Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, we mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier are Bloomberg Business Week story and how kids are
Speaker 1: going into the office actually office daycare while their parents
Speaker 1: continue to work remotely from him, I find would you imagine, yes,
Speaker 1: all of our kids running around here. I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to think of all the expensive art my son would
Speaker 1: break exactly, playing on the fish to the core piant
Speaker 1: don't touch. Well, it's interesting. What we're seeing is the
Speaker 1: workforce innovating, adapting, changing. Workers are increasingly picking where they
Speaker 1: want to work based on the flexibility they get. Tim,
Speaker 1: A lot of that's going on. Well, let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about this with Whitney Johnson, the CEO
Speaker 1: of Disruption Advisors. She joins us on the phone from Lexington, Virginia. Whitney,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm fine and nice to be with you.
Speaker 1: Tim and Carol, Well, happy New Year. You're also the
Speaker 1: author of Smart Growth, How to Grow your People to
Speaker 1: grow your company. Into Carol's point, you know, we we
Speaker 1: we There have been a lot of stories about returning
Speaker 1: to work and what the new normal looks like, you know,
Speaker 1: when we finally do get there. What is the right
Speaker 1: way for companies to think about tapping into either human
Speaker 1: capital right now to make sure that they're growing in
Speaker 1: the right way. Yeah. I think one of the most
Speaker 1: important things for companies to remember is that growth, for
Speaker 1: all human beings is our default setting. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that we're seeing coming out of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and psychologists have seen this. The research is that when
Speaker 1: you undergo your stress, it can lead to personal transformation
Speaker 1: or post traumatic growth. And so people not only wanted
Speaker 1: to grow, but now they're ready to grow as a
Speaker 1: consequence of the pandemic. We've been disrupted, We've dealt with it,
Speaker 1: we know how to disrupt ourselves, and so this, this
Speaker 1: is so called great resignation. Actually, in many respects, is
Speaker 1: the great aspiration. People want to grow. What wait, wait,
Speaker 1: what do you mean people want to grow? And why
Speaker 1: is it all of a sudden They're like, okay, we
Speaker 1: want to do it, like explain it a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so again it's our default set. But the psychologists
Speaker 1: have seen that when people undergo tremendous stress, one of
Speaker 1: the things that happens is there as Oftentimes we talk
Speaker 1: about post traumatic stress, but there's also post traumatic growth.
Speaker 1: And so there's this sense of people now know how
Speaker 1: to do it even better, and they've seen that they
Speaker 1: were capable of doing it much more resilient than they
Speaker 1: even expected. And so because of the pandemic, all this
Speaker 1: movement happened whether we wanted it or not. And so
Speaker 1: now people are saying, oh, I can move, I can change,
Speaker 1: I can grow. Now I want to take charge of it.
Speaker 1: And so coming out of the pandemic, I want I'm
Speaker 1: not necessarily resigning from I'm aspiring to something more, which
Speaker 1: is maybe why we've seen some people leave the great
Speaker 1: resignation is that? Why? What's the connection there? Sorry, Carol, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so I think you know there's a sense of Okay,
Speaker 1: people are leaving, Yes they are leaving, but what they're
Speaker 1: really saying is I am aspiring to some thing more.
Speaker 1: And so this so to your question of what employers
Speaker 1: can do, is they can recognize that if they bring,
Speaker 1: if they make it possible for people to grow, then
Speaker 1: they're going to not only be able to get great
Speaker 1: recruit great talent, but they're also going to be able
Speaker 1: to retain them because whether or not a person stays
Speaker 1: in an organization. Working for a boss, working for a
Speaker 1: company is very much dependent on do I perceive that
Speaker 1: there is growth upside for me? And so if you
Speaker 1: will make it possible and very um explicit that yes,
Speaker 1: if you come here and you work for me, you
Speaker 1: will have the opportunity to grow, then they're going to
Speaker 1: be able to both recruit and retain people. I do
Speaker 1: think you're spot on. I've had a lot of conversations
Speaker 1: with people who have actually left a place and sometimes
Speaker 1: they're going back to school because they're like, Okay, because
Speaker 1: I'm not growing anymore. I don't see the opportunities. I
Speaker 1: don't see the path, like where do I go next
Speaker 1: within an internal organization? Or they're switching departments because they
Speaker 1: don't see the growth or there aren't the growth opportunities.
Speaker 1: There always a case to be made, um we need
Speaker 1: that leaders and companies can always find new growth pathways
Speaker 1: for employees. Are there in some cases like maybe an
Speaker 1: Amazon distribution warehouse there maybe there is no path that
Speaker 1: you can go from from you know what I'm saying like,
Speaker 1: is there certain parts within an organization that maybe the
Speaker 1: growth path just stops? Yeah? Sometimes there isn't a path
Speaker 1: in that particular department or even in that particular organization.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons that um the s cravel
Speaker 1: learning that we talked about, which is this very simple
Speaker 1: visual model that allows you to think about what growth
Speaker 1: looks like, and that's what we've talked about in our
Speaker 1: our book Smart Growth, is that it gives you this
Speaker 1: artifact or this this model, this way to start a
Speaker 1: conversation with people on your team, so that if you
Speaker 1: are in Amazon Distribution Services and there isn't an opportunity
Speaker 1: to grow there, they can then say to their boss,
Speaker 1: it's not that I don't like Amazon, it's not that
Speaker 1: I don't like looking for you. It's just that I
Speaker 1: need to grow. I'm not getting any more dopamine that
Speaker 1: comes with a challenge. And so then the boss doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like, well, it's not that they don't like me,
Speaker 1: it's just that their brain says, give me growth, please.
Speaker 1: And so then you can have this conversation, so what
Speaker 1: will growth look like for you? Maybe it's somewhere else,
Speaker 1: But then if it's somewhere else, you become the boss
Speaker 1: that the person remembers ten twenty years later because you
Speaker 1: made it possible for them to grow, and they they
Speaker 1: become an ambassador for you and for your organization. You know, Whitney,
Speaker 1: you work with a lot of companies that are very
Speaker 1: well known to our audience, Morgan Stanley, s d Lawder,
Speaker 1: Citizens Bank, hub Spot, a lot more. Do you feel
Speaker 1: like companies in general get it that things have changed
Speaker 1: forever or do you believe that things have changed forever
Speaker 1: when it comes to the relationship between employee and employer
Speaker 1: because of COVID. I do think they get it. It's
Speaker 1: really interesting. There was a study put out by agon
Speaker 1: Zender just a couple of months ago where they had
Speaker 1: surveyed at thousand CEOs and they ask them a question
Speaker 1: about transformation and they said of them strongly agreed that
Speaker 1: they needed to transform themselves, and the organization agreed. What's
Speaker 1: interesting about that is that prior to the pandemic that
Speaker 1: number was only so it went from So I do
Speaker 1: believe that CEOs are now aware, Oh, if I want
Speaker 1: to transform my organization, I need to transform myself. I
Speaker 1: need to make it possible for myself to grow, and
Speaker 1: I need to make it possible for my people to grow.
Speaker 1: So yes, people are starting to get it. What does
Speaker 1: that look like, What does that actually look like? How
Speaker 1: does that manifest itself at companies? Well, it starts the
Speaker 1: fundamental unit of growth, and every organization is the individual.
Speaker 1: And so it looks like, UM manager. You know, you
Speaker 1: Tim as a manager, you UM Carol as a manager,
Speaker 1: sit down and have a conversation with someone on your
Speaker 1: team and you say, where do you think you are
Speaker 1: in your growth? Here's where I think you are in
Speaker 1: this particular role. Let's come up with the plans so
Speaker 1: that you can get to the top of your s
Speaker 1: curve of learning and you can grow. Because what will
Speaker 1: happen is as you aggregate the growth of five and
Speaker 1: then ten, and then a thousand and then fifty th people,
Speaker 1: all of those people are growing, all of those people
Speaker 1: are reaching their potential. Then they, working together, are going
Speaker 1: to be able to transform the organization. It's just starting
Speaker 1: with that fundamental building block of the individual. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: Are there certain industries, certain companies, certain leaders that you've
Speaker 1: said that are like man, they just get it spot
Speaker 1: on and they have figured out um how to help
Speaker 1: grow their people and it's really had an impact on
Speaker 1: their company. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In fact, I just um
Speaker 1: interviewed a company, and we just highly highlighted them in
Speaker 1: the Harvard Business Review this month. Um, it's the Sixers,
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Sixers and the NBA t they they get it. Um.
Speaker 1: There were four years where they were the losingest team
Speaker 1: in the n b A and yet um, because they
Speaker 1: were focused on developing their people Scott O'Neil, Jake Reynolds,
Speaker 1: Jill Snodgrass. They focused on helping their new recruits, um,
Speaker 1: straight out of college, learn how to sell, how to
Speaker 1: develop them. And as a consequence, in four years when
Speaker 1: they were losing all of their games, they were number
Speaker 1: five in terms of new season ticket sales, and the
Speaker 1: number three, and the number one and the number one.
Speaker 1: So you had a team that was not winning, and
Speaker 1: yet because they were willing to develop their people, they
Speaker 1: were able to sell tickets. That to me is a
Speaker 1: classic case of if you grow your people, you will
Speaker 1: be able to grow your organization. Okay, so here we are,
Speaker 1: what is a day three of two? A lot of
Speaker 1: people are thinking of thinking about themselves in terms of Okay,
Speaker 1: what are the changes that I can personally make to
Speaker 1: feel better to have a better year. Um, what are
Speaker 1: the some of the things that that you can offer
Speaker 1: our listeners from from your own practice of working with
Speaker 1: some of the biggest companies out there to transform individuals. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the first thing that I would do is
Speaker 1: just recognize that each one of us, um as I
Speaker 1: said earlier, growth is our default setting. We all want
Speaker 1: to grow. And if you recognize that as a leader,
Speaker 1: as a manager, and say to yourself, how am I
Speaker 1: going to help the people on my team grow? That
Speaker 1: is a great starting point. Um. The second thing I
Speaker 1: would say is that whenever we're starting something new and
Speaker 1: post pandemic, we're all starting something new. Um, we have
Speaker 1: to deal with a drop in dopamine. So one of
Speaker 1: the ways that you can counter that is to allow
Speaker 1: people to set very small, ridiculously small goals so that
Speaker 1: they can build momentum going into the year. And the
Speaker 1: third hack that I would suggest is for you, um,
Speaker 1: every day, once you make a list of things you
Speaker 1: want to get done, make a list of five things,
Speaker 1: and if you're pacing well by noon, don't add to
Speaker 1: the list just to say, good job, I got those
Speaker 1: five things done and those three things put together. Focusing
Speaker 1: on growth building momentum will allow you to again retain
Speaker 1: that locus of control, which is you build momentum in
Speaker 1: too the year and and start to feel like you're
Speaker 1: you're going to have some traction as you move throughout
Speaker 1: the throughout the year, um and moving up that curve
Speaker 1: of your career and in your current role. Any book
Speaker 1: that includes Star Wars and Yoda is uh, definitely good
Speaker 1: in my case. But what's interesting, and I'm thinking about Whitney,
Speaker 1: you know, employees who are listening to you right now.
Speaker 1: Leaders which this is our audience are listening to you.
Speaker 1: So what's the first step and employee can take in
Speaker 1: this growth process? And what can a leader do to
Speaker 1: encourage its employees in this growth process? Yeah, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: give you a quick example. So a company called chat Books, Um,
Speaker 1: they turn Instagram photos into books. They the CEO, Nate
Speaker 1: quickly came to us and said, you know, we've got
Speaker 1: a lot of people. They're fantastic, they've been here a
Speaker 1: long time. I'm worried that they're they're not going to
Speaker 1: feel like there's opportunities for them to grow. And so
Speaker 1: we administered s curb insight tool. Found that many of
Speaker 1: them were in mastery along the curve, but they now
Speaker 1: had a language to be able to have that conversation.
Speaker 1: In one case, one of the people said, Oh, there
Speaker 1: aren't any more growth opportunities for me in this particular organization.
Speaker 1: So they figured out a way for her to go
Speaker 1: somewhere else, which may feel like in the short term
Speaker 1: isn't a good thing, but long term, as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: they become an ambassador for you and your organization. The
Speaker 1: second thing I would say is that when you have
Speaker 1: this artifact of what growth looks like, it gives people
Speaker 1: permission to say, I am about to start something new.
Speaker 1: I have this language to talk about something new, and
Speaker 1: that something new is going to be awkward and uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to feel impatient and discouraged, but everybody
Speaker 1: knows that. So you've now normalized people doing new things.
Speaker 1: And so by having this language to talk about when
Speaker 1: things are new and uncomfortable, by having a language to
Speaker 1: talk about when people are feeling a sense of I
Speaker 1: need a new challenge, Um, there's this way to talk
Speaker 1: about it normalize the experience this emotional arc of growth.
Speaker 1: And that is something that you, as a leader can instigate,
Speaker 1: and you, as a person working for that leader, can
Speaker 1: do as well. Yeah, I figure out how to have
Speaker 1: the conversation makes sense. Hey, Whitney, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate Whitney Johnson's CEO of Disruption Advisors for
Speaker 1: new book. It's called Smart Growth