#66 Quiet Quitting Is a Design Outcome, Not an Attitude Problem | Work Design | Justin Robbins

Speaker A: The point behind the article I'd written and some of the workshops that I've done on the topic is really looking at this idea of the four points of employee connection. Every employee doesn't matter what your role is, doesn't matter what size your organization is. Every single one of us is navigating three questions or. Sorry, every single one of us is navigating four questions. The first of those is what do

Speaker B: I. Hi, I'm your host, Vishesh, five time founder and CEO at Valabs. Building Neo voice control for your computer. See what's next. At Vishesh Space, I'm joined by Justin Robbins. His research found that the employees most likely to go quiet on you are your highest performers. The ones who cared most, carried the most, and finally ran out of road. He spent two decades studying why that happens, wrote a book called More Than a Motto and built Metric Sherpa to help organizations stop designing systems that destroy the people they most need to. Hey. Hi Justin. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.

Speaker A: Hey, Vishesh, great to be with you today.

Speaker B: So your, your book says quite quitting is a design outcome and not an attitude problem. Um, I talk to a lot of founders who say that teams is genuinely passionate, um, but also exhausted. These are, uh, these two things compatible and what's going on? What's going on there?

Speaker A: Yeah, let's, let's maybe take a step back on why. Why even talk about quiet quitting as a book? Especially for someone who. A lot of my background was customer experience, Vishesh. And I think I found myself, and I saw in a lot of my teams the thing you just asked about, what is going on with my highest capacity people, the ones who care a lot about the work that we're doing, they show up to do extra things and yet they seem to be. The ones care the most, are also kind of silently, silently resigning themselves inside of their day to day. And so I started to study what's happening in organizations to create this feeling of disconnection in all employees, not just the high performers and the highest engaged ones. And what I realized is that for so many organizations, we're undermining our own efforts. And that can happen a lot of ways. And you and I can spend some time talking about that today. But to the point of your question, uh, hey, you've got a lot of people who care and they give a lot of effort. Can quiet quitting still exist?

Speaker B: And.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, absolutely. In fact, my research, uh, and my time with organizations has found that's where it's most likely to occur. It's not in the people where they're obviously never cared in the first place. It's often the people who care the most, uh, and have carried the burden the longest that, that are most prone to quiet quitting.

Speaker B: And so what seems to be the reason for, you know, people who, or uh, are they just burnt out?

Speaker A: Yeah. At the most basic level, it's a disconnect between promises and practices. We say one thing and then we do another. That can manifest in a lot of different ways. In fact, when I studied the organizations that do this really well, they do a great job of connecting what they say to what they do. I actually found that there were six different ways that they enabled success and they enabled that sense of connection and purpose and joy and fulfillment inside of their workforce. So it's not just one thing. It's often little things that compound and erode the, the sense of connection in that employee over time. That's really what it is. It's a bunch of small compounding things, not this big one time moment that, that creates this disconnection in the workforce.

Speaker B: So uh, like a lot of startups do this what, what we call in the, in the startup world a value doc. Founders will build or, or the early team will build a value doc, which was really, I think popularized by Netflix to a large degree. And many of them know it's not working. And like you said, you know, whatever is said in that value doc is not followed. How much of a cost is it having a value dog that nobody lives by? What does it cost operationally and on the P and L?

Speaker A: Yeah, look, writing values is easy. Living them is hard. That's, that's just kind of the truth of the matter. When we, we look at what's happening here and I want to break down your question in two parts. The first is what is, what is the cost of, of doing that exercise? And I could maybe argue what is the cost of not doing that exercise. We all need a North Star. We need to understand what matters. What do we want to be known by? How should we think operate best look like for our uh, business? And so I don't think inherent, I don't think that value documents are inherently wrong, but I think the mechanics behind them are often missing. And if I think about how that shows up in terms of cost positively or negatively, again, I can think it, I think it can show up in a, in a number of different ways. When I break down that connection between purpose and practice. I mentioned the six things that I observed the very first thing I noticed in organizations is that they're really good at resolving what matters. They're, they, they provide clarity on, on what, what wins when priorities collide. And that's often probably the, the first mistake I see organizations making is they, they believe that people are already clear, they already understand, and that's just not the case. And so in terms of what can that cost? Well, I mean, people are confused. They make bad decisions that can cost time. There can be missed revenue opportunities, there can be waste in terms of effort, there can be poor business decisions. Uh, there's all of these dominoes that fall out just by a lack of clarity and a disconnect, uh, between what leaders say or wrote down and then what gets operationalized at different individuals in the organization. It doesn't matter if that's a five person organization or a 5,000 person organization. The minute you add one person to the conversation, the idea starts to skew. I've been part of businesses as a single founder and then added one employee to five employees to 15 employees. And I can tell you that with every person, it just incrementally starts to drift a little bit to one side or another and it gets left to interpretation. So for me, the very first part to start is clarity. And assume that it will leak, that it will degrade over time. And we need to be persistent in how we communicate it. We have to be intentional about how we position trade offs in the organization, otherwise every, everything else will start to fall. So there's lots of other places where cost shows up, but for me, it really starts at the most basic level of clarity. What did we write down? But then what does it actually look like in practice every single day?

Speaker B: Right. A lot of people talk about like leaders having to repeat it again and again and again so that it doesn't degrade. Are, uh, there any hacks or tricks to get better at that as a lead or someone whose job it is to kind of reinforce this?

Speaker A: Yeah, the hardest part is that rhythm and making it repeat. Because what we don't want to sound like is a broken record. And what we often default to is just saying the same thing over and over again, rather than taking a moment to say, hey, this, this thing that matters to us, how do I embed it into different parts of what we do? And maybe it's a question that I ask in my one on one with my employee. Maybe it's about an example that I give in our next meeting. Maybe it's about a conversation that I have in Terms of a time where we got it right or, or we got it wrong. I think we have to look at like, what's the core truth that we're trying to get across and how do we embed that in different ways across our different communication. Is there any one hack that it's like, do this thing and it'll be perfect? No, because this has to fit into your rhythm as well. What are the meetings that you have? What are the questions that you like to ask? How do you typically engage your people? And how do you think about threading that core truth into different things? And so maybe it is putting a reminder on your day of like, hey, what one, one time today I need to ask my team a question about this or I need to give an example of this. And it's not letting it fade into the background. It's being clear about what are you trying to get across and intentional about plugging it into the day to day and not every day, hey, remember, this matters. Remember this matters. Remember this matters because then we just get tuned out. So that, that to me is, it's, it's be intentional, diversify your approach and recognize that it's not going to stick as fastly as you think. And even once it's stuck with, you're still going to need to revisit it from time to time. That's, that's honestly the biggest hack is not giving up on the need for the idea to be persistent and pervasive with your, your team makes sense when

Speaker B: coming up with this kind of doc, especially as a team, if you've scaled a little bit, a lot of people look at outside for reference on what has worked in terms of uh, design. Do you think looking outside is a, is one, a good step or is it more of looking inside? And two, if you, if you have gone that route and picked stuff from five different places to create the best recipe of what you want the org to be like, is that even executable?

Speaker A: Look, I think benchmarking is valuable and it is great to have models and ideas of what do you want to embody, but it's also important to recognize that there is no business that is exactly like yours. They don't have the same employees, they don't have the same customers, they don't have the same thing that makes you special. And so while I think it's a good idea to look other places for inspiration and get ideas and see what are some of the best practices, you also have to make it ownable. Because if it's not ownable by you, then it's potentially ignorable, it's potentially replaceable. And people don't want to be part of something that is easy to just blink and forget about. You have to have something that is uniquely you. So that, to me, is the challenge of look other places, but have some, have some ownership and be distinctive in how you make this come to life for your organization. Uh, otherwise, if you just try to copycat, you're never going to achieve what that organization achieved because they leaned into themselves. And so I think that's important. Look other places for inspiration, but then lean into yourself and bring what truly makes you unique and meaningful and distinctive. Bring that to life. That's what people want to be a part of.

Speaker B: And do you think that's more of, like, values told through stories that are unique, or is it more of, hey, this is who we are, and let's stick to this?

Speaker A: Uh, I don't think it's one or the other. I think it's important to use story to help people understand and see the impact, especially if those stories come from inside of the organization. But recognize that your organization is going to have a culture no matter what you do. I think the question is, how do we intentionally create the culture of that we want to see here? And a lot of that does have to come from the inside. It is, what is our lens for making. What is our lens for making decisions? How do we make sure that we recognize and celebrate our people? How do we think about what we measure and how we talk about success or growth through kind of some of the opportunities that we face? A lot of it really does have to become kind of internalized in the mechanics of the day to day. It can't just be about stories and celebration. Like, it really does have to become your muscle memory. That, I think, is the biggest challenge when I, I work with leaders is how do you build the muscle memory inside of your organization, your team, so that their reflex is a reflection of your culture? That doesn't just happen through story. It doesn't just happen from the values document. It comes from a very intentional approach to how work happens every single day.

Speaker B: And what are some of the things you've done in the past in terms of recommendation to achieve that? Muscle memory?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's the first place where we always start and understand, like, what is the destination for the organization, where are we trying to go? And once we know where we're trying to go, then we can figure out how we get there. One of the second things I often Work with organizations on this idea is of, of hold the line and, and that's understanding where are they compromising intentionally or not. What I find is a lot of organizations let pressure make the decisions for them rather than going in with pre decisions on what they'll do as pressure shows up in their business. So that's one of the things that we help them figure out, is what is their reflex today? What is the muscle mem and where do we need to mature or evolve and improve their, their reflex is, is certainly something that we do. The third thing that we often look at is this sense of belonging. You see a lot of people join organizations because of what they're going to get as an employee or what they think they can give in terms of their background and skill set. But then you hit this brick wall of, well, do I actually belong? Do I want to see this organization grow? And so there's things that we do to help people kind of go over that, that gap between, uh, you know, what can I give here? And do I actually belong? We also kind of look with organizations in terms of their operating tempo. You see a lot of businesses, especially today, especially in startups who are always on and are just kind of, it's just push, push, push, push, push. And the reality is there is zero recovery. And again, I've been part of, you know, a number of startups at different phases. And what I will tell you is that is a recipe for disaster there. There is always time for recovery. And so helping them figure out where does that actually make sense inside of their work and inside of building fast. And as something is growing and iterating, I understand the challenge. And that's something that we often, you know, help them with. The next thing I think about is how they actually hear their system. A lot of these leaders are measuring outcomes, but they're not measuring how work actually feels and identifying and addressing sources of friction. And so we'll work with them on that. You know, and then the last thing that you mentioned is making it repeat. How do you think about those places where this shows up again and again so that all of that other work isn't for waste? So that's, that's typically how we break it down. Again, it's six different habits that when applied in small, intentional ways, really do help organizations take their, their promises from the wall and, and put them into their workflow.

Speaker B: And so I, I get the push on clarity. And you say ambiguity drains energy faster than workload, but most startups run on ambiguity, right? Right from finding Product market fit to, um, you know, figuring out what their org design is going to be at each stage as they grow. Are, uh, founders structurally building burnout factories, or do you feel like even with that level of ambiguity, you can design something with a lasting culture?

Speaker A: Yeah. So I actually disagree that startups are built on ambiguity. Most startups that I look at are built on a big idea. And it might be a problem that the founder faced, it might be a gap that they recognized in the market, but they do have an idea of what that's North Star, what's that thing that we're moving toward right now. They have a sense of the destination. And what's important to know is that when you have a sense of the destination, the route that you take there can be left up to choice and testing and experimenting. But there are going to only be so many paths to get to that destination. And the ambiguity that I think that you're talking about is actually in our travel to the destination. And this is a place of experimentation. It's a space where we can innovate, it's a space where we can explore. And I actually think people thrive in those environments when they understand what they're moving toward. Now, we may certainly make discoveries as founders that say, hey, that destination that we thought, turns out it's a little bit different. But then we realign our team and we get back into that, that place of exploration I'm talking about. We've never clarified where we're going in the first place. And then that is a burnout factory, because what is, what is that, that ambiguity all about? It's meaningless. It doesn't have a purpose. So I would challenge that. That ambiguity isn't the problem. What is ambiguity? Why does it exist and what is it moving towards? And so if you haven't defined the end state, yeah, you're building a burnout factory. But if you've designed the end state and then you've given your people freedom to explore, I mean, that's, that's, that's part of the brilliance of building is, is enabling that environment. So that's, that's maybe where I'd push back on the idea of. It's not about ambiguity as, as the entire operating factor. Uh, but I do think clarity on what matters most and where are we going? That's where I see it start to get organizations moving in a bad direction.

Speaker B: So even if there's a pivot, you've basically changed the destination. But there needs to be a reset on clarity on what the destination is. And then you steer ahead, I guess. Makes sense. Um, I think this is a good point to kind of take a pause and come back to, you know, you have a book out and you are founder at Matrix Sherpa. How did the book come about? You know, how does Matrix Sherpa fit into all this?

Speaker A: Yeah, so, ah, as I said earlier, my background started in service operations. I grew up through the world of customer experience, initially as an operator, then I got into running very large global training and consulting organizations. Finally working in and with technology companies as they kind of build their story. They think about product market fit, they think about how the tools they build every day, uh, enable people to be successful. And what was interesting for me through all of that is I noticed this disconnect between what people kind of wanted and hoped for in the work that they do and what was playing out in their day to day. And so as a researcher I began to measure it. I did surveys, I did interviews, I did conversations over coffee. And there was this undeniable pattern that was playing out for didn't matter what the business was, it didn't matter what the industry, didn't matter what the size for most organizations work was, working against them. And that then led me to study, well, what about the organizations who get this right? Uh, and what I realized was some of those habits that I talked about. And the book was really a manifestation of that. It was taking the research, it was taking my own lived experience as an operator is taking some stories, but most importantly the habits and the principles that I discovered that enable any leader to better connect what they promise to what they practice every day. Because when we don't, it is robbing people their sense of uh, purpose, of joy, of impact. And so they realize that like the system around me has stopped caring. So why should I, uh. The book is really a hope to combat that metric. M Sherpa I founded a few years ago as a research firm. Primarily what we do is we research topics related to customer and employee experience. Uh, we build tools, resources, programs that often are leveraged by both technology companies, investors, event organizers and operators themselves to, to better live out what we say matters when it comes to our customer and employee experience. But uh, at its core, MetricsHRP is a research firm and has been a muscle behind a lot of what I've done over the years. The book honestly though, is a tool. It's a tool that I wish I had when I was wrestling this problem with teams. And uh, it's one that as I talk to so many operators Today, uh, has been a meaningful resource for them to kind of put into words what they've been feeling for a very long time.

Speaker B: Interesting. And so the book describes, uh, a, uh, pizza Party problem, uh, or was it an article or was it part of the book? The Pizza Party Problem?

Speaker A: Yeah. Pizza Party Problem is actually, uh, a session I've done a few years ago. I did write an article on it. And it's kind of this disconnect between rewards and recognition inside of our organization.

Speaker B: And so, you know, do the lessons apply to all sizes of organizations? And if yes, can you, you know, tell us back the story and what can we learn from it?

Speaker A: Yeah. Pizza Pro. The Pizza Party Problem is really just an example of what organizations often do to recognize employee performance. And the, the point behind the. The article I'd written and some of the workshops that I've done on the topic is really looking at this idea of the four points connection. Every employee doesn't matter what your role is. Doesn't matter what size your organization is. Every single one of us is navigating three questions or. Sorry, Every single one of us is navigating four questions. The first of those is what do I get? What do I get? Is often the most basic thing that's answered honestly during the interview process or as I look at your job description. It's what might my hours be? What will my pay be? What are the benefits? What are the. What's the package in terms terms of tools and resources or training? Right, Those, those are all of the what do I get? Questions Kind of is the bottom of the pyramid here. Second question every employee is asking is, what can I give? What can I give? What can I give is a question of my background, my experience, my training, my knowledge. What do I bring to the table? And what's the. What's that I think I might be able to have here? Do I see this as a fit for what I bring to the table? And so that's kind of the second layer of the pyramid. And what's interesting, if you think about those two questions, a lot of those are figured out before I even start or, uh, in my very early weeks and days of being part of a team, what do I get and what can I give? It's pretty clear I don't have to figure it out. There isn't usually a lot of ambiguity. There's. There may be some things that I expect that I'll get in terms of training and tools or resources that might not match my expectations. That. That's a different problem. But then as I start to mature, I do ask this third question of do I belong? And belonging is a different question from what can I give? Because this is really like, are these my people? Is this a place that, that it makes sense for me to give my best? I can bring me to a lot of spots. Is this the spot that actually is the right one? And, but belongings a different question. And I don't know that before I start with the organization. That takes time for me to really understand. And then the last question here is how do we grow? This is now where I'm fully engaged. Discretionary effort. I'm thinking beyond myself and what does it really mean for this organization to succeed? And again, it doesn't matter how many people you are. Like getting to that level is not a guarantee. I may be excited because, uh, I think I'm gonna get, you know, potential like stock option if this were to be really successful one day. Or maybe the work life balance you're giving me is incredible, or that the title is great or this is an opportunity for me to solve a problem I've never gotten to solve before. But, but belonging and then how do we grow still isn't a sure thing. And so if we go back to the pizza party party problem, we don't do a lot to address belonging and kind of that, that highest level of engagement. We do a lot to say well we're going to give you an award or we're going to do this, but we don't actually, we don't, we don't invite people in, I think in the right ways. And because that's what it really gets to the root of, of do we understand that those are the four questions our people are asking. Are we intentionally engineering how we're engaging people in thinking through those questions as part of their time with us and do we have the right mechanisms to celebrate and to engage our people or are we just kind of throwing carrots out and saying, hey, great job, you pushed through this awesome work. And we're not actually looking at like, is this sustainable? Is this meaningful? Is this, is this going to, to get us to the place we really want to go? Or are we just kind of doing these superficial actions? That's, that's really the ethos, the core behind the work, the research, the different things that I've done on that particular topic.

Speaker B: Yeah, I remember six, seven years ago there was a platform I think might be still around called 15:5, uh, which basically integrated with your slack and you could just give high fives to People as they achieved stuff, and it did, after a week or so, it did start feeling pretty artificial. What do you recommend? The organizations you work with, how can you not make it monotonous like that and kill the effect of appreciation? And, and two, how do you engineer belonging or, you know, people feeling that they belong to the org?

Speaker A: Yeah, a couple questions there. Let's start with the first one. In terms of, you know, what do I think makes sense from a, uh, recognition, uh, standpoint? You know, I think recognition needs to be personal. I think it needs to be clearly connected to something, and it needs to be something that we empower people to see and to act on. One of the things that I think about and I talked about in the book, and I've also worked with other organizations, uh, is something that we had done when I was at Hershey, and it was called the Legacy Check Program. We had four core values, Own, Anticipate, Delight and Inspire. And we created these checkbooks that had the four core values on them, and they were given to every kind of people manager inside of our organization. And one of the mechanisms was, is on the spot, handwritten recognition. And so maybe I had an interaction with you over the phone. Maybe I saw you in person do something for one of our guests. Could be anything. And I would actually get it down. I would check out what core value you, uh, embodied. I would write, hey, this is specifically what you did to embody the core value. And then you got a copy of it, your manager got a copy of it. Uh, there were some other rewards tied to it. And what it started to do is it made it made our values real. We knew it when we see it. We could name it. And it wasn't just a matter of, you know, at the end of the year, we do an annual evaluation. We talk about, like, we made our values living, breathing things that not only did people get that on the spot, handwritten recognition, but we were connecting it to something. It wasn't just a high five. To your point of that example, I think that's one of the muscles that we need to build is, hey, our values or our mission are the things we say are important. Do we have a mechanism for recognizing on the spot, for catching people doing the right thing? That's one of the easiest ways to start to make people feel like, hey, what I'm doing here is seen, it's known, it's understood, it matters, and it matters in a way that's connected to what the organization says is really, really important. That's one of the Simplest things that I think organizations can do in terms of recognizing that. I think from a cautionary standpoint though, don't, don't recognize heroics when they are fixing processes or flaws in your system. And what that might be is, hey, we had this, this issue and they came to the rescue. It's great that they came to the rescue, but the real problem is that the system broke and we have to make sure that we're not having our people pay the tax for broken systems and not going after the broken system. So it's important to say, hey, you did a great job. But I think it's even more important to say, but really you shouldn't have had to do it in the first place because we made a mistake. And that's one of the places that I think organizations, they don't do that. They recognize the heroics, but they don't own the problem that led to it. And that's another way that if we want to build culture, we want to build engagement, we've got to recognize that there's sometimes two sides to that equation. And what are we doing to recognize and to own and address some of those things. Uh, then maybe to the broader question here of how do we make this real and meaningful and scalable. It's not a one time meeting. Like this is something that if you haven't gotten this from me, it's intimate, it's personal. You have to sit down with your leaders, your leaders have to sit down with maybe the leaders reporting to them. This doesn't happen from just the top. It doesn't happen one time. The organizations who do this, they really recognize that this is a movement that must happen inside of their organizations. People have to say that it matters. They have to recognize that they can't just go on repeat and just try to get through the day. Because when we get through the day, the day is going to get to us. And that, and that's like really simple stuff. And, and again, like I uh, get really passionate about this because it matters. And it's not overly complicated, but we've gotta be intentional. And if we're not intentional, like it's gonna, it's, it's just going to go sideways. Like we have to recognize that every single one of us. Doesn't matter where you're at in the organization, you have the ability to make decisions about some of these things. There's a lot that you don't get to decide, but you get to decide in a moment, hey, am I going to take an opportunity to Recognize this person for doing something that actually matters to our business.

Speaker B: Makes sense. So it's not just plain kudos, but when somebody, especially when somebody lives a value, trying to encourage those moments instead of just giving hi fi on solving crisis.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's superficial. There's a lot we can go here in terms of, like, we can't ignore our top performers. Like, there's a lot that we need to do. But we have to recognize that recognition isn't just attaboys. Like, that is not. That is not the way that you get people to be part of a culture where they feel like, I belong. I'm making a, uh, I'm making a contribution. This all makes sense to me. That, that it's. So much is superficial. Um, so we shouldn't be surprised when people just start to ignore and not want to. Not want to be a part of it.

Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense. Um, and so moving on to some of the, um, customer experience research that you published, you found 86% of companies believe they're trusted by customers, but 44% of customers agree. That's a big divide. You can call it a hallucination. How does an entire leadership sit in a room, look at their data, and genuinely believe something that is factually wrong?

Speaker A: Yeah. So the research you're talking about, we had looked at several thousand consumers and their thoughts and feelings about their interactions with brands. And then we looked at several thousand business leaders and what they thought consumers might think and feel. What's. What's important to know about the, the stat that you called out is, is, I think, a few things. One, inside of organizations, depending on what we have classified as good enough, uh, there's a lot of insight that we just ignore. If numbers seem to be okay or if we don't have insight kind of surfacing, that's telling us a different story. There's a lot that happens that never reach it to the, to the top levels of the organization. I think that's maybe the first thing to recognize in terms of voice of customer, customer insights, experience, reality. There's a lot that just gets glanced over in the sake of mediocrity. Like, I'm gonna call it what it is. Like, that's. That's kind of a part of it. And so if people are still spending money, if they're still showing up, if, if churn's not that bad, or new accounts are. Are greater than the accounts that we're losing, you know, there's an attitude of we can just ignore it.

Speaker B: It. We're.

Speaker A: We're Growing more than we're shrinking, so it's fine. Or revenues where we hoped, it's okay. Meanwhile, what it really shows is that consumers, they're, they're relatively indifferent. And so I think that means a lot of organizations are easily disruptible. And I think it's, it's at a point in time where customers are realizing that as I have more choice and option, like no, I, I really don't believe that these businesses have my best interest at mind. Now it may mean I'm still doing business with them for a few reasons, but I don't trust them. And I think that's the important part to know is like, just because they're interacting with you, they may not trust you. And that could come, come back to bite you depending on, you know, uh, an issue that happens in your business, a new entrant that comes into your market. And so that to me is the biggest tension of recognizing that like ignoring consumer trust with your brand is maybe not a best practice. Like it may work for right now, but I really don't believe that the organizations that are going to have long term dur growth are going to be leaning into an attitude of it's okay that our customers don't trust us. Right. Call me crazy, I've only been in this business for a couple decades. But like it doesn't feel like it's going to work out for that. The, the organizations that have an attitude of indifference.

Speaker B: Right. And so for the group that was in that research, how were they measuring? And are there recommendations you have on how should one measure customer experience?

Speaker A: Yeah, so, so I think the first part of the question is how are they measuring customer trust? And what we recognize is that a lot of them weren't measuring customer. They might be looking at revenue or satisfaction rates or churn rates, uh, but actually looking at this question of do our customers trust us? A lot of organizations don't know how or why or don't go after that question. And the challenging part is it would be difficult for a lot of organizations to ask that question because customers may not tell them the truth. Uh, so that's actually a really like difficult slope there. But, but what I do know is that a lot of organizations are very fragmented and siloed in how they look at understanding the entirety of their customer's journey with their brand. Voice of customer is often different from the service team. And you've got sales and service often working in conflict with each other. And marketing. Sales and service are incentivized for different reasons. And so I see a lot of dysfunction inside of organizations where teams really are competing against their own best interests. And to me the question of trust really comes more to is your own house in order or do you have leaders to the point of one CEO that if I got in them a room and how to make a decision, it would be an all out turf war. And what I've recognized is that for a lot of organizations, internal politics and policy and just institutional inertia has put them in a place where it's like, yeah, it's, it's kind of bad. And so we shouldn't be surprised because like we've done this to ourselves. Uh, and so my question, I think for a lot, especially the executives in the room is like, like this is, this is on you, this is on you. You're tolerating it and maybe you're going to let the band aids play out. But we're uh, at a point in time where so much is being disrupted. I really do believe there's going to be a renaissance of leaders who think in a different way, recognize that the way that work has worked for a long time is not going to work as we move into the future. I really do believe that the biggest transformation that we're stepping into has to do with work design more than it has to do with technology. And so I think a lot of organizations are going to be on their heels for a period of time as they recognize that this misalignment they've had, uh, between their own functions has worked against them for too long. And as they think about trying to bring in AI or automation, all these things, like, it's requiring a level of collaboration and alignment like we've never seen before. I'm excited for it. I think organizations are going to be better because of it. I think customers are going to be better because of it. Employee culture is going to be better because of it. Uh, but we've got to recognize that right now, like a lot of businesses just don't have their house in order and we're going to have to like, we can't just blow it up, but we've got to make smart, intentional decisions one at a time to start to begin this evolution. And it will take time, it won't happen easily. But like, that's the core of customer trust. It's not a one time thing that you can do. It's a fundamental rewiring of how your organization thinks and operates because that's, that's what's going to build customer trust is consistency over Time alignment between what you say and what you actually do, that will impact your reputation way more than any statement in a shareholder meeting or any all hands. Like all of that is fine and well, but that's not going to be the thing that, that drives durable success for your organization.

Speaker B: So a lot of the trust is stemming from internal problems is what you're saying?

Speaker A: Pretty much, yeah. I mean, honestly, it's not like, it's not this big moment of like, they lied to me and I hate them forever. It's like, no, they were consistently bad, they said one thing, they did another, and I've given up.

Speaker B: Stop.

Speaker A: Customers are telling me that, employees are giving me that. Like, this is, this is why we're at this point in time. You know, according to Gallup, you've got more than half of the workforce in America disengaged. Globally, it's worse. We see this, this erosion in the consumer index reports. Like we've got to recognize like it is just a groundswell of indifference. It is nobody's fault but our own.

Speaker B: And do you take. I think, um, the scale of this is different, should be differently handled for let's um, say a 20% startup versus uh, with maybe 200 customers versus a uh, big company that has a contact center and a cx, um, and so on.

Speaker A: Yeah. What I know is what you do at 20 people is only gonna get worse at 200 or 2000. So I think it's especially important in those small phases to lay the groundwork. Now there are certain problems that you're like, maybe we'll figure this out. But what you recognize is that kind of rolling momentum of culture. It's already started. And so if you haven't started to build the, the, the foundation and the, the kind of the, the scaffolding that, that you want your organization to be known by long term. Now it's already started to sort itself out. So this to me is a moment of extreme intentionality. Because you can affect this now, now forever if you do it right. Otherwise you're going to find that it's, it's really the bigger you get, the harder it is to, to undo these things that have become entrenched over time.

Speaker B: Right. And given how much the team structures are changing with um, you know, the responsibilities being reshaped, given the AI tooling that is coming in in each, or how do you say, see this playing out out? Like what are some of the big shifts happening in terms of design and culture building that you are seeing with AI in the picture?

Speaker A: Yeah, this is the land of the unknown. Right now we don't know what we don't know. Nobody, including the AI uh builders have the magic playbook of this is how it all works. What I know in terms of what does it look like today, it's starting to recognize that what got us here won't get us where we're going. And so we do have to be willing to, to test iterate, fail fast. I think that is one cultural muscle that, that is scary and new for organizations is recognizing that we've gotta be able to iterate more agilely than maybe we had historically. So that's certainly something that we're seeing. Enabling employees to lean into experimentation and start to play through those what ifs. To start to navigate to your earlier question, some of the ambiguity. I think it's important. I think self discovery is really important right now. We've gotta have smart guide rails around it. We have to be there, help be a uh, filter and refine as people are thinking and processing and trying these things. But that to me I think is the biggest hallmark of who will be successful right now. They're willing to test iterate, fail fast. They are embracing cultures of innovation. They are getting teams who are coming in to kind of collaborate and refine together and recognizing that we don't have it all figured out. But it's not going to be figured out by one person in it's uh, going to require a patchwork of people coming together and it's more an attitude than it's any one thing right now in what's enabling organizations to be successful. And honestly when I think about a lot of the work that we do in helping organizations get some of the work design right, it goes back to some of those six habits that I talked about around clarity, around metrics, around decision making, around recognition. Those, those are the things that, that we start to say what do we need to make sure is in place? Because a lot of businesses don't have that firm foundation. Let's get that in order while building this culture of experimentation and changing and recognizing, you know, we're in this, I've uh, talked about it a little bit. We're kind of in this hinge between eras and that gives us this cool opportunity to figure out what is on the other side of that. So that's when I think about the work. It's, it's a lot of different things, but it's more the, the operating ethos and the attitude of the team. We're stepping more than anything else that I think is characteristic of their success moving forward.

Speaker B: So just like any big change, you have to kind of experiment and see what works for you as a, as a, as a group of people. You walked into a lot of organizations that are broken, um, in ways leadership doesn't see. What do you observe? Like, what are you looking for in that first meeting that tells you how bad it actually is, not what they tell you in the brief.

Speaker A: Yeah, I, I go to. Do they understand the destination that they're moving toward and do they know how to recognize it, uh, when it's in front of them? And, and one of the, the stories and examples I give is, let's say you and I were together right now at my office in Wilmington, North Carolina. A lot of organizations say something along the lines of, hey, let's, let's provide a great experience, so let's provide the ultimate member a satisfaction, whatever. Just throw words. It's kind of the equivalent of saying, hey, let's go west. And if you and I from, from my office in North Carolina, and I said, bashesh, we're going to go west, you go west, and I'm going to go west, you might end up in San Diego, California. I might end up in Seattle, Washington. We both went west and we ended up in very different destinations. So the first thing I kind of probe inside of organizations is do they even have an understanding? Can they articulate the destination that they're moving toward? And then what I try to recognize is, well, like, how, how are you thinking about moving towards that? And, uh, again, if it didn't allude by the name of metric Sherpa, like, one of the things I really try to understand is how do we define and measure success? And do we understand whether we're moving closer to or further from it? And I find that a lot of organizations like, they, they think about outcomes, where they think about reflective measures, but they don't have much that's predictive that's actually helping them understand, are we getting closer to this? So a lot early conversations and discovery for me are across the team. Do people have clarity on the destination? Are there metrics in place that are actually helping them see how the business is operating, to see where friction is playing out, to understand where there is momentum or where there's inertia? And do the individuals, like, do they feel connected to it, or are there a few pockets of people who are carrying the work? And, and for everybody else, they've kind of been resigned to a system that's working against them. That's the early Discovery. Do we have clarity on where we're going? Do we have alignment in how we're going to get there? And are some of the things that we're thinking about, like do they really expose the friction and the blockers? Do we have a, uh, you know, I think a meaningful sense of what matters most?

Speaker B: And have you walked into one of these meetings where you felt like this is unfixable and what does the fix look like in terms of the journey? How long does it take to fix if something is, is broken at this level?

Speaker A: Yeah, the, the unfixable organizations had everything to do with the attitudes of the leader and nothing to do with the factors in the organization. I, I don't think it can be downplayed how much of an impact, uh, a leader with the right perspective and mindset and willingness to lean in can have on an organization. Now are there real factors in terms of, of tolerance to the time it will take for this transformation to occur? Yeah, there, there could be real factors around that. Are there sensitivities to the, the cost impact that this could have positively or negatively to the organization? Yeah, there are sensitivities around that. Could it mean that we are going to have to enter into a season of short term pain for long term gain? And can there be sensitivities around what that might mean to, to endure a quarter or two or four before you hit the inflection point? Yeah, there can be like, there's, there's lots of those factors, but those are, those are not unknowns and those are things that, that you can have a conversation about and you can build models around. But uh, if you don't have the mindset and the attitude of the leader, then it's for naught. Uh, so that to me is the unfixable, is the, the, the, the leader's mindset. Everything else from there really comes down to can we make smart, intentional decisions? Can we figure out where there are the opportunities for quick wins and velocity and do we recognize where there's going longer tail that we are willing and wanting to invest in? Uh, point is it's, it's not a snap of the fingers, it's not an overnight, but it is incremental and you can start to see it compound over time. Uh, that, that to me, I think is a hallmark. And again, when I look at the organizations who, who do embody that, it may start with a single team, it may start with an executive group, or it may start, you know, kind of in this little pot of, of you Know, people inside of the business, it doesn't matter. You're willing to start somewhere. You're willing to kind of build and have that advocate at the leadership level. Really, really cool things start to play out.

Speaker B: What are some of the early signals people should observe to kind of red flag that, you know, there is this need to, um, either get some help from outside or even from within. But we do need help because, uh, we have a problem. Problem.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think for most people we can name the spot where work is working against us. Maybe not you individually, but maybe your, your department, maybe one of your direct reports. I think the first question is really just asking that question of where is work working against us? Spending some time thinking about, like, what is the potential impact of this? Why is this tolerated in the first place? Often you start to dig into some, some of those things and you can realize that this is having a bigger impact than maybe you even initially thought about. You know, quite candidly, a lot of leaders, like, they come to us because they had that, aha. They said, hey, we either don't have the time or we've been spinning our wheels and we can't figure out what's causing this. But we know work is working against us. We know it's holding us back from achieving what, what we believe we can achieve, uh, and so help us get there. That's really it. It's, it's not a matter of us knocking on doors and saying, where is this happening to you? It's like a lot of people, they, they recognize it, they can name it right now. And if they've tried to go after it and they've been unsuccessful or they want to go after it and they're just, they've got too much on their plate. That's typically where we're seeing people come at least to, to my team and I and say, hey, we'd, we'd love to figure out what it might mean for work to not work against us.

Speaker B: And what do you feel about the, um, whole nine nine six or the hustle culture that's been, um, I think for the last few years? We've, like, I've consistently seen a lot of companies, you know, design their compensation, uh, around this whole hustle culture. What's the moment, uh, where it goes from an asset to a liability? And how can startups have the hustle but not the, uh, burnout or the negative impacts of it?

Speaker A: Yeah, when I think about why burnout happens. Burnout, burnout, uh, at least in my observation, has two most Most common root causes. One isn't that the work is hard. It's that the work feels invisible. You've got people who really are giving their all and it feels unacknowledged. It feels like it's not having an impact. It's feeling like it, it doesn't really matter to people. And that, that one of the big factors is it's not that the work is hard, but that the work feels invisible. Certainly, you know, I think can be um, uh, an issue. The, the second really is this idea that recovery is something that happens after work. The issue is, you know, especially now when maybe you've got a device on you that you're answering emails all hours of the day, every day of the week, you're not taking time off. Like you don't even have recovery after work. Uh, so it really does come down to, you know, the shared responsibility between the employee but also their leader to, to think through. How do we find ways to build recovery into the workday? Part of it might be setting healthy boundaries around communication. Part of it might be making sure that we do encourage people to actually step away from their desks for just a little bit of time during the day. Uh, and not sit there and eat three meals in front of their computer and, and never get up and get outside. Right. These are the types of things that it's, it's too. Right. We all have to, we all have to be an owner in it. But I think even, even like I've talked to employees who like that kind of stuff is really important to them. But if they feel like their leader or their culture of their organization doesn't tolerate it, it's, it's not good. I mean I, I, this is a true story. I was part of one organization where the senior executive told all of the employees that uh, even if they're on vacation, they do not put an out of office on their email because that's just not how we operate. And that is absolutely une. Unacceptable. To believe that we should operate without any boundary and be always on, I think is ignorant. I think it is not sustainable and you know, time will tell. But I, I am hard to believe that those organizations are going to be the ones that are building cultures where employees stay and, and feel fulfilled, like they're, they're going after a means to an end and an at all cost mindset. And candidly like everybody has a chance choice. My choice is to not be a part of an organization where that's what matters most.

Speaker B: And especially if you like, if you have this culture set in motion at the early stage, it probably gets harder to undo it. Let's say by the time you reach 30 odd people, because you already have this six day a week culture of, you know, work bleeding into weekends. How do you undo the. That as soon as you reach a magic number in terms of scale or customer.

Speaker A: You don't. You don't. Right. People start to build a system inside of the system. That's, that's what happens. And that's where now organizations begin to fracture. And you hear about subcultures and you hear about riffs and you hear about silos operating, you know, kind of autonomously from other parts of the business. Like, that's why that happens.

Speaker B: Happens. Yeah. I can, I can already see like the early group that was closer to maybe the leadership or the founding team becomes one group within a larger group and kind of having a subculture. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, I even think about, you know, my team now is essentially a, uh, group of myself and five other individuals. And even at that size, you know, there were, there were little things where I would catch myself communicating to my team team, maybe later at night if I was in a different part of the world or uh, you know, on a weekend and very quickly had to catch myself. And it's like, no, this is not, this is not a habit that I want us to be known by. Uh, and how do we set those parameters now? And how do I make sure that, you know, my team, like, as I think about, if we were to be blessed enough to grow to any, you know, meaningful size beyond what we are like, like some of my team now, like they are going to be future leaders in that organization. And how do I make sure that they become ambassadors of the culture that matters most to me? Because that, that is, you start to scale, you need to scale what the founder's ethos and mindset and what matters most. And, and that was, I think, one of the interesting things, even from the book. I was in a diner talking to the owner, who is a former, you know, big consultant, and he talked about how the hardest thing for him was this founder's mindset sat, you know, on a team of, I want to say he had maybe 20 employees working there. It's like, it's hard because what matters to you as the founder really matters to you, and how do you get your heartbeat and mindset into your team? Like, that's, uh, if you don't do it at the beginning, it's going to be really, really hard to do it at the End.

Speaker B: And yeah, this might be a good point to talk about. Where can people find your book and who should be picking up your book?

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, let's start with who should be picking up the book. Uh, you know, really wrote this for anybody who is either a leader of people or kind of operating inside of a business. And you feel like, hey, there's a disconnect between our promise and our practices and I want to do something about it, but, but I really wrote it in mind with these people who are sitting in that tension between what their organization says is important and how work happens every single day. That's, that's who the book is really for in terms of where you can find it. If you go to more than a motto dot com, we've got some links, but it's available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, kind of wherever you like to buy books, you can typically get a copy there. You know, honestly would love to hear stories of people as they're navigating these problems. Uh, that, that to me, I think has been one of the biggest gifts through this is hearing from leaders who leaned in early, uh, and whether they, you know, I tried to build some, some pretty meaningful resources into the appendix so that the first 90 days a leader could take it and kind of on their own, lead their team through this. And as we've talked to leaders who've done that or have engaged my team and I to kind of help them take it even further, further. It's been cool to hear those stories of people finally seeing that, hey, what we say matters is actually showing up and how the work happens every single

Speaker B: day and being an outsider. What is your favorite book?

Speaker A: Well, I talked about Human Sigma earlier by Jim. Jim, ah, Jim Fleming and John Aspland, I believe, are the authors on that. That, that to me is, you know, even 15 plus years later has, uh, been really durable. Probably my other two most recent books that I've read that I really liked, uh, the Promise of a Pencil that I found really, really meaningful. And Deep Work by Cal Newport, I believe, was the author on Deep Work. Deep Work challenged me in a lot of ways to the point of our conversation. Like actually taking the time aside to, to get into deep work, I think is a practice not enough of us are in. And that has certainly, I think, helped me be a better leader and a better builder.

Speaker B: What, what do you do, like, in terms of practice? What have you picked up from that book that you're practicing today?

Speaker A: Yeah, one of the biggest things is just actually putting out blocks to do deep work, not letting my. My day be so disruptive with meetings and trying to patch it in. So, uh, one of my big practices is Fridays for me are typically just like deep work days. And I just, I get into it. I, you know, turn off most notifications and just get in to allow myself to. To really go deep and spend time considering a question, to work on a problem, to pursue. Something really, really just. It's cool stuff has come out of those days just by giving myself the space and permission to step into it.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think Friday is a good choice as well, because typically people don't want to have meetings on a Friday.

Speaker A: Yeah, I certainly don't.

Speaker B: Cool. Well, Justin, it was, uh, a pleasure having you and thanks for taking the time joining us here.

Speaker A: Yeah, Vishesh, thank you so much. It was great to connect with you today.

Speaker B: If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever your favorite podcast app is. See you in the next episode.