Intro: All right, welcome to the show. Welcome back. There’s a reason why I just do local knowledge translation, it’s never forgotten, started to really identify areas that we can improve in our company. So I want to introduce this to the listeners. And
Eric Mulvin: Welcome to the contact center cactus chat podcast. I’m your host, Eric Mulvin. And we’re back here. If you notice, I’ve got the same suit on again, because we’re a part two, I don’t go home and change, we just come back and do the next episode. So I’ve got Jackie Lord here from culture index, who is the Executive Advisor that works with us and many other businesses in the Phoenix area, I hope they can pull the culture index. So thank you for joining me again here.
Jackie Lord: Absolutely thanks for having me.
Eric Mulvin: All right. Awesome. And, you know, we talk, the last episode, we talked and dug into culture indexer, kind of introduced to to our audience here. And we started talking about some of the areas that could help. And so today, I wanted to get more into conversation around AI. And you know, that it’s 2023, I think, since very beginning of the year ChatGPT has just been in the headlines constantly. And I don’t think there’s a day that goes by where someone isn’t mentioning to me, Hey, have you looked at ChatGPT? Can t Have you heard of this? Or that? And I’m like, Yes. And, and for you guys that are trying to give me advice. We are using it in our company with some clients. So, so stop suggesting it. But But yeah, you mean AI? You know, there’s a lot of what, excitement, concern? You know, it’s supposed to change the world. The debate I hear a lot is, you know, when, you know, Why hold back technology, otherwise, we’d be still plowing horses, you know, fields with horses and doing everything, you know, all the advancement that’s happened in farming has helped get us to where we are today. You know, how do we usher in this new, new world if we don’t hold if we hold back technology like AI? So which is again, exciting, but then scary for the people that are doing the jobs that it could possibly replace? Like Senator jobs, so? So yeah, I want to jump into that, you know, because culture index is really designed to help people make people decisions and around people, it definitely will not help you with your AI. It’s not going to tell you what’s the right bot to install into your company. And so, yeah, what do you what are your thoughts on this as someone that helps implement culture index into companies and into trying to be the evangelists for culture index? And then meanwhile, you’ve got this competing force that’s saying, take the people out, put these bots.
Jackie Lord: What? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, AI is a real thing and reducing the people in the workforce? I think it’s going to be interesting as we start to navigate this era, I will tell you, yes. We may not be hiring as much yet. Yes, we may reduce your payroll expenses. Yes, we may have right at a completely different war on talent with with the workforce that’s out there. What is going to happen, I strongly believe is that the importance of infusing human back into businesses is going to even double that’s going to double down. And the reason why is because we are still humans, and we are still people operating inside of business. Some of the some of the work is going to be automated, right? But the importance of the people that are there and what is left, especially, which is really an interesting juxtaposition of kind of the mental health crisis. We are in post COVID. So we are in a position where the human and the people element is going to be even more important to get right as part of the equation. I strongly strongly believe that as we navigate to this AI world.
Eric Mulvin: All right, so you touched on mental health, which I think is interesting, because that is something that I wanted to talk about and, and then talking about the people that so important. So one of the things that I noticed too, that you know, you come from Amazon, or it’s part of your background, but I’m seeing this push to make humans like extremely efficient, you know, you’re all about data. I feel like certain companies like want to get 100% efficiency out of people in their their people like you need breaks you need you need time to think you cannot be I don’t feel like a human can think critically, eight hours straight, like you need mental rest somewhere in there.
Jackie Lord: Exactly.
Eric Mulvin: So with this push of AI, you know, getting more into the workplace and then I don’t know where do you see that going with the push to make people like make people more efficient. So you got the people that are still there because there’s you still need them but that now you’re you’re turning them into bots.
Jackie Lord: Absolutely. So that is twofold in my mind. Number one, how do we make people more efficient that actually comes back to the foundation of getting the right person the right seat? Right, they you actually don’t need to hold people accountable. If they’re aligned with the work that they’re doing, and they’re being communicated to and led properly. So really it starts with how do you make someone more efficient? Well, let’s check and see if they’re having a complete out of body experience to be there. Right, so let’s at least get the right person the right seat. From their right, we’re talking about this human aspect in the business, we still need community, we still need culture, it’s going to be even more important with this automation and AI world where we’re walking into the mental health, I just read an article the other day, it says, due to the mental health challenges, the average employee is reporting five less hours of productivity leak, right, just as this is a real thing that leaders, companies, businesses need to address and need to understand. So understanding their people understanding if they’re, if they’re aligned for the role understanding of their checked out, understanding if they’re stressed, or burnt out, is going to be of the utmost importance, because the people you do have the the leaders need to take care of them. Right? This isn’t about being in charge, this is about taking care of the people in your charge. And if you don’t have the data and the information, not only on yourself on self awareness as a leader, but also on your employees, then it’s really just a guessing game and a flip of a coin.
Eric Mulvin: Yeah. And is this really to talk about yourself as a leader? And a lot of I think a lot of people they don’t, that you’re working with and correct me if I’m wrong, they’re probably not thinking about themselves, necessarily. Initially, they’re like, this is for my team. This is from my company. And they’re not thinking about like, oh, wow, there’s a lot of stuff I can learn about myself. How many times have you seen a leader? Like, go through some journey of self discovery with you? Once they start? you start uncovering this stuff
Jackie Lord: 100% too. And my leaders and managers that I onboard over the past two years, I’d say over 1000 liters of managers go through a complete process of self discovery and self awareness. Right, understanding their tendencies, understanding that, you know, there are only 95% of the world will not operate like them. So how do you navigate that? How do you understand someone’s compliments? How do you understand your own weakness? It’s a little bit of a reality check. It’s a little bit of self awareness. It’s also kind of a beautiful process of understanding. What is that superpower magic you bring to the business you bring to the world you bring to your employees? And then how do you compliment on the offset? So as part of my onboarding process, I spend two days with my leaders or managers. And most of the time, over 90% of the time together, I’m harping on self awareness. Right, that is where we get to infusing humans back. And this is how we increase leadership effectiveness is starting with the leader and their behavior and their tendencies.
Eric Mulvin: Yeah, it makes sense. You know, for for me, I mean, it shifted the way I think about things. And the way I think about our people, because now like, it’s part of the language I talk about, I’m like, you guys, like we want you to be yourself. We don’t want you to hold back. And you know, we’re not just talking about that in the workplace, but like in life, and it’s interesting, I’ve gone through going through this, the culture index results with some staff. And I’ve seen it myself with my some of my leaders, where they’re like, Wow, I did not know this about me. I’ve been holding that back this whole time. And I’m like, No, don’t hold it back. Don’t like that. Sweet Laura, like, share it with the world. And, you know, there’s been some good and bad that comes with that sometimes, but like, we need people, I think the bad is really when people are holding themselves back. And then you see the stress, you see the, you know, the your, your famous phrase that I hear people saying all the time, that out of body experience, and which I’m starting to hear people in our company starting to repeat that now, which is kind of funny culture in our culture director, Keisha was, I don’t know, it could be on a previous episode or a future episode, depending on where this lands, but she did a whole talk in our company just recently, about that whole experience of so we did an exercise where you have to write your name couple times with your, with your dominant hand and then your non dominant hand. And that whole experience is like opened. It’s, intresting. Keisha’s like, I realized my whole like, life, I’ve been writing them differently. And now she’s like, it’s just like this representative of this whole thing in her life. And she’s one she’s the very first person I hired. She turned it into a talk in our company already. And so it’s kind of interesting that the ripple effects like not only will because, you know, we talk about we’re talking about business here, but it also has an impact outside of work. Than.
Jackie Lord: Absolutely personal journey. Yeah. It starts with an individual events. That’s why I kind of take a little bit of a different approach. This is a personal journey, and we all come together to build a business, create impact, and then re grow revenue and profit. Mm hmm. Absolutely.
Eric Mulvin: Yeah. And, you know, we’re out there with our core values and trying to find businesses that align to that because some there’s business is obviously that are not a good fit for culture index. Like they don’t care about culture, they don’t care about people. And I don’t know if you’ve ever come across that where you’re trying to work with them. And they’re just not implementing anything, because they’re like, No, this is what we do. And I don’t know, do you ever see anything like that?
Jackie Lord: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s a couple of things. Are they in enough pain? Right? Are they enough pain with people challenges with their own way too many hats too stressed out? Are they understanding what the actual core issue is, right? If you have a casual problem, we actually have to look at hardwired behavior of the people driving and impacting that cash flow. So really understanding the source, some folks are so overwhelmed, they don’t know where to start. And then also, some people are hardwired to take this, take this program and really drive it into a business. Right, so we’re dealing with a multifaceted approach here. But really, the folks that want to get their people engaged and aligned. And as a result, the business grows indirectly, that’s really the leaders who care about their people who are taking the responsibility as a leader and who are working on their own self awareness to drive. Really, it’s about employee engagement. It’s about making sure your employees are happy and checked in it is the single most important thing. One of my favorite quotes from John Mackey, who’s the founder of Whole Foods Market, he says, You have a moral obligation to make sure your employees enjoy coming to work every single morning. pretty profound. And so to really have that type of mentality, and to really have that amount of passion for ensuring the people, the employees that make up your business employees, right, that are even more important than your than your customers are happy and engaged and kind of right. Look forward to coming to work in the morning.
Eric Mulvin: Yeah, and you know, I remember that quote, I think I wrote it down on when I heard it. Ooh, because as that hits home with you, the the leader of hundreds of people, because you’re like, that’s, that’s on me. And I’ve got to make sure that we’re doing that all the time. And that’s a big goal that to have out there. Because I don’t think I don’t think there’s a lot of business leaders that look at that as a responsibility they’re looking at maybe I’ve got to drive profit or drive to grow. And I think from from me, like from day one, it’s always been about people. And so I think that’s why this was just such a perfect fit. And I think it could really accelerate where we’re going. But yeah, it’s interesting that, you know, it really comes down to the kind of business like, what’s their focus?
Jackie Lord: Precisely, what’s their cognate? Hagos? What’s the leader? Right, it all starts with the leader on the leadership team.
Eric Mulvin: Yeah. And if you had to predict the businesses in like, 10 years from now, like the ones that are using culture index versus the ones that are not thinking about people who are like, focus on profit, and all that, where would you say the ones are going to end up? I mean, I guess that’s a bias question, you’re gonna have, of course, a culture index
Jackie Lord: culture index a hundred percent
Eric Mulvin: Yeah, I don’t know, well, where do you see culture index heading over the next five to 10 years, because data is getting crazier, and we’re able to make better decisions. And I don’t know, I’m excited to see where culture index can help us out with that.
Jackie Lord: Exactly. Culture index has grown 40% Every single year, year over year for the last three years during the World pandemic. So the need to get this right, the need to take care of people, the need to grow businesses, from a data perspective on people, right, this is our whole our whole world is data driven, but yet we don’t use any data to make people decisions. So the need for this and getting this right, and the people that we do have, they’re not automated by AI, AI roles. The need to get this right is even more important. You know, why would we not have data on people? What would be the downfall, right? This is to understand how we make sure they like coming to work in the morning, how do we make sure that the value that they bring to this world aligns with a value that can bring the Pacbiz, can bring to any business. So it’s really about getting that data? It’s it’s a different form of data, just like you’ll look at your your pinel and just like you look at your balance sheet every single day and your KPI reports, this is another piece of data, which is actually the most important piece of the data.
Eric Mulvin: Yeah, and it for me as a sports person, I know we both connect on the basketball. Like I mean, there’s so many stats and basketball, like so many ways you could drill down the efficiency of an athlete. And I feel like you’ve got a tool that can help you get in combat get like that for your own business, which is pretty amazing.
Jackie Lord: And absolutely being a being also that sports fanatic with you. This This program has often been termed Moneyball for CEOs. How do you win that World Series with right the right people in the right seats, making sure you have all A players on the team instead of twice as many BNC players? Really, really depleting that payroll depleting your budget? So how do we really Moneyball this to get that ideal team from the data perspective
Eric Mulvin: Yeah, and I don’t know, we could probably go all day with sports analogies like, Yeah, I mean, you’re building a team on a sports team, how many talented you’re complaining on the couch? Like, why did this person on the team, why are they trained for this person like this? Shouldn’t this coach is horrible, they shouldn’t be on the team. And then, you know, we go back to our own businesses, and we tolerate like this horrible behavior from someone that if you saw them on that basketball team, you’re like, why are they here? They need to be fired. Like
Jackie Lord: Almost every single business I work with or walk into the leadership team is settling for good. They are settling for mediocrity. They are really settling for below below great performance, right? And it’s because we’re all used to B and C players. We’re all used to mediocrity. I tell people, they don’t even know how impactful if you had a player in this position, what the business would even look like it is right. They don’t know what I don’t know what that point. Right? What do they say the though the worst enemy of great is good, right? So it’s really me having to educate and change a perspective on hey, we’re, we’re good. Now you are growing your business. Let’s get to great. Let’s get your employees checked in. Let’s get a players on the team. Let’s rock and roll. Let’s grow this business.
Eric Mulvin: Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think that’s a great way to end this episode and the two part series. So Jackie, want to thank you for being guests Thank you. For sharing some of your wisdom with about culture index with our listeners. And if people wanted to learn more, because I think you’re not limited to working with people in Arizona. Do you have any clients?
Jackie Lord: Yeah, I’ve got clients, actually across the globe. I’ve got clients in Canada, and really all over the United States. I do have a significant amount in Arizona as well.
Eric Mulvin: Cool. So if people want to learn more, or get a hold of you, how do they get in touch?
Jackie Lord: Yeah, absolutely. They can go on to culture index.com and request a kind of free diagnostic or, or look into their team and just reference my name Jackie Lord.
Eric Mulvin: All right, perfect. And we’ll get some information in the show notes so you can connect directly. But thank you again for being a guest and and really appreciate it and catch us next time. We’ll got more episodes, we’re talking about call centers, outsourcing managing call centers, and how you can help grow your business. So thanks again for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.