Turning ERG Inclusion Efforts into Measurable Commercial Results with Sheryl Miller

Joe Santana: This is ERG Power Talk and I'm your host, Joe Santana. This program is for ERG and BRG leaders, executive sponsors and business unit leaders who want to unlock powerful, measurable business impact through their ergs while championing the goals and needs of the communities these ergs represent. Our vision is a future where ergs aren't just appreciated. They're seen as essential to business success, driving revenue, cutting costs, powering marketplace growth, and creating workplaces where everyone can thrive. Our, uh, goal is simple but powerful. To help you deliver so much value that your organization sees your ERG as a must have investment worthy of more resources, greater influence and stronger support. We know you'll get top value from every episode. So now let's get to the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of ERG Power Talk.

Joe Santana: I'm your host, Joe Santana.

Joe Santana: Over the past several decades, corporations have

Joe Santana: likely invested, uh, tens of billions of dollars and possibly even close to 100 billion globally in employee resource groups and related affinity groups. When you consider staff time, executive sponsorship, programming, some travel events, and Heritage Month technology, administration, dedicated support staff, and, um, we can go on and on. And yet, despite this enormous investment, there remains surprisingly little evidence connecting most ERG activity to measurable business outcomes such as revenue growth, cost reduction or operational performance.

Joe Santana: And for years, many business leaders overlooked

Joe Santana: this because these expenses weren't really quantified and they were in bits and drabs in different organizations. And ERGs were often viewed as this low risk, goodwill building, activity aligned social group that was meeting social expectations. And so during these times, they were funded. There was very low scrutiny to that funding. Today, however, that environment has changed as legal, political and financial pressure has increased and budgets have tightened. And executives are starting to ask these harder questions about return on investment and organizational value. And that shift raises an important question for ERG leaders in this world that's now demanding greater accountability. How do ERGs move from being seen as activity centers to being recognized as contributors to meaningful business outcomes?

Joe Santana: And to help us address this and

Joe Santana: other related topics, we've got the perfect guest with us today. She is a chartered accountant and MBA who runs a global consultancy focused on making inclusion work performed like any other serious management discipline.

Joe Santana: She's also the CEO of the ERG

Joe Santana: Leader Summit and has worked directly with corporations to restructure how ERGs connect to business strategies.

Sheryl Miller: Daryl Miller, founder of Reboot Global and the CEO of the ERG Leaders Summit.

Joe Santana: Cheryl, thank you for joining us on ERG Power Talk today. I've been looking forward to this conversation

Joe Santana: as I was looking over your background.

Joe Santana: I found something interesting there that we have in common.

Joe Santana: We both have a finance background, or

Joe Santana: we both have accounting in our background. I was a line executive for many years before I jumped into the work that I do now. And you're a chartered accountant and yet you're running a dei, uh, consultancy. So that an unusual combination because most people don't come from the backgrounds that we do.

Joe Santana: How do you think that changes the

Joe Santana: way you think and look at ERG programs in terms of what you expect them to do and what you think is the potential for what they can do?

Sheryl Miller: That's a great question and a really good place to start, Jo, and thank you for having me on to talk about ergs and this work from this perspective. I think being a finance person, first of all, I do tend to come at things with a slightly more scientific brain. When we talk about the business case of inclusion of belonging of dei, uh, if we use that acronym, we often talk about there being two elements. The moral case, as in it's the right thing to do, and also the commercial case. And certainly from my perspective, I think that it's time that we focused more, a little more on the commercial case, because that tends to be the thing that actually gets leaders on board with the programs. So I think me coming from my finance background and having actually been very used to building business cases, it's a skill set that I really love to impart to ERGs. The importance of being able to talk about what you do, not only from the sense of this is the right thing to do and social justice, but also commercially, it makes sense.

Joe Santana: So we have very similar approaches in terms of looking at things that way. You recently referenced a case study involving, uh, pension administration. Talk a little bit about that. And in terms of the business impact of that, uh, and just the particulars of how that worked and how that

Sheryl Miller: was put together, it was actually linked to something that a lot of ergs struggle with when they've been going for a little while. And that was around engagement. So often they start with a big fanfare and everybody's interested and everybody's coming along to the Heritage Month events. But then give it a year or so and people start to get a little bit bored and nobody's coming along to the events. Right. Engagement starts to wane. So I was doing some work with a, uh, pension administrator here in the uk, and one of the individuals that runs one of their networks is actually called a staff network. Sometimes the term that we use here in the UK was Basically saying, I'm really struggling with engagement. She was actually running one of the interfaith groups, so they have interfaith networks, something for Jewish colleagues, something for Muslim colleagues, Hindu colleagues, for example. And she said, I'm really struggling to get people coming along to the Muslim kind of get together, like the monthly coffee get together. Interestingly, when we got talking about some of the things that are actually working, it was the DEI lead that said, what's really interesting though is when the chief investment officer, the CIO at uh, pensions firm, said, we need somebody to help with the Sharia investment policy, there was no end of volunteers. And so what that opened up was a conversation about how ergs need to be positioning themselves to be more useful to, to the business and business strategy. So something like, what should our investment policy look like for a certain group of customers is like the perfect place for an erg to be playing into. They become the go to resource to understand that particular customer. And no doubt that then did have an impact in terms of like revenues appeal to different customer groups and markets and segments. Pretty impressive stuff.

Joe Santana: And I would imagine that being part of a project like that also raised the profile of those ERG leaders. Could you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that when you do, let's say you do a heritage month, right, you're celebrating a particular heritage month or you're celebrating a particular event, people may come, uh, they may partake of whatever food you have. Food always attracts people, right? Then it's quickly forgotten and the people that were involved are quickly forgotten. But if you have an impact like the one you're talking about, where you help to fine tune a product or a service for a client of the organization, people not only remember that, they see the impact of that, they remember the people that were involved. And that to me, actually helps you

Joe Santana: to achieve the goal of raising the

Joe Santana: visibility of that community. Was that your experience?

Sheryl Miller: I totally agree. Absolutely. Because I think it raises the visibility of the leaders in a way that the leaders aren't just banging that drum for social justice, but they're also very visible in terms of this is how we are helping the business achieve its wider strategic objectives. So it helps the leaders, in terms of their visibility being seen to do something that has a much broader kind of business impact, rather than just the kind of the narrow view sometimes that the ergs can be perceived as having. Right? So it helps with the visibility of the leaders, but also then for the members of the network, and this is, I think, why people were putting their Hand up to get involved in this particular project. It gives visibility to individuals within the ERG to get involved in those product and service improvement projects. And um, linking back to the point around engagement, as you said in the intro, organizations invest a lot of money into ERGs, but there is also a lot of scrutiny on ERGs at the moment and how people are spending their time. And individuals want to come to work and demonstrate that they understand that return on time invested is important. So for individuals who are involved with the ERG to get involved with projects like that is fantastic for their careers. Right. As well as doing good for the community. So it's a real sweet spot. It's like what I like to call a sweet spot all.

Joe Santana: And um, one of the things I'd love for you to do is let's think through like, what are some of the common elements of that particular situation that can be replicated? And then again, so you have a group of people, the event is staged in a certain way because I think that provides the formula for how can you replicate that with different types of groups, with black groups, Hispanic groups, Asian groups and so forth.

Joe Santana: What do you think?

Joe Santana: If you were to say these are the common elements that you to have in order to create that type of situation that causes that, what would you say those are?

Sheryl Miller: I always ask ergs to think about impact and to think about different groups. And so think about different groups that you can impact as an erg. And you often start with the members, so you've got the members of your erg. You can do things that make people feel better, feel like they belong, etc. That's one thing. Then you've got colleagues that are not a part of the erg and they can sometimes get involved in different projects or maybe, maybe fundraising, so it might be a charitable objective. You've then also got customers, so customers or clients that the organization serves. And for me, when I talk about sweet spot, ideally it touches all three. But customers, if you think about customers through the lens of your erg. So for example, if you are a Latinx, uh, erg, and you are thinking about how does this organization meet the needs of the Latinx customer, that is insight that the organization has got within the organization, right? So you as an erg can provide that insight, can come up with ideas for how to improve things for that customer. And then I talk about the general community and society in terms of the impact on community and, and in terms of the ingredients. I always say if you can have an impact across as many of those Groups as possible. Right. And I ask ergs to actually rate what they are doing, rate the activities they are doing by the impact that they are having on these different groups, members, inside colleagues, outside customers and wider society. The wider impact, the more of a sweet spot you're going to hit and the more the business is going to be happy to give you the resources. And now often in terms of the serving customers piece, this is often where the ergs are now, almost like acting like a mini consultancy around product and service. How can we improve our products and our services to better meet the needs of customers that are potentially similar to the erg? And that's a real kind of niche or niche as you say in the States that only the ERG can often tap into.

Joe Santana: As people listen to something like this, they'll think that's good if you're a B2C. But we're a B2B so it doesn't apply to us. And I often point out that's not true because B2B's usually are just a link in the value chain that ultimately leads to a consumer of some kind. Right. So let's say, for example, I especially have had this conversation with pharmaceutical, ah, companies that create products like different types of drugs to address certain types of conditions. And I said, look, you're a B2B because you're selling to hospitals and you're selling to retail pharmacies. So you're not selling to the consumer, but the demand for your product is actually driven by those people that buy from that retail outfit. So they are the end consumer or what creates the demand pole for your product. So even if you're a B2B, having an insight into what your customer's customer, your customer's customer, customer, that ultimate human, the other end of that transaction, how they think, what they want and so forth is vital.

Sheryl Miller: There is always an ultimate C, there is always a C. But I'll, uh, just share with you one another example of how ergs can be more, I guess, more innovative even if they're in a B2B as a business women's network that I've been associated with. In fact they partnered with me on the summit in Dubai and what was interesting, we talked to them about how they had repositioned themselves from being seen as uh, the women's networks that comes uh, together and has cupcakes and things like that. And it's all kind of talking about women's events. And interestingly they actually changed their name to the Business Women's Network and a Lot of the focus of their events, they're inviting clients in, right? So B2B, now it's a B2B tech firm. Um, they're inviting clients in, they're talking about kind of business issues, etc. So they have absolutely repositioned themselves to being somebody that only thinks internally about the network and its members to actually how can we reposition such that we can be more business savvy, more commercially focused, et cetera. And it's had a huge impact just on the perception of the ERG and the value they bring and I'm sure

Joe Santana: also on the resources that have become available to them and the support that they get. It's interesting. I think I've used this analogy too many times. Maybe this will be the last time I use it in this episode. This entire strategy always reminds me of the story of the little young dog and the big old dog. So the little young dog chases its tail and never catches it. It gets exhausted and it says to the old dog, hey, don't you ever try to catch your tail? And the old dog says, a long time ago I discovered that no matter how hard I try, I can never catch my tail, but if I walk away, it always follows me. Right?

Joe Santana: And I think the same is true

Joe Santana: in this particular case. That if you're chasing after the visibility and hey, here we are and this is our heritage and this is what we do and so forth, sometimes it always eludes you that it's like you have the event, it doesn't seem to really catch. Right? And yet when you walk toward some of these business opportunities that you could provide the organization, all these other things come in as ancillary rewards, right? Where the organization now notices and says, hey, that group has a lot of value to us. Hey, we can take that person who actually led that volunteer effort that brought us all this value and we could put them in charge of this particular department.

Joe Santana: So all those tail following benefits come,

Joe Santana: um, as a result of that.

Sheryl Miller: Uh, and even just to build on that, the. Because I think sometimes there is almost like a negative perception around linking what ergs do to, to business and strategic objectives. But for example, I was delivering some training around career acceleration, so strategies that the ERG members can take to accelerate their career. But what the organization did that was so clever, it was actually the learning and development team. They invited clients to nominate individuals from their organization to come along to the session as well. And we had senior leaders coming in to talk about business challenges with the people in the room. So even though the Event was very much around development, training of people from certain backgrounds, but it was pretty open to everybody. But by just opening out to clients, so, uh, just by putting that lens on, so it's a B2B organization, they opened it to clients and said, do you want to nominate some of your stars, et cetera, to go along to this career accelerator day? And we had senior leaders coming in, hosting tables, talking about business challenges. So it could have potentially been quite an internally focused session. But just by flipping it, inviting clients in, getting senior leaders in, getting people talking about business challenges, all of a sudden, as you say, more resources and more leadership support for that as an event, because it, it felt like it was, like it had value. There was a real return on investment to it.

Joe Santana: And at the risk of sounding like I'm appropriating the British culture, I will say brilliant. That's.

Joe Santana: I hear that term a lot when I'm in stage.

Sheryl Miller: Brilliant.

Joe Santana: In any event, at the ERG Leader Summit that you have, you talk about building frameworks and metrics specifically to help ERG leaders demonstrate commercial impact. Talk a little bit about that.

Sheryl Miller: Yeah, it's so funny because we've got ERG Leader Summit literally coming up next month in London. It will be the third. Third. So we're really looking forward to that. But the metrics, us being finance people with your background as well, we. Metrics are important. Right. And especially to leaders. And I would caveat it by saying I'm not promoting like an industry of metrics and measures. Right. That's what. Not what we're suggesting here, but it's having a few measures that really work. And it's actually something I was working on at the weekend at the moment for, uh, a current client that I've got on board. For me, there's something about choosing a really good mix of getting like member voice or member sentiment in terms of how our members feeling. Also touching on relevance. Is what the network is doing relevant to the organization and then also obviously, what is the contribution, what is the impact that this, this network is actually having? So those are like the basics around which we then build other things on, like progress and priorities and things like that. So I'm a big fan of a really nice dashboard that ERGs can create on like a quarterly basis. Uh, as a minimum, I'd say that goes up to whatever they have internally, whether it's an inclusion council or an exec sponsor or kind of other types of internal bodies. But I'm very big fan of ERGs getting into the rhythm of Doing like quarterly reporting, just in the same way that any other business unit would write the famous quarterly business review. Right. The qbr, as it's sometimes called erg, should really look at themselves with that same level of scrutiny and really embrace the data, uh, and the measures.

Joe Santana: Clearly you could take those QBRs or

Joe Santana: you could take those quarterly reports, send them. Let's say you have an Office of Inclusion to the Office of Inclusion. The Office of Inclusion. Combine them all together because you've got maybe six, seven of these ERGs or staff networks in addition to anything else they're working on, with a view of how this is impacting the business.

Joe Santana: And wow, that's a powerful thing to

Joe Santana: present to the business leadership in your organizations.

Sheryl Miller: And also it's obviously it's another opportunity for visibility, right? So for the ERG leads to present this information again internally into the business, into business leaders, it demonstrates that they understand where the value is driven from the er, and they're not just asking for resources, but they're actually contributing positively to the organization.

Joe Santana: Interesting enough, when I, when I moved out of the line, role I was in, and I was actually leading an Office of Inclusion for a really large organization I'm sure you probably heard of, called Siemens, based out of Germany, I would give quarterly reviews like that to the leaders of all the different organizations of all the different parts of the company. I would also in each one of those have a guest ERG lead who would go a deeper dive on a particular aspect, especially if they did something really interesting. And let me tell you, I never had a problem finding ERG leads because the level of visibility that they got with senior leadership in those meetings was absolutely outstanding. They wanted those, those opportunities. And so it really worked out well for me.

Joe Santana: Okay, so what did we learn from the first half of our discussion with Cheryl? 1, you need to stop positioning your ERGs as cultural activity centers and start positioning them as business assets. Heritage month food and social events may build community, but executives increasingly want to know how your work improves revenue, customer experience, execution, or operational performance. If you can't answer that question, your funding and relevance are vulnerable. Two, look for business problems your ERG is uniquely positioned to solve. If your ERG understands the customer segment, cultural nuances, language needs, or market behavior better than others within the organization, turn that insight into improvements to products, services, or, or customer experience. That is where visibility, credibility and influence start to grow. Three, focus your ERG efforts on what Cheryl calls the sweet spot. That's the strongest area where your initiatives create value for multiple stakeholders. At once your members, your colleagues outside the ERG customers, and the broader community. The wider the impact, the easier it becomes to justify resources and and executive support.

Joe Santana: 4.

Joe Santana: Think beyond internal programming and ask how your ERG can help the business compete in the larger world. Even in B2B organizations, there's always an end consumer that drives demand. Understanding that ultimate consumer better than your competitors can create a commercial advantage. And ERGs often sit on valuable insights that businesses fail to see and to leverage. 5. Stop chasing visibility and awareness raising and start creating value. Visibility often follows impact. When ERG leaders contribute to projects that improve products, services, customer relationships, or business outcomes, leaders remember who help create those results and opportunities. And finally, six reposition ergs from internal social groups to business contributors. Small shifts matter. Inviting clients to ERG development programs, participating in efforts to solve business challenges, or aligning with strategic priorities can dramatically change how leaders perceive the value of your erg. In the first half of our discussion, we learned that in ergs increase their influence when they shift from activities to business impact by helping the organization solve real problems, better serve customers, and strengthen performance. In the second half of our discussion, we're going to explore how ERGs can connect their work to measurable commercial outcomes, strengthen executive sponsorship, create defensible metrics, and build the kind of business credibility that survives scrutiny. All that and more when we come back. But first, this I'll, uh, see you

Joe Santana: on the other side.

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Joe Santana: One of the things that I discovered about you when I was doing research on you is that you've been doing a lot of speaking in the Middle East, North Africa region MENA about ERGs as drivers of cultural and commercial impact. Talk about why that area and what's

Joe Santana: going on there and how you see

Joe Santana: the ergs bringing value there.

Sheryl Miller: Yeah, and these areas, we can look at specific countries, cities, regions, et cetera, but they are going through massive expansion and actually are often very innovative. I think that the uae, for example, Dubai, is a really in fascinating case study of what innovation and growth can look like. And so there are other areas in that region now that I guess have seen the Dubai model in terms of innovation and attracting top talent. And we know that having good ergs helps to attract top talent because it also helps to demonstrate that an organization is interested in diversity and interested in inclusion and interested in different thoughts. So there is something about, in those regions in particular that have, uh, a growth agenda. So growth, market, expansion, ergs are perfect, perfectly placed in those areas. And when I. So we did a summit, we did a summit in Dubai, the first in its region. We had people from all over MENA coming to the summit and we talked about these challenges of the culture. But it's great attracting, attracting diverse talent. How do you get diverse talent working well together? And these are some of the things that ERGs can help to, to help to navigate. Yeah, I think ergs are just a fantastic vehicle to help with attracting top talent, helping them to assimilate into the region and get used to working in different regions and then also being innovative and working together. So I think ergs are actually the perfect vehicle and certainly that for the people that were in that room where we had all kinds of organizations, multinationals, tech, leisure, hospitality, construction, all of them, um, really just talking about the power of ERGs across those regions.

Joe Santana: One of the things that ERGs and inclusion organizations struggle with a lot is really showing any kind of revenue impact because, ah, a lot of times, and I'm sure you know how to get around this just like I do because of your background in finance. But a lot of times what I hear people say to me is hey Joe, I work on these projects before or five people or four different departments working on it. How do I tease out here is the impact that we had and the value of that impact. And there are methods for doing that that you and I are familiar with. I'd love for you to talk about what you've seen as one of the most defensible methods that you've seen used in connecting ERG activity to direct revenue outcomes.

Sheryl Miller: It's linking back to the example that I gave about the pensions administrator. There are ways of looking at specific market segments or customer segments that align with ergs. But some of the examples that I've seen, one of the specific ones in the UK there is an organization called Lush, Lush Retail and they actually they specifically have what they call a co creation committee within their erg. So they bring their ergs together and they are actively looking for them to have an input into product design and manufacturing. And some of the ideas that have come out of this co create committee. Now I understand that not all organizations are going to have, are going to have something like this, but some of the ideas that have come out of this co create committee have become top selling lines for this organization, have become viral moments. I think one of them that I can remember is a product so lush is a, ah, cosmetics, be cosmetics and beauty. They have a line that came out which was made out of dates so very associated with Middle east segwaying. From my last, my last answer. So a product that's based on dates and it's called Sticky Dates. I think it's about two or three years ago it went viral on um, TikTok that came out of an ERG co create committee of all of the leads talking about different products that would resonate with different groups. That product is still now one of their top sellers, Sticky dates. And they do this every year. The co create committees come together, look at the calendar, talk about what they can do. So sometimes when I talk about how ergs can get involved in product and or service development, I sometimes feel that businesses sometimes look at them in a way that's a little bit patronizing and think oh, the ergs are just over there doing their little thing with the awareness days and the heritage months and things. But I remember I was running a Dragon's Den for a, a really well known car manufacturer here in the uk. I won't say who it Was. But I was running a Dragon's Den where, again, I was getting ergs to come up with ideas for how product and service could be improved. And they were presenting to a group of executives. And, um, the executives were then asking them questions. And as I was watching it play out, I was thinking to this mindset of where ergs are patronized. And I had these teams of ERG leads, some who were software engineers, some were, uh, internal, uh, ergonomics designers. And these are talented individuals. And so actually, I think one of the best ways to connect Ergs to revenue is actually to create whatever you want to call it, co creation labs, customer labs, innovation labs. Get more of your erg people in those labs and in those spaces where they can actually have a voice and actually have a direct impact onto ergs. I understand the whole thing about business case and indirect impact and all of that, but I'm like, these are talented individuals. Get them in the rooms that are doing the innovation around product and service.

Joe Santana: Totally agree with that. And I have to ask you a question. Just.

Sheryl Miller: Yeah.

Joe Santana: Myself as well as on my listeners. Tell us what a Dragon Den is.

Sheryl Miller: Oh, like Shark Tank. Shark Tank, Yeah.

Joe Santana: I thought so. But I wanted you to be explicit because I think some people are sitting there and they're thinking, is this like Dungeons and Dragons or what is this about Shark Tank?

Sheryl Miller: Yeah, it's the. It's the UK version of Shark Tank. Yeah.

Joe Santana: And of course, because it's the uk, it would be dragons instead of Shark.

Sheryl Miller: Absolutely, yeah.

Joe Santana: Wizards. And they have to be wizards somewhere.

Sheryl Miller: And so we ran internally and they were like, this is. The execs were like, this is great. We need to turn this into an annual event. Getting the ergs in and compete, we made it a bit competitive. But some great ideas coming out of that session. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Santana: Uh, I can imagine. I know one of the people that I work with, a good friend and a member of my association groups. His organization is in the entertainment business and they run a Shark Tank event very similar to the TV show Shark Tank, because they actually produced the TV show Shark Tank. But in any event.

Joe Santana: Yeah.

Joe Santana: Ah, when you said that, I thought probably like Shark Tank, but let me make sure it is the uk. So there have to be dragons there somewhere. Anyway.

Sheryl Miller: Yeah. And just as long as nobody gets fired,

Joe Santana: they don't exhale fire. Exactly. I love that. I love that.

Sheryl Miller: Yeah.

Joe Santana: Another component of Ergs, where I think you probably have some interesting thoughts also is the that of executive sponsors. Executive sponsors are usually cited as being really critical to the success of these groups, but in practice, a lot of them, they're like a name on a webpage. I even went as far in one of my books a couple of years ago to say that some of them are just figureheads. Yeah, but at the same time, you don't want an executive sponsor to overreach to the point where they take the responsibility for running the group completely away from the staff network lead. But they do have a role to play. Talk about what that sponsorship looks like when it's really tied to business outcomes and executed in an effective way that's not overreaching, but not just sitting back

Joe Santana: and putting your thumbprint, uh, on the, on the charter.

Sheryl Miller: Absolutely. And I have seen both. I have seen sponsors quite rarely, but I have seen sponsors that overreach and are almost doing the role of the lead or the co chair. And then, but more often than not, I see sponsors that really are, as you say, almost just like a name on a slide. And that's it. And nobody ever sees them. One of the things that I often say to ERG leads is that they can say to their sponsor, if you were sponsoring a project or a program or a strategic objective, what would your role be? And sponsors tend to know what that looks like because it tends to be helping to make sure they secure resources, removing blockers, championing the project or program across the organization. Right. So for some reason sponsors understand, executive sponsors understand what sponsorship looks like for everything else, apart from it seems when it comes to ergs. So I think sometimes it helps to give them that framing to say if you were sponsoring something else, a product launch or something, what would it look like? And then they can liken it back. So for me, all of the things that I talked about in terms of, uh, advocating removing blockers, helping to secure resource, the other thing I would add that I guess is maybe a little bit different with the ERG is doing a little bit of self learning and like raising their levels of self awareness. I guess what I was called becoming a little bit more fluent in terms of the lived experience of the network. And that might take a little bit of curiosity, especially if they don't share a lived experience or they don't share something with the community that they're sponsoring. So it might take a little bit more self work and just a little bit of time finding out more so that they can be more effective. That's the one thing. And then the second thing I would say the things that we've been talking about in terms of how to have impact and how to make sure that you are delivering return on investment. This, for me, is where the sponsor should be helping. The sponsor should be helping to bring that strategic lens of. Okay, actually, so where and how could this ERG have a broader, uh, business impact? Who can I make an introduction to? Which business department can I plug this ERG into so that they can make more impact? Or which client can I make an introduction into? So I think that's the bit that I would love to see sponsors doing more of. Almost like being like that strategic alignment link, because that's what they're there for and that's their world, the strategic world. So if they could bring that more to ergs, that would be great.

Joe Santana: That sounds like the ideal place for them to play a role that's unique and different and to act as that bridge back to the business. Visioning this from a structural standpoint, if you've got an executive sponsor, that's that bridge back to the business. And you've got an office of inclusion that actually collects information from all these different groups and acts as a bridge back to the business as to some of the value that they're producing and the impact and so forth. That totally transforms the overall practice and all its components, which is really m fantastic. So for ERG leaders, we're just starting from zero right now. They have no metrics whatsoever, no historical data. They've been collecting nothing. What would you say is the most practical first step that they can take right now after hearing this and saying, okay, now what do I do with this? What do you think is that most practical step they can take to start building that credible track record of business impact?

Sheryl Miller: When it comes to measurement, I always say, just as a minimum, to start with how many members you've got and whether your membership is growing and or engaged. So I remember I was going in to do some training at an organization and the word on the street was that they were going to say, we're not even sure we need training, we just need more budget. What was interesting when I went into that organization and I said, well, how many members have you got? Do you know how many of those ergs didn't know how many members they had? And I'm like, how can you need more budget when you don't know how many members you've got? So just the fundamentals, just count how many members you've got or count how many people are turning up in events. And then I would say the next stage is collect feedback from them at that event or whatever activity you're Doing collect feedback and collect it before they leave the room, which you can do using various tools like Slido or Mentimeter or an Ms. Form or whatever. It be just a simple five question survey. Was that relevant? What would you like to see more of? How does that help you in your current role? Just by doing that, you can start to collect more. One final thing. Sometimes I hear people say that they're not allowed to run surveys internally because people are over surveyed. Right. And I understand this, but there are different ways of getting data. So for example, if you are a lead and there are, I don't know, four or five of you on your committee, depending on what it is that you need to find out from either members or people who aren't members. Do you know what this is what I've started saying to people, Decide one or two questions that you want to ask people and it might be what's the one thing that we should be doing as a network or what more could we do to, um, add value to you in your current role? And each of you commit to asking five or six people those same questions. You've got some data, right? It's just, it's, you can start anywhere to get some data. Uh, you don't have to run a survey. It does not have to be high tech. Just start measuring something.

Joe Santana: I love that.

Joe Santana: That's a nice little workaround because a lot of times there's a lot of reasons why organizations say everybody's over surveyed. Don't go out there and ask questions. You might get answers, but without, you can't really, you can't really run anything or measure, uh, where you were and where you are now and what progress has been made. So you're left with what you're left with, celebrating food, fun and flags and

Joe Santana: then not being able to know what

Joe Santana: that impact was either.

Sheryl Miller: Yeah.

Joe Santana: So it's unfair when ergs are put in that position until you have no data, run no surveys, ask no questions,

Joe Santana: just do stuff, just motion, just keep moving.

Sheryl Miller: Exactly. In food, fun and flags, there's another saying that we have in the uk, which is patties and pakoras, which if you're based in Saint Kitts, you know about.

Joe Santana: I know what that is. Yeah, I know what that is. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's too funny.

Joe Santana: So Cheryl, how can our listeners reach you?

Sheryl Miller: LinkedIn is where I tend to live. It's where I tend to hang out. So I'm on LinkedIn. I actually do a LinkedIn Live. I must get you on that. But I don't know whether we can get the time zones to work. So I go live on LinkedIn every Friday morning at 8:30 UK time. I also have a substack, a uh, monthly substack called Erg Debrief and and I've recently started a YouTube channel called ERG Strategy as well. So that's where people can read me. So lots of different places but LinkedIn is probably the best place. If anybody wants to ask me any questions they can always DM me and I promise I'll reply.

Joe Santana: Cheryl Miller is the founder of Reboot Global Ltd. Thank you for joining us today on the ERG Power Talk. Cheryl, it was a pleasure talking to you.

Sheryl Miller: Thank you so much Joe. I enjoyed it.

Joe Santana: Okay, so what did we learn from the second half of our discussion with Cheryl? 1. Stop underestimating yourselves and uh, believe in the commercial value sitting inside your ERG and its members. ERG members are often talented engineers, marketers, designers, technologists and operators who understand markets and customers in ways that can improve products and services. Get those people into innovation labs, customer insight sessions and strategic conversations.

Joe Santana: 2.

Joe Santana: Create more opportunities for ERGs to directly influence revenue generating work, whether through innovation labs, shark tank style, uh, idea competitions, co creation consoles or product feedback groups. The closer ergs get the solving customer and market problem problems, the easier it becomes to demonstrate business value.

Joe Santana: 3.

Joe Santana: Expect and demand more from your executive sponsors. Strong sponsors remove blockers, secure resources, create introductions and help connect ergs to strategic priorities. If your sponsor is not helping your erg gain access to business opportunities, then they are not fully sponsored the work. Perhaps you need to find a new sponsor.

Joe Santana: 4.

Joe Santana: Start measuring something. Anything, even if it is small and simple. Too many ergs ask for more resources without being able to explain or demonstrate how they use the resources they currently have. Start with membership, growth, event participation and simple feedback mechanisms and then grow from there and terms of what you measure. Remember, some imperfect small data is better than no data at all. 5. See and treat your erg more like a business unit. Create quarterly reports, define priorities, show contributions, and demonstrate relevance. Executives are more likely to support ERGs that operate with the same accountability they expect from other parts of the business. And finally, six Never allow your erg to become trapped in a food, fun and flags bubble. Community building matters, but if your erg cannot explain how it contributes to better execution, stronger talent outcomes, customer growth or innovation, it risks being viewed as optional and expendable rather than essential. I want to leave you with one final image that captures exactly what Cheryl

Joe Santana: and I have been talking about.

Joe Santana: Imagine someone standing in a field chasing butterflies with a net, hoping to bring them back to their backyard. The harder they run, the more the butterflies scatter. And even when they catch a few and take them to their backyard, these

Joe Santana: rarely stay for very long.

Joe Santana: Now imagine someone else who stops chasing these butterflies and instead plants a garden. They prepare the soil, plant what attracts butterflies butterflies and create something of real value. Over time, butterflies begin showing up on their own, drawn by what has been built. Too many Erg uh spent their time chasing butterflies of visibility, recognition, executive attention and influence. With events that do not show business value, they work hard to raise awareness and hope. Support follows, only to find that attention fades to quickly after the event comes to an end. But there is a lesson here. When ergs focus on creating business style value by helping solve problems, improving customer understanding, strengthening execution, supporting innovation, or opening up markets, those butterflies begin to arrive on their own. Because visibility follows impact, recognition follows impact and executive support follows follows impact. And with that also career opportunities follow. So here is my advice to you. Stop chasing butterflies and start building gardens of value. Ask yourself what business problem is my ERG uniquely positioned to help solve? And then start solving it. Because in today's environment, the ergs that thrive will not be the ones asking to be noticed, they'll be the ones the business cannot imagine operating without. Thank you for tuning in to ERG Power Talk. If you enjoyed and got value out of this program, please like us and leave a favorable review at your podcast provider site. Also, invite others to listen to the show. By the way, contact me if you're looking for an ERG Symposium keynote or a leader for your strategy workshop, New Chair Onboarding and or ERG Bootcamp, I can run these for you either in person or in a virtual setting. Also, for more great ideas and tips for your ergs, get my books. Supercharge youe Ergs 18 tips to power up your ERG Slash, BRG Strategy and the New DEI and ERG Frontier how you and your efforts can rise and thrive in the new world of constant disruption. Both available on Amazon.com I'm Joe Santana.

Joe Santana: Thanks again for tuning in.