Jessica Kriegel on How to Build an Intentional Workplace EP 515
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Coming up next on Passion Struck. I call leaders chief repetition officers because they have to repeat the how, the why, and the way over and over again. In our company, we start every single meeting by saying out loud what our purpose is, what our strategy is, and what our results are that we're trying to achieve, as well as the beliefs that will get us there every single meeting.

every executive call on Friday, every revenue call on Friday, every time. And it gets sometimes a little bit awkward and embarrassing that we're saying this whole thing every single time. But

It is consistency that intentionally shapes culture. You can't just do some big bang experiences. - Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice

for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now,

Let's go out there and become passion struck. Hey, passion struck fam. I am absolutely thrilled to welcome you back for episode 515 of the passion struck podcast. You, yes, you are the heartbeat of this movement. And I can't thank you enough for your energy, passion, and commitment to growing and living with intention.

Week after week, you show up ready to transform your life, and that's what makes this community so powerful. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome to the PassionStruck family. You've just joined a group of people who are all about igniting purpose and living boldly with intentional action. We're excited to have you with us on this transformative journey. Before we dive into today's episode, let me share a quick highlight from earlier in the week. I had an incredible

Thank you.

And for those of you who want to take these insights even deeper, don't forget to sign up for my Live Intentionally newsletter. Every week I send out exclusive content, practical exercises, and tools to help you apply what we talk about on the podcast directly to your life. Head over to passionstruck.com and start living with more intention today.

Also, if you're wondering where to start with the podcast, we've made it super easy with our episode starter packs. With over 500 episodes, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. So we've curated playlists based on themes like leadership, mental health, and personal growth. Check them out on Spotify or visit passionstruck.com slash starter packs to dive in. Now, let's talk about today's episode.

because we have the privilege of diving deep into the world of workplace culture with one of the foremost experts in the field, Jessica Kriegel. Jessica is the Chief Scientist of Workplace Culture at Culture Partners, and for over 15 years, she's been guiding some of the world's most influential companies like Toyota, Lockheed Martin, the Federal Reserve, and Bank of America on their journey to create intentional cultures that drive performance. Jessica's latest research and strategic insights offer a

Thank you.

As the author of Unfairly Labeled, Jessica challenges the conventional wisdom around generational stereotypes and offers a compelling roadmap for creating more effective intergenerational workplace strategies. Her work has been featured in the Today Show, MSNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Yahoo Finance, and more, where she provides expert insights into the most pressing workplace trends. Today, we'll explore actionable strategies to

create a thriving workplace culture, the importance of intentional leadership, and how to overcome the biggest challenges facing today's organization. Jessica's wisdom will not only help you lead with purpose, but also show how you can foster an environment where both people and profits can flourish. Before we get started, I have a small favor to ask. If today's episode resonates with you, please take a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review. Your feedback helps us continue to bring you these powerful conversations and grow our amazing community.

The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those that you care about. All it takes is sharing it with just one friend or family member. Now, let's dive into this impactful conversation with Jessica Kriegel. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Dr. Jessica Kriegel on PassionStruck. Welcome, Jessica. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

So I'm going to start today's episode out with a question I like to ask. We all have moments that define who we become. What is a defining moment for you? That's a beautiful question. My defining moment was in 2019. My father had recently passed away and I was

having a hard time with it. I was spiraling downward. I started drinking a little bit more than I should. And the morning that I woke up that morning and got into an argument with my husband and he ended up leaving me during the course of that

argument. And in my hysteria of feeling so emotional, I went for a walk on a place that I used to go for a walk with my dad every day. And I was talking to my best friend on the phone and talking about how emotional I was and how upset I was. And he said, well, how do you feel? And I said, I just miss my dad. And right at that moment, I looked down and there was graffiti on the ground that

had a word that was something me and my dad shared that

was a unique word that only he and I would have known about that had never been there before. And I had a sudden awakening. I had been a lifelong atheist. And in that moment, I knew that there was something bigger than myself. I knew that my dad was looking after me and I knew there was a higher power. I didn't know what the higher power was because I had never been to church, but I knew that there was something bigger than the world that I was seeing

I got sober, I turned my life around, I still ended up getting a divorce, but I suddenly had meaning and purpose in my life in a way that I never had before. And the journey since that moment has been so significantly different than everything that came before it because now that I have a higher power, it's not just me in my head, there's a whole other world out there that I need to tap into.

That is probably the moment that makes me the person I am today. And it wasn't that long ago. I was in my late 30s. So before that, I don't know what I was doing. It's interesting you bring that story up. And I'm very sorry to hear about your father. I lost my sister to cancer earlier this summer. So I can definitely understand the toll that losing someone close to you has on your life. Where I was going with this is,

I had interviewed a woman named Rebecca Rosen on this show, and it really was an episode topic that I haven't done before and haven't done since. She's really a spiritual medium. And it's interesting, her belief from now talking to people on the other side for two decades is that she believes that we are in earth school.

And Earth School is just part of our journey of being reincarnated multiple times until we learn all the lessons that we're supposed to learn. And we eventually end in spiritual world. And as you were talking about your dad, it just gave me shivers because she talked

about so many stories where people wouldn't believe anything that she was doing was true, and yet she would bring up something that only that person would know about their relationship. And it's now happened thousands of times. So whether you're a believer or not, I

truly believe that there is a higher power and that's what led me to do the mission that I'm doing because I think we're all unique and put here for a specific reason. And when we tap into that uniqueness, I think our lives go a lot more smoothly than when we're fighting it. Just my two cents. That's interesting. William James in the Varieties of Spiritual Experiences says that spiritual experiences, those moments cannot be transferred.

So me having that moment cannot in some way be a spiritual experience for one of your listeners because they have to have their own spiritual experiences for it to be personal to them. And that's the journey we're all on and whether we have them or not and whether they're real or not. I mean, what's interesting is after that moment, I started going to a different

church service every single Sunday from different religions, different denominations, because I wanted to understand how people worship. I wanted to find my church, frankly. I also signed up for divinity school. I'm still in divinity school now learning about God academically, which is a whole different journey. And

What's interesting is I never found the church that felt right. I don't have the one religion because there was so much similarity and so many differences in each one that ultimately where I landed was the more of a mystery it feels

the closer I am to being on track. Because I feel like if I can define whatever this higher power is and put it in a box and give it a label and say it is this and it's not that, it's not a higher power, right? It's something that I can then define within the small construct of my human brain. So

Maybe we are in earth school, maybe we do get reincarnated. I have no idea what the answer is and the less I have an idea, the more at peace I feel with being on track with whatever the belief is because I think it's supposed to be a mystery that's part of the journey, isn't it.

I completely agree, but on the end of it, I would much rather have believed when I come to that judgment day than not to believe. And that's just my personal feeling about it. But I was raised Catholic and I've been going to church my whole life. But it is interesting to talk to people who were raised in different ways, because I think that is the biggest thing that kind of influences initially our belief system. And sometimes that goes all the way through adulthood as well.

I did want to bring up to you, if you're familiar with this book, it's written by a friend of mine, Dr. David Yadin, who's been on this show, but it's called The Varieties of Spiritual Experience. And this is really him exploring a lot of the work of William James and applying it to 21st century research. And he writes it with another fantastic author and researcher, Andrew Newberg. So if anyone is listening, this is a great book on this topic to pick up.

Beautiful. No, I haven't seen it, but I will definitely pick that up. David is doing some really interesting work. He is at Johns Hopkins, and he is actually part of the center that is studying the effects of taking mind-altering drugs, whether it's LSD or...

psilocybin or other things and how it impacts. He's looking at it from people's spiritual journeys, but he's also looking at how it helps people get through PTSD and other traumas that they've experienced. So some fascinating work. I love the idea of a scientist studying God. I think that's really interesting.

So I'm going to take us back to the core of what we're going to be talking about today. You have made it your personal mission, if I understand this correctly, to quantify culture. Can you share what that means to you and what inspired you to embark on that journey?

Absolutely. I started caring deeply about culture when I was early in my career and was experiencing what I perceived to be a toxic culture. I had a bad manager and was feeling undervalued and disconnected from the organization, from my peers. It just felt bad. I mean, you know what it's like when you have a job that just feels bad and you don't want to work because of any number of reasons.

And I wanted it to be something better. I wanted to understand how it could be better and started caring deeply about culture because ultimately we spend all day at work, many of us. And so why can't that be as positive as possible, as uplifting as possible, as enjoyable as possible?

At the time, however, I was working at a large technology organization, Oracle. And Oracle has a culture of competitiveness, of driving business results, of being very data-driven. Analytics and insights are at the heart of how they made all of their decisions. And so to go into the workplace at Oracle and say, let's be better people, let's make people happy, it just wasn't an effective approach.

to improving culture. The work that I was doing at Oracle was culture transformation. I was working in the HR department, supporting leaders in making their workforces better through organizational design, leadership development, training, learning and development. And yet the approach that I had in my heart, which was, I want people to be happy. I want them to feel fulfilled in the work that they're doing, fell on deaf ears with executives, not because they didn't care, but because that wasn't

the way that things were done at Oracle. And so I quickly realized that if I could understand the data that supported why we should focus on people, then those initiatives would become adopted. So I got certified in the ROI Institute certification program around understanding the ROI of business programs.

including in particular things that are viewed as soft leadership development, training and development. What is the ROI of leadership development? Is it measurable? And if so, how do you measure it? And then I went to school and I got a doctoral degree in human resources development and did quantitative research.

Specifically, I was focusing on the generational dynamics at work and what it was like for millennials and Gen Xers and baby boomers all to work together, the similarities and the differences and looking at what the data said, not the stereotypes and the anecdotal information that we seem to have about what every generation quote unquote wants, but what does the data actually say? And I quickly saw how many doors I could open when I came with FACTS.

I was able to talk to one of the co-CEOs of Oracle about our messaging around generations. And because I brought the data, we switched the messaging. I wrote a book that became very popular very quickly about what does the data actually say about generational differences? And it kicked off my keynote career, which I was definitely not expecting to happen, or I didn't even know what a keynoter was at the time, but suddenly I was getting invited to conferences to share my research. And so

So I realized that just appealing to it's the right thing to do in business didn't work. It just wasn't effective. So I had to be the one

to quantify culture, to quantify the value in business sense, in profit and loss terms, the value of creating a culture in which people are fulfilled and organizations thrive. And that has opened so many doors because people can justify spending on that. And so it's a backdoor approach. I wasn't necessarily super passionate about data until I realized it was the only way to get things done. And so here I am.

I'm advocating for culture as a data scientist. That's why I said that's interesting. You've got a scientist studying God. I feel similar. I'm a scientist using data to study something that is very often considered woo and touchy feely. And I'm trying to decouple that stereotype. Culture doesn't have to be woo if you dig in. You just have to be willing to go there.

Thank you for that explanation. And I have to ask, when you were there, was it Charles Philpott or was it Mark Hurd? It was Mark Hurd. It was Mark Hurd. So he was known, there was a class of program. Oracle was hiring 5,000 new college graduates every year.

for both the product development team and the sales team. And they were developing the future leaders of Oracle in this massive program. And Mark Hurd was becoming known as

kind of millennial whisperer. And he was writing all of these articles about what millennials want and what they don't want. And I was writing this book at the same time that said the opposite thing that his articles would say. And I started to get in a little bit of trouble, frankly. The head of HR at the time reached out to someone on the team that said, Jessica is embarrassing Mark Hurd by saying the data doesn't support what he's saying. You've got to get her to stop talking.

And so I asked for a meeting with Mark. I said, I will stop talking really in my head. I was going to quit if they made me stop talking, but I said, I'll stop. But can I just meet with Mark first and just have conversation?

30 minutes with him to show him the data. And so I didn't get 30 minutes, I got 15 minutes. And in order to get that 15 minutes with him, I had to have about 11 meetings with other people who wanted to see what I was going to say and how I was going to say it to make sure I wasn't wasting his time. It was this whole song and dance.

Ultimately, I got in front of them and the way that I presented the data was I looked at the Oracle Employee Engagement Survey data and I broke it out by generation and I looked at the question around what do you value the most and every single generation at Oracle had the same number one value, which was career development.

And I use that data point to say, look, you would think that maybe baby boomers don't care about career development as much as millennials because they're older in their career. They've already developed. But that's not the case. The data shows that there's more similarities than differences. You've got to change the way that you're talking about this. And he just said, thank you.

And then that was the end of the call. I'm in the conversation. We didn't have any further conversation. I just walked out of the room and went back to my quote unquote desk and felt like I'm just going to get fired. I didn't know what was going to happen. And I didn't hear anything after that for weeks. Actually, there was no follow-up. No one called me to say what he thought.

And then weeks later, I was at Oracle HCM World, Human Capital Management World, which is one of their big conferences. Mark Hurd was giving the keynote. And there's a slide that he shares in the middle of his keynote that says, I bought into some myths.

What I thought about the generations on one side, I have a picture of this moment and him talking in front of the slide and then what's true. And he used all my data and changed his tune and said, I thought it was this way with generations, but actually he didn't give me credit for it, but he did change what he was saying. And ultimately I didn't get fired and I got to keep talking about what I was talking about. So that was my little way of influencing a Fortune 100 CEO at the time. It felt pretty good.

I love that story and I knew Mark pretty well, well enough that I probably could have made a phone call and gotten you an appointment with him. Without the 11 pre-calls?

I worked very closely with them when he was at NCR Lowe's. When I was there, we were NCR's largest customer. And so we would have three to four meetings a year with them and two with his board. And so I got to know the man extremely well to the point that I actually shared the stage with him and Michael Dell at Oracle World somewhere

No, it was Larry Ellison and Michael and I, but did work with him, did work with him sometime around 2015, 16 as well when he was admirable. But he, one good thing about Mark that I always liked is he would listen. He might not initially acknowledge it, but he would always go back and think about things. And that was something that I valued about his leadership style. He,

might not always come back to you in the way that you would want to thank you, but I knew he was willing to self-examine and admit when he was wrong. So that was something I always valued about his leadership. I was a busy person. I didn't feel any kind of resentment about the lack of acknowledgement. I was just happy to have made a difference. Oh, absolutely. Well, I'm going to just talk about company culture here for a second. I was with three large organizations, Lendlease,

who you probably don't know but was one of the top eight biggest firms in australia when i was with them we were about 15 billion in revenue i then went to lowe's and then to dell and it was interesting out of those three cultures i would have said that the home office at lindley's and lowe's when i first got there were my two favorite because it still felt

even though you were with a big company, that it was almost like a family run institution where you could talk to any executive. Everyone was very approachable. Everyone wanted to see the success of the firm. But I do have to say that when I got to Lowe's and I've told this story a lot on this podcast, I inherited this group.

that upon joining, I found out had the second lowest employee engagement scores in the entire company of 350,000 employees. And as I got into trying to understand what was causing it, it was the fact that they didn't really understand how they fit into the culture, how they were influencing anything that was on the company strategy

how they were having a role in shareholder value, customer impact, none of that. And when you're so disenfranchised from the thing that you're supporting, it makes you feel like you don't matter. And that's what was happening is they just felt as if they had no purpose into the work that they were doing because they didn't know what the results they were trying to achieve or how do we even measure them.

And I know that this is something that you have studied with culture equation.

Can you explain what that is and maybe tie it into the story I just talked about? Absolutely. And it ties into the story where we started as well about meaning and purpose. People want to feel useful. It is nice to be useful. It feels good to have purpose and we feel fulfilled when we are adding value in some way. And when we're not, we feel directionless and that doesn't

motivate us, right? So ultimately that is intuitively correct. Then we needed to prove it with the data and the research. And that's what we did last year in partnering with Stanford University. We dove into 243 companies. And these were large organizations, companies that you would have heard of, Coca-Cola and McDonald's and big companies that have 100 to 350,000 employees. And what we did was we looked at

The main elements of any organizations make up their purpose statement, their why, then their strategy, which is the how are they going to go about accomplishing their why, and then the culture as reported by employees, which is ultimately the story we tell about who we are, and then the results that they were achieving.

And what we were looking for is what wins, what actually drives results as measured in this particular study by revenue growth over time. It was a three-year study starting in 2020. So we wanted to see what was correlated with more significant results.

for revenue growth. And there was a group of organizations that made 4X returns than the other organizations in that study. And those were the organizations that had alignment between those elements.

When your purpose is aligned with your strategy and is aligned with your culture, that drives 4X results than when they're disconnected. And most organizations have those things disconnected because they all get created in silos, in a vacuum. Your purpose statement or your mission statement gets created 30 years ago by the founders of the company. It's written on a

plaque somewhere and put above the doorway at the entrance of the organization's lobby. Then you've got your strategy, which is done in an insular boardroom in the Napa retreat with the leadership team. They put it on a slide, they share it on an all hands call and email goes out about it.

Some people know what it is and some people don't. And then you've got culture, which usually just gets delegated to HR. HR is in charge of, quote, culture. And what we define as culture is often so different, even within one organization. Understanding of what culture is and how to influence it is not singular, right? Some people think it's about ping pong tables and kombucha Fridays and Hawaiian shirts.

parties or whatever. And then other people think it's whether people are happy or not. Are you happy? Other people think it's employee engagement. So then they look at employee engagement scores. And if the scores are high, then the culture must be quote unquote good. And so that lack of alignment leads to this bad culture and ultimately bad results. And when you see companies that do connect the dots on those things, significant revenue returns. So

That's what we focused on is how do you understand what the why is, what the how is, what the way is, and making those all connect to ultimately drive results. And the way that we think about culture, if you want to get everyone unified behind one definition, is it's the way that people think and act.

to get results. How do the people think and act at work? It's not about feelings. It's not about perks and benefits. It is ultimately how are people thinking and acting to get results? And everyone knows what results they want to achieve. It's usually a revenue number or whatever. And then everyone knows

what they have to do, how they have to act, which is we're going to implement technology or we're going to restructure the organization or we're going to improve this process. But not a ton of organizations are focused on the way people think in order to get the right action, in order to get those results. And that's what you can activate to really drive meaning at work and ultimately results. So that is, in a nutshell, what the culture equation is and what it is that

I'm passionate about helping organizations do, because I think there's a false narrative that you have to choose between people and profitability. That is not true. It's not that if you invest in people, your profitability will suffer. There is a way where those two things meet and both thrive. And that's the story I want to tell. That's where culture meets revenue growth in a way where everybody wins. And capitalism can be something that buoys both

shareholders and employees at those organizations and not just shareholders. That's the mission I'm on right now. I love it. And I think what you're saying is really true. You come up with the mission statement. Sometimes it's recultivated by the management team that's there. You then have that strategy, which oftentimes the VPs or directors are not doing a very good job of disseminating it to their people.

and then you have this thing that just seems like off to the side which is culture which often seems invisible you refer to it as the invisibility of culture but i think if people would think about this in terms of their personal life there are a lot of similarities because you really want to create a mission statement for yourself if you have one

you need to have a strategy about how you want to live your life. And what I would typically replace culture with are personal values. And so to me, a culture of a company is really the values upon which the company operates. People like to use words to express it, but in my mind, that's really what it is. Do you see it in a similar way?

Absolutely. So when it's time to activate culture in your organizations or in your teams, we use a model called the results pyramid. And so it starts with results. That's why it's called the results pyramid. What are you trying to accomplish? Maybe it's a safety goal or maybe it's a productivity goal or a quality goal or revenue goal, whatever it is.

And then those results we know come from actions, right? So people taking action that leads to result, but that's where most leaders stop. They know that results come from action. So they focus on actions and trying to get people to do things. So if you're running a sales team, you're focusing on how many calls did you make? Did you make the call? Did you track the call in Salesforce? How did the call go? Let's get a transcript of the call. Maybe AI can help us learn more about the call and that action trap is

is going to lead to burnout because it's really activity focused. It's also why so many people struggle with managing remote teams because they're so used to managing to activity and not to outcomes. And when you're not with the person, managing to activity is a lot harder. So let's forget the action trap and go deeper and understand what drives people to take action.

And at its core, it is the beliefs that we hold. You can also call them values. But beliefs, the belief I have about the value of the work I'm doing, about whether I am seen, about whether the mission is useful, about whether I'm growing, those beliefs will lead me to take the right action or not at work to get the right result or not. And so that's where you want to start as a leader. What are the beliefs?

that are shared amongst your team that may be currently getting in the way of us achieving our results. So when you inherited that team with low engagement, what was the shared belief? That they don't matter. They don't see how they're supporting the larger mission. They're not valued or seen by organizational leadership and they're irrelevant. That was a shared belief that was getting in the way. You didn't want to focus on

do more work, you want to focus on getting the right belief in place, which is that you do matter. You are meaningful. You are helping us on this mission.

And so then the question inevitably becomes, how do you intentionally shape or change people's beliefs? That's the key. Because if you see the wrong belief and you want to shift it, what's the secret sauce there? And we believe that is experiences, right? Every employee is having many experiences every day with each other, with management, with your systems and processes, with

CEO communications with what they read about their company in the media, all of those experiences will shape my beliefs. And so you want to be intentional about the experiences that are getting created. And when an accidental experience creates a negative experience,

belief, you can interpret those experiences and help explain experiences. And being intentional about experiences is what will get the right belief, which will get the right action, which is what will get results. And that is ultimately culture activation, right? Is getting people to actively think and act the way that you need them to drive results. And everyone wins when you focus on that formula. I also think it comes down to repetition. I never...

think that we put the strategy out there enough. And I remember when I was doing this, I would have all hands meetings where I would introduce the overall strategy and what we were trying to do in a given year and a given quarter.

I would then have the directors who worked underneath me do this on a more frequent basis with their managers. And the most important thing that I felt that I brought back to the organization was a scorecard that they all very well understood what the impact that they were making to that scorecard and how by achieving higher results, it created

not only better financial results for them personally, but it also gave them more sense of accomplishment for the work that they were doing to have what was driving the results. And I don't think companies use these dashboards as effectively as they can and then bring their employees on board so that they understand it and understand the correlation between the result and the work or job that they're doing.

I mean, I call leaders chief repetition officers because they have to repeat the how, the why, and the way over and over again. In our company, we start every single meeting by saying out loud what our purpose is, what our strategy is, and what our results are that we're trying to achieve, as well as the beliefs that will get us there. Every single meeting, every executive call on Friday, every revenue call on Friday, every time. And it gets...

sometimes a little bit awkward and embarrassing that we're saying this whole thing every single time but it is consistency that intentionally shapes culture you can't just do some big bang experiences i remember when i was interviewing for a job at google many years ago they were showing me all of the cool perks that they had and one of the things they did is they would hand out envelopes of cash at christmas time to all of their employees

That's an experience that needs no interpretation. Very clearly has a purpose and is a powerful experience. But how long does that envelope of cash last?

if the interactions I'm having every day with my teammates are negative in nature, right? I'm not saying they were at Google, but it can't just be the big bang experiences. It has to be the way that we talk to each other, the emails that we send each other, moments of feedback that we provide to each other, how much recognition we're actively doing, the stories that we tell on calls or

just casually in hangouts that we're having. That consistency is really key in any kind of culture creation. There really is no silver bullet, ultimately. There is, however, a formula that if you pay attention to that formula, that equation, you can make a difference over time. And it doesn't have to take a long time. Some of the impact that we've made is in three to six months, you can see significant improvement in employee engagement because some of the low-hanging fruit can be...

solved for very quickly. So often we're not giving employees what they need simply because we're focused on what's urgent and not what's important. So we're putting out fires and not talking about why are we here? And so sometimes we just need to zoom out.

I absolutely agree. And in my case, the organization 18 months later went from one of the two worst to one of the two best in the entire organization. But more important to me was employees were no longer walking around with their heads down and feeling so down about everything that they were doing. Their heads were up. More and more people were wearing company shirts. They were excited to be there.

people were talking about it, people from other groups wanting to become part of our group. So it just starts this ripple effect. And I wanted to ask you one more thing on this before I switch topics. And that is I've been fortunate to interview both Gary Vaynerchuk and Claude Silver on this show. And Gary implemented something pretty interesting. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this, but he felt that

at VaynerMedia they were VaynerX they weren't looking in totality at the whole person enough meaning you would look at what their goals were in work but you weren't really looking at them as a whole person inside and outside of work and what their overall life goals were and so he implemented something called the chief heart officer which Claude Silver is the first

Daniel Rothenberg: person who's helping role and he says it's completely transformed everything in the company, because the employees now see that they as an institution care about them in totality, what do you think about that type of approach and are you seeing it anywhere else.

I am seeing it everywhere else in many different places across industries. I've seen it in banking institutions. I think what makes or breaks that strategy is the authenticity with which leadership actually cares.

So I believe, and I don't know Gary Vanderchuck, but I follow him and I've read about him. I believe he actually cares and invests in the chief heart officer because he thinks this is a differentiator for business results. And I think employees understand that authenticity is there. I've also seen organizations who

who are jumping on the bring your whole self to work bandwagon because they read about it in Harvard Business Review and they think that they should do it, just like they should do DEI or they should do ESG or they should do whatever the thing is that they think if they don't do, they will get in trouble. And when you're doing it from that place, that also is incredibly obvious and it can be very ineffective. So

What doesn't work is doing it because you think it's trending. What does work is coming from the heart about it. And what I do that's similar is I am laser focused on purpose fit.

for my team rather than culture fit. I think culture fit is super dangerous because what often people mean when they say we're looking for the right culture fit is they want someone just like them that will quote fit in, right? And when you're looking for someone that'll fit in, you end up having a homogenous group of

people that have similar interests, similar styles of thinking, and that you feel most comfortable with because of your similarities. And that actually is a recipe for worse decision-making and less business results. So you don't actually want culture fit. In fact, when you have culture fit as a focus, you're letting unconscious bias seep into your decision-making process in a totally destructive way. So abandon culture fit. Instead, embrace purpose fit.

To go to the very beginning of this conversation, when we talked about personal purpose and higher powers and what an organization needs from its people is ultimately you want your person that you have hired, their personal purpose and the organization's purpose to have some kind of alignment so that there's more meaning in the work that they're doing. So the first question I ask every single person I interview is what is your personal purpose?

And then they talk about it. Maybe they've thought about it. Maybe they haven't. If they haven't, they come up with it on the spot or they have something that they have pre-prepared because they've done this deep work. And then I tell them our organizational purpose. So our purpose at Culture Partners is to drive results by activating your culture. So then I say, okay, do you see how you helping us with that organizational purpose is

is a vehicle with which you can accomplish your own personal purpose. And if so, what's the connection? And I get them to think about that. If they feel that connection, that's a powerful motivator for discretionary effort and for working through challenges when they exist. My personal purpose is to serve God and others.

And I see how by doing the work that I do at Culture Partners, I can help drive results by activating your culture. And that will be a way in which I've served God and others. And that alignment makes me more motivated, makes me want to stay, makes me more excited to do the work that I'm doing. So it's a similar approach to the same issue, which is you've got to see people not as, quote, laborers.

and not even as employees, but as people who are here to help you on this mission. And it's got to be a win for them. I love that you put out your personal mission statement there a couple times, because as you were talking about how your organization and all the meetings talks about its mission, strategy, results, I do the same thing in my personal life every single day. I wake up

And every day I say this mantra, today is a glorious day and I'm going to live it with excellence, with boundless enthusiasm and limitless

potential, true to my visions and with a heart full of love. And then I say some other things. But when you keep repeating to yourself what your values are, how you want to live your day, more times than not, over time, it leads you to lead your glorious days because you set out with that intention. And I think companies can do the same thing with their employees and create a more intentional workplace.

In the morning, I say a similar prayer, which is a wish I have, which I say, God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt, which is all about how do I get out of myself?

and stop focusing on what I want, and start focusing on how can I be of service? What is it that I am needed for, and how can I be useful? And a reminder to myself, because my tendency is to think about what I want, be very selfish. I mean, that's just how I was built, right? So I have to actively work to get out of that. And so it's a bit of a prayer, a bit of a reminder, a bit of a

an intention or an affirmation that I'm going to try and get out of myself today. And I think if we all do that a little bit, doesn't the world get a little bit better in some minor way because of the way that we show up for others? It absolutely does. So speaking of getting out of the way of others, when I was in many of these jobs, I was a high achiever, go-getter, and I found myself often in positions where I was far younger

than my peers. I was the youngest person at Arthur Anderson when I was there to be up for partner. I was the youngest vice president at Lowe's. I was one of the youngest CIOs in Fortune 50 America, etc. And I ran into a lot of issues because there were so many generational stereotypes going against me and how people would view me because I was younger than them. And they thought that my values and ethics were different than theirs.

You've written a whole book about this called Unfairly Labeled, How Your Workplace Can Benefit from Ditching Generational Stereotypes. And in it, you go into kind of the science behind why we stereotype. Can you maybe give the audience a little bit of a background on why the brain makes different categories and how that impacts how we think about people we work with?

Absolutely. I was also the youngest person in so many of the things that I was doing and came across those stereotypes and was so frustrated with that, which is why I studied this. And yet I also still held many of those stereotypes myself, even though I was the quote victim of those stereotypes. It was also a natural human tendency for me to hold those stereotypes about generations younger than me. And this is something that has been happening for

for thousands of years. Socrates is quoted as saying that younger generations today value chatter instead of hard work, and they're too focused on luxury. So the complaints haven't even changed about what's wrong with young people today in 2,500 years. So clearly this is not because

of the technology age or because there's something inherently wrong with millennials or Gen Zers. This is a human tendency to classify people in this way. And what I did in the research was understood the brain hates

hates ambiguity. When things are unknown, it creates fear for us. We love predictability and patterns. We want to know what's happening. That kind of schedule that we provide our young children is a way of creating safety for them because when they know what's coming next, they feel better. And so we as adults still want that.

And as times change and the pace of change is quickening today, and because of the technology age, we're seeing all of these different dynamics that we're unfamiliar with, and it heightens that fear. And we've now created these very convenient labels for different generations, which is a new thing, by the way, the word millennial wasn't invented until 1990. So we didn't really label different generations differently before that.

And now that we have these labels, we're attaching ourselves to those labels because they make the unknown known. They make the unpredictable predictable. When we can say Gen Z are entitled and they're tech savvy and they don't care about interpersonal skills, but they do care about volunteerism or whatever the stereotypes are.

It makes this mash of new people with new expectations and new values and new ways of thinking

singular in nature. We can put them in a box and call it understood. And as leaders, especially in the workplace, if we can understand what this new generation of workers wants, what they're going to buy, what kind of management style they appreciate, what attracts them to a company or not, somehow we feel like we're getting a competitive advantage. The reality is so much of those stereotypes are not true.

and made up and bad science, really. I mean, I can share with you so many statistics that people point to to justify the stereotypes. But if you dig just a little bit deeper under the hood of that research, you realize that it is totally misunderstood or lazy or too small of a population or being miscategorized.

And so that was what my doctoral research was, is putting my head under the hood of the generations research world and understanding what's really true and what's really not true. And what I found was it's all pretty much made up. It is so many lies packaged in a way that will get a click on Inc or Fortune or Forbes, these websites that are trying to get attention. And when you see a headline like five tools for managing your millennial employees, you

it gets clicks because people are struggling to understand each other. And that click is revenue. And so therefore we continue to invest in lies in an effort to drive capitalism. And so all of this to say, what is true? What's true is what makes up who we are and our beliefs or our values are the thousands of experiences that we had growing up with our family, with our friends, with our schools, going to church or not going to church and

That's what makes up who we are, not these historic events like the Great Depression or 9-11 or the narrative that these big news stories somehow shape who we are and what brings us meaning is so reductionist in nature and just not true.

And the work that we can do, how we can overcome this is by personally taking accountability to think differently about this, because we all have in our hearts that ability to classify others as different than us. And Henry Tatchville called this in-group out-group dynamics. We want to belong to a group because then we feel like we belong. And if we belong in the in-group, that means there must be an out-group and the out-group is

is not as good as us. We naturally go there because it helps boost our self-esteem. So think about generations.

Whatever generation you are, I bet you've never had the thought, I wish I was that other generation. I'm a millennial. I've never thought I wish I was a baby boomer. And I don't think baby boomers very often think that they wish that they were Gen Z. We all think our generation is the best generation because our brain is making us feel good about ourselves by making that the in-group and every other group, the out-group. And it's a totally destructive, totally made up construct that

just creates problems and keeps us separate. So let's never say the word millennial again. Drop Generation Z as a concept entirely and remove it from your vocabulary and we'll all be better off. Yeah, I love your explanation. Earlier this year, I wrote a book myself and the first principle that I go into is all about the fact that we need to find our mission in life. And I talk, I describe it as a mission angler

And I picked that description purposely because just like groups of fish, we are so conditioned to join the herd and to be influenced by the herd. And that defines what our life becomes. And what I'm really encouraging people to do is that they need to break free from that school of fish and become their own fish and not what the herd is expecting of them. And I think the same thing goes

with what you're describing. Most organizations assume that different generations need to be managed in distinct ways, and what you're emphasizing is that it's not age, it's interpersonal dynamics that matter most in the workplace.

Absolutely. And what's become really destructive with generational stereotypes is that they are socially acceptable. So we've had, if I replace the label of generation, millennial, Gen X, etc., with a different label, let's say race, and I say, okay, there's four races in the workplace. There's the whites, the blacks, the Asians, and the Hispanics.

It's pretty obvious because we've had so many conversations societally about how inappropriate it is to stereotype based on race or gender or any other number of labels that we've decided are not okay. It still happens, right? I mean, it still happens, but we don't socially, it's not socially acceptable to do that anymore. But with generation, it is. It's totally fine to say millennials are entitled.

And that's the problem. We haven't even figured out that it's inappropriate. So it's really ageism hiding in a generational label, which is socially acceptable. And a story I wrote once for Forbes was about

how we get tricked into the acceptability, if that's a word, of this whole construct. So you see the article about five tips for managing millennials. Well, imagine if I replaced the word millennial with an actual age, like five tips for managing your 62-year-old employees.

Well, now we're actually more obviously talking about ageism. And in fact, there's federal law against discriminating against employees over the age of 40. So you're now in illegal territory. And it's the same idea. It's just replacing the label with the age and going above 40. Millennials are under 40 mostly. So of course, people feel totally comfortable discriminating against millennials. But

It just keeps us separate. And right now, what we need to do is find ways to come together. That's what everybody wants. And there's so much fragmenting us, fragmenting our consciousness, fragmenting us physically, especially post-pandemic, that this is one of those fragmentation tools that we need to abandon. I couldn't agree more with that. And I wanted to take this, Jessica, in a little bit different direction than what we've been going. I want to talk about

the great pay reset in two different ways. I was recently listening to a recent podcast that you did on this. Can you explain how this trend is reshaping the job market and what workers can do to protect themselves in this new economic environment and maybe explain to them if they're not aware what the great pay reset is?

So the Wall Street Journal had an article about this on the cover last week, and this is unprecedented. What I need people to understand is that this isn't just a normal part of the economic business cycle. We come and go from good news in the economic macro scale, but this is something we have not seen.

So what the cover of the Wall Street Journal talked about is that wages are now going backwards. We have historically always believed that wages only go in one direction. They go up or they plateau and then they go up and then they plateau. And what we have seen now is wages going backwards.

for both frontline workers, hourly workers, and salaried workers, we're seeing offers below, significantly below what they were a year ago. So hourly work that used to get paid $20 an hour is now getting paid $15 an hour. Jobs that used to pay $80,000, $90,000 a year are now getting offers at $60,000 a year. That is unprecedented. Maybe you saw that

around the time of the Great Depression, but there was a depression happening. This is not the same circumstance. And so why is the Great Pay Reset happening and what can we do about it? Well, workers need to be

prepared, I think is what's happening. And organizations should also be careful about taking advantage of this moment in time in which wages are getting set back, because the consequences of that over the long term may be quite negative, not only for the culture, but for your financial results. You may be able to get away with it temporarily, but what are the long-term impacts of

of the quality of your workforce, of turnover in your organizations. I mean, there's a big difference between talent acquisition and top talent acquisition. It's not that complicated to hire people. What's hard is to get the best people to come to your team. And the impact that having great employees have on your organization is huge.

I don't need to make the argument for that. Every business leader understands the value of top talent. And so scaling back wages right now, just because you can, because of the fear in the marketplace and how many stories there have been about layoffs may not actually be the best strategy for driving business results.

This isn't about it's the right thing to do for people. I mean, there is a wage equity gap which needs to be addressed. I'm not trying to address that here. I'm saying this is probably bad for business and short-term thinking, especially when you consider that many times the people who are making those negotiations are hiring managers who are frankly employees themselves who may also get laid off and then be on the job market. And hiring managers sometimes make short-sighted

in an effort to maybe seem like a better hiring manager, right? Oh, look, I got a deal on this employee. I negotiated them at the bottom end of the range. Aren't I great? But the long-term strategic impact of that on the business is not positive. And so I think leaders right now need to make sure that if you're going backwards in wages, there's a good reason that you've studied the long-term impact of that on your business and you're not falling into a trap of making decisions

gut decisions based on fear that's happening right now in the marketplace for both employees and hiring managers. I have made a prediction, and I think that this is only going to make it go more quickly, that there's this thing called social impact theory, where basically society goes in a bunch of cycles.

And we've been in our current cycle for a very long time. And I think we're going to come out of this cycle and we're going to go more into the cycle where people were individual tradesmen, blacksmiths, whatever it might have been. But I think the cycle we're going into, you're going to have more instead of entrepreneurs, individual entrepreneurs who start selling their services if they're smart across different company bases so that they can maximize

their value and lessen the impact that I think is going to happen with AI, the other digital things that are disrupting, whether it's robotics or automation or what have you, because

having been around these boards of public companies they're constantly wanting to reduce costs and the biggest cost that you have in most businesses is your people so if they can replace you what i've found is matter what they say they're going to try to so the more indispensable you can make yourself and be a free agent across the board that's where i personally think things are going to go in the future right interested to hear your thoughts on that

I completely agree. I think you're going to see that, especially with highly skilled workers that are specialists in niche areas.

where I don't think you see as much flexibility or ability to do that as at the frontline level, people who don't necessarily service workers, people who don't necessarily have deep education or expertise in a particular area. And I fear for what will happen with that group of people, those group of workers, they are feeling the pain right now. And I think that pain will increase. And I think there is a real risk of a revolution, right?

And that can take many forms, right? I don't necessarily mean a bestie day revolution. It could be just a general strike, a nationwide general strike where the people finally show up in a

cohesive way and say, we will not stand for this. And so that balance of what works for employees and what works for employers needs to be struck. That is the long-term play for any CEO is figuring out what is the best way to make sure that everyone's winning because there can only be so much taking on

from that frontline workforce before something breaks. And I think that that's already happening. You're already seeing it in the form of increased anti-work sentiment, increased noise on social media. Also, the multi-directional nature of information sharing has totally changed the game. People are quitting live streaming. They're quitting on

social media, your brand and your culture are now one in the same. You can't have a positive brand with the negative culture because you will be exposed. There's anonymous boards like Blind and Glassdoor where people are posting the truth. And so many times in history, leaders have leaned on

the corporate communications narrative that they can construct. And those corporate comms talking points have been very scrubbed for a long time and that worked for a while, but they're not working anymore because people see the truth. They know what's going on, even though the CEO releases some statement and, and,

that isn't working anymore. They're losing the power of the narrative and controlling the story. And so authenticity is more important than ever before. And we have to care. Care is the place where profit and people both win. That is the place. My TED talk is called how to get people to give a

Hoot, although I don't say the word hoot I say another word that starts with S, and that is because that's where both companies and employees win because if you talk to any CEO today and say, how much would you pay to get everyone on your team to deeply care about the results you're trying to achieve. They would pay a lot of money for that because they know the impact it would have on their business results.

And if you ask any employee, what was the best job you ever had? They will say it was one where they really cared about the work that they were doing. So it's a win. It's what CEOs want. It's what employees want. We all want people to care about the job they're doing. And if we can figure out the secret sauce to doing that, it is a win where there isn't some big self-destruction at the end of the storyline. That's where we need to be focusing our attention right now.

Well, you and I are so aligned on that one. And there's one last topic I wanted to talk to you about, and that's cultural fit versus cultural ed. And I want to talk about it in this way. I had a peer at Lowe's who, when he was hiring someone, had this four by four quadrant. And he would often tell me that it doesn't matter how gifted someone is technically,

If they don't fit high on the cultural side of things, then we can't train that into them. We can train a person who's not as technical to be more technical, but you can't reshape a round peg to fit a square hole. And I agreed with him. And then I went to Dell, where there were a ton of people who were cultural fit.

and Michael was trying to bring in cultural ads. And what was happening is the cultural fit culture was getting rid of all the cultural ads, which was trying to change the culture of the company, trying to change the way that they were doing things because the whole business model was adapting. And my question for you is, when is cultural fit the right solution and when should companies really look for cultural ad?

It's such a great question. You've teed me up perfectly to tell you about the other research we did with Stanford last year, which blew my mind. And what happened was we've been in business for 36 years and we have a list of clients. I mean, it's such a long list and we've helped all of these clients figure out what cultural beliefs or values they need in order to drive the right results and help them shape that. So I looked at all that data from 35 years, 36 years of history and

and came up with the most commonly held themes from those clients about what culture they wanted to create. And there were basically six cultures that made it to the top of the list. It was

results-oriented culture. It was an accountable culture. It was a transparent culture. It was a collaborative culture. It's straightforward cultural beliefs that were espoused by these clients. So we approached Stanford and we said, Stanford, help us understand which one of these actually wins. Let's look at these culture types that we've identified and figure out which one drives the most revenue.

So we do this study together and the professor I was working with at Stanford said, I've done a bunch of research on culture. Why don't we add a couple other dimensions that I've previously studied just to, just for good measure, just to see if those are also driving results. So we added three others and we did this research and we were blown away because in fact, the culture type that one,

every single time. And it was 3x revenue growth than every other culture type. It was the only culture type that was significantly correlated with growth, was not one of the six that I had identified in my clients past. None of our clients have ever asked for that type of culture, but it was an adaptive culture, a culture that's able to shift.

And what was so fascinating about that is it's not about getting stuck in one culture type because then culture fit keeps you stuck, which is exactly what you were just saying. There was the culture fit and then the culture ads and the culture fit people were saying, no, don't change. We don't want to change. And that change resistance was the very thing that we're holding back business results.

So the key here, what I learned is that I am culture agnostic. I don't come into any organization and say, you need to be more innovative or you need to be more, you need to be like Netflix or you need to be like Zappos and all the culture books say that, right? The culture authors all have an opinion about some organization that they were at that had a quote, great culture. And that's what everyone else needs to have. But the reality is

That's not true. It all depends on the culture equation, which we talked about a little while ago. It's what is your purpose? What is your strategy? What is the culture that will amplify that? And here's the thing, right? So you've got strategy, which is always changing, especially today with the competitive landscape changing, with leadership changing, with technology changing, with

with everything changes all the time in your strategy and you have to pivot your strategy accordingly. And that's the easy part because you just get your leaders in a room and say, hey, we're going to invest in AI. Sound good? Sound good. That's the new strategy. Write AI on the slide, send it to whomever. And now that's the new strategy, right? It's not that complicated to change strategy. But the hard part is if you're supposed to be aligning strategy and culture,

And culture is about how people think and act. How do you get everyone in your organization at scale to think and act differently to meet that new strategic imperative? And then if the strategy changes again, now you got to get everyone to think and act differently again to meet that strategic imperative for alignment to drive results. That's the hard part is adapting culture.

And the way you adapt culture is through new beliefs, understanding what are the beliefs that are currently getting in the way of us achieving our new strategic goals around AI investment. Well, the beliefs are probably AI is going to replace me. That's a dangerous tool. I'm going to be obsolete. And so I'm going to resist AI investment because of that. And then you have to understand what do those beliefs need to be and what experiences can we create to help shape those beliefs intentionally, right?

And so that's the key. It's not culture fit because that'll get you stuck. It's all about culture adaptation as the differentiator to drive results so that you can keep up with your strategic shifts as they happen. Thank you so much for explaining all that because I've seen this play out firsthand and in so many of these cultures, especially

Those who were advocates of the Jack Welch way of doing things, where you're constantly ripping out 10 to 15% of your organization every year. So many of them were the cultural ads just because they seem like a different type of fish to the environment. And when you keep doing that, you're just leading yourself to becoming obsolete, which is what so many companies have done over the past 30, 40 years by not

looking at themselves in the mirror and realizing that they need to change. Well, Jessica, it's been a great interview. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Can you share with listeners that they want to learn more about you?

get you to potentially do a keynote for their organization, read your book, where's the best place for them to go? With pleasure. You can go to my website, which is jessicacriegel.com. Kriegel is spelled K-R-I-E-G-E-L. I also have a LinkedIn newsletter. Every Friday it comes out. It's called This Week in Culture. So follow me on LinkedIn if you're interested. And I would love to come and keynote at your organization. It's my favorite thing to do. So reach out. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was an honor to have you.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for such thoughtful questions. It was a great conversation. Wow, what an insightful conversation with Jessica Kriegel. Her expertise on building intentional workplace cultures that balance people and profitability has given us a wealth of practical knowledge that leaders and organizations can start applying right away. Jessica's dedication to transforming workplaces and her innovative strategies

offer a powerful blueprint for anyone looking to create an environment where both employees and the business can truly thrive. If today's discussion resonated with you, I highly encourage you to explore more of Jessica's work, including her book, Unfairly Labeled. Be sure to stay tuned for her ongoing research and thought leadership in the field of workplace culture. Remember, the culture you create defines the success you achieve. So take these lessons to heart and start making intentional changes in your workplace today.

You can find links to all things Jessica Kriegel in the show notes at passionstruck.com. If you're planning to buy any books from the show's guests, please use the links on our website and keeps it free for all our listeners. You can also watch the videos of the episode on YouTube. And don't forget to check out all our advertiser deals and discount codes at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

You can connect with me at John R. Miles on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's episode. You can also find me on LinkedIn if you prefer connecting there. Before we wrap up, I want to remind you that beyond hosting the Passion Struck podcast, I am incredibly passionate about sharing these insights with organizations and teams through public speaking engagements. I've had the privilege of speaking to some of the world's top companies, helping their leaders and teams unlock their potential and create intentional change.

If today's episode inspired you and you think these messages could benefit your organization, head over to johnrmiles.com slash speaking for more details or reach out directly. Let's explore how we can work together to ignite change and drive growth. Next week, I am sitting down with the incredible Maha Abu-Ellenine, where we dive into her insights on personal branding, communication, and how to navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape. It's a conversation you won't want to miss. It wasn't what I do, John. It's

It's how I did it. I created value for them. I played the long game. I tried to build a good reputation. I worked on building a network. I worked on introducing them to my network. Those are the things that are in this book, these rules, that if you practice them, it'll make a profound difference, not just on your business, but on yourself.

I talk a lot about creating value for other people is like the tenant, my DNA. Some people are motivated by money. I'm motivated by creating value for other people. And one of the benefits of creating value for other people is it actually creates value for you. If you found today's episode useful, I'd appreciate it if you could share it with someone who might benefit. The greatest compliment you can give us is sharing the show with those you care about. And as always, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. We'll see you next time. Live life passion struck.

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