholder return and to a degree, EBITDA are actually outcomes of what you stand for and how you operate as an organization. We know that on a global basis, we're still stuck at 87-ish percent of the world disengaged or not engaged at work, but there's a correlation as well when you kind of dig down to the next layer of the causal relationship between culture or engagement and purpose. When the organization feels as though its intent, its belief, its actions are indeed working for a higher purpose, i.e., community, i.e., others, not just EBITDA, shareholder return, et cetera, then what happens is it triggers a sense of engagement and community itself in the organization. I don't know if we, Dani, actually knew what we were doing back in 2010 through 2013, 2014, but we knew enough to say back then, there's more to us than just shareholder return.

Chris Pirie:
The nature of the work that Telus does, connecting people, do you think that had anything to do with how you got to like community, in particular, but purpose?

Dan Pontefract:
I think that’s a fair query, Chris. To be honest, it was, the organization, sorry, was a public Crown corp up until 1999 and very unionized shop. But, at the end of the day, Telus itself circa 2001 became a publicly traded organization. And the machinations that go along with becoming publicly traded where you served any sort of, you know, crown Corp ethos that was originally is lingering if you will, because it's the notion of an organization's singular mandate for many, if not all publicly traded organizations, other than maybe Unilever back in 2010, was what? It's to serve the stock market and the analysts every quarter. I have an example and it's a large company that everybody knows and most people use. And the situation is circa middle of April 2020. And there are some whistleblowers at everyone's favorite online shopping mall Amazon that are discussing work conditions in the factories, in the warehouses.

Dan Pontefract:
And there's a VP of cloud computing. His name is Tim Bray, and Tim Bray, albeit Canadian, working out of Vancouver, goes through the regular channels inside of Amazon, right? To highlight his disdain for how these whistleblowers are being fired for complaining about the lack of safety in the warehouse. And so, because he's a VP and he says this on a public blog post, he said, I wanted to follow the right protocol and the right chain of command by being then and subsequently ignored and, you know, shushed, Tim was left with a decision. He looked at his sense of self, meaning purpose. What does the organization stand for? And what's role in all of this, which is just very simply the three types of purpose that I believe are found in all of us and must intersect.

Dan Pontefract:
And when they're not in lock step, you know, either we have to make a decision or you have to live with it. And Tim Bray made a decision. He quit publicly in a blog post, outing, you know, the situation that just had unfolded and saying, ‘Look, this is not my values. This is not essentially my purpose. And so I'm out.’ And I think that's encapsulates for many, just as a microcosmic story, what goes on. It's that organizations might say, and again, this is not Amazon example now, but organizations might say they operate with a great sense of purpose. That's the what, but the how, the behaviors, do they actually serve community? Do they actually serve all stakeholders and not just shareholders? That's what gets frightening.

Dani Johnson:
Let's talk about those three things. You've mentioned them a couple of times. In your book, you discuss three types of purpose, personal purpose, which I think we just got a really good view of with Tim Bray. The second one is a role purpose and an organizational purpose. You talk about them in sort of three separate chunks, critical relationship between the three. So talk about why, why three, and then what's the relationship between them.

Dan Pontefract:
I think what some authors or researchers and writers and others have done a really fantastic job of is that sense of personal purpose? You know, who am I, what do I stand for? And what I like to cheekily say, as part of your personal purpose, how do I want to be known when I leave a room? But what dawned on me, Dani, was that if the individual who wakes up in the morning and is Dan or Dani or Chris, as a sense of personal purpose, has to go to work. And doesn't recognize that there's actually two other types of purpose that they're getting in the car or the subway and going into work for, then they're in deep trouble. Because if they're not aware that they should be feeling a sense of purpose in their role at work, does their work give them a sense of meaning and value?

Dan Pontefract:
Do they feel valued by their team, by their organization, by their boss? So role purpose, as I call it also has a nice employee engagement. Do you feel engaged in what you do? But then of course, there's this, the elephant in the room, and that is the organization. If the organization's purpose is one in which it’s only focused and fixated on profit or harming the environment, or not caring about giving to the community, you know, if that runs like nails on a chalkboard to you, do you think you're going to kind of be in a sweet spot, Dani, do you think that it's all going to connect? Now we have decisions to make just like Tim Bray did.

Dani Johnson:
So, whose responsibility is it for alignment of those three things if those three things are sort of necessary in order to give somebody a sense of purpose?

Dan Pontefract:
What a great question. Yeah. it's actually twofold. So again, I believe, and I've seen this where there's a principled stance that the organization has to take to ensure that their employees, their team members feel and can actualize purpose in the role. And because it's an ecosystem because we're all in this together, I do truly believe that that organization also must extend its hand to help the team member with their own sense of personal purpose. But then flip it around, whether it's temporary or otherwise, we must always be curating, developing, questioning who we are in our own life, i.e., personal purpose. But we also have to recognize that there's a development path in our career, and we're going to have to learn that role purpose is actually a journey as well. It's not instantaneous. But again, if we think that there's things in our role over time, let's say that are really contradictory to our sense of purpose of self or the organizations, then we got to do something about it. Maybe it was the wrong role. Maybe it's the wrong organization, Dani. So there's two, the organization has a responsibility, I believe, whether you're CEO, C-suite, CHROs, CLOs. But also you coming into the organization, you got some muscle building to do as well.

Dani Johnson:
Do you think that's a fairly, a relatively new construct, this idea of organizations having some responsibility in helping people find their purpose, or do you think that's always existed?

Dan Pontefract:
There are some great examples out there. Dannon Yogurt, you know, those folks back in, I think it was 1970, 1968, somewhere around there. You know, there's an example of an organization that says right from the get-go, this is how we're going to operate. This is our ‘graze on dirt,’ if you will, they call it responsible capitalism. And they said from there that they would support community, they'd support their employees. They would support the environment. This is like 1970. When, you know, Uncle Milt, Friedman put out his famous New Yorker report or article or essay that said shareholder capitalism, shareholder primacy is how we should be operating our organizations. And Reaganomics and Thacher-nomics took, took hold and, you know, that's what we've been stuck in ever since.

Chris Pirie:
What advice would you give to talent leaders and CLOs in terms of how they approach this topic of purpose?

Dan Pontefract:
I'd say, first and foremost, make sure that you've, you know, developed it, declared it, defined it, and you've communicated it so that you can point to it. And its examples. So whether it's videos or stories, that's kind of important first and foremost. Secondly, on the attraction point itself, if you're not having a conversation, let's say, you know, in the interview stage or in the submission stage about a, what is our purpose? but b, how do you see our purpose meshing with yours? Because we want to be hiring the right type of people who are going to enact and continue on, you know, in the sense of hopefully operating with a higher sense of meaning. I think that's really important to have it upfront out in the open and in the conversations of, you know, the interview stage even. And then when you're a CLO or CHRO and you're in the organization, again, back to that earlier point, when Dani and I were chatting about, you know, the two types of responsibility, that organization, I do believe, has a fiduciary responsibility to inculcate purpose into the pedagogy and curricula of the organization.

Dan Pontefract:
So whether that's in the onboarding piece, for example, right, just sort of getting your feet wet if you will, but then having either purpose workshops that are ones about, you know, your own personal sense of purpose, having leaders in a webcast series, you know, its purpose month in February. So we're going to chat with five or 10 VPs, et cetera, about what it is that their sense of purpose, personal purposes, not even thinking about whatever your company name is, just them as people, when we're weaving it into our curriculum and pedagogy, our career pathing actually becomes systemic.

Chris Pirie:
There is maybe a danger to all this. And that is, I know Dani feels strongly about sort of like mono-cultures in organizations and you end up with a lack of diversity if you're just hiring people for sort of culture fit. Do you think that's a possible downside of this?

Dan Pontefract:
I do believe that you can use purpose and your culture and your values to make good decisions and better decisions that revolve around your ethos, you know, your way of being, but I wouldn't hire folks as sort of a group-think hire. Oh, we better all think this way. Then we end up with a very, you know, staid, placid, not very differentiating type of organization.

Chris Pirie :
Perhaps we can talk a little bit, Dan, about the dreaded COVID 2020, how has it changed how you think about purpose and secondly, what do you think is the job to be done next as we start to hopefully put work back together?

Dan Pontefract:
I don't think purpose and this, you know, operating with a sense of higher meaning is as foreign a concept as it was back in 2015, 2016. I think we're actually inching our way to it being part of the vernacular and lexicon of how we operate. And we can thank several organizations. Satya Nadella as he came on as CEO at Microsoft, clearly waxed lyrical five years ago-ish when he came on about how we need to operate, not just for a sense of EBITDA, but for others. I think Paul Pullman, a great example at Unilever starting in 2010, and continue now with Jop, its CEO as well. And then the work of Larry Fink at BlackRock and his annual January letter in January of 2019. He said, look, if we're not operating with a sense of purpose, why are we here?

Dan Pontefract:
And then follow that up with the January letter of 2020 with we better all become environmentalists. It's open when you're trading $7 trillion, Chris, as they are kind of the world's largest shadow bank, Fink has, is helping us see the light if you will. There are some examples and, you know, there's some shining stars that are starting to shine a little brighter. Now the pandemic hits, you know, and what I'm noticing is a couple of things. First of all, there are still a bunch of morons out there that think they can hierarchically pound their way into increasing or at least sustaining their revenues or their profit levels by not caring either for their people or with a sense of purpose with community, just so asinine. Whether it's an Amazon example or otherwise, there are a ton that I've been observing. I mean, a ton, I've kept track of them on a spreadsheet because I keep coming into them.

Dan Pontefract:
But that said, as horrible as this pandemic has been, somewhat obviously it's a tragedy, it's a human tragedy. It has also, I think, awakened many C-suites from where they were to where they ought to go, and let us not, you know, discount the civil unrest from Brianna to George Floyd, et cetera, right? There is a palpable, I believe, pent-up, global frustration with how many organizations had been operating. And so, you know, what it comes down to, I certainly truly believe, Chris and Dani, is empathy. There is such a relationship between empathy and purpose that our organizational leaders that are CLOs and CHROs need to start teaching about empathy and its relationship to purpose. And empathy, very quickly to me, there's three types that I've kind of observed. And I call it head, heart, and hands. The head empathy, if you will, which is known as psychologist called cognitive empathy, is how we intellectualize how someone else is thinking about something.

Dan Pontefract:
So you think about how they're thinking. You use your head to get inside their head. What's known as emotional empathy is the feelings part. How is someone feeling about a particular situation? And then the last one is known as sympathetic empathy, and that's what I call the hands. Are you willing to do something about it because you now understood how they're thinking and feeling. So back to purpose. If we're teaching as CLOs and CHROs in the organization about purpose, you know, purpose of self, purpose of role, purpose of org, I think we need to also fill the gap of empathy by teaching the relationship of purpose to empathy and how, when we think and feel and do, we can then understand that we're not in this, i.e., life, just for ourselves or just for our own organizational needs. We empathize of how others are thinking in the community, about the environment, how our employees are thinking about how we're treating the environment or the community, if we're turning a blind eye, you know, not doing enough that serve those in need. I think that that relationship is going to be key for CLOs going forward.

Chris Pirie:
What do you think are the main things that we've got to get done as we sort of move into hopefully the next phase and we sort of put work back together again? And how can purpose kind of help us think about that?

Dan Pontefract:
I can't stand, to be honest with you two, the notion of the new normal. I've been yapping away calling it the Great Reset. So this is, we had the Great Recession. We've had the Great Depression. I think this is such a wonderful opportunity for us to inculcate a Great Reset. How are we defining ourselves in our work and use this time, you know, to come back to this, the reset of how work ought to occur when we'll be in, I hope, hybrid models. I hope in achieving a different way of operating our business, our organizations. So if we can reset a few things in this time that we've got till the vaccine comes and look at our behaviors, look at our way in which that we might be developing or not developing our people in the organization with purpose, look at how we're hiring or not hiring people with a sense of purpose, look at how our organization has or doesn't have a declaration of purpose, a purpose statement that says, this is what we stand for and how we operate in our community and in the world.

Dan Pontefract:
There's all kinds of chances as people are planning for 2021 right now, as we know at the time of this recording, and mid-October, it's a chance to reset, so that when we do have the vaccine, it's never going to go back to the old normal, because that assumes it actually was normal.

Dani Johnson:
One question that we always ask our guests particularly for this podcast, because we think it's fairly poignant is about your own personal purpose and especially as you went over your career. We would love to ask you why did you choose the line of work that you chose? How did you end up where you are and who hired you to do the work you do?

Dan Pontefract:
When SAP, the company that I did work for, the reason I ended up working for SAP was because it acquired the company I was CLO for, which was a company called Business Objects based in Paris, but locations around the world, had about 10,000 employees, just under a billion in revenue. And it was a business intelligence software company at the time in my life. SAP came in in 2007 and acquired the company. And for about a year, I tried in earnest to sell them, SAP that is, in Germany on what our culture was. I mean, the business objects culture was one of family just to put it bluntly. And we were already back in that day, we had a community investment team and that was about 10 people. And you talk about philanthropy. I think this company, business objects defined what it meant to be a philanthropic kind of purpose-driven company. Anywho. During the time in which SAP acquired us and I was making way too many trips to Frankfurt to convince them of our culture, I also, living in Vancouver, started climbing something known as Gross Mountain, which is in Northend. It's just a 1.8-kilometer up hike. I was doing that like two or three times a week, and I got it down to about 42 minutes, straight up, but I kept swirling around these words, like what, you know, why? What's struggling with me? Why can't I, why can't this fit? Why is SAP feeling like this? It just nails on a chalkboard. It's just not cool. So after, I don't know, a bunch of times, I say, you know what I need, I called it a mission statement at the time, Dani. I need my personal mission statement. Like I'm, something's wrong here. And so I ended up landing on the following. ‘We're not here to see through each other, we're here to see each other through,’ and that line or the kind of two-line, pithy statement there got me thinking about how I need to help SAP see through the fact that they don't get it. I had to find a home for my 120 odd team members because I had decided to leave because I was not in a sweet spot with SAP. So I had to see these folks through, I had to find, make sure they all had jobs and make sure they're all taken care of. And so once that was done, once I sort of made peace with myself, I announced my departure. And then used that kind of purpose statement from 2008 onwards.

Dani Johnson:
Just to wrap up. We know you’ve written several books, Dan. We know you’re out there. We’d love for you to just tell us where people can learn more about your work and how they can connect with you.

Dan Pontefract:
Maybe we'll just go to the latest book. It's called ‘Lead. Care. Win’ and you just go to www.leadcarewin.com and you'll find me and the book and all the rest of them there, including the purpose book.

Chris Pirie:
Thank you for sharing your wisdom around this, Dan, and your personal story as well.

Dan Pontefract:
Thanks for doing what you’re doing.