#49 | Key Elements of a High-Performance Culture: What HR Needs To Know

Speaker A: Welcome to the HR Dialogues, a show where we talk about HR and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Dieter Feltzmann, and we've got an exciting episode lined up for you talking all about peak performance and how we enable our organizations to become the best that they can be. I'm joined today by Amy Lavoie from Culture Amp, VP of People Science. Welcome to the HR Dialogues, where we learn from People practitioners as they navigate the emerging world of work. Amy, welcome to the HR Dialogues.

Speaker B: Hi, Dieter. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker A: Amy, what brings you to our episode?

Speaker B: Well, I'm here to talk about something that we have been studying and, um, innovating on at Culture Amp, which is how to enable sustainable high performance cultures, um, how to kind of disrupt the ways that we've approached engagement and performance in the past. And I'm really, uh, looking forward to getting into the research and what we're doing to try to help.

Speaker A: Well, definitely looking forward to that. And I think, um, you know, on this podcast, the M moment you say anything related to culture, anything related to performance, most people's ears prick up, um, a little bit more. Amy. In short, for those that don't know, I'm a massive fan of fan of Culture Amp, uh, but what do they do?

Speaker B: Great. So at Culture Amp, our mission is to help create a better world of work. And we do that through our technology that is underpinned by People Science. And we have kind of some of your classic approaches to employee, uh, engagement and employee experience. But we're also trying to really, um, think in a different way about those by bringing them together through things like one on ones and goals and effectiveness. Um, so, so it's really, we're kind of pivoting, uh, and, um, at a place where our technology is just like all technology and all, uh, programs across the world of work. Right now we are, um, in the middle of pretty major transformation and trying to help lead our customers through that. Um, so that is Culture amp, uh, and I lead our People Science efforts here at Culture amp.

Speaker A: Absolutely amazing. And for anyone listening, if you have not heard about Culture AMP before, please do check them out. They really do some amazing, amazing work. Um, Amy, before we deep dive into our topic, we like to get to know our guests a little bit better here on the HR Dialogue. So, quick fire round from my side to you. What has been some of the best career advice, uh, that you've received up to now that's stuck with you over the years?

Speaker B: You know, I think the one that probably has had the biggest impact on me is to go find the organizations and leaders who get it. And what that really means is so often we find ourselves in organizations where it feels like, especially in the HR space, we are trying to kind of push the boulder uphill and convince leaders to care about the work that we're doing. But the reality is there are a lot of, uh, executives and CEOs and organizations that already are convinced that this work matters. And so I had a grad school professor say that, like, go find those organizations and put your time and energy there, because you're going to be able to go so much further than all of the time and energy that it takes to try to convince the organization to care.

Speaker A: Amy, what makes you passionate about our field? Whether that's hr, IO cycle, people, science, what, uh, what keeps you motivated to remain in this, in this profession?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, like many of us, you know, never could have quite predicted that this is where I would be in my career. But I think I've been, uh, circling always this question of how do we help people thrive at work? And that's not just thrive as in, like, be really happy, but also do great work. I always like to say we want to help people do great work and feel great about it. And those two things kind of coming together has been something that I have always been so intrigued in. I've been an internal practitioner and most recently was a chief people officer. Um, I've also consulted and worked with hundreds of organizations and sat with their leadership teams. And I have a really core belief that the majority of leaders and managers and employees, they really want to do great work, they want to be great leaders. But I think there's a lot of friction that gets in their way of achieving that. And so I've always tried to think about how can we remove that friction and help people. You do the thing that they probably innately want to do. Um, and I've found over the years that technology can play a great role in that. So I have worked on, um, product teams within Glint, um, now Microsoft, as well as here at Culture Amp, to really try to use technology to help, um, people across an organization.

Speaker A: Amy, I want to start moving us into our topic, and today we'll be talking about something that you call peak performance. And it's based on a lot of the work that you've been doing at Culture Amp and a lot of the research there. But get us started off, when you say peak performance, what are we talking about?

Speaker B: Okay, so peak performance is the cultural state where organizations achieve Both high employee engagement and high performance competence at the same time. And so this is something that we have been studying for quite some time, really trying to understand what is it that organizations do when they are sustaining high performance over long periods of time. And we've kind of found the formula of what that looks like and we call that peak performance.

Speaker A: Love it. It sounds like you've discovered the uh, secret sauce and the hidden recipe that people have been searching for. I want to ask you a follow up question because I think whenever anybody in hr, myself included, you know, we hear the words performance or performance management, it's one of those double edged swords. We know it is extremely important, we know it's extremely difficult and it comes with a lot of baggage. Some of it earned, some of it definitely not. Uh, how is this different? So help me, if I have to go back to those leaders and sell it to them, what would you tell me?

Speaker B: Right. Okay. So one of the interesting things is I do think we've been talking about high performance, high performance cultures for quite some time. But if you stop and ask a leader, okay, how would you define a high performance culture? You typically get a bit of hesitation and sometimes a blank stare. And I think that's because leaders either start by thinking about performance through our performance management systems and then they pretty quickly realize that those, you know, semiannual ratings don't necessarily add up to a culture of high performance. Um, and then you also uh, have leaders who think about, oh well, performance cultures are those that consistently hit targets, but that's an outcome, that's not a culture. And so we actually started with sort of that conundrum is that we don't think there's a really great definition of it. And those who think they have a great definition of it probably aren't doing it in a way that's really healthy high performance. They're sort of drive performance at all costs. But I think if you're talking to an HR leader and most leaders like that doesn't feel, feel great. And so that's really where we wanted to start is let's define what it means to have a high performance culture. You know, we have so much perspective at culture amp with our, um, you know, years of experience and our um, organizational science perspective, um, and so much data to really try to first and foremost answer that question. Um, so that's kind of the first thing I would say. And one thing we did, uh, identify kind of that recipe as you described earlier, is six dimensions of sustainable high performance cultures. Um, and so we have kind of that formula of the organizations who consistently um, achieve it. What are the things that they are doing. And then we were able to see, um, that those organizations who consistently achieve those dimensions are um, essentially focused on both employee engagement and performance at the same time. Instead of treating them as sort of competing priorities, which you often hear people say, think that either you have an engaged workforce or you have a performing workforce, but you can have both. And what our research found was that actually there are two sides of the same coin and you need to look at them as intentionally integrated. Um, and that's really, uh, kind of those things I would say are kind of the foundation of um, what this peak performance research, uh, showed us.

Speaker A: No, I love that. And I mean I'm a big supporter and have always been around, you know, engagement and you know, depending on your point of view, I think engagement leads towards various other things. And the, you know, the research also tells us that story. What I love about what you're saying is the word sustainable. Because I think we've all been in environments where you know, there's almost this hustle culture that says, you know, we need to push really now this is the phase or the stage of the business that we are in. But I think kind of adding sustainability into that context and saying, but how can we do this in a healthy way over time I think is a much more human centered approach that does not negate the fact that we are still operating in mostly a commercial environment. So how did you balance that tension a little bit? Because as you said, it's two sides of the same coin and we're going to get into the recipe, into the formula in a moment.

Speaker B: And I think this is where you go past this concept of ah, sustainability equals not burning people out, which is true. But I sat across the room from a lot of executives around the C suite who aren't that motivated by this whole concept of burnout and well being and work life balance. Like they sort of, yeah, maybe emotionally get it, but it doesn't necessarily feel like the thing that they need to achieve as an, as a, as a leader. But when you think about self sustaining it's, that's where the, the description that we have is. It's where everyone around the organization is taking responsibility for the success of the company and those around them. It's when they don't wait to be told what to do, they just go for it. Um, they are lifting up those around them. Uh, they are think like an owner. And when you start using words like that and Phrases like that, it's just undeniably something that leadership all feels like, oh, I need that. And so yeah, I think the thing that really jumped out to us is that when we looked at organizations who are really good at engagement but maybe not as focused on performance, we saw that they really struggled to meet results. And um, those types of companies might have like, passionate people who really believe in what they're trying to do and who feel really taken care of by the business. But if they didn't also see a clear path to execution, feel like their systems, um, decision making criteria, um, were all sort of moving in the same direction, they actually, those organizations couldn't succeed. They um, I like to say, you know, it's, it's, it's as if, if we just focus on engagement and we're not thinking about engagement towards what, then it's not a recipe that is actually going to succeed in the long run. And so to those employees it's like we don't have, we have to first have permission um, to be able to invest more in our people by also making sure we're performing. On the flip side, we also saw that organizations that are really focused on performance but not on engaging their people, they do something really interesting, they achieve short term success. So within a year they actually perform pretty well. But it's the sustainability over time they start to teeter out. And we see a significant difference in two years and three years and beyond between those companies that have invested in engagement and those that have not. So if you are both highly engaged and um, focused on high performance, those are the companies that get it right over time and they have, have surprisingly a 47 point advantage from a stock price change perspective. So the companies that we see that are doing both, they are outperforming the rest of the performance cultures, um, by 47 points. So their stock price change is increasing, um, by 36 points. Whereas companies in those other quadrants are actually um, have a median decline of about 11 points. Um, so there's real data and m, this is across, across thousands of organizations that we've seen. Um, so that's the real reason uh, that we saw that you can't just focus on one or the other, you have to do both.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I love that. And I mean I think it's you know, a lot of HR professionals sitting around the table. I think intuitively, as always said, you know, we know these things are both important. I do think the conversation unfortunately shifts towards one or the other side. In a lot of boardrooms today. Right. And I've also sat around those tables. You've been, well, it's almost. You push the engagement mandate, and when you see you're not getting traction, you almost flip a little bit more towards the performance mandate. Um, what I like about what you're saying is obviously there's the cognitive argument of, you know, the data tells us this is what it does over time. Here's the evidence thereof, which I think is, uh, a fantastic foundation to come from. But what I also loved what you mentioned is around the fact that if you have those conversations with leaders, it goes a little bit towards what is their expectation. And clarifying that, when we talk about things like, you know, peak performance, high performance, what does it look like, what does it feel like? What is different when we start seeing it? And I actually think, you know, we don't spend enough time aligning people on the definitions of things and what we mean by what we say. Um, and I find that's the same with a lot of HR initiatives. We kind of get stuck on the jargon. And then when you sit around the table, um, I've recently, uh, met with a client and we asked, what is your HR mandate? And then people like, mandate is mandate vision is mandate, mission, is it strategy? Is it goal? And I think just that clarification is sometimes very, very useful. And I can assume that it's the same in this instance.

Speaker B: I love that, Dieter. It's so true. It's really easy for us to all sort of, um, default to the heuristics and the, um, the old definitions. And, um, I think, yeah, just starting with. With clarifying is. Is so powerful, especially because we all have to admit, you know, the definitions and mindsets of the past may not be what we need to keep our organizations and the people within them in a healthy place. And so I think stopping and sort of challenging everything and making sure we're clarifying everything is, um, is. Is really important, especially now.

Speaker A: Yeah. Amy, before we jump into, into what are the ingredients, I first want to ask, out of the data, did you see something interesting that speaks a little bit about some of the myths that we still carry today around performance?

Speaker B: I love this question, Dieter. Part sometimes of my job is like myth busting, having access to all this data. Because so often, yeah, these sort of tropes of the past are. They guide a lot of behavior in an organization. One of my favorites that really became so foundational to. Because this, this. This new performance culture quadrant that we'll talk about, um, a bit more. What really led to it was research and definitions. And um, one of the big things that came out that surprised all of is that there actually is no such thing as a high performer. So think about how much conversation in organizations is about what do our high performers think? What do we do for to get more high performers? What we found is that if you look across performance ratings, which are really the best proxy, we have to understand performance. Although I think all of us especially um, who have studied the data would admit that there's a lot of bias and um, it's an imperfect measure. But if you look at that as our best proxy, because it is kind of the only thing we really consistently have across an organization, what we did was we looked at who receives the highest performance rating multiple cycles over time. So that those are kind of essentially the start off with let's understand what's happening with the high performers. Um, so we look at that and we see that if you look at those who receive the highest performance rating, only 2% of the global workforce receives the highest performance rating twice in a row. And say, okay, actually let's just look at those who receive a high performance rating twice in three years. We actually see that only increases to 5%. And so if you think about that alone, which, and I think most people instinctually, when they think back and they think about calibrations and they think about, they're like, oh, you know, you're right, it isn't probably something where people regulate receive, um, that indication of high performance. And um, I think, you know, I look at it too. Having worked at several organizations and been an internal practitioner. I've seen people be great performers in one team or organization and then really struggle in another team or organization. Someone who I would have called a high performer in one place is not in the next. And so what we actually saw is that it's less about the people that being high performers like some innate quality. And it's more about how the system is facilitating high performance. It's not about going and finding more high performers or making everyone high performers. It's more about how do we create a system of high performance where people can do great work. And it may not be that everyone is doing great work every moment of the um, of the year. It's more that the system is facilitating it so that everyone is able to achieve and expand experience high performance. But that might mean that you have to actually rotate your go to um, you know, the people that you always give the challenging assignment to, who you put on every single committee. The challenge with that thinking is that you will burn those people out and you're not creating opportunities for others to be a part of high performance. And so I would say that concept and I uh, of like there's. Let's think about, not about more high performers. Let's think about creating systems of high performance and then let's make sure that we are rotating the bench inch to create more opportunities for everyone to grow and develop and learn and also rest.

Speaker A: Mhm. Now I love that. I think that, you know, I've always thought that you need to speak about the. Are we creating the conditions for performance to occur? Right. So the, the systemic approach that you've also mentioned here. Because very often I do think that as organizations we almost trip people up a bit. And I mean of course there's always going to be the outliers. Right. The people that don't want to be here, uh, versus on the other side. I do think we have a tendency to kind of, you know, I think box hypos in too much. Right. Because we almost have this high level of expectations for them. And you're absolutely right. I've also been in those calibration conversations where we are trying to create fairness and then people are like, yeah, it's been solid. But you know, we stretched them really far enough this year. So maybe this year they just didn't meet expectations. You know, it's fine. We gave them something else last year. So I think it is quite uh, interesting to see that maybe a lot of that effort that we put in is not that worth it if I may say so. And we must rather focus a little bit more on the conditions and creating organizations where everybody can do their best work, even if that means not where I am currently based. Because I think hierarchy, you know, I come from an org design background, so we can talk about that for ages and ages. But I think it's a very limiting concept uh, for us in today's world of work. I think we should completely rethink um, how we think about Org design, which then has implications for talent.

Speaker B: Okay, Dieter, can we rain check that conversation? Because I cannot wait to talk to you about that. I have so many thoughts and I mostly just want to hear learn from you. It is so important. I always think about how it's like a lot of the systems that we use to organize talent in organizations today, like yeah, calibrations. But even as simple as job descriptions, competence, um, hierarchies, career paths, they are very rigid. Like just by definition, if you think about all of those, they're like this document that gets approved and then like sealed in time. And it's just not the way work gets done anymore. We are constantly, you know, moving to different projects. I mean just think about trying to set annual goals for an organization and the number of times those shift, even within a quarter, much less 12 months.

Speaker A: No, uh, you're spot on. And I mean we'd love to pick up that conversation because I also, you know, it does set the tone for me a little bit that I do think a lot of the call them traditional people practices that we've had were very much based on a world where the principles of work was very, very different. Usually time and space bound to a large extent. So we'd love to hear you mentioned that the model identified six dimensions. What would be those things that these organizations do really, really well to create these, these conditions?

Speaker B: Okay, great. I'll try to, try to go through them pretty quickly. But there's a lot, yeah, of course in each one. Um, so the first one is about excellence. Uh, and this is really about being clear about what great looks like. Um, and constantly really rewarding that and also making sure that when that you're clear about what great isn't and that you're dealing with that quickly. Um, this is often also has um, a lot related to like how excellence and, and a kind of an obsession with how we're creating value for the, for our customers. Um, so that's the E, uh, it all. Um, by the way, I'll just give you a little, a little uh, teaser here that these dimensions do spell out the word evolve, um, which was also intentional because uh, as you can imagine just that what these do is actually unlock the ability for organizations to pivot. Okay. So Excellence V is about vision and that is also where our values come into play. I like to think of this one as. These are things that don't change. This is the stuff that is like kind of core to our identity as an organization so that as things are rapidly evolving around us, we kind of know what we can anchor on and what we can use to help us make decisions through that. The O is about ownership. Um, this is the clear decision making frameworks, making sure that we know who is responsible for things. Um, this often breaks down in companies that have high engagement and low performance because everybody is so passionate that they're almost all running at the same things and bumping into each other and running in the opposite direction. Um, so you know, getting really making sure that systems are clear, responsibility is clear, ownership and empowerment is clear. The L is about learning. This is really a learning organization. An organization that is constantly um, thinking about what just happened there. What can we do better next time? Um, continuously improving and also has people with a growth mindset who are constantly trying to learn and evolve themselves. I think right now you're seeing almost every, you know, job description and role could be completely changed with you know, AI, agentic, um, co workers. All of that is completely changing things and needing people who have a really curious mindset. Um, the second V is about voice. Really making sure that we're listening to the right, um, voices who represent diverse perspectives and that we have a way for employees who feel that ownership for the success of the organization to be able to inform, influence and give that rapid feedback and make changes. And then finally the last E is energy. And this is as I, as I mentioned, a really important concept that I think was not in a lot of frameworks of the past. Um, and that is just making sure that you're um, balancing the energy of the team. And I think this is also so important because as AI tools are becoming a common part of work, what it's done is it's made some of the um, the more administrative tasks, the more linear tasks a lot easier to do. And what that has led, I think sort of the shadow of that is not that now we are able to do our work a lot more efficiently to get to the end state. I think the shadow side is that it means we're having to do really deep thinking work much more. We don't have that sort of repetitive work to sort of give our brains a break. And so that concept of energy is something that is actually, even though we've based this research on um, on years uh, of data from the past, it's something that I think is actually also rapidly evolving. Like how do you focus and preserve energy in the modern world of work? So those are the six dimensions of sustainable high performing um, organizations.

Speaker A: No, absolutely love it. I think to your last point on energy, I think I've always thought, you know, in organizations you need enough petrol in the tank to be able to initiate the various things that you want to. And I think one key thing that people do struggle with at the moment, as you've mentioned, is I think one overwhelm and then on the other side then when you have overwhelm and uncertainty with all the changes that's happening currently, I think the first thing that goes is the general energy and just orientation almost towards the organization and where it's heading. What I love about your framework and I think it's such, um, a nice way to pull together various different components. Right. That we've been talking about in various different contexts. But I do love the fact that there's, you know, a lot of things that we've been talking about in the HR domain, like a learning organization. How do we create voice and a lot more active listening strategies in terms of where our workforce is currently and how that's starting to change and then combining that with some of the other elements there. Which one of these surprised you? So when you work through the data, what is the one that popped up and you said huh, huh. I didn't realize that you were here.

Speaker B: Um, there's so many good little nuggets within each one. Um, I will say one that I don't think I've mentioned yet is in that learning organization, um, the l, uh was we found that organizations that sustain high performance have really good internal mobility practices. Um, so they are more likely to think about how to move talent around, uh, versus just hiring from the outside. And I think internal mobility has been probably a topic of discussion for a long time time. Um, and it's hard to get right. So I wouldn't say that the research.

Speaker A: We still suck at it.

Speaker B: Yeah, we still kind of suck at it. But I do wonder if with um, you know, with access to more um, and we can use AI to help us better understand skills that actually. And, and as we start to break down traditional job descriptions and career paths with AI, I think think there is potentially it kind of forces us to have to figure internal mobility out because we know there's great talent sitting in places where they may not be optimized right now. And we know that if, you know, moving our people around is actually one of the things that helps all the other dimensions of sustainable high performance to work. Um, so I think that we might be at a place of being able to crack that one open and figure out how to do it. I wouldn't say I have the clear answers to that one either, but it is a clear differentiator.

Speaker A: M. Well, I think you're right. I think the, you know, the visibility first off of being able to understand what skill sets I have where and be able to. To move them around is already a big win. Because I think, to be honest, in the past, I think the one of the biggest hurdles besides like talent hoarding and culture and those things in the organization has been just not knowing and realizing what you have and knowing where I can deploy it differently and I think that's the exciting thing about things like marketplaces and some of the newer tech that we find out there.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Amy, I want to ask you a question. Um, and this one is a little bit, uh, I'm playing devil's advocate on this one. So looking at the model, what's the role of leadership? You know, usually when we talk about, you know, who drives culture in organizations, who's responsible for then you know, leadership pops up. And we know that that's a very debatable topic at the moment. Also with the role of leaders changing, how organizations are changing in terms of like what oversight looks like, of work, etc. So the managerial layer is starting to shrink as well. But when you think about leadership, where does this fit in here? Do they, do they help or do they hinder?

Speaker B: Well first of all, I should say that my definition of leadership, since you challenged uh, challenged my thinking earlier, my definition of leadership is anyone who takes responsibility for the success of those around them. Um, and I don't think that is necessarily hierarchy dependent. I think that we can be individual contributors and be leaders and I think we can be very senior at the organization and not be doing leadership very well. And um, you know, I believe, and one of the things we talk a lot about at Culture amp is that you know, the real um, the real human that we are creating solutions for is, is the employee, is the worker, is the manager or the people leader, um, and that we need to build things that, that they love interacting with and that make them better in order for um, for us to be able to scale peak performance, um, and help everyone thrive at work. And so um, it is not called out as a specific dimension in our research because it is actually foundational to every single dementia. Um, that sounds a little bit theoretical but um, I will share with you kind of some of the things that we have seen happen as this research has come out. Uh, so first of all, I don't think I've said this yet, so I just want to be really clear about. You know I talked about holding both um, performance and engagement together and in an integrated way. And the really tactical way we do that is we is we've created a two by two. Um, we've created a matrix that puts engagement on one dimension and puts confidence in the performance of the organization on the other dimension. We've created a diagnostic that um, organizations can send to all of their employees and we suggest they send it to all of them because you don't actually have, um, have a great view if you Only ask your leaders, um, and so they answer questions, and then it allows us to plot them on this two by two. And each of the four quadrants is a different type of performance culture. And we call it a each, each of them a performance culture state. Um, not a performance culture type because actually there's quite a bit of fluidity. Um, we've seen organizations and teams be able to move a lot within, um, the quadrants because business circumstances change, you know, structures of the organization change, people coming in and out change. And so, um, you know, you might be in peak performance in one at one point in time, but that could change depending on what else changes. Uh, and so what we're trying to do is really, um, you know, we call this a performance culture quadrant. And you'll notice that the words engagement are not really in there. And that is very much by design. Not because engagement doesn't equally matter, but because we want every leader across the business to think of this as a tool for them. And for better or for worse, employee engagement has kind of carries some baggage with it. Um, it's a term that I think has been used for a long time. I think we've seen a lot of leaders do a little bit of an eye roll when the next engagement survey comes out, say, oh, here we go again. And we wanted to, you know, break that, um, that relationship with the term. And we have seen that, like, just calling it that and saying to leaders, we're going to tell you what your performance culture is. We've seen stakeholders around the business really lean in and say, I want to know, you know, where's my org? Where, um, where do I want them to be? What, what are the biggest risks that I have? Um, uh, you know, I had one customer say that they, um, they ended up spending two and a half hours with their engage, uh, engineering leadership team. And they said that's two hours more than they've spent in the last three years because their, uh, their CTO was like, get, I want to talk about this. I see that my most important engineers are in a disconnected performance culture type. And I've got to figure this out. Uh, and so I think one of the biggest things is like, speaking the language of the business so that every leader looks at this as a tool for them, not a tool that HR is, is owning, that HR is managing that. I'm going to wait for HR to tell me what to do with, which is unfortunately, um, and for good reason. Like I think you said, you know, these worked, these systems worked really well in the past. But the challenge is that they've been really seen as something that the HR team owns and we've got to shift that and make these tools feel like something that every leader owns.

Speaker A: But I think that's such an important distinction. Right. So I think where we fail at times with engagement is one, it was seen as the silver bullet that fixes everything. And then on the other side, it was very much seen as something that HR brings again via, you know, the annual survey. And we all know that those types of things have started to shift as well. But I think the simplicity and really love your two by two. I am a consultant that hard, so just make me happy. In general, I, um, think is very valuable because I think it does diagnose for people to give them perspective. Because I think that's very often what we struggle with, is give people perspective around what does this mean? You know, how do I shift it, how do I move it and make it simple enough that they can work with it as opposed to against it? I've found that, you know, some of these methods, if you spend, you know, 45 minutes just explaining to people what we are trying to do here, they lose interest in it completely, as opposed to five minutes easy to grasp. And let me work with you through the conversations that we need to have. So I can imagine that that's getting, you know, some really good, good traction.

Speaker B: Yes. Two things, um, that brought up for me is one, yes, the, um, some of the feedback that we've gotten is how intuitive this is. And that, uh, in the past it felt like every time survey results came back, you know, you have all of these leaders and stakeholders just wanting, like, asking lots of questions, wanting more data, wanting to make sure that they understand what they're looking at. And that that has really quickly shifted in this framework because it's so intuitive. And I would also say part of it is because we have moved away from just talking about, like you, dieter, are a 67% on engagement, which I'm sure you know, gives you all sorts of feelings of, uh, you know, if I tell you your scores.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's not very empowering.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you're like, okay, tell me, how does that compare to benchmark? How has that changed over time? Are there parts of the business bringing that down? You start asking a lot of questions. But if I said to you instead, Dieter, your team is a team of engaged skeptics. They're high on engagement, but they're, they're skeptical and they're not confident that you're Going to be able to succeed automatically. Where does your head go? Like, I think it's, it's. This is a storytelling, this is a narrative. And even when, you know, heads of engineering can, can really quickly say, I want to talk about that, it's actually not that different than the 67. In fact, the 67 is part of what, what, you know, got us to be able to diagnose you there. But it is really changing the game because leaders can quickly kind of identify with that, that narrative. Say that feels like what it's like to work here. And then, um, then they want to jump into, yeah, all right, what do we do about it?

Speaker A: Yeah, but I also love the fact that you, you know, you almost. And I think that's a mistake HR professionals make. We try to deep dive and make things complicated because then it's kind of of, you know, we hold this and it kind of feels like it's more hre.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: I think making it a lot more simple and being confident about what sits below the surface, I think that's the really important thing. So know that the models work and that the data tells us the right story, but you just need to surface the piece that's going to create movement, the piece that's really going to get people to grasp onto one thing, to shift and to move forward.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Ah, Amy, I've got a last question for you before we, we start wrapping up. And what is HR's role in all of this? We've spoken about the fact that, you know, peak performance, this balance between a different. And I love the fact that you said it's a culture state, not a culture type. I think they are fundamentally different. Um, how does HR help organizations lean into this a lot more? We know culture work is important. We know performance is important. We know engagement is important. How do we lean into this and how do we bring that change in mindset about?

Speaker B: Yeah, so actually I just recently spoke with one of our customers, um, at one of our forums and was asking, um, him, he is the head of employee engagement and performance, um, at a technology, a big technology company. And um, asked him, you know, like, for his advice as he has brought this out into his organization. And um, you know, he's played such a critical role, but interestingly, he is really focused on almost getting out of the way. Um, so he had to come in with a strong belief. And one of the things he said is, I do not apologize for the changes that I'm making to the organization with this. And that really struck me because I think so often, um, and I felt this too when I was a practitioner, but I see it with a lot of customers where they're like, oh no, this is different, this has changed. I have to, um, make sure everyone's ready. I have to make sure I've got all the comms right, I have to update all the user guides, I've got to train everyone. And that is almost like by definition being kind of apologetic, like, I'm so sorry that I am, um, making this harder for you. And what this customer said is our job is to keep innovating our functions the way every other function across the business. And when we get, when they have to change tools and systems that to, to improve finance or tech or whatever it might be, they don't apologize for it. They just say, this is what we're doing. And so he says, you know, go in, be unapologetic and be really proud that you're bringing the latest thinking. And yes, past it's going to be a little different. Maybe you don't have a few benchmarks, maybe you, it looks different than the way it's looked in the past. People can adjust to that really quickly. Um, but if you try to hold them back because you want to hand hold them through every single thing like that, that in itself is, um, is probably enabling some of this helplessness that we've created for leaders. So I think it's be bold as an HR practitioner, um, be unapologetic, um, speak the language of the business. You know, leaders care about performance culture more than they care about employee engagement scores. So let's meet them where they are. Um, and you know, the truth is that if you can, um, give them something that they believe is theirs and they feel is theirs, the work that HR can do is just uplifted and so much more strategic and so much more impactful. Um, because, you know, you are leaders are coming to you just like the engineering leader I mentioned. They're coming to you once they're ready to do the real change. Change versus coming to you to try to get the next analysis, figure out why their login's not working, um, complain about some of the user interface, whatever the things are that they might go to you about, um, they're going to you about the really good stuff. The other thing I would mention that is really critical to what we built is we have an AI coach embedded into this, this whole performance culture quadrant experience. Um, so that as a manager or employee is going in and looking at their performance culture quadrant, they're questions about why is this different? What am I looking at? How, you know, help me understand what this means. They're asking it at the point at which they're interacting with the data. The goal there is that, you know, don't worry about a ton of training that you need to do. Let the product and our AI coach do that training. We've trained our coach on all of the sustainable high performance research. Um, and then we also have the ability to bring in your strategy and goals and values at your organization. And so the AI coach can actually talk the language, help get them there, help answer those questions in the moment and help get them moving towards action. And that is really when you know HR can do its best work, when you're sort of letting the technology get every user as far as possible and then bringing you in to really do the important work of strategic impact.

Speaker A: So it's how do we leverage that as HR professionals? You know, the biggest frustration has always been how do we do these things at scale, how do we make it accessible for or you know, the first time manager that is sitting very far away in a distributed org structure and needs something now in the moment. They don't need the upskilling that we're only going to get to slightly later. Amy, absolutely loved our conversation. A couple of things that really stood out for me. I think the first one is that, you know, we need to rethink some of our definitions that no longer work, um, in this new way of working. Love the fact that you spoke about the research and kind of what looks different when we start not thinking about engagement versus performance but we actually start seeing it as concepts that can coexist. Loved your definition around sustainable over time. It's healthy, it's where people can do their best work. But we still perform as an organization so it doesn't lean towards the one or the other. Love your model of excellence, vision, ownership, learning, voice and energy. Um, I think the EVOLVE acronym is also one that can really stick into the people's minds listening today that they can go and apply it. And loved your practical tips that you gave around. Allow managers to do their work and you play a very different role as HR in terms of making sure that you can guide them but make sure that they have access to the recommendations and the actions that will really make a difference as part of the different culture quadrants that they will be playing in. So Amy, from my side, thank you very, very much. I really enjoyed our conversation. Where can people follow you and the great work that you are doing at Culture amp.

Speaker B: Thanks so much, Dieter. This was so fun. I just love the questions that you asked and the way that you think. It's clear that you have lots of different perspectives about this important. So thanks for having me. Um, follow us on LinkedIn for Culture amp we put out a lot of content and my team actually produces a lot of that content of my team of people, scientists, uh, sharing the data, sharing the patterns and, um, and kind of telling the story back to you of what we're seeing with the data. Um, and you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Ah, Amy Lavoy. I would love to have all of these HR rebels and brilliant people join in on the conversation with me so we can all learn together and really disrupt this, um, the world of work in a really positive way.

Speaker A: Absolutely love that. Thank you very much, Amy. For those of you dialing into the HR dialogues, thank you so much for joining us for this episode and we will see you soon. Bye. Bye, everyone.