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The Employee Advantage with Stephan Meier · Disengaged

• Stephan Meier: You know, it's relatively easy to give I mean, you need the resources, but once you have decided I can bump up your salary by X amount of dollars, but in strategy hard is actually good. It's actually good to do something that is difficult to do, because it's then hard to copy. So James: Right. Hmm. Stephan Meier: Lowering the price is also easy to do. I mean it's painful because it comes out of the margin, but it's easy to do. But if it's easy, everybody can do it. and if it's hard, that really creates like a sustainable competitive advantage. If you can really create an atmosphere where people are super excited to come in every day, are engaged, innovative, that's really difficult to do. But once you did it, another company cannot say, Well we had a shitty culture and now we're changing it tomorrow to a better one. That's hard. But hard is actually good if you want to differentiate and create a competitive advantage. James: Hello and welcome to another episode of As Discussed. My guest today is Stefan Meyer. Stefan is a behavioural economist. and the James P. Gorman Professor of Business Strategy at Columbia Business School. He is the author of The Employee Advantage. How putting workers first helps business thrive? His argument is that companies have spent the last few decades gravitating towards a customer centric model. And these same companies now have to shift their focus towards an employee centric model. And as Boki points out, the tools to do that are already on the shelf. Many of the approaches that we've taken towards a customer centric model can be reapplied. Many of those skills and models and frameworks can be reapplied to the employee to improve that experience and get the most out of people. It's a book that runs very close to my own thinking on how we need to shift the workplace into a more positive experience for employees and in turn generate a more productive output. As always, if you enjoy this discussion, please rate the show and please share it with a friend. This helps tremendously in expanding the reach and helping me get more guests like Stefan on the show. If you are interested in any of the books or names mentioned, you'll find references to the literature in the show notes. And I now have a substack in which I will drop a transcript of the discussion if you are a reader rather than a listener. So without further ado, I give you Stefan Meyer. And I hope you enjoy the conversation. So Mr. Stefan Meyer, thank you so much for joining me. How are doing? Stephan Meier: I'm great. Thanks so much for having me, James. James: This is a real pleasure and we're here partly to talk about your book the employee advantage, which I really enjoyed. And first of my first reaction was I am kind of angry about this because I'm quite jealous of the book is very much in the same area that I'm writing about right now. And I'm not going to be able to do as good a job with this. So anger was my initial reaction. And then that kind of gave way to appreciation and respect, eventually, after a few minutes. Stephan Meier: Okay. I I appreciate that, your honesty, James, and I'm fine if you're angry about that. Now I do think I'm almost certainly what you write is gonna be very complimentary to what I do because there is never enough material right now who kind of talks about how to improve the employee experience. James: Okay. you room. Right, absolutely. And I have one question, actually, while I'm holding it. One question, which is on the cover design, was in particular the mug and the orientation of the text, because it differs here, and it's kind of off-center, and on the spine, it's in the right place. So I've got a theory, but I was curious as to whether that was a deliberate design choice and what the rationale is there. Stephan Meier: it it it really wasn't I mean it might have been from the cover design designer, but it was definitely not my intention. What's your th what's your theory about what's the intention? James: Hmm. hold it here. So my theory was that it was a deliberate ironic dig at how we recognize employees. So world's best employee, this superlative that obviously doesn't really make any sense. And the reward is a mug that's poorly designed. That was my interpretation. Why would you have the text running through the handle and on the outside of it rather than being in the middle? And then you've kind of corrected on the spine, which tells me that someone did it deliberately. So that's my theory about it. But I'd love to say, if you ever speak with your Yeah, whoever did the cover on then. Stephan Meier: I y you're the first person, James, who pointed that out. Now that does not mean you're the first person you realize it, but the the first one who is honest enough to tell me that it was poorly designed, which was not I did not design it, so it's not my problem. But like I I definitely will ask the exact I will I definitely ask the editor about this. James: I think deliberately it does not end. I'm also acutely aware of it because I'm kind of going through my own cover designs right now. So I'm now sort of looking at every other cover and sort of trying to infer meaning behind it and things. I think it's very clever. So anyway, it's an excellent book. And I'd like to start off by having you speak a bit more about your thesis, which is, and it's very apparent that this kind of this core thesis and way of thinking runs through the entire book. And it's about this move. Stephan Meier: Okay. James: or not a move, but this evolution from a customer centric way of thinking in business to a more employee centric way of thinking, which is sort of yet to really emerge at scale. But I'd love for you to just talk me through that and what your views are on that. Stephan Meier: Yeah. So I think there are like two ways of talking about this. One is a very personal way. So, you know, I'm in I'm a professor at at the business school here at Columbia and I go into my classroom. I teach strategy or taught strategy for like twenty plus years. And I go into the classroom and talk about like how do you differentiate with customers? You know, how do you create customer delight and whatnot? And then I went back to my office And did my research, which was all about like what motivates people, you know, how to what what how does money work? When doesn't it work? What is the meaning of work? And then I'll go back to the classroom and talk all about customers. And only after, quite frankly, a while, I figured, you know, I'm always talking customer when I when it's strat business strategy with my MBAs, and then I talk about motivation, what actually happens inside of firms when I do it. And it took me To the pandemic, where I finally made that connection. Whereas, like, you know, when it comes like the great resignation and whatever, and I figured, you know, something is not going well. and originally and I thought, like, you know, maybe it's just during the pandemic, and I saw it's actually for years we were doing a pretty bad job in engaging our employees. And then I made the connection. It's like, you know, you can differentiate as well. on the employee side, you can create what my strategy per per persona would say a competitive advantage. And so that's kind of my personal story how I got there. The more content-wise, I do think we're seeing this evolution from you know shareholder value, it's all about the shareholder. And then certain firms figure out, you know, in order in order to make shareholder value, maybe we should care about the customer. And then This customer centricity movement came along and we moved from product centric to customer centricity. And I do think we're now at the stage where we can figure out, you know, actually, you know, if we treat our employee well, you know, that leads to customer delight and to innovation and all those good stuff that will actually lead to shareholder value as a result as well. So that's I I made the I had a journey, a personal stor journey to that, but I also think there is a move in general in the market that like employees create an advantage and might also have an advantage. So the employee advantage, the title actu of the book, actually has two advantages. You know, the employees I think will gaining more power. over time and also firms that put employees first actually create a competitive advantage in the market. James: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because there's a sort of assumption that if you give more to employees, then you're giving less to your customers. And no one's going to say that. But I feel like there's this assumption that why would we pay people over market? Because we could put that money into our customers. And it's like there's a zero-sum assumption behind all of this. But what's clear in your book is it very much isn't zero-sum. If you treat your employees well, there's a sort of There is a greater sum of the parts argument to this. And we don't need to choose whether a dollar goes here or there. We can put a dollar there and get $2 here. Stephan Meier: Totally. No, I completely agree that this either or or serum thinking is all over the place. I mean, I quite frankly, I think it was there when we moved to customer centricity, where we thought like, you know, I think Amazon got heat for like years where like, you know, where's the money? Like you do maybe too much for your customers, like and there was this either or mentality too until we figured out now there's actually win win. You make customer happy, you make more money. And so that's my argument in the book exactly that like, you know, you make the employees engaged and committed and motivated, and as a result, you actually make more money too, because your comp your your firm is gonna out compete the others. James: so you used the example, a particular example of the new Harry Potter book and how Amazon dealt with that and how at that time when the customer centric view wasn't as common, it was viewed as a strange So, talk me through what happened there and how we can learn from that from an employee perspective as well. Stephan Meier: Absolutely. So you know, Amazon when I forgot which exact version of the Harry Potter came out and Bezos figured like that's an amazing opportunity. You know, we should actually give people and it came out I think on a Friday, we should make sure that customers have that book in their hands on a Saturday, which is a very, very short turnaround time. They need it and they subsidized it as well. They thought like that's how we can read those Harry Potter fans, and there are obviously a lot of them. We can really delight them. We can like blow them away. And analysts were like, what the hell are you doing? That like costs so much money. You know, like people and they should suck it up and wait a couple of days, you know, that's okay. And some will go to the bookstore, the local one, and get it there, but we don't care. Turns out it was a huge success because sure enough, people were so surprised positively, creates like loyalty. And and just that moment, you know, as in marketing, where it's like that moment that matters, you know, that was a moment that really mattered, that creates kind of that brand awareness that is really, really difficult to like buy otherwise. and as a result of those loyalty, you know, you then can actually make more money as a result. so there's a clear win-win there as well. And we sometimes see it on the other side as well, you know, where a company Costco Who is a relative employee-centric organization gets heat or got heat? Still, sometimes now is like, you know, you have to decide shareholder or people. You know, no, actually, you don't. in that particular case, you can cr make happy employees, and as a result, the customers are delighted. they buy more stuff. they actually like the the private label of Costco, which has higher margins. So you make money there and the turnover goes down. So you also save money on that. So it's it's all win win, in in the end. James: Yeah. And I think that's that realization that happened once in the customer experience movement, let's call it, that is starting to happen now in the employee experience movement as well. And what's interesting is you mentioned you had a sort of realization during COVID that maybe we just haven't been thinking about this in the wrong way. It was probably around the same time that I had my own realization, but it was from a different perspective. For me, my career had been built by building pay systems. to kind of coerce people into giving water to the company with the assumption that why would they ever do it if they didn't have incentives? That's the kind of overarching assumption with pay in many companies. Why would they ever offer more than they could or do work that they want to? And this assumption that work is, as Darl Lindsay would say, is a negative good, overrides everything. So my sort of realization was kind of, why are we always assuming that people don't want to work? and why are we creating work that people don't want to do and leaving ourselves on the back foot to the extent that we have to incentivize people to do something that they otherwise wouldn't have done. So I think we both sort of had a sort of parallel arrivals there, this idea that well maybe actually you can just make work fun in the first place and people will just want to do that. Stephan Meier: Yeah. If totally. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think James, what is it also important and and really interesting what you just said, you know, with the customer, you know, in order for customer centricity to work, it needs to be, you know, there needs to be more than price. You know, if they only care about price, that's then it's zero sum. You know, like I have to give you a better deal, that comes out of my margin, that's hard. If it were all money, you know, pay, that's also Heart then. you know, I need to give you more, that comes out of my margins directly. But if you think about customer centricity, it's not like lowering the price. That's not what customer centricity is. It's kind of to figure out what do you like on top of just the price. In Amazon's case, it was like, you know, I surprise you with like you can have now this book a day before, like right when it comes out, you can continue the journey, the story of Harry Potter. and that creates this delight where them I'm actually willing to pay for this. and so you can if you delight people and the experience of the customer is better, they're actually you know paying more. And the same is true with customer. It's they're not just motivated by money, they're motivated by other stuff. And if you if you provide them the right structure, culture, whatever it is that actually makes them engaged and motivated. You know, they work harder, they are more innovative, they treat their customer better. So all all the stuff we talked about. And and that's a mindset shift. That's a shift from thinking about the humans in one way and shifting to think about their actually work or they they work differently in their brain. Their brain works differently than it's just money. James: Yeah, they're not just inputs to production. not machine. They're not a replaceable part. And what you were saying about the value there beyond just the price, I was just speaking with Jessie's one on a previous episode. And the example she uses in her book is coffee. It was just... Stephan Meier: Totally. James: price you buy your coffee beans and make it but people go to coffee shops all the time and spend way more per bean than they have to to get a cup of coffee. You have the coffee bean, you have someone that roasts it for you, then you have a barista with a beanie and tattoos in their arms that serve at you and you're paying for all that things but you're paying for much more than just a coffee bean and the functionality of that coffee bean. So we do it all the time as customers we acknowledge this extra value so it's just re-engineering our thinking to think of Stephan Meier: Yeah. James: employees in a similar way. Stephan Meier: Yeah. And coffee is interesting. I mean I r I wrote a when you know when the new Starbucks CEO came along, I wrote an oped which y nobody including him hasn't read probably. But the argument I make there I the argument I made there is exactly what he said. You know, in order for people to bu to b pay for a Starbucks coffee which seems James: I want to read that. Stephan Meier: you know, a premium over what the coffee is, is the experience you get in the store. The baristas are a big part of that experience. You know, if you walk in there and everybody is miserable, I don't want to spend much time there. I'm also not willing to pay a lot for that coffee. It's like everything that makes this vibe or this third place, as we talked about Starbucks for a long time. You know, the people in the store are critically important. So you need to train them properly, you need to, you know, give them the feeling that they're wanted, that they have the right skills and so on and so forth. Because that translates then exactly what you're saying in the experience when people walk into a Starbucks and and are willing then to pay a premium for that you know, that brownish brute thing that we call coffee. that is like what a twenty, thirty percent more than in a in the coffee shop next door. And and so the people are critically important for creating that delight for the customer as well. James: Yeah, it's such a good analogy. So Stefan, practically speaking then, when we're talking about this parallel between the customer experience and the employee experience, you point out that the tools built for those customer experience elements can be repurposed for the employees. Things like segmentation, journey mapping, experience design. So talk me through a good example of how we can repurpose any one of those tools or your favorite tool and apply it to employee experience in a way that maybe we haven't done so far. Stephan Meier: Yeah. I mean it's a little harder to choose among your kids. It's feels a little bit like the question. But like there is I mean, there are many examples I think where you can literally take the tools and apply it. So one that I find particularly striking, and it has to do with, you know, if you will go to a marketing executive and say, you know Is it a good idea that we ask our customers once a year how they're doing? You know, what they were laughing their asses off. They were like, no, of course not. We need to like constantly know what they're doing and using multiple techniques to actually figure out what they want, how they want it, and you know, focus groups, journeys, and so on and so forth. And while with the employees, we often do annual engagement survey, everybody ignores it. Everybody knows that it's ignored, so the data is actually not particularly good. So an interesting example is Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company. they had the problem that they they saw that like female top talent would not making it to the executive level as much as they wanted to the top management. And they were like struggling, like what is going on? I think we don't discriminate, you know, I think we did everything right. And so they thought like, well, how do we deal with such problems in other domains with our customers? Well, with patients, if you want to figure out, you know, how to deal with adhere drug adherence problem, like whether people actually take the drug or not, you do a customer journey. You figure out like what actually happens in the life of their patients or the customers for a pharmaceutical? When do they get up? When do they normally take the pill or not? When When are those moments of that matter where you could intervene? And and so they literally took the marketing team that does customer journeys and applied it to employee journeys. They're like for females, that particular segment, female talent, let's see what the journey is of those female talent. Where are the moments that matter that we can intervene? Turns out in those journeys, they figured out a big difference. And problem is like male and female talent do not ask for mentors the same way. part of it is because it's not the samely accepted to ask for help. Part of it is a little hard to find the right men. So they really intervened then at exactly that point. And they were able to, in like a couple of years, to increase the number of female talent from like 41% to like 46%. So like a five percentage point increase. They were so happy that they're now, I think, on their sixth or their seventh journey, where they're then like, let's do that for other segments. you know, for Hispanic employees and so on and so forth, and see the journey that they go, what's the moment that matter? And intervene. Exactly what we would do with our customers. So that's just one example where you would you know take this technique and in Eli Lilly case, literally the same team, the same tools. and apply it to the experience that the employees had instead of the experience that the customers had. James: Yeah, let's give me a few thoughts in there. So first of all, had a guest, Meg Bernard-May, who was a product experience person and is now a people experience person. So it's pretty much the same thing, taking a skill set that once applied to the customer and now applying it to the employees. But when you talk about that, I love that, by the way, that Eli is a really interesting company for case studies. But what is interesting about that is the conventional business shape or the conventional business structure is about the roles and responsibilities prohibit that kind of creative solution to happen. And the whole that's not in my job description reaction might come about. And the leader who's tasked with short-term goals and achievement and metrics and performance management, all that kind of apparatus. When asked, can I borrow one of your team members to run this experiment, we'll say, well, no, or what's in it for me? So it requires a slightly different organizational mentality, I think, less kind of bound by those conventional roles and responsibilities to allow that skill set to free up and be redeployed. But then when you can do it, I think that's a wonderful way to. Stephan Meier: Yeah. And I I I completely agree with you, James. And I think when we move to, you know, those, you know, those everybody cares about customer centricity. Not everybody can actually pull it off. And I think one way is like if you think if you go into employee, if you if you go into customer centric organization, it was like, customers experience is is is marketing's job. Then it was like, no. Like Marketing needs to be involved, you know, technology needs to be involved, operation needs to be involved, everybody needs to be involved in order to create the experience for the customer. But when we talk about employee, it's still often the case. Like, well, that's HRs, you know, that's like HR jobs. But you can't actually move the needle significantly if that's HR. It has to be, as you said, it needs to organizationally change. as well in order to create, you know, the real different differentiation that comes from the experience. Because, you know, HR can only do so much, in order to you know, like can gave like I don't know, you know, can offer like free gym memberships and what but like that's not really moving the needle because it's like what happens in the teams in i in the divisions, in the functions, whatever, that really then matters. But in order to do that all hands on deck, everybody needs to be involved. You can't outsource it to just one function. James: and the traditional role of HR, even the title, Human Resources, treats humans as a resource in a production kind of sense. Stephan Meier: Absol totally. James: And the training and the skill sets and the job descriptions and the tools of HR are all built around this kind of assumption. This assumption, these are inputs into production. So I don't want to be critical of HR because that's born out of years and decades and centuries really of manufacture. But for the HR to evolve, I think that does need to be a fundamental rethink. of the role of a given function, if indeed there needs to be a given function in getting the most out of people. And that's a good example, I think. Like you go to HR and to your point, it's like a, it's a kind of additive problem. Okay, what else can we offer people to solve this? Rather than rethink of the structure and nature of the work and the relationship to the business. Stephan Meier: Yeah. Totally. James: So one of your chapters, is more than money. So obviously this caught my eye as someone that works a lot in paying comments on the relationship between pay and motivation and human behaviors. And there's a subheading here, which obviously kind of stops you in your tracks, which is money doesn't work. That caught my attention. So talk me through what you meant by that. Stephan Meier: Yeah. I think like the chapter before the sub chapter before that is like money does work. so there is the thing is money obviously is important no not unimportant. And you know, we all care about money. we do things for money. On the lower end of the income distribution, you know, money is critically important. If you can't make ends meet you know, or always have to worry like, you know, what happens, my kid has a dental emergency, I'm in big trouble because that like is such a strain on on people's minds and brains that like it really affects and kills productivity as well. But once you reach a certain level, that's what I meant in money don't then it doesn't it just doesn't move the needle that much. when we think about sustained engagement and motivation. There is just at a certain point more money, you know, is not I mean it's nobody I would not say no to ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand, hundred thousand dollar bonus. but you know, in order for me to really be engaged and motivated, you know, that's not really mud moves in. And that's not just my opinion, you know, there is research after research. In fact, that's what I was doing when I went from the classroom. to my office like study, you know, what does it say? I'm an economist by training, so I was like, you know, when does it c when does money work? When does it doesn't it work? what actually motivates people in the long run? sustaining people? And, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong, if you say like Stefan, you know, can you fly tomorrow to San Francisco and I pay you a million dollars and you have to you know walk my dog I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna come walk your dog for a million dollars. I have no problem with that. but but there is you know, would I do it for like a thousand dollars every week? No. or every day. do would I wo do my best? No. But if there is other motivators, you know, as I describe in the book, let's say there's purpose or have real impact, I mean that's kind of what make keeps people going. James: First of all, I mean, this is not a good dog. I'm not sure exactly what the price would be to have to walk this guy. But it is a really interesting area. one thing I fasted, I had Alfie Cohn on. recently and he wrote this wonderful book, Punished by Rewards, which, and he takes the stance that basically there's no good way to reward people. Not only is it not an effective way to get people engaged and motivated, but it actively works against innovation. That's the fascinating thing for me when you actually look into the research. If all you want is a bit more, if you want someone to do a bit more of a thing that they know how to do but have chosen not to, is a thing Alfie Cohn's framing. then yes, you can incentivize people to do that, but that's it. And in this world, we want people to be innovative and collaborative and think of things that we haven't thought of before. And this innovation is, I think as you put it, it's like, it's the fuel of survival for companies. And you can't incentivize that. So assuming that you can use pay to motivate more of that is so weirdly ubiquitous, but also unanimously disproved in the literature. That sort of... Stephan Meier: Yeah. James: Dichotomy really fascinates me. Stephan Meier: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean and there is like many examples and I mean that I did a lot of research on that as well when it backfires, you know, when money can actually destroy motivation and somet you know, there's like those simple this is not my example, but like my co author and and good friend Uri Ignizio who wrote a book on on incentives, you know, has this example where like you know, if you would ask me, you know, Stefan, can I help you move? James: Mm-hmm. Stephan Meier: Well, you know, we're friends, help me move. And I was like, I mean nobody really likes to help move, but like I would do it for you, you know, if it's a friend. Or you could say, Well, would you help me move and I'd pay you five bucks for the day? Now I did it for free before, so five dollars should be like additive to it. But like obviously the five dollars destroys something in the relationship. You know, like I think I'm offended, or I think like, do you think my time is worth five dollars. like again, for a million I would help you move anytime. but there is something money actually destroys and we have to be extremely careful in in using it in in in the right way. But but we often have to I mean we often have to. Now the the problem also with monetary incentive, it's a little bit like if we would compete on price In customer centricity, you know, it's just like a race to the bottom. Well, I lowered the price a little bit more, I lowered the price a little bit more. and you're not actually creating value. And I think that's the same when you think about just the monetary. First of all, it's the race to the bottom in terms of you know, I pay a little more, you pay a little more, and so on and so forth, without actually creating, you know, what would be on the when you think about customer like customer delight. And with the employees like employee experiences. So I think there are multiple problems with money as a as an incentive, as a reward system. James: Yeah, it's a complex area and it staggers me how little people and it's very well researched. That's the interesting bit for me. Like people always come into it with an assumption that people want more money or they won't do more work and out it. And you can compare that with the stack of research that explains exactly how money will change or not change behaviors that I find very interesting that it's a very established knowledge that you can use money. Stephan Meier: Yeah. Well I think like part of it is also because it's actually easy. You know, it's relatively easy to give I mean, you need the resources, but once you have decided I can bump up your salary by X amount of dollars, but easy in strategy is not in strategy hard is actually good. It's actually good to do something that is difficult to do, because it's then hard to copy. So James: Right. Hmm. Stephan Meier: Lowering the price is also easy to do. I mean it's painful because it comes out of the margin, but it's easy to do. But if it's easy, everybody can do it. and if it's hard, that really creates like a sustainable competitive advantage. If you can really create an atmosphere where people are super excited to come in every day, are engaged, innovative, that's really difficult to do. But once you did it, It's hard for the as another company cannot say, Well we had a shitty culture and now we're changing it tomorrow to a better one. That's hard. But hard is actually good if you want to differentiate and create a competitive advantage. James: Yeah, I think you just gave me the cold open for the episode. That was wonderfully said. So Stefan, you use a quote in the book that I really love, which is, I'm not mopping floors, I'm putting a man on the moon. I really love this quote. So I'm not going to say anything more, but tell me why you use that quote and where you go in that section of the book. Stephan Meier: So the the quote comes from this janitor at NASA who was asked why, you know, what he's doing. And he says, like, well, no, I'm not mopping the floor, I'm bringing a man to the moon. And it's part of the chapter where I talk about one strong motivator which is purpose. I call it Shoot for the Moon. and the story starts with President Kennedy Who changed when he became president, he also became the head of the US Space Agency. And the space NASA had like multiple missions and he reduced it to one. And the mission was bring a man to the moon within seven years. Now that was a very, very ambitious goal because at that point NASA was able to bring a man out of orbit for 30 seconds. That's very, very far away from landing on the moon, which is the easy part. The hard part is like getting Getting them back from the moon and bringing them back to Earth. Now we all know that they achieved this within seven years of Kennedy saying it. And there is a lot of research by s sociologists as well who figured out kind of you know what actually happened in that organization. And that one mission goal was very, very, very important. That like brought everything behind that one goal, that North Star. Now Many people I mean, I've I've never met a CO says like purpose is not important. The hard part is to make it that everybody in the organization, including the janitor, who is far away from actually you know, like the rocket scientists, that's one, but like the guy who mops the floor says like no, I'm not mopping, I'm bringing a man to the moon, that everybody in the organization knows what the purpose is. feels it in their bone that they're part of this, this is hard. And that just requires more than just like, you know, in shiny letters putting in your break room like we're gonna save the world and like let's work for whatever it is. It needs to be the mission, the purpose needs actually be meaningful. That's one. you need to live it so that everybody on an organization actually knows that we're living that that's part of what we're doing. And then that Everybody in the organization, independent of rank, functions, positions, feels it that they're part of that. And that what really differentiates those organizations who take that seriously, who think about that's our why, that's our North Star. and and that's a very, very motivating thing for for organization. And of course it differs, you know, when you're a pharmaceutical company The goal is different than when you're a grocery store. so you have to for in your industry, in your job, find kind of what is the purpose that we're doing, what's the why? And that is goes a long way of motivating people to give their best. James: Yeah, and I have two thoughts as you're speaking on this. I'll try to remember the second one as I was the first. But a lot of your book, I think how we both think, it means trusting people more, not assuming that they don't want to work, trusting people that if you give them good work, they'll figure out the best way to organize themselves and get that work done. but it doesn't mean a complete lack of direction or it doesn't mean a complete absence of control. So in this example, what I like is there is a controlling factor here and that is the purpose, but it's a very clear, understood controlling factor. And it's a fun one as well. In this case, I'm putting him out on the moon. That's fun. So you do have control in the sense that you want people to work towards something that everyone shares and understands. And this is a great example because it's so clear, but... Beyond that, you're allowing people to freely figure out how to get it done. So you also talked about how engineers were just figuring things out the entire time. Like, this is the goal, but you need to figure out how to get there. And when you start taking that mentality and asking people in other careers, do you have that same sense of freedom and that same clarity of goal? When the answer's no, I think that's when a lot of problems arise. when you... Stephan Meier: Yeah. James: do start to look at people and say, they're not doing the work. We need to start incentivizing them. Well, if you had, if you're able to answer some of those questions, then perhaps you wouldn't have to. Stephan Meier: Yeah, totally. I co I couldn't agree more. That you know, that doesn't and I sometimes get like people get this wrong that like, you know, when I s tal talk about like employee centricity it's like, well, it's like a free for all. Everybody can do whatever they want, like we just listen w whenever they want stuff, we give it to them. No, no, that's not true. I mean you have to give as a leader, I think you have to give clear guidance. Like that's where we're going. That's the strategy that we're having. Clearly communicate this, everybody knows. But then Yeah, empower them to make the choices to get to that point. you know, kind of saying we we're going from A to B. How we get to B, you know, you have a lot of say how we actually get there. And and that's really important. That makes it hard, obviously, because it's like it's you have to give guidance, but you also empower at the same time. And and that some people feel that's in conflict, but I don't think it is, because You there is a there is a middle ground where you can actually be, you know, giving guidance, even f being frequently involved, you know, give feedback constantly without being controlling. Because we obviously don't like the micromanager who's frequently involved and in order to control, but we also don't like the one who is like, as I I I in the book I call him cheerleader, who is like, James, go for it, you know, and then James: man. Stephan Meier: without clear guidance where to go and not constantly involved, that's that's terrible as well. In order to set empowerment up for success, you have to be involved, you have to be an engaged coach. You have to be frequently engaged, but in order to coach, in order to say, well that was great, you know, what about here? And so being kind of a a part a yeah a coach for somebody and that sets up empowerment for success. Otherwise it's gonna be a disaster. If there is no guidance at all. James: Yeah, yeah, it's not an abdication of managerial responsibility. It's a reimagining of what that role is. And it makes me think of like, Theresa Marble and Stephen Cramer's research. And they asked managers, what do you think enables people to improve their inner work life? And the instinct for lot of managers to reach to recognition and reward. But whereas the actual factor that they found through the diary studies was that it was Stephan Meier: Totally. James: enabling meaningful progress on a daily basis. So that means removing obstacles, asking people what's getting in their way, like what do they need more of? Where are you constrained by resources? Where is your team falling apart? How can I bring in extra help? How can I reorganize the work in a way that gets more out of people? It's a very different mindset to what I think of as the factory supervisor whose job it is to monitor and incentivize more of the thing that you already thought you wanted. Stephan Meier: Hm. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. No, I couldn't agree more. And you know, it it does make it harder because you have to w walk that fine line. But again, hard is not hard is not a problem. I mean, it should actually be hard because then only the ones who really put their effort behind it, who really want to be, you know, employee centric are going to be successful. And again, to to stress the analogy to customer centricity again, you know, it's also not easy. You know, to be like really customer centric is also not so easy. And you also often have to f find balance between like, you know, what the can the customer do, what they can they not do, how much do you direct it, how much you don't, how much you listen, how much you overlie. And and and that makes it then the good companies are will succeed in that and and and then the other one can't catch up because it's actually hard to do. James: Yeah. Well, I really like that framing. Yes, it's hard work, but it's a competitive advantage that can't be replicated. So the barriers to entry into that model are high, so people can't play in your space. think, again, I want to make sure I'm getting the right example. Did you mention HEB as one of your examples? Yeah. Stephan Meier: Totally. Absolutely. Yes, yes. James: I love that company, Now, and when we talk about this, think HEB has done that and it's very difficult to go after what HEB does. They've built this cult-like following. So how has HEB done all the things that you were talking about? Stephan Meier: Yeah. I mean HE B for those who who don't know the company, so the b the the best way to illustrate, I think, H E B so they opened in I forgot the year, they opened a new store, a new new th store in outside of Dallas and people would line up overnight to be the first one in that store. Now that store is like doesn't give out free but it's a grocery store. you know, it's not like free Taylor Swift tickets or something like that. b but they have like this cult following. people love that store. And they're extremely employee centric, so they really care about their workforce in any way, shape, or form. They you know, they support them wherever, they think about their careers really carefully. They're really there when they're in when they have difficult. a difficult situation so when there was a hurricane in Texas they're mainly they're only in Texas they were there and helped them so they have this purpose aspect as well. They do some recognitions as well. So I have a story in the book about like the four-star truck driver. So he is like I I forgot hi his name, but he drove like four million hours Or miles without accident. You know, that's like h really, really difficult to do. That's not like the employee of the month where you're running out of employees for the month and like eventually everybody becomes employee of and then it's like completely meaningless. It's a little bit like the the participation trophies that the kids get in in the US here. but like the the four yeah, the four star you know, truck driver is like super meaningful and to so they celebrate that and it's a really important part of what they're doing. And as a result they have those customers who are like who would do anything, pay anything and like are very, very happy going to those grocery stores. James: And it's a grocery store. Again, and it's just been achieved by smart thinking. And I think we talk about purpose as well. If your purpose is to sell groceries, that puts a cap on what you can be as a company. If your purpose is to be an integral member of your community, that changes. Stephan Meier: Yes. James: everything about what you're doing. And I think like another good example was Men's Warehouse. you could see yourself as selling clothes to your customers, or you could see yourself as making people more confident, making them leave the store more confident when they came in. Now we talk about, again, we go back to the coffee bean. Now you're adding value to something. Now you can charge more for that because you've added value beyond the component. Stephan Meier: Mm-hmm. James: parts of it. And H-E-B is such a good example of that. and you talked about the disaster relief of the hurricane as well. Well, all of a sudden now you are a member of the community and you're not just saying you are, but you're acting like you are. So employees and the community can, everyone can see that you're living up to that purpose. It's a really good example. Stephan Meier: Totally. Yeah. It's a very powerful example. And it's also I like it also because it's you know, it's not an industry like tech, you know, where there's like so much money left and the right. You know, it's a small margin business. But even in those relatively small margin business, if you do it right and you know care about the people, then you're really successful. The company is financially extremely successful. in an industry, you know, where we wouldn't think like you know, they don't have like slides in the office and like ping pong tables, whatever. But they actually care about what what really matters to the people and what you said is a is a really important part. You know, they feel that they're part of something bigger than just selling tomatoes. and that I think is a really, really important part to motivate people within the organization. James: So Stefan, I want to move on to another example, which I really like, which is higher. So we're going from groceries in Texas to consumer products in China. And this wonderful concept, I don't think I've ever said this out loud, so tell me if I'm pronouncing this right, but Ren Dan Hei. Yeah, so maybe you could talk us through. Stephan Meier: Well, I don't speak any Chinese either, so but y I think you got it right. James: what that means and why that fits into this way of thinking so well. Stephan Meier: Yeah, so hire is you know, is a white good producers and white goods I think like small fridges and whatever. I think people in the US know them from like college dorm, like tiny fridges that you have in your dorm room. and they moved on, you know, or like much more higher end. They actually bought G appliances, so that's the general electrics division that had all of those, you know, the fridges and stoves and whatever. And and the model that they're having is like, you know, giving extreme autonomy to the people in who are working divisions in the in the different divisions. And that brings also so part of it is empowerment off the teams. The other one is that it brings them closer to the customer. They actually understand the customer better because they're now in those smaller divisions, you know, where who are responsible for whatever that one product, and they they're much closer to the to the customer base. And because they're empowered, they can make then choices that are not constrained by, you know, the top down direction that comes from top down, which goes back now to kind of what we talked before a little bit about, you know, giving direction and empowerment. There is this fine balance. I'm sure they have an overarching strategy, what hire is supposed to be doing, but then they give those teams full autonomy to do whatever they think is right to serve the customer. And that's a really powerful way, and they're extremely successful. You know, they turned around GE appliances in just a couple of years. being a Chinese company, you would not expect that the stereotype is that a lot of the Chinese companies are like much more command and control and and they turn it really around and there's a it's a very autonomous, empowering company that that is very successful financially as well. James: Yeah, it's a really interesting one for me. And one of the things it raises is the sort of cognitive human limits that we have that I think organizations fail to respect. And you've got, for example, Dunbar's number, which is about 150 people is the maximum number of people that we really see as individuals. But the maximum number of people we can work with as a group is lower than that. It's sort of 10 to 15, I think, or something like that. Our hire, a few years ago they shifted to this decentralized model, respects that cognitive limit. So to me, you've got these large organizations that almost pretend that they're these just homogenous groups of people that can act and work together when there's still hundreds of thousands of people, whatever. And hire said, well, no, that's not going to work. We need to create autonomous teams to do that. and just because we do that doesn't mean we can't function as a company. And I kind of think there's a wonderful analogy here that I stumbled across, which is starlings, European starlings. So they move as this beautiful flock, as wine and murmuration. And for many, many years, people thought that that had to be centrally coordinated. And some scientists even thought it was telepathy is the reason they. so well together. was only relatively recently that each Starling, they found out each Starling's only responded to the six or seven Starlings nearest it. And that ripple effect is what creates this wonderful, ostensibly coordinated group. I think Hire is kind of like the European Starlings. Like it works very well as a company, but there isn't any real central coordination. It's just lateral connections between these micro enterprises that work so well. Stephan Meier: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like yeah yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know, it really unlocks then value because not only because they're motivated, they actually have information that is, you know, really difficult to get centrally. and they can adapt much faster than like the whole big organization does. Another good example about this, which I like, is a Dutch company, Bertzorg. Is like a home healthcare organization that produces about a thirty percent higher client satisfaction rate for like a fraction of the cost. And they do this by having fully autonomous like twelve nurses team who then go, you know, they can decide everything, what they want to do with the patients, how they want to hiring, firing organization, and and it's just a very powerful example of like what autonomy can do. And what it also shows kind of linking to what we talked before a little bit, you know, with the does the leader need to be completely disengaged? So and it birds or mainly works because they team it up with a very powerful IT system that you know provides all the information. It's really difficult to fly blind. you know, even if to have to autonomy, you need to kind of know a little bit where to go, you need some guidance. And that's this IT system gives those teams very concrete data on like how are they doing? How then can they do better? what do other teams do? So they learn from each other as well and and and and adapt it if if applicable or not. And they can decide that. But it's not done to c control. It's actually done to give them guidance. It's it's a it's a good example of like being an engaged coach. Now, some teams then have problems that needs to be escalated to the headquarters where there is actually a coach who then says, team, this is how I would see, you know, I saw that somewhere else, and really coaches them on overcoming problems that they can't solve themselves. And and so it's this back and forth from like the headquarter those autonomous teams, and and it works beautifully. It's a it's a model that been seen across the world as like a re revolutionising is kind of this home health care model. James: I think the US could probably do with some pointers for the healthcare as well. yeah, Woodsock is such a beautiful example really. for most organizations, top down is the default and lateral is the kind of exception. For Woodsock, lateral is the default and top down is the exception where it needs to be. And I think that IT system you mentioned, if I remember correctly, and I might be mistaken this, was... Stephan Meier: Totally. James: basically developed by the nurses. Like they provide an input, they figured out what they needed automated to make them get the most out of their work. And this comes back to work design. By letting people have greater ownership of their work, they can automate away the stuff they don't want to do. Now, if you give someone a job that could be automated, Why would they ever automate away their own work and make themselves independent if they don't believe that they can trust their company to then redeploy them if that were to happen? But the Bootsorg nurses were like, well, your job is to help customers, help patients feel better. That's essentially it. And therefore, they helped work the system out that could automate the boring bits. So they could focus on the bits they wanted to do. So that's what that kind of thinking really enables that is just not allowed in the typical autocratic organization. Stephan Meier: Yeah, totally. Yeah. No. The great example. James: So I want to go to my next topic of conversation is just right tasks. Wonderful three words, just right tasks. is chapter eight. you had a wonderful illustration of a just right task with your son and the books. So I'd love you to tell me a bit about that in your own words. Stephan Meier: Yeah, so it started with real frustration. So when my son, who is older now, actually his birthday is tomorrow, and so when he was younger, you know, he had to read thirty minutes a day. So that's like the school would say, you know, you go home from school and you read thirty minutes. He had it he had he was he was supposed to log it, you know, I read from page X to page Y and and then they would ask him about And like I would fight with him every single day over those thirty minutes. I mean, like we had fights you cannot believe in those thirty minutes. And and I was like frustrated. I was like, dude, you know, like just come home, read thirty minutes, you're done. You can literally like you can play FIFA until you have squared eyes. Like, I just just read thirty minutes. I mean like how hard can that be? Turns out it was really hard for him and like he's struggling until one day he he pulled me into a bookstore. Which, you know, he would like avoid like the plague before. And he was like and he's like, Dad, you know, Dada, as he calls me, you know, like Dada, I wanna buy those this this book of this box of books. Like multiple books, real book, you know, like sentences and stuff. and I was like yeah, I mean in my world it was like Christmas and Easter and whatever, like my birth everything together. I was like, Okay. He made he made a strategic mistake. He like said wh I'm using my birthday money to buy those. You know, you not even have to pay for it as if I w would be opposed. I mean I was like I would have spent my whole wage on this on those books. And and it was because it was just right for his reading level. So it was not a baby book, or too easy or he would call it a baby book. James: you Stephan Meier: And it was not like when he was six, he wanted to be talked about Harry Potter. He actually wanted to read Harry Potter, but you know, he couldn't understand anything. It was just too complex, which is very frustrating as well. And and so if it's just right for your skill, or y it's actually very motivating. That's true for kids to learn, but that's also true for humans to be engaged. About forty percent of employees c say their number one reason why they quit. is because they don't learn anything new. and we've all been there. You know, you've done stuff that is either too hard, that's also frustrating. You know, you're not trained properly, you never succeed. I mean you feel like an idiot. that's that's not a great feeling. or it's like too easy where like it's just like boring as hell. and but if it's like just right, that's the way to go. Now the problem is with the book You know, after the Weird School was the series called by Dan Goodman. that's the book that he got. Once he read a bunch of them, and he did, that became a baby book. So he actually had to move on. And he did. So then he read Spy School by Stuart Gibbs. So it's a series as well. And he he's not a particularly avid reader anymore, but like we had a we had a good run. But like so like what is hard then for organization because it's a really, really strong motivator. It's like getting to know what's the just right task for every employee, match it to the right task, and constantly update. So that makes it then a little harder to do. Now I actually think, I'm not sure whether you're gonna ask that, AI can help a lot with that particular problem. James: Yeah, so, okay, so I want to go into that. I've got an informal rule that we can't allow more than 10 % of any discussion to be about AI because I feel the world is so saturated by it. But I want come back to in a second. You just reminded me of something, but first of all, it's a wonderful story and I'll drop those books into the show notes in case anyone does want a book that George might enjoy. But it reminds me a little bit of something that, again, Alfie Cohn mentioned in one of his books, which is that if you... Stephan Meier: Okay. James: If you were to say to your son, I'll give you $10 if you read for half an hour, you might get your son to read for half an hour, but they'll treat that half an hour as something I don't want to do in exchange for something I do want to have. Whereas, what you found was the just right task to give your son intrinsic interest in doing that thing. And then the reward is more of that intrinsic thing. So if we carry that analogy to the workplace, the reward for good work is more good work, not the incentives that people tend to reach to. And I find that very, very interesting. The idea that the more work is a reward is, for many people, a difficult thing to accept. But if the work can be made to be good, then it's one of the best rewards you can offer people. And it's that slightly harder book, that slightly harder job, that slightly more taxing problem, more difficult market to go after, whatever it may be. And so that analogy between how you reward children and adults really, really does hold true. Stephan Meier: Totally. I completely agree. So, you know, when those extrinsic incentives are like very different than what they the intrinsic reward here is like you feel good about yourself. You know, you actually have mastery. You know, I think that's what the just right task is like you're working on a problem or working on something that is like a little challenging, but not too challenging and not too easy. So that's kind of the the way that really k gives people joy. And as you said, you know, internally reward rewards you and that's something that is very sustainable. Well like, you know, those extrinsic I give you X for Y, you know, that might work for a while, but it it's not sustainable at all. And we really care about the intrinsic. We want them to do better work, and this in a self sustaining way. James: And you mentioned AI. So let's talk about how we can solve this because, again, the traditional architecture of an organization is jobs and levels with very clear descriptions about what you're going to do. But the problem for me has always been with this model is that it doesn't respect the just right task. It doesn't respect the fact that as you get better at something, you need more challenge to be engaged. You need to make that progress. So what's the solution to that and how might AI support with it? Stephan Meier: Yeah. I mean there are a couple of solutions. One is technical and one is not. But I think you pointed to a really important part. What is the problem to begin with? And I think a big problem is what people in the in the academic literature at least call like talent hoarding. You know, like let's say I'm on your team, James, and I'm really good in doing X. now for you I should do X over and over and over again because I'm really good at this. and I'm one of your team memb you don't want me to now venture out in starting to do Y a little bit. And but the problem is like after a while I'm like so fed up that I leave not only this task X but the whole organization completely. So you need to personalize it to this just right task. Now there is an old school and the new school, new way of doing the old school way is you know talking to people one on one. And I describe in the book as well in old school where where like Novartist or Sondon, kind of the a group of Novartists of the of the pharmaceutical company, they have this initiative where managers have to have one-on-one meeting with team members. And in the meeting it's really about like being empathetic, you know, understanding, you know, let's say I have a meeting with you, like ask you, you know, tell you tell me what you want, what do you need, what is your And that's kind of pers that's one-on-one old school personalization. I now know James is different from Sandra, from different from Jessica. And you actually see that in the data there. It's not only psychological safety actually goes up as well, but like people are much happier with their career prospect because they now understand, their boss knows. And managers are critically important to f to allocate those talents. You know, they actually There's just a new study that came out that looks at the importance of managers, good managers. They actually figure out where should Sandra go? What should be their job, next job be? and that's a really important part. The new way, so that's where AI can potentially help, is you know that because I then make this joke in an execut session, it's like, well, now you know just right tasks means for everybody in your team, you need to know what's the just right task. match it to the right task and constantly update. And then they look at me as like, dude, you have no idea. You know, I have like even if you only have ten people, that's a lot. Like s a lot many who come to my my classes have like hundred people in their team. You know, they have many, many large organizations. And then I say, well, it sounds a little bit like an AI task, doesn't it? Because what AI is good at if you think about Netflix You know what Netflix does is like knows exactly like James really likes those like he watches those British whatever history series because Exactly because he feels like feels at home. Like yeah, downtown Abbey and all those like Queens and whatever. He and shows him more of that. but now he lives in San Francisco. At one point he gets James: Whatever the Brits watch all the time. Documentaries about colonialism or something. Stephan Meier: Bored of that and wants to like, I want to watch like nature documentaries. and then the algorithm knows, shit, like he actually watches let's show him more nature documentaries, which of course is very different from what my stream looks like. So that's what AI is really good at in personalization. And now we take we actually took this idea and and put it in time in inside firms. Those are like AI-powered internal marketplaces. I wrote a case on MasterCard. there's others who do that, where people go to the platforms, they're like, you know, I want to learn something new. I wanna I wanna stay at Mars MasterCard, but you I want a different challenge. And then it matches those people. The algorithm helps to match it then to a project within MasterCard who needs somebody. who know, you know, they might not know in the database that James is actually from England. He actually knows something. That is not in the database. So it matches you with that project. You work there a little bit. The matches get better and better over time. And it can really unlock value by making that match to the just right task better. So MasterCard started during the pandemic and they on by now unlocked, that's how they call the the platforms. Well, they unlocked a million working hours. Where people were a million hours were worked on those projects. And that obviously has impact for the business in general, for the pro for the project manager, but has real motivational impact. Because now me, I work on this project that is engaging. I learn something new. I come back. I d work on another project. And and people are then not leaving MasterCard because that was the option before. I'm like stuck in that silo, in that job that I was hired. I'm a little bored, and then I leave MasterCard. and now they actually stay inside because they get just right tasks. they're actually so successful that they thought about other matching problems. like mentor, I mentioned mentorship with Eli Lilly. You know, they now use that platform also to match mentors to mentees, and James: Mm. Stephan Meier: And it's a very power it's a very good example of like using technology to actually help humanize work more instead of, you know, replacing or automating. James: Yeah. That's fascinating. don't know very much about that one at all, the MasterCard one. But a million hours, in theory, is a million engaged hours that you might not have had otherwise. If we try and simplify it slightly, that's an incredible... Stephan Meier: Yeah. Totally. You can quantify you know, I think they did, I for I forgot. Like you can you can put this in money terms. It's a lot of money. That and that's not even the motivational aspect. That's like the work that's g being done on those more work gets done in projects anyway, in general. In any organizations, there is more project work. So there are many project managers who actually look for people and they don't want to hire somebody full time. and if you now have a talent within MasterCard or whatever the organ there are many who now starting to do those internal marketplaces. MasterCard is one, MetLife, Unilever, there are a bunch of large and mid sized companies who are using those talent. You can really create like win win for the organization but also for the motivation of the people. James: Yeah, that's fascinating. And you used the word marketplace a few times. And that, me, is the reframing of it. So again, if we think about where the traditional model of an organization comes from, it's essentially factories, the industrial era, which is very much not a marketplace. You're a person. You do this job. You're on that point in the assembly line. This is about saying, we've got all this information. No one's got the resources to do anything with it. And LLM is really, really good. Or AI is really, really good at doing something like that. So thinking of skills as a marketplace rather than something that resides in a job description is a really interesting departure, I think. Yeah. Stephan Meier: Mm. Totally. Yeah. No, it's a I think, you know, through the book, I mean I I I I totally honor your ten percent AI in the book because as the head of head of AI Morgan Stanley says, you know, this book has nothing to do with AI and has everything to do with AI. Because how I think about the technology that I often talk about in the book, not necessarily AI, is like how to use technology to humanize work more, how to actually create you know, better experience and customer centricity, you know, technology and data plays a big role. I mean that's how we can actually personalize the experience for customers. And and I think we are now have an opportunity if we do if we don't screw it up with like surveillance and whatever, to do it actually right in a way that improves the experience of the employee as well by using technology to really what I call like humanize humanize work more. James: Mm. Stephan Meier: and l and kind of leverage those motivators instead of destroying them, what we unfortunately also often see. James: Yeah, and that obviously, if you're a company that regularly lays people off, not mentioning any big tech giant names or anything, but if you're a company that regularly lays people off under the guise of AI and efficiency, if you then turn around and say, using AI to try and create a marketplace of skills, no one's going to believe you. Everyone's going to assume that you're using AI to strip out jobs. So it does depend a lot on the culture of the company as to the degree to you can do that. Stephan Meier: Yeah. Totally. Yeah, totally. I mean, and if you have a trust problem, you know, that's like whenever there is change, I mean, that's gonna be bubbled up. you know, you can't solve you have to deal with kind of the trust that we that you mentioned at the beginning. You know, trust is a really important part that goes through all of it. And yeah, if that's destroyed, it's really difficult first to recover and everything you do is kind of interpreted in like suspicious way. Like I think you're gonna screw me over this time as well by doing that. Even if it's that you disguise it as like employee centric, but in fact it's like you know, cut, reduce, control, monitor. totally, totally. James: Right. Yeah, that's even worse. doesn't he just create him? yeah. So I think, and the next piece I wanted to talk about is part three of you, but I think we've of touched on this a little bit, but you used the phrase, the workforce of one. And I think some of what you're talking about, we've kind of already touched on, but what exactly do you mean by that phrase? Stephan Meier: Yeah, so I mean it's borrowed from like customer or segments of one from like customer centricity where the idea is you know in the in the past in this product centric view you know we would do we will build something for like whatever the customer and then we figured out actually we can start to segment and now we can segment even more. Ideally, you know, I build a product, a service that is just for you. You're the one segment. and you know, in some of those, you know, if you look at Amazon, you know, your Amazon profile and what they send to you and how the web page roughly looks like is like tailored to you and to me and to everybody else. And so I think that gets a lot of mileage in the customer centricity view of those personalized experiences and in the workforce. You know, we still do often like a one size fits all. We don't really segment we or we don't think about segments as much. I mean, there is no conversation you can have in customers where a segment doesn't come up. Well, I have to focus on the good segment, the bad segment, whatever the segments are. And they're all they're not just defin if they do it right, they're not defined as like the old and the young. The urban and the rural, they're much more behaviorally defined. And so that's what I mean with workforce of one. Can we move to a place where you're actually treated as one individual instead of like you're a worker or you had an employee? no, you're James. And so is there a way to move into that what we do in customers already in the employees. And you know, the the the talent marketplace that I was talking about before is kind of one of those examples where like the two of us could have been hired in the same function in the same division. but you went onto the platform to like I want to learn something new. Where I'm like, I'm fine with what I'm doing. And the experience that you have is very different from what I it's very individualized to exactly you. And and I think we have to move into that direction where we figure out kind of how can we provide you know work environments, yeah benefits even you know that are really tailored to individual to individuals instead of like this monolith of like the workforce. James: Yeah, so and I want to move on to the practically speaking, you know, what can happen here because again, like the apparatus of let's say if you're in HR and you're listening to this and you're thinking this sounds great, but. We've got job architecture, we've got leveling guides, we've got workforce planning, we've got incentives, we've got goals, and we can't do any of this stuff because the entire org structure is built around systems of control that prohibit exactly that kind of thinking. But there are examples of companies that have clearly moved on, and many of those companies, by the way, that are in response to struggling in the marketplace, they were forced into doing things definitely higher, I believe, shifted away from the traditional structure. in response to the need to work in the marketplace. Handel, Bootshock, think came about from the ground up when, Josta Block started himself, but Handelsbanken as well as another example, I think comes up that did it in response to struggles in the marketplace. But if you are in, if you're in HR and you want to start maybe rethinking these ideas, how can you really start to change or start getting people thinking about change maybe, realistically. Stephan Meier: Yeah. So I mean, in terms of like the segmentation, I think the first and you know, the the that's basically the first step whenever somebody asks me, like, you know, how to what's the first step to being employee centric in general? And my answer would always be listen to what you know, getting insights on what the employees actually want. In that in that journey, you would not only figure out like, you know, what motivates them or not. You will also figure out people are very, very different. And we have to think about them differently. I mean, whenever whenever I ask in my exec ed sessions, like, you know, why do we care about why does everybody s say we care about the employees and why is the engagement level so miserable? and then what always comes up is like, you know, it's hard because everybody is so different. It's like, well. That's true for customers as well. And we figured it out. That's the personalization, the segment of one. That's kind of the idea of that. Like figure out what are the different segments. No, segment of one is a very extreme version, but that's kind of the end goal. And so listen, getting insights, starting to segment the workforce and figure out what are those different people that are there. But still Starbucks did a couple of years ago a famous study where they segmented the population, I think in like three people. So there's like the ones who are like I think they called them the skiers or something. The one they just work there because they have a hobby. You know, they actually finance, they just have to do that because they actually were, you know, passionate about something else. They were like musicians or like artists or like skiers who have that other passion. Then there were those who wanted to do do a career. James: Mm. Stephan Meier: Within it. You know, they were the ones like, Yeah, I started as a barista, but I don't want to be a barista. I want to be like the manager then of whatever. And eventually I wanna move to and there were some like that. And and the third group were there, so they really passionate about the covet. They were like that that was their passion. And if you think about now only those three, it's very different approaches, how you deal with those three. And understanding that motivation, thinking about those three allows you then James: Mm. Stephan Meier: You know, the the the artists who wants to you know works in Starbucks only for the money but has a passion project, you can actually bring that passion project somewhere in, you know, like acknowledge it and like celebrate that as well. But the the guys who want to make a career, it's a very different approach. and so thinking about those different segments already allows you kind of to personalize it more. Now the listening starts also with in smaller what I called before like old school personalization. Old school personalization is one on one meetings. It's like actually understanding, James, how to Sandra, to Jessica or whatever, how how are they different? What do they want? What does their life look like? And you know we talk now a lot about the not a lot. We mentioned the pandemic. One realization that I had in the pandemic as well is well You know, over Zoom has many disadvantages. But like some of those video conferences as it has right now, I now know. I see your life in the background. I see like, you have a dog, you know, those those Zoom meetings where like kids go through the background or like that was a moment where we felt like, there is a I actually work with the other human being, or my boss is a human being because he has a life as well. And that creates that personalization. James: Mm. Stephan Meier: in from the ground up. And then there's system wide stuff that people can do. Like those internal marketplaces are definitely kind of personalization tools. Creates also data. because personalization needs data. You know, I need to if I didn't know, if I want to send you a meaningful gift, you know, I now know. Maybe something with a dog. You know, like James seems to like Plants. Yes, like it looks like they're real plants, but like so he actually likes plants and like and that could be and I need that information in order to personalize it a certain degree. And we're creating now more data which has, you know, danger as well. we have to be careful with that data. because you can definitely also exploit it. and to the point you made before, if there is no trust, you know, I don't want to give you any data. I don't want to tell you about my life, I don't want to tell you what I do. Like because I'm always exactly I'm always afraid that you're like you use that against me, or as a surveillance technology. But like listening, understanding, getting insights, I think is the first part of creating a more personalized experience. James: Right. You're just going to use it against me somehow. Yeah, it's very well said, Stefan. And you think about the direction as well. You mentioned we now can see each other more as humans because of COVID. It almost feels like historically, the model of business was to prevent that. So offices, titles, suits, haircuts, everything was kind of to make people look and sound the same. Again, going back to this almost... machinery style model of where humans fit into a business. And when I think about what I would like companies to be doing more of, the direction is in that. We're heading in that direction, one way or another, which the new generation, the younger generation has this healthier, I think, relationship with work and brings their true selves to work more. They dress the way they want to dress. They talk the way they want to talk. deride some of the traditional organizational practices that are once taken for granted. So when we think about change, it's really kind of embracing that direction and recognizing what your organization's ready for in a way. And often refer to Joseph Overton, who had this thing called an Overton window, which was about shifting the degree of acceptable policies in government. And that's kind of what you have in any given company. You've got a window. Now some stuff is going to be completely out there and impossible to do. Maybe at some point it will be. But there is a window of things that you can do and test and try. And to me, the question is what direction are you taking that window? So it's more understanding of your employees and who they are and what they want and what they value. but less control, less granular job architecture, less stringent leveling, less need for approval, less hierarchy. And it's unfortunate for me when I see companies reaching towards more of those things because they think that's going to solve the problems they have. again, pay, it's something tangible that you can adjust, you can tinker with. Stephan Meier: Yeah. No, I completely agree, James. And I think we're very kindred spirits in that sense. You know, if more and more people have that vision, you know, like that's kind of the way to go. And you know, I always whatever always tell the leaders I teach is like, you know, n not because it's the right thing to do, because it's actually the profitable thing to do. That's how to get people on board. I also think it's the right the right thing to do. But it's actually the way to be successful as as an organization. And but it you you just have to change a lot of things. You know, you can't just if you have a culture of distrust, you know, like and I then tell you like James, you know, we're all family. Think about the office as the family. It's like, I don't want to be in your family. Like, like you want to be in my family that you can squeeze out more like, you know, good way. Exactly. Like, no. And so it has to everything has to fit together. That then, you know, setting empowerment and trust up for success is is not so easy. But again, not so easy is actually good. Once you figured it out, it's it's a real competitive advantage where there is James: No payment. Stephan Meier: You know, they're those are the barriers to entry that make it hard for others to compete with you. James: Absolutely. So I want to finish by first of all reminding anyone listening that this is the book, the book that made me both incredibly angry and also very interested in what you had to say. So congratulations on that. It's a real mix of emotions. But if people would like to hear more about what you have to say and learn more about your views, where can they find you? Stephan Meier: Thank you. So they can go to my webpage, stephomeyer.com. Now the the I also have a newsletter that is about human-centric future of work. And the best feature about the newsletter is so if you see here in the background, I have like a little Lego minifigure. So I make little stop motion Lego movies about work, and every newsletter comes with a new of those Lego movies. Where it and in the newsletter I talk James: Excellent. Stephan Meier: I mean I actually do talk often about AI as well, but not only like how to create a human centric future of work. So that's probably the best place. But you see you you find all that information on my on my webpage. that's probably the best way to start. James: I love those little videos, they're excellent. I recently subscribed to your newsletter and I caught a few videos. So Stefan, thank you so much for your time. I've really, really enjoyed chatting to you. It's reassuring to know there are people out there that want to move in this direction and make an employee experience a more positive one. thanks for all your hard work and congratulations on the book. Stephan Meier: Ha ha. Well, thank you so much, James. This was a lovely conversation. lots of good insights. Thank you. James: All right. Take care. Speak soon.