Big On Small - The Official Small Business Podcast
Ep. 003 - Being Human at Work with Lale Kesebi
[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]
Karolyn Hart You’re listening to “Big on Small”, the official small business podcast powered by InspireHUB, I’m Karolyn Hart.
Samantha Castro And I’m Samantha Castro.
Karolyn Hart We unpack the big ideas happening in small organizations for businesses, agencies, schools, towns, charities, and teams.
Samantha Castro Because what we know is that good things come FROM small packages and there’s nothing small about doing good.
In today’s episode, we’re talking with Ted speaker and CEO whisperer Lale Kesebi who created the inspirational firm ‘Human at Work’ to help organizations of all sizes help the humans that make our companies thrive. Today, we discuss what it means to be human in a work environment designed to reduce our humanity, the lessons we can learn from sasquatches about creativity and relaxation, and why small businesses actually have an advantage that many don’t realize.
PART ONE - Bringing Your FULL Self to Work
Samantha Castro It’s the mid-1990s, and Lale is enjoying her career as a litigation lawyer in Calgary, Alberta Canada. Home of the Calgary Stampede and about as far removed as you can get from where she lives today in Asia. Her parents had instilled the moral of being ‘in service in life’ as a leader which was one of the reasons she found herself in law.
It’s around this time when Lale and her husband find themselves with an opportunity to start a new adventure across the Pacific, but Lale was unsure if her career as a lawyer would be able to come along.
Lale Kesebi I don't think I ever wanted to leave the law, I loved being a lawyer, but really moving to Hong Kong meant the possibility that I may not be able to practice. And at the time, my husband and I really went to Hong Kong on a, "Let's try it for two years and see where life goes." So it didn't really seem to be such a big deal to take possibly a two year pause or a side trip to do something different. When I arrived, becoming a lawyer in Hong Kong meant re-qualifying again, which meant writing a whole bunch of exams and getting qualified, et cetera. So I started looking for both law jobs and non-law jobs, and quickly found out that a lot of what you learn in the law is highly transferable to business.
Samantha Castro Lale decided to take a chance and apply for the Executive Director position at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, and she got it! This job did so much more for Lale than just being a segway from her career in law to the business world.
Lale Kesebi That was probably the best introduction to Hong Kong that there was. It was the who's who of the Canadian business community. It was the who's who of the Canadian community. It was a great introduction into making networks and to really developing a support system. And I can trace a lot of my success back to that first job of just who you got to know, and who got to know you.
Samantha Castro In 2003 Lale started the next chapter in her career at Li & Fung, the world’s largest supply chain management company that has today over 10,000 factories worldwide and is in over 40 countries. It’s the opposite of a small business in every respect, and it’s here, that Lale is hired as the Vice President of Operations for a newly acquired unit. In 2007, as the company was experiencing rapid growth Lale was appointed the Executive Director which meant leading over 28 offices globally.
Fast forward to 2014 Lale became the Chief Communications Officer, where she continued working with their dispersed teams of humans across a wide range of countries. It was through this role she quickly found herself pioneering initiatives for new ways of working.
One of the initiatives led to a new team within the company being formed called Strategic Engagement. Here’s Lale:
Lale Kesebi My team and I were really effectively solving problems for the company that we were working for. And we used to affectionately call ourselves the Ninja Unicorns. It wasn't enough that we were a Ninja team, we had to be a unicorn on a Ninja team to be making this massive transformation that was happening at this company globally.
So a lot of your time and your effort as a member of the executive team and certainly if you're running a team, goes into this, "Okay, here's my problem. How can we get creative? How do we collaborate? How do we solve this problem?" And your universe is actually your company. And when your universe is across 40 countries, it's a big universe.
Samantha Castro Within this big universe, the innovations Lale and her team were making - varied.
Lale Kesebi We really got to play a lot and experiments with innovation culture; what really sort of makes people tick? How do we align people to the company's new direction, particularly under a new CEO at the time? How do we create agility?
We created really the first open innovation unit. So what we did was we created a technology platform and a process that allowed 22,000 people across 40 markets to collaborate and come together to become quote unquote innovators.
So we ran innovation challenges. What product would you develop that would delight a customer and how could we market it? And we had thousands of people participating in every single market globally. And the funny part of it was that looking back on it now, is that while the majority of the company, about 65, 70% of the people, were people who were focused on product every day, it was actually all the non-product people that became innovators. That was the real unlock of what I think we solved for, is that here was somebody who in their day job was a finance person or an IT person, or a head of the driver unit. And they were submitting ideas online on, "Hey, I think this would be a great product," because as a human being, we're all innovators, right? And it was really getting people to experiment with innovation.
Samantha Castro Other innovations included running mentoring circles, changing the physical office space to be more open, and giving out Rock Star awards that others could celebrate.
And while on her big, amazing and inspiring journey Lale’s attention keeps being drawn to a much smaller focus with powerful implications that would ultimately apply to every size business.
Lale Kesebi At the center of everything, of every change, of every way of being was, "Well, geez, if we were just a little bit more human things would be better." And that's such a big thing to say in such a small way, that the potential of who we are as people is untapped. And yet at work every single day, most of us are only getting tapped for about 10 to 15% of the full gift of who we are in that role. Partially because we're not put into a job that isn't necessarily tapping into our expertise, partially is because we have artificially ourselves said, "Well, actually, no, that's my home life versus my work life," and we hold back the gifts and the things that we're good at, and we don't bring them to work.
A lot of it has to do with how work is designed. So how a company is designed, in terms of what kind of an output does it want, and then the kind of culture it creates, and whether that supports our full humanness coming to work. And a lot of it has to do with leaders.
Samantha Castro The power of one human to impact an entire group of humans. We call them leaders and we know from numerous studies that one of the biggest differences between successes and failures lies in leaders.
We also know there’s all different types of leaders and most of us have worked for both good and bad ones. Lale’s question really came down to what would it look like to not see your people just as resources but as humans.
Here’s what Lale found out during this time -
Lale Kesebi You can design businesses, organizations, teams, to get the output around the win. And that output around the win has to do with the full humanness of your team and the full humanness of your team; how innovative somebody is, how compassionate they are, how customer service they are led, how empathic they are to your customer or to a vendor. You name it. The full range of our humanity at work, in play is the win.
And when you can no longer predict to the world, which is smack in the middle of where we are today, the only thing you can do is say, "All right, what tools do I have that I can use to solve this problem?" And guess what? Your tools are your people, and everything they bring to the table to help you solve what it is that you need to do collectively collaboratively and as you co-create solutions for this world, which is now unknown. And your job as a leader, leading people through the unknown, by knowing full well, which skills, tools, people you're going to draw on to come to those conclusions.
Samantha Castro Bringing your FULL work to self. It’s a captivating idea especially when you take a look at the body of evidence around the power of an engaged and motivated team versus people who are counting the minutes until their workday is over.
There are plenty of studies available on this topic and the benefits are many. Businesses with engaged employees are proven to simply make more money but there are deeply personal benefits to the humans that make up those businesses. It ends up that when we’re engaged, a lot of things in our lives are better including our ability to problem solve, our actual physical health, our home lives, and ultimately our overall happiness.
This idea of bringing your full self to work in the way Lale was just describing was a breath of fresh air around 2015 but the core concept wasn’t new because it’s a facet of work life behaviours. Karolyn made the connection while chatting with Lale about how ‘work life balance’ wasn’t really a thing until the 1970s/1980s by several psychologists and one in particular, that jumped to mind. Karolyn explains:
Karolyn Hart He was the one who actually introduced this concept of work life that turned into balance or divide, but it's actually been misunderstood, because when I read the research, what he actually concluded was that the happiness and our satisfaction level is higher and better the more that there's a blur. And he actually was looking back over history. You and I were talking about how there's nothing new under the sun, that civilization and societies, we always have famines, wars, plagues. All these things come, and then every generation is shocked when it's their turn, but they always arrive at some point; we all have to face that.
And so in his studies, he was looking at farming communities where they worked at and did life and work and love altogether. So family's friends, brothers, cousins, everybody worked the fields together, went to worship together, went to the dance together and they did life together. And their happiness levels were through the roof, and therefore their productivity levels were also through the roof.
And then in the 70s, it gets completely taken out of context. And really, if you had anybody else in your life who was like, "Hey, I'm going to do life with you, but then I'm going to put this weird wall up," you'd probably think they have some sort of psychosis, but that's what we do in the workplace.
Lale Kesebi Exactly.
Karolyn Hart Right?
Samantha Castro Right. This idea of helping employees bring their full selves to work, getting them in and growing them as a person individually that would also in turn help the organisation was originally meant to be a test. As Lale learned in her testing, our humanness drives us toward community, relationships, and self-fulfillment.
Lale and the team were conducting this experiment within their company but it was working so well that people outside of the company were seeing these major cultural shifts and reaching out.
Lale Kesebi They're like, "Hey, Lale, you guys are doing something like super cool in that really traditional, very big company. Do you think you can come and talk to my executive team about what you're doing, because we're kind of facing the same problems." And then it kind of snowballed into somebody who knew somebody who knew me then saying, "Could you come speak at our leadership conference about how you're leading transformation inside of company, because we're facing the same thing."
Samantha Castro And what started as small friendly asks slowly began to transform Lale’s career path.
[MUSIC: Matt Wigton “Sunset Lover”]
Lale Kesebi And then it kind of snowballed into an invitation to speak at an innovation conference in San Francisco. And that then snowballed into somebody who was in the audience going, "Whoa, you have no idea that what you're doing here, is not really done in other large companies. We'd like to do an article on you and your team and the work that you're a part of, and it's for Forbes." And then it kind of snowballed into a professor at MIT Sloan, who then said, "Well, we'd like to write up a case on you."
So somewhere in the back half of 2017, I sorta came to this conclusion that this little laboratory experiment we had underway at this very big company, was kind of valuable and of service to other companies. And as I was thinking about transitioning out, I thought, "You know what? I think there's something here to what we're doing." The fact that transformation is really about leaders leading into the unknown, that it's all about people all the time. So you really have to reach that that sort of N equals one individual on your team. That a purpose led initiative and company or team creates this collective ambition for people to get behind. That everybody is innovative and really what's missing is either a mechanism, or a platform, or a way or a process for people to become engaged in making that happen. And that in all of that, there is a way for people to matter, really matter when they show up at work, and for people to really be their full selves.
So the aha moment was sort of these three or four things that kind of told us, "This is not just you and your team specific to this company. This is a new way of looking at how work might be for everybody. And if your service ultimately in your life as a leader is to unleash this to the world, then here's the world telling you it's ready to hear you and to be a part of that."
Samantha Castro Coming up after the break, Karolyn dives in deep with Lale on what it means to be human at work, what differentiates the market makers vs the market laggers, and big foot? Stay tuned.
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Part Two: Human At Work
Samantha Castro As Lale mentioned before the break, by the end of 2017 she knew her work as Head of the Strategic Engagement Team and the way they were solving problems within their organization was something other companies wanted and needed in order to survive.
So in 2018 Lale decided to follow where the research was taking her and left the over 20,000+ team at Li & Fung to start her own small business, Human at Work. Interestingly, right as this transition is happening, the professional services firm EY releases a study that same year showing that more people get their sense of belonging from their jobs than any other source, outside of their own homes. This was a first, because work replaced our neighborhood and places of worship for the first time. What’s clear, is that need for a firm like Human at Work, is now more critical than ever, so Lale and her team got busy...
Lale Kesebi We're really big on the small, like big time big on small. There's three of us, three of us on the team. And we felt like that the best way for people to learn about what we were trying to get across as the ethos of Human at Work, was to role model it ourselves. So we're fully dispersed. We do not have quote unquote an office space. In Asia, that's a big deal, right? You don't have a real physical shingle. At lately, that's been changing.
We run everything off of our phones and our laptops. And a big part of that is to role model, especially to senior executives, there's another way to be fast and to make things happen and to get on with the work that isn't this sort of big sort of layer of stuff that encompasses your day or your organization.
So we really role model how we work together and people are always shocked, because they tend to sort of reach out to us for work, and they're expecting a scope of work that's 18 months long or 24 months long, with 55 decks and spreadsheets, et cetera. And we're always like, "Okay, if you can get us two weeks and an access to a few key people, at two weeks and two days, we can tell you how to do what you need to do." It's very surgical. We're in, we're out, we take a beat and a pulse on what's happening, and that's it.
Karolyn Hart And when you come in and you're helping companies and leaders, what does it really boil down to? What are you seeing in all your work across these different companies, that really you're like, "Every time I go into the company, I'm always dealing with this specific thing that is this barrier I have to get everybody through." What is that thing that you're helping organizations find that breakthrough with?
Lale Kesebi Well, when I'm working with organizations, whether it's advising CEOs one-on-one or organizations, CEOs, and their teams, because we tend to start right at the top because that's the tone that gets set in the organization. When we're working with them, we're asked and we're invited in, because typically an organization is going through a period of disruption, right?
So they're being disrupted, let's say because of digital technology, or they used to be a market maker now they're a market laggard. And people are, really, I would honestly say, they're in pain. Leaders are in pain. I've been doing this for 20 or 25 years. They don't know why it's not working anymore and then they tend to seek us out.
And our aha moment, which gets repeated over and over again, which becomes their aha moment, is that they approach it like it's an intellectual exercise and they're not approaching it in their full humanity themselves.
So let's say, for example, take the financial services industry. I'm just using one industry as an example. And let's say, we're working with a CEO and they're like, "Okay, numbers are down, share price is down by 20%, revenues are down by 15%. We need to engage our team. We need to focus on engagement because we're just not doing well." And that to me is a red flag right away. And the first thing that is always the aha moment is, well, what are you trying to do? Number one, which should be actually very clear question. Cause most people know the, what super easily in organizations and if there's ever any fuzziness around the what for sure that there's a lot of fuzziness around the why, right? Why does that company exist? Why is it that they're doing what they're doing? Is there a cause that's, that's being celebrated internally that people can rally around.
So, the aha moment is always, "Do you know why you exist? Do you know why you're trying to conduct this transformation?" And then the next becomes, "Okay, if I'm a member of your team, anywhere in your organization, would I understand why we're trying to do what we're doing here? Would I understand the pain that you are feeling? Have you asked me how might I help? And then collectively, do I know what it is that we need to do every single day when we come in to the job?"
[MUSIC: Noah Smith “Giving Up On Love”]
Lale Kesebi To go from A, which is where we're at today, to where the win is and how we define that as the end game. And you have to actually start articulating that to your team and that isn't about, "Hey guys, if we all do this, we're going to be up on revenues 20%." I mean, I could hang myself with those kinds of announcements. That's nothing to me as an individual, nothing. But if you tell me that we're going to win together, if you tell me that we're going to build something new, if you tell me that, "Hey, we're going to put a man on the moon," I'm going to come to work pretty inspired on how I can help you to do that. If you take me with you, if you guide me in that process, if you say, "I want more of this, less of that." I know you're really keen on doing that, it's not what we need here, guys. I need more of that. How am I connected to what you want to do as great change?
Now, one of two things happen here for most companies. They either go, "Oh my gosh, you're right. We actually amazingly, have never told her organization that A, we are in pain, or B, talked about why we're in pain, or C, what it is that we're thinking about and how we can all collectively make that happen;" zero transparency. Or the other side of the argument is, "Well, why do we need to do that?" So these are the one or the two things that happened in every single company that we work with.
Obviously the aha moment of the first group of, "Yeah, we didn't even think about that. Let's go on and do that," tend to be market makers. The companies that continually question why it is that they need a purpose to galvanize their teams and to even articulate it, the companies that question why is it they need to live by their values, the companies that question why they even need to have a team even on side with what's happening, are market laggards and continue to be; regardless of whether you work with them or not.
There is a fundamental gap, because in the market maker category, you have CEOs and companies who get that this is a human endeavor. The market maker company has leaders that are authentic. They have leaders that build trust. They have leaders that care, that understand that not everything they do, or know or have talked about is about them. They understand that they can co-create and collaborate. So the aha is always there.
Karolyn Hart Yeah, and I love that Lale, because when we're talking about being a market maker, a lot of people get this picture in their mind of a Fortune 500 company, and certainly you both and I come from that environment, but a market maker is that local small business that just owns the market on cupcakes. That is the one place that everybody in that community is getting to, or that one restaurant, for example, who they just own that marketplace and it takes weeks to get a reservation into it.
What I love about what you're saying is, because I see this in, doesn't matter the size of business, but to your point, often the difference behind the scenes is leadership; understanding what their goal is. And we're not just serving food, right? We're not just making cupcakes. When you get in there, there's usually an experience behind that. They often will talk about how they treat their employees.
Samantha Castro So for market makers, we see these different traits in them. They tap into the human potential of their own employees and keep the human focus on their customers, they don’t just see them as a sale, or a number, but as a person to serve.
It seems pretty simple, and yet the amount of small businesses that fail is extraordinarily high. Not just during a pandemic, but even during strong economic times about 20% of small businesses fail in the first year, and about 50% in their fifth year. The indicator that you may fail? It starts with lagging behind your local market. So what are the traits of the market laggers? And how, if you’re currently a market maker, do you fall prey into being a market lagger?
Lale Kesebi I actually think that the market laggards who see themselves as market makers, they're just basically running the same operation against the same goals, and they're driving the business into the ground. The worst for an organization or society or a nonprofit, however the group of people are around whatever endeavor they're working on, the worst for a business is when you say, "We're currently doing A, but we really want to become B." And then literally after that statement, they do everything like they would be doing it as if they were running A. Nothing has changed but for their aspiration.
That is a killer of a business. It's actually much better just to stick with A, because your whole organization, whether you're a small business or a big business, is designed to reinforce all the objectives of A, right? "I just make cupcakes," or, "I am the best payment services and financial services," or, "I am whatever."
And then when you have an aspiration that is different and when you have a transformative aspiration, something that's not just a little change of your current business, but something totally different, because you have to because of a pandemic, or because you want to, because you're shifting your business. And you say, "No way, mom. This is what I want to be when I grow up." And then the next day, at your meeting, at your reporting cycle, through your financial reports, how you interact with your customer, you continue to operate like you used to, that is a killer for an organization. And it's a killer for innovation. They'll have the aspiration. Just because they're thinking about it and they're saying it, does not translate into the doing of it.
[MUSIC: Noah Smith “Mayfair”]
A great mentor of mine once told me that paper doesn't refuse ink. And that really is what we're talking about here. You can say and talk and write any aspiration you could possibly think of. The human potential for dreaming is unmatched, but to translate that into action and into doing, and to design an organization, like truly design it, such that the output that you want, which is the B win, is supported by a B organization, as opposed to the organization that you currently have, that's true leadership and leading into the unknown and leading transformation.
Samantha Castro There’s so many leaders right now leading into the unknown and facing excruciatingly hard decisions that have very human consequences. It can feel like a catch 22. We wanted to share some scenarios that we’ve seen with Lale to get her thoughts on them.
Karolyn Hart First catch 22 is this, I have very limited funds and I have to do a digital transformation in order to survive right now. But the only way I can do that, I'm going to have to let some people go. And so if I let some people go, then they're going to say, "Well, you're an awful boss because I have kids to feed, and I can't believe that you laid me off." And then the businesses at risk of not continuing, right?
And on the other hand, so then the business closes and those same people who were saying, "You were horrible because you did this," are saying, "Well, why didn't you make that tough call and do what was necessary, so we'd all have a chance to at least get our jobs back in the future?"
Lale Kesebi Yeah. That's a tough one.
Karolyn Hart It is a tough one. And on top of that, you also have small business owners who are saying for whatever reason, their team, they're like, "No, we don't want to change. We got to keep doing what we've always been doing." And so they're just in these impossible situations, what feels impossible. I have my own ideas about it, but it feels impossible to them. What do you say to them?
Lale Kesebi Well, look, let's take the first one, which is the big one; digital transformation. I think it means different things to different people. So if you're a small business owner and let's say it's a true digital transformation, everything in your company is currently running on analog. And in order for it to be future-proofed, it has to have a digital process, let's say, okay.
So one example would be someone physically having to send a PO to order something and bringing something back, versus implementing a system that has a point of sale distribution that allows for a supply chain to operate on a digital basis. That then future-proofs your organization, because you're not only just getting the speed and productivity inside, but you're actually servicing your customer, right? So the center of that journey is your customer needs something better, stronger, faster in this world where we've all gotten used to Amazon delivering to our door in 24 hours or less.
So in that kind of a, "I have to be where the legends are," there has to be a digital transformation. So then the question becomes, "Okay, in order to do that, what skill sets do I currently not have in my team to make that happen? I need to bring those skill sets in. And what skill sets do I have that I can potentially more for someone who says, 'Well, hey, I like that idea. I want to do a better job in a different kind of a job." And then there are skill sets, which frankly, just aren't going to make the leap. You have to have the open conversation. You have to, as a leader, at least be able to, as clearly as possible, paint the future of where an organization is going without any bones. This is where we need to be people. Guys, this is the win. This is the win.
So here's what I think we need to do. We need to digitally transform. Meaning, we actually need to move from the analog world to the digital world, and the business has to operate this way. And let me make it clear for why that is. We no longer have a market operating in an analog world after about an 18 month runway. We have to have a longer than an 18 month runway for a business, because there are 10 of us, 50 of us, 60, however many people that there are.
These are the kinds of skills that we need. Anyone who wants to put their hand up to say, "You've done this before in another job, or you have a skill set and, or a degree and or an interest," please come see me, because I need to know. And we're going to take the first team first and then do the reassignment. Here's the next set of skills that are going to be useful for us at about the sort of six to nine month mark from today. We really need everybody to become like that. This is what I think is key. Here's what we can do centrally, but more importantly, here's what I think you need to be able to do yourselves, on your own time or talk to people or get qualified; whatever the case may be, I want you to come with me. Here are the skills we really don't need anymore." You need to have a very open candid conversation with your team.
Now in doing so, you run a risk of somebody who, let's say, thinks that they are not going to make the leap, deciding that they'd rather leave sooner than later, and potentially having that impact your operation. That will potentially happen. But in the end, that person, if you're really doing them a service, you're putting people on notice to say, "These are the skill sets that may not make the leap. And here's a very long runway I'm creating for you, to say that if you don't see a future for yourself here, and we can have a one on one conversation later about that, then here's a runway that allows for you to take care of yourself, your career, and your own families. As opposed to one day you coming in and me telling you on a Friday afternoon that you don't need to come back here, 72 hours later on a Monday." But that's heartless.
Karolyn Hart Right, that is. So a lot of small businesses have very unique setups; they are family run. And what do you do if you know that you have to make this digital transformation, but you just have family members or people within your ranks who are just like, "You know what? We disagree and we're not going to do it." Especially in this world, you would think that we now understand that whether you realize it or not, consumer behaviors, they have shifted. We will see just how much in the years to come, but it won't be a matter of if they do, but how much they have.
And so what would you say to the person who's trying to champion change, and right now they're the lone voice against everybody in them. And it's not like they have that executive decision making to be like, "Well, I'm the owner, so you do what I say," or you know what I mean? What advice would you give them on that whole process?
Lale Kesebi Well, family owned businesses, I think are their own unique beast. You could probably run an entire podcast series just on that. It's frustrating, both for the people who are in the family running the business, and it's frustrating for people who are inside as employees inside of a family business, particularly if it's multi-generational.
So if it's multi-generational family business and you have operators from the family inside the company, I can 100% guarantee you that the decisions are being made by the operating matriarchy or patriarchy. There's always a deference back to who started the business. There's lots of friction between the generations as to, "Well, you said this and in your day, this is how it works. But this is no longer your day, and we need to make change." There's a huge dynamic that happens just even amongst the family and the smaller the business and the more families there are, the more difficult that becomes.
Fundamentally, what gets people's attention is the question of, "Okay, if you do not make this change, whether it's a digital transformation, whether it's a privatization or going public offering, whether it's a, whatever, an expansion of the business, if you do not make the change, if you do not make the transformation, do you think your business will still be alive in five years?" And if the answer to that question is no, then that's the starting point. "Okay, you're telling me you're not going to be in business if you do not make the change."
Even if, whether you agree with whether this is the manner in which this is going to happen is different, right? Somebody wants to be bold. Somebody wants to be risk averse, but you're not going to have a business. Surely to goodness, isn't that reason enough to make a change?
Karolyn Hart Absolutely. One of the questions that I like to ask is, not in an aggressive way, but if they say, "Well, no, we think our business is going to go back to the way it was, and we're not really worried about it." And then I like to ask, "Okay, and what if you're wrong?" Right. Because that's a really great exercise that I like to always do when I'm making decisions and I call it the pillow test, which my father gave me, which is, will you put your head on your pillow at night thinking to yourself, "I wish I would have?" Or will you be like, "You know what? We did everything possible," with no regrets?
Samantha Castro Asking yourself the question ‘Did I do everything I possibly could?’ is a great but also hard question to ask because we get into these places where we’re comfortable and when something happens to where we’re challenged and maybe needing to try something new, we may hesitate. But as Lale mentioned before, even if we decide we need to switch things up and make a transformation, but then do nothing, it’s a killer.
So as a leader or owner, operating as a business, I want to inspire my employees and want to show them the why we’re in business to begin with besides the universal understanding of making money. Right Lale?
Lale Kesebi Correct. And look, I think money's not a bad word. So let's just be clear about that. By making businesses purposeful, or having something for groups of people to work around and to create a better business, to create a better product, to create a better service. You're not the antichrist for doing that.
Karolyn Hart Right.
Lale Kesebi You're not, because that puts food on the table. That allows people to pay for their lives. That allows, when it's done well and in service of a community, for there to be an equitable distribution of wealth. It's the tide that lifts all boats. But here's the thing about money. It's not an input variable, it's an output. It's a measurement at the end of the day of everything that's gone into the company at the beginning of the flow chart, right? So it's all the input stuff, generate something at the end, which has this very hard metric next to a dollar sign that you can go, "Okay, today I'm this, yesterday I was that."
[MUSIC: Alsever Lake “This Is The Life”]
But if all you do is chase the output without thinking about what all the input variables are, what the leavers are that you're pulling, how well your team operates and collaborates together, can you actually co-create? Are you agile? Do you have a culture of transparency and trust? Am I leading people properly?" So the money is at the end, that is a given and all the studies and all the research will show that well-run companies always have a bigger number next to that dollar sign than ones that are not.
Karolyn Hart And I think that might be a concept that's probably a little bit new for some of our small businesses. I mean, they know intuitively that the passion, the effort that they're putting in makes a difference in what they actually have, but I don't think they may always fully understand that all the different levers as you put, have an influence. That includes the fact of whether or not you're open to new pieces of data and realizing that maybe you might not have all the answers to everything. And maybe there is something new and not to be so afraid of any of the change and transformation that could be happening.
Samantha Castro So what advantages do you as a small business owner or an employee have within your organization? You may not have the money, resources or reach that these massive Fortune 500 companies do but as Lale will tell you, you have something those companies don’t.
Lale Kesebi Every Fortune 500 company wants to operate like a small business owner. That is their number one sort of goal. They want to be agile. They want to be able to just make something happen. If they think about it in the morning, they can make it. So I actually think that small is the new big, and it's going to be that way for the next 10 years.
So small business owners have a tremendous advantage, and I know it doesn't feel like that when you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to make revenues so that you can pay people, but it's a massive advantage because of agility. I think whether you're a small or a large business, you kind of have to do the same thing. But particularly for small business owners, the best advice I can give you is, you got to start with the end in mind, provided that you're not folding overnight, and you have resources to get you through what everyone is surviving at the moment. Then your best course of action is to figure out how do you want to merge at the end of this? What does that business look like for you? Is it still the same? Is it different? Are you operating in a different way? And then as soon as you can land on what that might look like for you, your next bet is to invite people in to help you solve for that problem.
And your number one resource is your team. And particularly if you're a small business owner, you are going to have people who are facing the customer every single day or facing your vendors every day, are a part of your community every day. And being able to hear from them, what's possible with how you're going to frame your business going forward, is absolutely crucial.
The second thing is, is that most of the people on your team are also in it to win it with you. So they're going to understand that this is not normal at the moment. And if it means that everybody has to come together and say, "All right, how do we make this business not only just survive, but thrive," you're going to want to hear from them. And I think you'd be most often pleasantly surprised at the creative solutions that your team will come up with, in order to make that business thrive, because they're in it with you to make that happen.
I saw a great example the other day of this incredible realtor that was based in California. Can you imagine, okay, this is the innovation. He decides that in this very nice California home that he's listed, as just something innovative. "I am just going to grab some eyeballs to this property. I'm going to create photo shoots that have a Sasquatch, a Bigfoot, in various poses throughout this house."
Now let's break this down, right? Small business owner, the guy's a realtor. He's going to have to pay for the same photos to list this house. He's going to have to go through the exact same effort to list the house on a website. But what does he do? He says, "You know what? I'm going to draw eyeballs. I'm going to put a Bigfoot in the kitchen, a Bigfoot relaxing on the deck." I mean, it's amazing. It costs him no extra money except maybe probably a case of beers for, to his friend who was wearing the Sasquatch outfit and did him a solid by posing in these photos.
So there's zero extra dollars in that strategy; this new quote unquote digital content strategy. He's been covered by Mashable he's been covered by Buzzfeed and somewhere, some unknown realtor in California has caught my attention, and we're now talking about him on a podcast.
[MUSIC: Mikey Geiger “Polaroid Picnic”]
Samantha Castro We have links to go view this amazingly fun photoshoot on the podcast post for this episode. Go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and find the post for this episode to see them.
The pictures are as Lale described, this Sasquatch, let’s call him Greg, doing all kinds of different activities within the home like baking cookies, reading a book about Edible Mushrooms on the couch, sitting on the deck reading a newspaper, out in the garden trimming the flowers, yoga in the sunroom, there’s just so many images.
We didn’t know the name of the realtor (Daniel Oster) at the time we recorded this podcast so we ended up nicknaming him Bob. And we came to the agreement that this creative exercise didn’t have to stop with just this one house (which from reading some articles sold above the original asking price of $999,000). So how does Greg the sasquatch and Bob the Realtor’s story keep going?
Lale Kesebi Greg, the Sasquatch, his buddy was Bob, the realtor, and Bob has now made Greg famous. So I would say, "Bob, why aren't you doing Bigfoot merchandise? Why aren't you creating yourself a brand new revenue stream by just going to Snaptee or some sort of online, order 50 Bigfoot Greg, the Sasquatch t-shirts and generating some merchandise for yourself? Or guess what? Even better, give them away for free to your clients, and no one will ever forget you, and you will get more listings and you will make more money."
So the agility of Bob, the realtor to have Greg, the Sasquatch to do this, is way beyond what a PNG could do or a KPMG could do, or any other big company. Can you imagine people would have their knickers in a knot in the corporate communications department or brand or marketing going, "Does this fit with our style? And we've got a guidebook and I don't know if we can do this." Freedom man, you've got freedom as a small business owner.
Karolyn Hart And meanwhile, right now I'm like, what sort of dinner party with Greg, the Sasquatch actually hosts in his California home? And I need to know what wines he would actually ... I'm just wondering. They're not a client, so I'm just going to throw this out. Would he have a partnership with Barefoot Wines?
I'm just saying. I'd just like to say to Bob, the realtor, Greg, the Sasquatch, if Barefoot Wines does come, please do a partnership just for Lale and I. Please, just make that happen so that we can say-
Lale Kesebi It all started here.
Karolyn Hart It all started here on Big On Small. But you know what's funny about this is this inaction is exactly how some of the most creative inspirated, like that's how it starts, is just saying, "We're not going to have the restrictions," and I love that we just did that.
I am curious. One of the things that I want to make sure to ask you about, is so when you're going between cultures and countries and things like that, do they do Greg, the Sasquatch type ideas in Japan? Are there some very much common themes that you see regardless of where you're at? Or are there things that are just really specific to culture?
Lale Kesebi I think there are things that are specific to culture. Just like you can't replicate culture of one company to another company, you can't replicate culture. But every culture has its strengths, and every culture has its uniqueness. But the part that always amazed me, was how everybody was the same, not how everybody was different.
So they can express themselves differently of course, culturally, but the motivations were the same. "I want to do a good job. I want to feel like I matter in the world. I'm proud of working here. I want to be a good person. This is what I do in my community. I want to earn for my family. I want to have a good life." So if anything that sort of resonating, we are so much more unified than we are separated.
I think that from a business perspective, there's so many things that are different. I don't think that anyone can run a company as efficiently as a company is run in Hong Kong. There is a tireless work ethic, I think too much so, to be honest, at the expense of a personal life, but things just literally get done in a day. And I think that that's very difficult to get used to in North America, where that tends not to be the case when you get to larger companies. Smaller companies, I find quite agile.
I think there's nothing to beat what's happening in North America, particularly West coast, North America, when it comes to technology companies. Agile ways of working current cultures, a lot of what InspireHUB does with dispersed teams, for example, there's a presenteeism in culture in Asia still, of being in the office, being seen, having the boss see you do the work, that I think is really eroding here in North America.
I think Europeans have just figured it out when it comes to its life and work fits into that. And I think the world is catching up to them in all honesty. So it is different in terms of how it manifests itself, but I think at its very, very core, we are so much more alike than we are different everywhere in the world, everywhere in the world.
Samantha Castro We are all experiencing some sort of disruption in life right now, whether that be family, relationships, the way in which we work, you name it - and it’s important to remember that we’re more alike than we are different and that in order to be a better organization, a better company, a better leader, we need to start being more human at work.
Thankfully, Lale and her team are currently working on the resources and tools to help you begin.
Lale Kesebi What we're really interested in at Human at Work, is how we can scale how to be human at work, beyond just what we're doing with our clients, because clearly that work's super important. You have leaders who want to know how to do that for their teams and their companies. But what we're really working on is, how can we scale that independently, collaboratively, through technology, through social media? How do we get to anyone who has influence in their organization to tweak the kinds of things that need to happen in their culture for their culture to be much more human, and therefore their companies to be much more powerful and successful?
So what we're working on at the moment is really something that's kind of scalable. Think of it as a Maria Kondo version of how to declutter your home. It's sort of a guide on how to be human at work. Imagine it being inspirational, like Simon Sinek's work around, why imagine the scalability like Ted, where it's all these great ideas that are shared openly, freely transparently, goodness to the world. That's kind of the project we're working on at the moment. How do we get these tools, our thinking, our insight into the hands of really good people, because there's a lot of good people out there, who can then get on and do something different. And how can we effectively re-mantel work 2.2 and dismantle work 1.0.
Samantha Castro To learn more about Lale and connect with her, go to human-at.work. That’s human-at.work
Before we end the show, which has already had soooo much advice to small business owners, here’s one last thought from Lale.
Lale Kesebi Scrappy is the way to go. Big companies are looking at how small companies do things. Small companies are looking at how they want to try to do things like big companies. That is an ixnay; do not do that. Continue to do more of the same at scale. Do not try to emulate what a big company is doing, because they've already decided that is not the way; they're looking at you. So have faith and stay the course.
CREDITS
[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]
Samantha Castro We hope you enjoyed this episode of Big on Small and if you did, be sure to subscribe and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.
Karolyn Hart Visit bigonsmall.biz to join our community of small businesses and find helpful resources. To learn more about what we talked about in today’s episode, read show highlights, and more, go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and visit the post for this episode.
Samantha Castro Is there something you want us to discuss on the podcast? Do you want to rant to us about what your business has been facing in the past few months? Whatever you may need, please call and leave us a message at 1-844-967-CHAT. That’s 1-844-967-2428.
We listen to each and every message.
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @Bigonsmall
The Big on Small podcast is powered by InspireHUB - creators of the award winning IHUBApp Digital Experience Platform.
Big on Small is produced and directed by me, Samantha Castro
Karolyn Hart And me Karolyn Hart. Additional support by Sue Braiden, Richard Brashear, Audrey Duncan and Sue Jenks. Music by Noah Smith. Mixed by Samantha Castro.
For the full list of credits visit the podcast page for this episode.
Thanks for listening!
Ep. 003 - Being Human at Work with Lale Kesebi
[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]
Karolyn Hart You’re listening to “Big on Small”, the official small business podcast powered by InspireHUB, I’m Karolyn Hart.
Samantha Castro And I’m Samantha Castro.
Karolyn Hart We unpack the big ideas happening in small organizations for businesses, agencies, schools, towns, charities, and teams.
Samantha Castro Because what we know is that good things come FROM small packages and there’s nothing small about doing good.
In today’s episode, we’re talking with Ted speaker and CEO whisperer Lale Kesebi who created the inspirational firm ‘Human at Work’ to help organizations of all sizes help the humans that make our companies thrive. Today, we discuss what it means to be human in a work environment designed to reduce our humanity, the lessons we can learn from sasquatches about creativity and relaxation, and why small businesses actually have an advantage that many don’t realize.
PART ONE - Bringing Your FULL Self to Work
Samantha Castro It’s the mid-1990s, and Lale is enjoying her career as a litigation lawyer in Calgary, Alberta Canada. Home of the Calgary Stampede and about as far removed as you can get from where she lives today in Asia. Her parents had instilled the moral of being ‘in service in life’ as a leader which was one of the reasons she found herself in law.
It’s around this time when Lale and her husband find themselves with an opportunity to start a new adventure across the Pacific, but Lale was unsure if her career as a lawyer would be able to come along.
Lale Kesebi I don't think I ever wanted to leave the law, I loved being a lawyer, but really moving to Hong Kong meant the possibility that I may not be able to practice. And at the time, my husband and I really went to Hong Kong on a, "Let's try it for two years and see where life goes." So it didn't really seem to be such a big deal to take possibly a two year pause or a side trip to do something different. When I arrived, becoming a lawyer in Hong Kong meant re-qualifying again, which meant writing a whole bunch of exams and getting qualified, et cetera. So I started looking for both law jobs and non-law jobs, and quickly found out that a lot of what you learn in the law is highly transferable to business.
Samantha Castro Lale decided to take a chance and apply for the Executive Director position at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, and she got it! This job did so much more for Lale than just being a segway from her career in law to the business world.
Lale Kesebi That was probably the best introduction to Hong Kong that there was. It was the who's who of the Canadian business community. It was the who's who of the Canadian community. It was a great introduction into making networks and to really developing a support system. And I can trace a lot of my success back to that first job of just who you got to know, and who got to know you.
Samantha Castro In 2003 Lale started the next chapter in her career at Li & Fung, the world’s largest supply chain management company that has today over 10,000 factories worldwide and is in over 40 countries. It’s the opposite of a small business in every respect, and it’s here, that Lale is hired as the Vice President of Operations for a newly acquired unit. In 2007, as the company was experiencing rapid growth Lale was appointed the Executive Director which meant leading over 28 offices globally.
Fast forward to 2014 Lale became the Chief Communications Officer, where she continued working with their dispersed teams of humans across a wide range of countries. It was through this role she quickly found herself pioneering initiatives for new ways of working.
One of the initiatives led to a new team within the company being formed called Strategic Engagement. Here’s Lale:
Lale Kesebi My team and I were really effectively solving problems for the company that we were working for. And we used to affectionately call ourselves the Ninja Unicorns. It wasn't enough that we were a Ninja team, we had to be a unicorn on a Ninja team to be making this massive transformation that was happening at this company globally.
So a lot of your time and your effort as a member of the executive team and certainly if you're running a team, goes into this, "Okay, here's my problem. How can we get creative? How do we collaborate? How do we solve this problem?" And your universe is actually your company. And when your universe is across 40 countries, it's a big universe.
Samantha Castro Within this big universe, the innovations Lale and her team were making - varied.
Lale Kesebi We really got to play a lot and experiments with innovation culture; what really sort of makes people tick? How do we align people to the company's new direction, particularly under a new CEO at the time? How do we create agility?
We created really the first open innovation unit. So what we did was we created a technology platform and a process that allowed 22,000 people across 40 markets to collaborate and come together to become quote unquote innovators.
So we ran innovation challenges. What product would you develop that would delight a customer and how could we market it? And we had thousands of people participating in every single market globally. And the funny part of it was that looking back on it now, is that while the majority of the company, about 65, 70% of the people, were people who were focused on product every day, it was actually all the non-product people that became innovators. That was the real unlock of what I think we solved for, is that here was somebody who in their day job was a finance person or an IT person, or a head of the driver unit. And they were submitting ideas online on, "Hey, I think this would be a great product," because as a human being, we're all innovators, right? And it was really getting people to experiment with innovation.
Samantha Castro Other innovations included running mentoring circles, changing the physical office space to be more open, and giving out Rock Star awards that others could celebrate.
And while on her big, amazing and inspiring journey Lale’s attention keeps being drawn to a much smaller focus with powerful implications that would ultimately apply to every size business.
Lale Kesebi At the center of everything, of every change, of every way of being was, "Well, geez, if we were just a little bit more human things would be better." And that's such a big thing to say in such a small way, that the potential of who we are as people is untapped. And yet at work every single day, most of us are only getting tapped for about 10 to 15% of the full gift of who we are in that role. Partially because we're not put into a job that isn't necessarily tapping into our expertise, partially is because we have artificially ourselves said, "Well, actually, no, that's my home life versus my work life," and we hold back the gifts and the things that we're good at, and we don't bring them to work.
A lot of it has to do with how work is designed. So how a company is designed, in terms of what kind of an output does it want, and then the kind of culture it creates, and whether that supports our full humanness coming to work. And a lot of it has to do with leaders.
Samantha Castro The power of one human to impact an entire group of humans. We call them leaders and we know from numerous studies that one of the biggest differences between successes and failures lies in leaders.
We also know there’s all different types of leaders and most of us have worked for both good and bad ones. Lale’s question really came down to what would it look like to not see your people just as resources but as humans.
Here’s what Lale found out during this time -
Lale Kesebi You can design businesses, organizations, teams, to get the output around the win. And that output around the win has to do with the full humanness of your team and the full humanness of your team; how innovative somebody is, how compassionate they are, how customer service they are led, how empathic they are to your customer or to a vendor. You name it. The full range of our humanity at work, in play is the win.
And when you can no longer predict to the world, which is smack in the middle of where we are today, the only thing you can do is say, "All right, what tools do I have that I can use to solve this problem?" And guess what? Your tools are your people, and everything they bring to the table to help you solve what it is that you need to do collectively collaboratively and as you co-create solutions for this world, which is now unknown. And your job as a leader, leading people through the unknown, by knowing full well, which skills, tools, people you're going to draw on to come to those conclusions.
Samantha Castro Bringing your FULL work to self. It’s a captivating idea especially when you take a look at the body of evidence around the power of an engaged and motivated team versus people who are counting the minutes until their workday is over.
There are plenty of studies available on this topic and the benefits are many. Businesses with engaged employees are proven to simply make more money but there are deeply personal benefits to the humans that make up those businesses. It ends up that when we’re engaged, a lot of things in our lives are better including our ability to problem solve, our actual physical health, our home lives, and ultimately our overall happiness.
This idea of bringing your full self to work in the way Lale was just describing was a breath of fresh air around 2015 but the core concept wasn’t new because it’s a facet of work life behaviours. Karolyn made the connection while chatting with Lale about how ‘work life balance’ wasn’t really a thing until the 1970s/1980s by several psychologists and one in particular, that jumped to mind. Karolyn explains:
Karolyn Hart He was the one who actually introduced this concept of work life that turned into balance or divide, but it's actually been misunderstood, because when I read the research, what he actually concluded was that the happiness and our satisfaction level is higher and better the more that there's a blur. And he actually was looking back over history. You and I were talking about how there's nothing new under the sun, that civilization and societies, we always have famines, wars, plagues. All these things come, and then every generation is shocked when it's their turn, but they always arrive at some point; we all have to face that.
And so in his studies, he was looking at farming communities where they worked at and did life and work and love altogether. So family's friends, brothers, cousins, everybody worked the fields together, went to worship together, went to the dance together and they did life together. And their happiness levels were through the roof, and therefore their productivity levels were also through the roof.
And then in the 70s, it gets completely taken out of context. And really, if you had anybody else in your life who was like, "Hey, I'm going to do life with you, but then I'm going to put this weird wall up," you'd probably think they have some sort of psychosis, but that's what we do in the workplace.
Lale Kesebi Exactly.
Karolyn Hart Right?
Samantha Castro Right. This idea of helping employees bring their full selves to work, getting them in and growing them as a person individually that would also in turn help the organisation was originally meant to be a test. As Lale learned in her testing, our humanness drives us toward community, relationships, and self-fulfillment.
Lale and the team were conducting this experiment within their company but it was working so well that people outside of the company were seeing these major cultural shifts and reaching out.
Lale Kesebi They're like, "Hey, Lale, you guys are doing something like super cool in that really traditional, very big company. Do you think you can come and talk to my executive team about what you're doing, because we're kind of facing the same problems." And then it kind of snowballed into somebody who knew somebody who knew me then saying, "Could you come speak at our leadership conference about how you're leading transformation inside of company, because we're facing the same thing."
Samantha Castro And what started as small friendly asks slowly began to transform Lale’s career path.
[MUSIC: Matt Wigton “Sunset Lover”]
Lale Kesebi And then it kind of snowballed into an invitation to speak at an innovation conference in San Francisco. And that then snowballed into somebody who was in the audience going, "Whoa, you have no idea that what you're doing here, is not really done in other large companies. We'd like to do an article on you and your team and the work that you're a part of, and it's for Forbes." And then it kind of snowballed into a professor at MIT Sloan, who then said, "Well, we'd like to write up a case on you."
So somewhere in the back half of 2017, I sorta came to this conclusion that this little laboratory experiment we had underway at this very big company, was kind of valuable and of service to other companies. And as I was thinking about transitioning out, I thought, "You know what? I think there's something here to what we're doing." The fact that transformation is really about leaders leading into the unknown, that it's all about people all the time. So you really have to reach that that sort of N equals one individual on your team. That a purpose led initiative and company or team creates this collective ambition for people to get behind. That everybody is innovative and really what's missing is either a mechanism, or a platform, or a way or a process for people to become engaged in making that happen. And that in all of that, there is a way for people to matter, really matter when they show up at work, and for people to really be their full selves.
So the aha moment was sort of these three or four things that kind of told us, "This is not just you and your team specific to this company. This is a new way of looking at how work might be for everybody. And if your service ultimately in your life as a leader is to unleash this to the world, then here's the world telling you it's ready to hear you and to be a part of that."
Samantha Castro Coming up after the break, Karolyn dives in deep with Lale on what it means to be human at work, what differentiates the market makers vs the market laggers, and big foot? Stay tuned.
[AD MUSIC - Rhythm Scott “Old Skool 808”]
This episode of Big on Small is brought to you by us! - InspireHUB, creators of the Award winning IHUBApp, the small business digital experience platform that allows you to rapidly build websites, apps, and portals to help your small business thrive!
Since it’s start 7 years ago, InspireHUB, has been a 100% remote company. But even we have found working during a pandemic extraordinarily difficult. If we, who are experienced at remote work are struggling, we can only imagine how difficult it is for you.
That’s why we published ‘Loving Remote’ a free e-book to help you create an inspirational remote culture at your small business. It’s packed with the lessons we learned the hard way: like why your exhaustion isn’t caused by Zoom fatigue, what you can do to make virtual meetings amazing, and why working remotely could be the positive game-changer your team has been waiting for!
Download your free copy by visiting inspirehub.com/LovingRemote. That’s InspireH-U-B.com/LovingRemote.
Part Two: Human At Work
Samantha Castro As Lale mentioned before the break, by the end of 2017 she knew her work as Head of the Strategic Engagement Team and the way they were solving problems within their organization was something other companies wanted and needed in order to survive.
So in 2018 Lale decided to follow where the research was taking her and left the over 20,000+ team at Li & Fung to start her own small business, Human at Work. Interestingly, right as this transition is happening, the professional services firm EY releases a study that same year showing that more people get their sense of belonging from their jobs than any other source, outside of their own homes. This was a first, because work replaced our neighborhood and places of worship for the first time. What’s clear, is that need for a firm like Human at Work, is now more critical than ever, so Lale and her team got busy...
Lale Kesebi We're really big on the small, like big time big on small. There's three of us, three of us on the team. And we felt like that the best way for people to learn about what we were trying to get across as the ethos of Human at Work, was to role model it ourselves. So we're fully dispersed. We do not have quote unquote an office space. In Asia, that's a big deal, right? You don't have a real physical shingle. At lately, that's been changing.
We run everything off of our phones and our laptops. And a big part of that is to role model, especially to senior executives, there's another way to be fast and to make things happen and to get on with the work that isn't this sort of big sort of layer of stuff that encompasses your day or your organization.
So we really role model how we work together and people are always shocked, because they tend to sort of reach out to us for work, and they're expecting a scope of work that's 18 months long or 24 months long, with 55 decks and spreadsheets, et cetera. And we're always like, "Okay, if you can get us two weeks and an access to a few key people, at two weeks and two days, we can tell you how to do what you need to do." It's very surgical. We're in, we're out, we take a beat and a pulse on what's happening, and that's it.
Karolyn Hart And when you come in and you're helping companies and leaders, what does it really boil down to? What are you seeing in all your work across these different companies, that really you're like, "Every time I go into the company, I'm always dealing with this specific thing that is this barrier I have to get everybody through." What is that thing that you're helping organizations find that breakthrough with?
Lale Kesebi Well, when I'm working with organizations, whether it's advising CEOs one-on-one or organizations, CEOs, and their teams, because we tend to start right at the top because that's the tone that gets set in the organization. When we're working with them, we're asked and we're invited in, because typically an organization is going through a period of disruption, right?
So they're being disrupted, let's say because of digital technology, or they used to be a market maker now they're a market laggard. And people are, really, I would honestly say, they're in pain. Leaders are in pain. I've been doing this for 20 or 25 years. They don't know why it's not working anymore and then they tend to seek us out.
And our aha moment, which gets repeated over and over again, which becomes their aha moment, is that they approach it like it's an intellectual exercise and they're not approaching it in their full humanity themselves.
So let's say, for example, take the financial services industry. I'm just using one industry as an example. And let's say, we're working with a CEO and they're like, "Okay, numbers are down, share price is down by 20%, revenues are down by 15%. We need to engage our team. We need to focus on engagement because we're just not doing well." And that to me is a red flag right away. And the first thing that is always the aha moment is, well, what are you trying to do? Number one, which should be actually very clear question. Cause most people know the, what super easily in organizations and if there's ever any fuzziness around the what for sure that there's a lot of fuzziness around the why, right? Why does that company exist? Why is it that they're doing what they're doing? Is there a cause that's, that's being celebrated internally that people can rally around.
So, the aha moment is always, "Do you know why you exist? Do you know why you're trying to conduct this transformation?" And then the next becomes, "Okay, if I'm a member of your team, anywhere in your organization, would I understand why we're trying to do what we're doing here? Would I understand the pain that you are feeling? Have you asked me how might I help? And then collectively, do I know what it is that we need to do every single day when we come in to the job?"
[MUSIC: Noah Smith “Giving Up On Love”]
Lale Kesebi To go from A, which is where we're at today, to where the win is and how we define that as the end game. And you have to actually start articulating that to your team and that isn't about, "Hey guys, if we all do this, we're going to be up on revenues 20%." I mean, I could hang myself with those kinds of announcements. That's nothing to me as an individual, nothing. But if you tell me that we're going to win together, if you tell me that we're going to build something new, if you tell me that, "Hey, we're going to put a man on the moon," I'm going to come to work pretty inspired on how I can help you to do that. If you take me with you, if you guide me in that process, if you say, "I want more of this, less of that." I know you're really keen on doing that, it's not what we need here, guys. I need more of that. How am I connected to what you want to do as great change?
Now, one of two things happen here for most companies. They either go, "Oh my gosh, you're right. We actually amazingly, have never told her organization that A, we are in pain, or B, talked about why we're in pain, or C, what it is that we're thinking about and how we can all collectively make that happen;" zero transparency. Or the other side of the argument is, "Well, why do we need to do that?" So these are the one or the two things that happened in every single company that we work with.
Obviously the aha moment of the first group of, "Yeah, we didn't even think about that. Let's go on and do that," tend to be market makers. The companies that continually question why it is that they need a purpose to galvanize their teams and to even articulate it, the companies that question why is it they need to live by their values, the companies that question why they even need to have a team even on side with what's happening, are market laggards and continue to be; regardless of whether you work with them or not.
There is a fundamental gap, because in the market maker category, you have CEOs and companies who get that this is a human endeavor. The market maker company has leaders that are authentic. They have leaders that build trust. They have leaders that care, that understand that not everything they do, or know or have talked about is about them. They understand that they can co-create and collaborate. So the aha is always there.
Karolyn Hart Yeah, and I love that Lale, because when we're talking about being a market maker, a lot of people get this picture in their mind of a Fortune 500 company, and certainly you both and I come from that environment, but a market maker is that local small business that just owns the market on cupcakes. That is the one place that everybody in that community is getting to, or that one restaurant, for example, who they just own that marketplace and it takes weeks to get a reservation into it.
What I love about what you're saying is, because I see this in, doesn't matter the size of business, but to your point, often the difference behind the scenes is leadership; understanding what their goal is. And we're not just serving food, right? We're not just making cupcakes. When you get in there, there's usually an experience behind that. They often will talk about how they treat their employees.
Samantha Castro So for market makers, we see these different traits in them. They tap into the human potential of their own employees and keep the human focus on their customers, they don’t just see them as a sale, or a number, but as a person to serve.
It seems pretty simple, and yet the amount of small businesses that fail is extraordinarily high. Not just during a pandemic, but even during strong economic times about 20% of small businesses fail in the first year, and about 50% in their fifth year. The indicator that you may fail? It starts with lagging behind your local market. So what are the traits of the market laggers? And how, if you’re currently a market maker, do you fall prey into being a market lagger?
Lale Kesebi I actually think that the market laggards who see themselves as market makers, they're just basically running the same operation against the same goals, and they're driving the business into the ground. The worst for an organization or society or a nonprofit, however the group of people are around whatever endeavor they're working on, the worst for a business is when you say, "We're currently doing A, but we really want to become B." And then literally after that statement, they do everything like they would be doing it as if they were running A. Nothing has changed but for their aspiration.
That is a killer of a business. It's actually much better just to stick with A, because your whole organization, whether you're a small business or a big business, is designed to reinforce all the objectives of A, right? "I just make cupcakes," or, "I am the best payment services and financial services," or, "I am whatever."
And then when you have an aspiration that is different and when you have a transformative aspiration, something that's not just a little change of your current business, but something totally different, because you have to because of a pandemic, or because you want to, because you're shifting your business. And you say, "No way, mom. This is what I want to be when I grow up." And then the next day, at your meeting, at your reporting cycle, through your financial reports, how you interact with your customer, you continue to operate like you used to, that is a killer for an organization. And it's a killer for innovation. They'll have the aspiration. Just because they're thinking about it and they're saying it, does not translate into the doing of it.
[MUSIC: Noah Smith “Mayfair”]
A great mentor of mine once told me that paper doesn't refuse ink. And that really is what we're talking about here. You can say and talk and write any aspiration you could possibly think of. The human potential for dreaming is unmatched, but to translate that into action and into doing, and to design an organization, like truly design it, such that the output that you want, which is the B win, is supported by a B organization, as opposed to the organization that you currently have, that's true leadership and leading into the unknown and leading transformation.
Samantha Castro There’s so many leaders right now leading into the unknown and facing excruciatingly hard decisions that have very human consequences. It can feel like a catch 22. We wanted to share some scenarios that we’ve seen with Lale to get her thoughts on them.
Karolyn Hart First catch 22 is this, I have very limited funds and I have to do a digital transformation in order to survive right now. But the only way I can do that, I'm going to have to let some people go. And so if I let some people go, then they're going to say, "Well, you're an awful boss because I have kids to feed, and I can't believe that you laid me off." And then the businesses at risk of not continuing, right?
And on the other hand, so then the business closes and those same people who were saying, "You were horrible because you did this," are saying, "Well, why didn't you make that tough call and do what was necessary, so we'd all have a chance to at least get our jobs back in the future?"
Lale Kesebi Yeah. That's a tough one.
Karolyn Hart It is a tough one. And on top of that, you also have small business owners who are saying for whatever reason, their team, they're like, "No, we don't want to change. We got to keep doing what we've always been doing." And so they're just in these impossible situations, what feels impossible. I have my own ideas about it, but it feels impossible to them. What do you say to them?
Lale Kesebi Well, look, let's take the first one, which is the big one; digital transformation. I think it means different things to different people. So if you're a small business owner and let's say it's a true digital transformation, everything in your company is currently running on analog. And in order for it to be future-proofed, it has to have a digital process, let's say, okay.
So one example would be someone physically having to send a PO to order something and bringing something back, versus implementing a system that has a point of sale distribution that allows for a supply chain to operate on a digital basis. That then future-proofs your organization, because you're not only just getting the speed and productivity inside, but you're actually servicing your customer, right? So the center of that journey is your customer needs something better, stronger, faster in this world where we've all gotten used to Amazon delivering to our door in 24 hours or less.
So in that kind of a, "I have to be where the legends are," there has to be a digital transformation. So then the question becomes, "Okay, in order to do that, what skill sets do I currently not have in my team to make that happen? I need to bring those skill sets in. And what skill sets do I have that I can potentially more for someone who says, 'Well, hey, I like that idea. I want to do a better job in a different kind of a job." And then there are skill sets, which frankly, just aren't going to make the leap. You have to have the open conversation. You have to, as a leader, at least be able to, as clearly as possible, paint the future of where an organization is going without any bones. This is where we need to be people. Guys, this is the win. This is the win.
So here's what I think we need to do. We need to digitally transform. Meaning, we actually need to move from the analog world to the digital world, and the business has to operate this way. And let me make it clear for why that is. We no longer have a market operating in an analog world after about an 18 month runway. We have to have a longer than an 18 month runway for a business, because there are 10 of us, 50 of us, 60, however many people that there are.
These are the kinds of skills that we need. Anyone who wants to put their hand up to say, "You've done this before in another job, or you have a skill set and, or a degree and or an interest," please come see me, because I need to know. And we're going to take the first team first and then do the reassignment. Here's the next set of skills that are going to be useful for us at about the sort of six to nine month mark from today. We really need everybody to become like that. This is what I think is key. Here's what we can do centrally, but more importantly, here's what I think you need to be able to do yourselves, on your own time or talk to people or get qualified; whatever the case may be, I want you to come with me. Here are the skills we really don't need anymore." You need to have a very open candid conversation with your team.
Now in doing so, you run a risk of somebody who, let's say, thinks that they are not going to make the leap, deciding that they'd rather leave sooner than later, and potentially having that impact your operation. That will potentially happen. But in the end, that person, if you're really doing them a service, you're putting people on notice to say, "These are the skill sets that may not make the leap. And here's a very long runway I'm creating for you, to say that if you don't see a future for yourself here, and we can have a one on one conversation later about that, then here's a runway that allows for you to take care of yourself, your career, and your own families. As opposed to one day you coming in and me telling you on a Friday afternoon that you don't need to come back here, 72 hours later on a Monday." But that's heartless.
Karolyn Hart Right, that is. So a lot of small businesses have very unique setups; they are family run. And what do you do if you know that you have to make this digital transformation, but you just have family members or people within your ranks who are just like, "You know what? We disagree and we're not going to do it." Especially in this world, you would think that we now understand that whether you realize it or not, consumer behaviors, they have shifted. We will see just how much in the years to come, but it won't be a matter of if they do, but how much they have.
And so what would you say to the person who's trying to champion change, and right now they're the lone voice against everybody in them. And it's not like they have that executive decision making to be like, "Well, I'm the owner, so you do what I say," or you know what I mean? What advice would you give them on that whole process?
Lale Kesebi Well, family owned businesses, I think are their own unique beast. You could probably run an entire podcast series just on that. It's frustrating, both for the people who are in the family running the business, and it's frustrating for people who are inside as employees inside of a family business, particularly if it's multi-generational.
So if it's multi-generational family business and you have operators from the family inside the company, I can 100% guarantee you that the decisions are being made by the operating matriarchy or patriarchy. There's always a deference back to who started the business. There's lots of friction between the generations as to, "Well, you said this and in your day, this is how it works. But this is no longer your day, and we need to make change." There's a huge dynamic that happens just even amongst the family and the smaller the business and the more families there are, the more difficult that becomes.
Fundamentally, what gets people's attention is the question of, "Okay, if you do not make this change, whether it's a digital transformation, whether it's a privatization or going public offering, whether it's a, whatever, an expansion of the business, if you do not make the change, if you do not make the transformation, do you think your business will still be alive in five years?" And if the answer to that question is no, then that's the starting point. "Okay, you're telling me you're not going to be in business if you do not make the change."
Even if, whether you agree with whether this is the manner in which this is going to happen is different, right? Somebody wants to be bold. Somebody wants to be risk averse, but you're not going to have a business. Surely to goodness, isn't that reason enough to make a change?
Karolyn Hart Absolutely. One of the questions that I like to ask is, not in an aggressive way, but if they say, "Well, no, we think our business is going to go back to the way it was, and we're not really worried about it." And then I like to ask, "Okay, and what if you're wrong?" Right. Because that's a really great exercise that I like to always do when I'm making decisions and I call it the pillow test, which my father gave me, which is, will you put your head on your pillow at night thinking to yourself, "I wish I would have?" Or will you be like, "You know what? We did everything possible," with no regrets?
Samantha Castro Asking yourself the question ‘Did I do everything I possibly could?’ is a great but also hard question to ask because we get into these places where we’re comfortable and when something happens to where we’re challenged and maybe needing to try something new, we may hesitate. But as Lale mentioned before, even if we decide we need to switch things up and make a transformation, but then do nothing, it’s a killer.
So as a leader or owner, operating as a business, I want to inspire my employees and want to show them the why we’re in business to begin with besides the universal understanding of making money. Right Lale?
Lale Kesebi Correct. And look, I think money's not a bad word. So let's just be clear about that. By making businesses purposeful, or having something for groups of people to work around and to create a better business, to create a better product, to create a better service. You're not the antichrist for doing that.
Karolyn Hart Right.
Lale Kesebi You're not, because that puts food on the table. That allows people to pay for their lives. That allows, when it's done well and in service of a community, for there to be an equitable distribution of wealth. It's the tide that lifts all boats. But here's the thing about money. It's not an input variable, it's an output. It's a measurement at the end of the day of everything that's gone into the company at the beginning of the flow chart, right? So it's all the input stuff, generate something at the end, which has this very hard metric next to a dollar sign that you can go, "Okay, today I'm this, yesterday I was that."
[MUSIC: Alsever Lake “This Is The Life”]
But if all you do is chase the output without thinking about what all the input variables are, what the leavers are that you're pulling, how well your team operates and collaborates together, can you actually co-create? Are you agile? Do you have a culture of transparency and trust? Am I leading people properly?" So the money is at the end, that is a given and all the studies and all the research will show that well-run companies always have a bigger number next to that dollar sign than ones that are not.
Karolyn Hart And I think that might be a concept that's probably a little bit new for some of our small businesses. I mean, they know intuitively that the passion, the effort that they're putting in makes a difference in what they actually have, but I don't think they may always fully understand that all the different levers as you put, have an influence. That includes the fact of whether or not you're open to new pieces of data and realizing that maybe you might not have all the answers to everything. And maybe there is something new and not to be so afraid of any of the change and transformation that could be happening.
Samantha Castro So what advantages do you as a small business owner or an employee have within your organization? You may not have the money, resources or reach that these massive Fortune 500 companies do but as Lale will tell you, you have something those companies don’t.
Lale Kesebi Every Fortune 500 company wants to operate like a small business owner. That is their number one sort of goal. They want to be agile. They want to be able to just make something happen. If they think about it in the morning, they can make it. So I actually think that small is the new big, and it's going to be that way for the next 10 years.
So small business owners have a tremendous advantage, and I know it doesn't feel like that when you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to make revenues so that you can pay people, but it's a massive advantage because of agility. I think whether you're a small or a large business, you kind of have to do the same thing. But particularly for small business owners, the best advice I can give you is, you got to start with the end in mind, provided that you're not folding overnight, and you have resources to get you through what everyone is surviving at the moment. Then your best course of action is to figure out how do you want to merge at the end of this? What does that business look like for you? Is it still the same? Is it different? Are you operating in a different way? And then as soon as you can land on what that might look like for you, your next bet is to invite people in to help you solve for that problem.
And your number one resource is your team. And particularly if you're a small business owner, you are going to have people who are facing the customer every single day or facing your vendors every day, are a part of your community every day. And being able to hear from them, what's possible with how you're going to frame your business going forward, is absolutely crucial.
The second thing is, is that most of the people on your team are also in it to win it with you. So they're going to understand that this is not normal at the moment. And if it means that everybody has to come together and say, "All right, how do we make this business not only just survive, but thrive," you're going to want to hear from them. And I think you'd be most often pleasantly surprised at the creative solutions that your team will come up with, in order to make that business thrive, because they're in it with you to make that happen.
I saw a great example the other day of this incredible realtor that was based in California. Can you imagine, okay, this is the innovation. He decides that in this very nice California home that he's listed, as just something innovative. "I am just going to grab some eyeballs to this property. I'm going to create photo shoots that have a Sasquatch, a Bigfoot, in various poses throughout this house."
Now let's break this down, right? Small business owner, the guy's a realtor. He's going to have to pay for the same photos to list this house. He's going to have to go through the exact same effort to list the house on a website. But what does he do? He says, "You know what? I'm going to draw eyeballs. I'm going to put a Bigfoot in the kitchen, a Bigfoot relaxing on the deck." I mean, it's amazing. It costs him no extra money except maybe probably a case of beers for, to his friend who was wearing the Sasquatch outfit and did him a solid by posing in these photos.
So there's zero extra dollars in that strategy; this new quote unquote digital content strategy. He's been covered by Mashable he's been covered by Buzzfeed and somewhere, some unknown realtor in California has caught my attention, and we're now talking about him on a podcast.
[MUSIC: Mikey Geiger “Polaroid Picnic”]
Samantha Castro We have links to go view this amazingly fun photoshoot on the podcast post for this episode. Go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and find the post for this episode to see them.
The pictures are as Lale described, this Sasquatch, let’s call him Greg, doing all kinds of different activities within the home like baking cookies, reading a book about Edible Mushrooms on the couch, sitting on the deck reading a newspaper, out in the garden trimming the flowers, yoga in the sunroom, there’s just so many images.
We didn’t know the name of the realtor (Daniel Oster) at the time we recorded this podcast so we ended up nicknaming him Bob. And we came to the agreement that this creative exercise didn’t have to stop with just this one house (which from reading some articles sold above the original asking price of $999,000). So how does Greg the sasquatch and Bob the Realtor’s story keep going?
Lale Kesebi Greg, the Sasquatch, his buddy was Bob, the realtor, and Bob has now made Greg famous. So I would say, "Bob, why aren't you doing Bigfoot merchandise? Why aren't you creating yourself a brand new revenue stream by just going to Snaptee or some sort of online, order 50 Bigfoot Greg, the Sasquatch t-shirts and generating some merchandise for yourself? Or guess what? Even better, give them away for free to your clients, and no one will ever forget you, and you will get more listings and you will make more money."
So the agility of Bob, the realtor to have Greg, the Sasquatch to do this, is way beyond what a PNG could do or a KPMG could do, or any other big company. Can you imagine people would have their knickers in a knot in the corporate communications department or brand or marketing going, "Does this fit with our style? And we've got a guidebook and I don't know if we can do this." Freedom man, you've got freedom as a small business owner.
Karolyn Hart And meanwhile, right now I'm like, what sort of dinner party with Greg, the Sasquatch actually hosts in his California home? And I need to know what wines he would actually ... I'm just wondering. They're not a client, so I'm just going to throw this out. Would he have a partnership with Barefoot Wines?
I'm just saying. I'd just like to say to Bob, the realtor, Greg, the Sasquatch, if Barefoot Wines does come, please do a partnership just for Lale and I. Please, just make that happen so that we can say-
Lale Kesebi It all started here.
Karolyn Hart It all started here on Big On Small. But you know what's funny about this is this inaction is exactly how some of the most creative inspirated, like that's how it starts, is just saying, "We're not going to have the restrictions," and I love that we just did that.
I am curious. One of the things that I want to make sure to ask you about, is so when you're going between cultures and countries and things like that, do they do Greg, the Sasquatch type ideas in Japan? Are there some very much common themes that you see regardless of where you're at? Or are there things that are just really specific to culture?
Lale Kesebi I think there are things that are specific to culture. Just like you can't replicate culture of one company to another company, you can't replicate culture. But every culture has its strengths, and every culture has its uniqueness. But the part that always amazed me, was how everybody was the same, not how everybody was different.
So they can express themselves differently of course, culturally, but the motivations were the same. "I want to do a good job. I want to feel like I matter in the world. I'm proud of working here. I want to be a good person. This is what I do in my community. I want to earn for my family. I want to have a good life." So if anything that sort of resonating, we are so much more unified than we are separated.
I think that from a business perspective, there's so many things that are different. I don't think that anyone can run a company as efficiently as a company is run in Hong Kong. There is a tireless work ethic, I think too much so, to be honest, at the expense of a personal life, but things just literally get done in a day. And I think that that's very difficult to get used to in North America, where that tends not to be the case when you get to larger companies. Smaller companies, I find quite agile.
I think there's nothing to beat what's happening in North America, particularly West coast, North America, when it comes to technology companies. Agile ways of working current cultures, a lot of what InspireHUB does with dispersed teams, for example, there's a presenteeism in culture in Asia still, of being in the office, being seen, having the boss see you do the work, that I think is really eroding here in North America.
I think Europeans have just figured it out when it comes to its life and work fits into that. And I think the world is catching up to them in all honesty. So it is different in terms of how it manifests itself, but I think at its very, very core, we are so much more alike than we are different everywhere in the world, everywhere in the world.
Samantha Castro We are all experiencing some sort of disruption in life right now, whether that be family, relationships, the way in which we work, you name it - and it’s important to remember that we’re more alike than we are different and that in order to be a better organization, a better company, a better leader, we need to start being more human at work.
Thankfully, Lale and her team are currently working on the resources and tools to help you begin.
Lale Kesebi What we're really interested in at Human at Work, is how we can scale how to be human at work, beyond just what we're doing with our clients, because clearly that work's super important. You have leaders who want to know how to do that for their teams and their companies. But what we're really working on is, how can we scale that independently, collaboratively, through technology, through social media? How do we get to anyone who has influence in their organization to tweak the kinds of things that need to happen in their culture for their culture to be much more human, and therefore their companies to be much more powerful and successful?
So what we're working on at the moment is really something that's kind of scalable. Think of it as a Maria Kondo version of how to declutter your home. It's sort of a guide on how to be human at work. Imagine it being inspirational, like Simon Sinek's work around, why imagine the scalability like Ted, where it's all these great ideas that are shared openly, freely transparently, goodness to the world. That's kind of the project we're working on at the moment. How do we get these tools, our thinking, our insight into the hands of really good people, because there's a lot of good people out there, who can then get on and do something different. And how can we effectively re-mantel work 2.2 and dismantle work 1.0.
Samantha Castro To learn more about Lale and connect with her, go to human-at.work. That’s human-at.work
Before we end the show, which has already had soooo much advice to small business owners, here’s one last thought from Lale.
Lale Kesebi Scrappy is the way to go. Big companies are looking at how small companies do things. Small companies are looking at how they want to try to do things like big companies. That is an ixnay; do not do that. Continue to do more of the same at scale. Do not try to emulate what a big company is doing, because they've already decided that is not the way; they're looking at you. So have faith and stay the course.
CREDITS
[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]
Samantha Castro We hope you enjoyed this episode of Big on Small and if you did, be sure to subscribe and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.
Karolyn Hart Visit bigonsmall.biz to join our community of small businesses and find helpful resources. To learn more about what we talked about in today’s episode, read show highlights, and more, go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and visit the post for this episode.
Samantha Castro Is there something you want us to discuss on the podcast? Do you want to rant to us about what your business has been facing in the past few months? Whatever you may need, please call and leave us a message at 1-844-967-CHAT. That’s 1-844-967-2428.
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The Big on Small podcast is powered by InspireHUB - creators of the award winning IHUBApp Digital Experience Platform.
Big on Small is produced and directed by me, Samantha Castro
Karolyn Hart And me Karolyn Hart. Additional support by Sue Braiden, Richard Brashear, Audrey Duncan and Sue Jenks. Music by Noah Smith. Mixed by Samantha Castro.
For the full list of credits visit the podcast page for this episode.
Thanks for listening!
