Ep. 055 - Building an employee experience muscle
We explore the concept of “Building an EX muscle” within organizations for systemic change. Going from accidental to occasional and, finally, embedding this work into the very fabric of the business. She shares a unique walk, run and fly approach - shifting from focusing solely on process and technology improvements to a deliberate focus on enhancing employee experiences. Offering insight into how and where to get started that enables this work to thrive.
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About Stephanie,
Stephanie Denino is the Managing Director at TI People – an employee experience consultancy (EX).
Stephanie works with leaders who are eager to shape and apply the practices that will allow them to systemically improve experiences for and with their people.
Through her work, she helps organizations chart their path toward excellence on EX, improve critical work experiences and build capabilities needed to improve experiences, at scale.
Before joining TI People, she spent six years building up the Global Employee Experience team at Accenture – this practitioner lens is one she carries with her as she now serves a broad range of organizations in this space.
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniedenino
EP. 055 Transcription
[00:00:00] Steve: Stephanie, welcome to the experience designers.
[00:00:05] Stephanie: Thank you, Steve. I'm, I'm thrilled to be here. I think I told you the first time we met, I felt like you were A long lost friend, so I'm excited to have this chat with you today.
[00:00:15] Steve: Yeah. I mean, our conversations have been super natural from the start. Yeah, I've always enjoyed them and I'm. Super privileged that you're here. I know you have a busy schedule and I'm always grateful for people sharing the most valuable asset which is time. And of course we're here to talk about some rather important topics in the world of work and especially employee experience.
But before we dive in just for the audience who are you, and where are you, and what do you do?
[00:00:52] Stephanie: I am I'll start by saying I'm based in Montreal. I'm a Canadian. I'm a hockey player. Quintessential Canadian. That'll be relevant as we keep going in this conversation. But I'm a mother to two young children, and I have an awesome partner. Professionally I describe myself as a, an EX professional.
I was first a practitioner in this space, starting in 2016, and more recently became, became an advisor as I joined TI People. TI People is a, an employee experience consultancy, and I'm the director of Apply DX Practice. I'm responsible for the Americas region, and fundamentally what I do is, I work with leaders who want to figure out how to systemically improve employee experiences. Tagline is one we'll come back to. but I often say that I like to help organizations figure out the how of GradyX for their unique context. You know, when you think about what that takes, there's a lot of practices you need to master if you're to ever excel at employee experience, and I love digging into that with ambitious leaders.
So, yeah, that's a bit about me.
[00:02:07] Steve: Cool, cool. Can I just ask, like, what's the, like, let's get past some of that a little bit, into Stephanie a little bit. What kind of gets you out of bed every day with this work? What, what's really, where's the kind of the, the drive and the fire for this?
[00:02:27] Stephanie: Okay. Um, two things. One, I love work. Like, I love the construct of work. When I was a young teenager, I thought to myself, I really hope that one day I will find work I love. And I don't know why I felt this way, but I loved it instantly. And I've always had a very strange fascination with seeing people love their work.
Like, there is nothing more addicting, addictive to me than to see someone want to fully lean in to something they care about. And conversely, I, I think a little piece of me dies every single time I see someone who does not enjoy their work. So that's, that's one, my relationship with work. And the second thing is, I also have a, a long time fascination for the notion of continuous improvement.
Like, I love the idea of things getting incrementally better over time. Prior to falling into the EX space, I did operations work, process improvement work, and I, I loved the disciplines of Lean Six Sigma, for example because they, they have this essence of empowerment to make the organization better and better over time.
So this, this notion that we're never done really is something I, I, I like to embody. And so there you go, Steve. I love work, and I love continuous improvement, so I love continuously improving people's experience of work.
[00:04:08] Steve: Love it. Love it. And, and, and I think you're in the right space because this work never stops. Ever. And there's still so much legacy stuff to do, never mind futuristic. So. Why we don't let's dive into ex because obviously I I'm always privileged to to sit with an ex practitioner Someone who's very much been in the corporate environment, you know driven this This agenda and driven this topic and theme and way of working inside of you know large scale global organization previously what's your take on, like, the journey that we've been on, if we think about the EX as a, as an industry, what's, how would you describe, I guess, some of the evolution that you've seen and observed and where are we today?
Really interesting to hear your view on that.
[00:05:00] Stephanie: Great. And I can't wait to hear yours.
[00:05:01] Steve: Ha ha,
[00:05:02] Stephanie: well, listen, I've been, I've been a pretty fervent student of this field and of this discipline since 2016. As I said, when I got my start at the very beginning of what was the global employee experience team at Accenture. And when I look back on these It's almost eight years of, of swimming in this field.
I'm noticing a common arc that most organizations are on. They may be at different stages on this arc. And I've recently tried to draw up a simplified story of that evolution and it goes something like this. In the beginning, EX improvement is accidental. It's a byproduct of a focus on improving process and improving technology.
It is not the core focus. It happens accidentally as a result of those things. But, then an organization realizes that improving processes and improving tech isn't the same as being intentionally focused on improving experiences. And so it typically attempts to launch a focus on EX. And EX improvement becomes occasional. And I think this is where most Most organizations are today. But then they start asking themselves, Yeah, but how do you scale this? I still remember being asked this question in my last role. It haunted me a little bit. And it's what has led me to think about it a lot. But you know, so many people are told, what you did here is very nice, but how do you scale this for even broader impact?
And that's why I believe that What most organizations are trying to reach for is making EX improvement systemic. So a systemic focus on EX is one where the whole organization is involved in some specified way in the pursuit of better EX. yOu've distributed accountability for it, so that's why it feels scaled and it's become a continuous practice.
It's not a project. And then you're done. It's a new ongoing work, way of working. And so that's, that's the evolution for me. From accidental, to occasional, to systemic.
[00:07:29] Steve: hmm, hmm,
[00:07:31] Stephanie: one way of answering this question. What, what, what's on your mind? Ha, ha, ha.
[00:07:37] Steve: Depends which lens I want to put. It depends what mood I'm in today. So I think, I think there's some amazing work that's being done and being done. I think there's some really interesting emergence of, um, the discipline and the role, and I think. It's beautiful to see it and I think we're only going to see more more people putting employee experience in their title as we've seen already of course, we've seen things like LinkedIn with the top 25 growth roles number five or number eight was employee experience manager Amazing.
So we're in this moment in time where we're moving a little bit out of the buzzword and actually into I think, I think, you know, I spent the last couple of days with with a group of CX practitioners, funny enough. And what I realized, and it was a bit of a grounding for me actually, was like, Oh God, we, We're, we're in the same battle, actually, and I was hearing the same things, but actually just different first word customer versus employee.
[00:08:46] Stephanie: Mm hmm.
[00:08:47] Steve: is organizations lack of investment or understanding of what customers want versus employee needs and it's, they're fighting the same battles to convince businesses to invest in experience and whether that's customer or employee. And even as a kind of practitioner and a much more mature market. Yeah, it's a bit, it's scattered and the practice is super scattered to the point of which perhaps even has impacted the impact of CX because of the, the mix of practitioners and capabilities inside of, inside of that kind of competence, if that makes sense.
So I think, you know, in a market or industry where that's been much, you know, has matured much more than EX. It feels a bit a bit messy, and so I, I came away thinking, Great, there's some amazing synergies there really are but the battle remains the same, is that we're still battling against I use this word systemic.
We are battling systemic. And we have to challenge the notion of what is the current, not future of work, current work, which has been completely disrupted and needs a new way of thinking and approaching what those problems and solutions are going to be, which inherently is going to be more human centric.
In my mind anyway. So I think, I think we've got this the realities of business the businesses, the way they're set up is Where we meet them where they are in their systemic environment and in weave it into that and then bring them along. And I think,
[00:10:23] Stephanie: couldn't agree more.
[00:10:24] Steve: yeah, so I think that's that's my where I'm where I'm seeing it at the moment.
I think we've got a hell of a long way to go. And I think we've we've got to cement this practice and this discipline into something that brings really tangible value into organizations. And some do don't get me wrong, but we're way, way off yet. In terms of it, in my mind, it being widespread.
[00:10:46] Stephanie: You, you know, I, I feel like we, we've moved over the hump of false confidence.
[00:10:51] Steve: Mm.
[00:10:52] Stephanie: It's almost like in the beginning, in the first few years, people were like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it, I got it, I know what this thing is, I'm doing it. And, and now, I think practitioners across organizations are saying I don't know.
I think I need to keep being a student and I keep need, I keep needing to take inspiration from other fields and other disciplines and I couldn't agree more that our sister, our sister discipline, CX, is Just such a, an important partner to
[00:11:21] Steve: Mm.
[00:11:21] Stephanie: this journey and I think we'll get into that a little more because there's no denying that we should learn from what they've done before us and, and try and accelerate through some of the know, the dips that, or the, or the, the traps, the, the
[00:11:40] Steve: importantly, yeah, and link it. And I think
[00:11:42] Stephanie: and link you.
Mm
[00:11:43] Steve: lie. You mentioned in our, in our opening segment around building the EX muscle. aNd we talked about kind of the systemically elements. So let's bring that together around. You know, we're going to focus around building the EX muscle and I really like that because it is a muscle and it needs training and it needs protein and it needs weight and discipline and consistency.
So the EX muscle to kind of systemically improve EX. Let's stay off a little bit into that. What do you mean, what do you mean by that?
[00:12:13] Stephanie: Okay. So this reference to this muscle, this new muscle that, that organizations need to build to systemically improve comes from research that we did a few months ago at TI People with dozens of global EX leaders. anD from looking back on our years of work in this space, when we conducted this research, we were trying to understand two major things.
One, What are EX leaders trying to achieve, and what are they doing to get there? And when we analyze these answers, we realize that all these leaders in some way are trying to do something quite similar. They may use very different words, but there are, the essence is that they're trying to create great EX for all.
In fact, one, one person said that, and it kind of cemented the, the essence of what so many were saying.
[00:13:12] Steve: Hmm.
[00:13:14] Stephanie: EX leaders know that this aspiration is very lofty, um, and they also understand that they can't do it alone, right? They need to enlist the help of the whole organization, and they also understand, as we've been discussing already, that you're never done.
So, you need to treat this as a continuous thing.
[00:13:34] Steve: Hmm.
[00:13:34] Stephanie: But to do that, you need a new organizational muscle that doesn't exist. in most organizations, if not all. And so, you and I agreed that talking about what it looks like to build up that muscle could be a really helpful conversation.
[00:13:53] Steve: Amazing. Amazing. How does that I mean, I guess this kind of could be a maturity piece conversation or more into like, how did, how do people go from a typical, and we say a typical state into a future state of building ex muscle, are they like stages to that, what, what did that research or what was your kind of.
that you did outside of, you know, obviously for me, when you research and find insight, you go, great. Now, how can we support that? Or what's the model to advise and guide right around that? What do you, what do you, what are some of the principles or areas did you kind of lean into?
[00:14:31] Stephanie: We, we, we tried to trace a simple articulation of, of stages that organizations flow through. We called them walk, run, fly. And, and we are not trying to be overly specific about these stages because, to be honest, I think we resisted the very rigid maturity model approach here, where, as you and I have already said, there's so much variability, there's, there's so many things we don't yet know that, you know, tracing a, a big picture felt, felt more relevant at this stage, and so when you think about building up this muscle we talk about walk as being getting started.
So bringing about a new focus on EX in an organization. The next stage is run stretching your impact and thinking about how you improve experiences more broadly. And then stage three is what we're calling, you know, s s s s fly. So how do you scale this systemic approach where your whole organization is working in support of EX? those are the sort of rough stages, if you will, that I think it's helpful for us to unpack in
[00:15:51] Steve: Yeah, definitely. And this is a, so I think, I think interestingly, the get start, the walk. And I think, I think this is where quite a lot of organizations are right now, is finding out what does this mean in our context, and where do we get started, and how. So I'd love to, let's just pull the walkout for now, let's dive into that.
From your experience of what you've seen, like what are some of the best ways to get started? What have you seen as some of the most effective approaches that organizations have taken to do this?
[00:16:24] Stephanie: Yeah. The one thing that often comes to mind here is, start anywhere you'll be able to get a win. And what we mean by a win is You'll have done work in a new way that is I like to call it human centered and data driven. And we're at the end of this work, Improving Experiences. You have moved the needle in a way that you can sing the praises of this, uh, new way and tell everyone about it. And what it requires to get a win, therefore, is to start in a focused area. Right? Something, something not, not too big. That means you'll never be able to talk about the end of this work. And often it also means something that is perhaps for a targeted uh, employee population. Again, trying to, trying to really start in a focused way. And the other thing I'll add is, Where you typically want to start is with a willing partner who is very excited to pioneer something different with you. And I'm speaking as if we were an EX leader, a new EX team. I think you need to go find your, uh, your sort of early adopters who, who see the promise of this and who will help you tell the story of, of impact of this new way of working.
So that's, that's typically what, what comes to mind for me. I know, I know you speak to a lot of people who are at this stage too, so. What, what do you what do you typically suggest?
[00:18:13] Steve: Yeah, so I think of it let's get some visualization attached to this. You know the little wedges that you, this is really random, but this is how my brain works. So you know the little wedges that hold your doors, that hold your door open, you know, like a, like a cheese, piece of cheese. There's like a, for me it's finding those wedges, like where can you create a wedge and hammer it in and create impact and what's the angle you want to play as part of that. Not get too much visibility, as you say, you don't want it to be too, too visible, too big, too cumbersome.
And, and that might be to your point, thinking in journeys to go where in the employee journey is like one lens to go, okay, where are some existing challenges along? And there's plenty to choose from, as we know. Then there's also some of the data that you have available. So is there any engagement data? I think a lot of companies obviously have engagement data, but don't. the experience data. So actually, all their opportunities to maybe leverage the existing engagement data in it with in an experience led way. If that makes sense and create that bridge towards that in a way, potentially testing that with the customer at the moment. And so, yeah, I, or as you say, a particular population, it could be a graduate population, it could be interns, it could be, I mean, choose and then find, find the ways of bringing that together.
[00:19:36] Stephanie: Yeah, I think I had in my mind to talk about this a bit more later, but it's just too relevant now. It's like, find a problem to solve. Find a problem, often a talent related problem,
[00:19:48] Steve: Mm.
[00:19:49] Stephanie: that an experience focus can help you address. So, an example of that is, as you said, maybe low pockets of engagement, high pockets of attrition, lowering productivity, areas where attraction is really hard, and You therefore need to be very intentional about how you're treating a certain population in your organization, you know.
Where you have reputational risks, right? Because of unionization. Who knows? There's a lot going on in the world right now that means that many different parts of an organization could benefit from this. This, this, this new focus.
[00:20:37] Steve: Here's a balance to it, just, here's something to balance off you on this, so, hmm, there's one element that says.
Well, there's one side of me actually saying, do we need to show ROI with a walk stage project? And or is it more about showcasing the value of the work and way of working and its potential?
[00:21:09] Stephanie: I have a thought.
[00:21:11] Steve: go.
[00:21:13] Stephanie: So um, you know what you're trying to do here is you're trying to create demand,
[00:21:21] Steve: Hmm.
[00:21:21] Stephanie: You're trying to do a new piece of work that the rest of your organization looks at and says, Hmm, I want some of that. Come, come see me next. And in most organizations, especially if you're involved with if you're involving business leaders, especially in the current economic climate people are not don't have a lot of loose, loose cash jingling, jingling around in their pockets.
And they are trying to be very focused and, and, and, and, and by cash, I just mean, it also means focus or time, organization are trying to be incredibly intentional about what they take on and what they focus on. And so. Maybe your organization doesn't need an ROI, but in most organizations, if you do have the ability to speak about any kind of result that your work has driven, you have increased your chances, what feels like tenfold, to be hired on again.
So, that's kind of my take.
[00:22:32] Steve: Yep.
[00:22:33] Stephanie: Try and get it. Try
[00:22:34] Steve: Super valid. No, I mean, it's, it's super valid. 'cause I think there's the, that's the, the, the learnings in the doing with this work particularly. And of course just that the way of working and seeing people's faces when and the light bulbs turn on when they realize that the impact this work has.
So I think there's, there's an element of there, and of course it's so contextual to the organization, and of course, without a doubt, you want to bring ROI with this work particularly early stages in order to ask for maybe more budget and more resource to support in the future. How, this, just to kind of lean in a little bit more, Let's say you're new to EX or new EX function, or even you're somebody who's trying to convince somebody from a like a current state at zero, ground zero to moving them into a state of, okay, let's do a test.
Let's try something. So kind of winning, winning the hearts and minds of of those leaders to sign off on a budget to do something. And of course the hearts and minds continue to be one with through the work and the interactions. I'm curious on that segment of
[00:23:41] Stephanie: On, on, on the sell. How, on the
[00:23:44] Steve: On the hustle! The Hustle.
[00:23:45] Stephanie: It's, it goes back to tell them about a business problem you can help them solve, using an approach that they haven't tried before, and tell that to them in their own language. So, I know that we love talking about experience improvement and experience design, and we, and we love, we love talking about this with our own language, but I think meeting leaders where they are, knowing exactly what is top of mind for them as they, and, and this can be whether it's a business leader, an HR leader, know how to speak their language and pitch to them in their language.
And I think this is something that EX teams have to become. Master's at, like you need to know how to flex your talk track and your sales pitch depending on who's in front of you. Because, you know, the reality is, you know, you know the, you know the work is, is, is the same but you, you, you can position it in slightly different ways depending on who you're trying to get to buy from you. These, these EX leaders, they have to be, they have to be superheroes in so many ways.
[00:25:06] Steve: Totally. Totally. Yeah, I mean, it goes back to my, sorry, my point that we are Yeah, we're pushing up against an old paradigm and we have to, yeah, we have to adapt and be extremely nimble to that audience depending on where, and meet them where they are. I'm a big advocate of weave, the word weave, and, and meet people where they are.
It's one of our principles, yeah, come as you are, it's a big, big principle of ours. So let's kind of move into like we've got the kind of the walk element down like just get you know Given a sense of walk How do we move from like walk to run and actually what are some of the bridges? When someone is ready to move from walk into a run Piece and where they can start to stretch or expand that impact into the organization
[00:25:48] Stephanie: There's two things that come to mind. When, when we say stretch when EX teams talk about stretching their impact, one is to stretch type of experience improvement work they take on. So in new parts of the organization, new experiences, you know, new, new, new talent segments that for whom their experience are trying to improve.
And the second is the EX team starts thinking about how they no longer just. improve experiences, but enable many others to improve experiences in their remit, right? The EX team starts thinking, man, if we're really going to do this on a broader scale. I can't be the only team thinking about this in this way.
And so in the best scenarios, I've seen EX teams start thinking about this dual role of, yes, improving targeted experiences, but also evolving the organization's way of operating. To start enabling more key players and I'm happy to say, say more about that but it's like you've, you've started understanding that you have a dual purpose in life and that's how you start really Broadening your impact.
[00:27:16] Steve: Yeah, how does that move into, because there's this thing around practice and having the function and the role, etc, but how do we kind of move that beyond themself, I guess, outside into that, as you say, that way of working and because EX is a, is a culture and when we think about So. Think about, let's go back to CX.
You know, when you've got a mature customer centric business, like Amazon, certainly in the early days, they were obsessed and continue to be obsessed with the customer. Every decision they make is based on the customer, and the customer has a seat very much at the table. How do they get to that point, but actually, as you say, to start to move it into a more employee centric.
Business and a way of working and starting to create that opportunity to as you say using this run element To start finding the ways to do this. I'm just yeah, just curious to see like what's that mid step to this?
[00:28:18] Stephanie: you know, the first stage is starting to position EX in the minds of leaders across this organization as a value driver. That's what it needs to start doing, right? And in this next stage, what you're doing to really hook it in is to start being very intentional about a set of practices that you need to get really good at to create.
What we're calling an EX centric operating system. And by the way, this research I referred to earlier, in that research we revealed what are the sets of goals and activities that an organization needs to be really good at to systemically improve. And, you know, some of that includes not only understanding how to improve experiences.
But how do you start enabling key players? Just an example of that is, okay, let's assume that you want to enable the head of talent with the right way to improve the experiences in their purview more regularly. Some things you need to have done is you need to have found a way to help them understand what experience and experience improvement is.
You need to start equipping them with a, a new flow of data that they can use to understand how what they're shaping and delivering is in fact translating for people. You need to equip them with new An understanding for new ways of working, often rooted in human centered design, to make both incremental and big changes that will improve experiences.
You need to really clarify for them their responsibilities in this, and you even need to start thinking about how do you embed responsibilities for EX in people's objectives. Right, there's all these things that are about pushing this and making it part of the system. And, and so that's what you're trying to do, you know, you're trying to start I think I told you this before, like, I like thinking about the electric grid analogy, you know, you're trying to bring power to different parts of your organization, trying to turn the lights on with this new way of working, and it requires that you, you put in place a few things regularly across all of these parts of your organization. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a bit of what, what that
[00:30:55] Steve: it's really cool. Yeah, I like, I like the enablers you shared there. I think it's super valid. And I think finding those ones where it might be more of like a consistency of, okay, we have some core elements that we can push out and the business can support and utilize. But as you, to your point, some of the data flows are going to be very, very different based on the stakeholder.
And also how are they using those insights in a meaningful way. So yeah, quite the journey. Where are some of the kind of when you, from your experience, where are some of the biggest blockers to that in today's organizations to enabling some of that what you just described?
[00:31:34] Stephanie: You know, I think fundamentally there is still a very pervasive misconception of what EX means and that translates into people across an organization thinking, I'm doing this right. Like I, of course, I'm improving my people's experience every day. And so, I said there's a misunderstanding of what EX is, but there's also difference of perspectives and how you go about doing that.
And right now, I think the blocker is, people aren't commonly agreeing on what, what, what the approach should and could look like. And so, all these people across an organization, given their professional background, You know, whether they sit in IT, or in the business, or in CX, or in HR, thinking, Yeah, I'm doing my part every single day to improve experiences.
No question about it. So it's still hard for EX teams to come knock on their door and be like, I could show you a better way. And, and, and, and, and conveying that in a compelling way, that means people are like, yeah, I'm, I'm ready to come along. And, and that's something that I really enjoy helping EX teams do, because That, that, that is a common blocker that I'm seeing.
What about you? Mm
[00:33:06] Steve: Oh, good question. So I think there's, I think there's probably something in data actually. Yeah, I'm going to land in data mainly if I just kind of. Pull out for a second if we look at like the people analytics world, um, and we look at organizations say like Qualtrics who have on their EX product side has accelerated the last six, seven years, substantially in that area, having been very dominant in it in CX world for a long time.
Is a representation of how we're now capturing more data and utilizing people experience data and operational data in new ways. But I still think there's an awful long way to go, and there's still lots of organizations who, as we are making decisions very much on data, whether that's quantitative, solicited, unsolicited, through to qualitative data.
Also what, you know, what What level of pace we're also capturing, whether it's once a year, pulse or quarterly, monthly, daily, whatever it might be. There's still a lot of organizations that just run engagement, annual engagement data surveys. So it doesn't always have to be a survey, of course, but I think there's the lack of data right now is a hindrance in some organizations.
Because if we went in as an external. We would look to do qualitative research to get a current snapshot as is of the current scenario and situation and grounding those needs. That's cool, but of course when you're in the reality of then embedding to run, you've got to have a consistent, just consistency of data coming in.
And I think that's, that's a challenge because it requires investment, it requires a lot of competence. And then once you've got your people analytics competence in, then you need to get your leaders to actually understand it. Even in your people functions to actually be able to analyze that data in a meaningful way and draw the right insights for them.
So I know there's all sorts of maturity out there in the world, but I definitely see that as an area in lots of organizations that still struggle with that.
[00:35:18] Stephanie: I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. Like, in, in reality, the right kind of data fuels this, system, right? This continuous improvement loop. And I think you're right that a lot of organizations have data that is either too high level, You know, it's like aggregate sentiment, or it is qualitative and therefore not scaled.
It's just very deep and, and very insightful, but not for your entire population. And there's a new, new, new, new category emerging you know, that sits in the middle of these two, where you're able to get scaled human centered data with a very moment centric lens. It's a very cool thing, and you know, I love getting the chance to work with that kind of data in different contexts, you know.
Fount is a provider of this kind of moment centric data, and it just changes the game in how you equip and enable people with a consistent set of metrics that are about what they are shaping and delivering as experiences, so.
[00:36:39] Steve: Yeah, and are those, you know, those, you know, are we anchoring in the right measurements around this and, and you know, whether it's a dashboard or a, you know, a report that's been, you know, self, self driven, you know, quarterly, monthly, weekly you know, I've looked at sentiment data on a dashboard before many times.
It doesn't necessarily always tell you the why and I think it points, you know, I was thinking of it as a As a flashlight, you know, it narrows it down and gives you like a focus area, but you've got to go deeper And that requires that does require tactile hands on at times And that's that's another challenge sometimes.
So yeah, I I think the data is a big one for me Bit away, but AI I think is going to, already is making some waves in that. So, so we're in the run, and now we get into the kind of the fly and scaling the system. Just talk me through like the third stage when we are flying and say we're standing in inside that organization Steph and we're kind of going what are we what are we seeing what are we hearing what are we observing that's going on
[00:37:49] Stephanie: Okay. Picture this.
[00:37:52] Steve: I'm with you go for it yeah yeah
[00:38:02] Stephanie: HR, IT, CX, business leadership, there are more, but these are some common key, key players. You know, they fundamentally understand that, Improved experiences for their people is at the root of all downstream outcomes they care about. There is conviction, okay? They have clarity on the role they play when it comes to improving specific experiences. They are equipped with the data they need to understand. Whether what they are responsible for shaping and delivering, like tech, or process, or policy, or whatever it may be, is supporting a positive experience for people. They make decisions together, using this data, about what needs focus, what needs priority, what needs investment, when it comes to EX. They know when they can go improve something on their own, because it's within their remit. But they also know how to collaborate. to solve something that is inherently cross functional. They monitor whether the interventions they've put out into the world have moved the needle, and by how much, to then be able to incrementally improve that, and speak very credibly about the impact of their efforts. And they've tied the impact of those efforts to downstream customer, operational, and financial metrics. Oh, and by the way, they all have objectives they have ex metrics baked into their objectives and, and that's, that's, that's what it looks and feels like. That's, that's the dream. What do you think? Do you want to work in that organization?
[00:40:00] Steve: of course because you know what the outcome is Ultimately, the outcome is you have happier people and people are having a much more human experience. It means that the minute they voice something uh, a piece of feedback discontent this is amazing. Not all, all about the negative. This is all some of the good stuff that's going on as well as some of the challenges that that voice and those words are being.
Immediately extracted process used and leveraged to make the business better for people and the business. You know, the, we talk about voice of the customer, voice of the employee, and you know, the magic in all this stuff is how you react. And if you have a dedicated EX team that is acting on this stuff in a meaningful way, solving it in a human centric way, bringing value to those people.
And they sit there and observe and see that and feel it and experience it. How do you think they're going to be more productive? Or what value do you think they're going to bring to your organization? And it's there, I mean it's yeah. And then of course you've got a team that is bringing significant value into your organization from the senior leadership level.
I think that's, that's what I would see. And I would probably see, or I'd like to see some merch that says iHeart ex on the front in the in the business. So that could be quite interesting. That could be the, the internal ext merch that they could generate. But yeah, that's, that's what I would see.
[00:41:33] Stephanie: Love it. It's the, it's the North Star that I think we, we, we, we all can, you know, someone once told me like, it's important to be able to imagine that North Star, because I think a challenge that we've seen so far is that organizations want to excel at EX, but They're not all able to articulate what they're aiming for.
Like, they might be able to say, I want people in our organization to feel X, Y, Z, right? We've, we've seen those kinds of North Stars, but there haven't been many articulations of the North Star of how does that business operate?
[00:42:11] Steve: Mm,
[00:42:13] Stephanie: do you make that happen? What does an eccentric operating system look like?
And I think with clarity on that, you can start making real progress towards it. Yeah,
[00:42:25] Steve: Mm, I wish it was as easy as updating. Your Apple phone. Do you want to update your operating model? Yes, please. Done. Thank you. That would be nice and as simple, but as we know humans are the most complicated beings on this planet, so we don't make it easy for ourselves either. So Stephanie just to close off, just some thoughts around If you know, look, some of our listeners are going to be here, you know, they've listened to our words today.
Some have resonated more than others and they're probably sitting there with their own struggles and blockers and challenges. Any kind of recommendations or suggestions on whether it's how to walk, run or fly any elements that you'd like to just pull in or recommend from your
[00:43:14] Stephanie: yes, I think
[00:43:16] Steve: going to change.
Hmm.
[00:43:19] Stephanie: a lot of what you have to do through this work is to fuel organizational buy in. And doing that requires that you be very attuned to where your organization is headed and what your leadership cares about. So You know, chances are these days, your executive committee, your most senior management committee, is thinking about growth, is thinking about cost efficiency, is thinking about quality, operational effectiveness, productivity.
These are, these are some of the obvious obvious topics on the mind of senior leaders right now. And I think you, we all need to figure out, how to talk about EX in support of all of these things. In support, and not only theoretically, but describing what CX enables in quantifiable ways. And I've worked with organizations where we've We've created the case.
We've created the dollars and cents case of improving, you know, a specific part of the experience or, and that's, that's the key, right? Don't try and create one big massive case. It's often really hard to do it that way, but start tracing a line between what this EX Improvement Project can allow for in this part of your business and so on.
And so, I can't. Emphasize enough how much weaving EX in to I got, I got it. EX into the fabric of your organization matters and it's what will mean that leaders around you are saying, give me more. I saw the power of this and you're, you're changing my mind about. Just how relevant this is.
And in, in so doing, you're gonna be changing the lives of people who work for you, who work for your organization. You know, you'll be, you'll be improving the, the, the relationship your organization has with customers. You'll be improving your bottom line and so on and so forth. So, you know, make, make, make it clear.
Make it super clear what this discipline, the value that this discipline can. I have another final if I may. And this is for, for EX leaders and teams.
I've been thinking about this because I think so many teams that start off, start off with a, you know, a small mandate, small headcount, little budget, if any. In many ways, they're like just a little startup.
Trying to change the world and my advice to these small, but mighty ex teams is to dream a really big dream for yourself and for your organization. Because, yeah, you could, you could just, you could just do project, small project after small project of experience, improving that experience, improving that experience.
But You can do so much more for your organization if you think about your job as eventually being an orchestrator and, and a guide for the organization on its path to becoming more EX centric, more EX focused. And so don't be afraid to, to dream that for yourselves because inevitably an EX team will need to evolve and need to stretch.
So, knowing where you're headed and knowing what you dream of really matters.
[00:47:36] Steve: Ooh, that's a lovely way to finish this episode. Did you store that one up for the end of this? That was great. I love that. And you're right, I think a lot of, a lot of the teams are extremely small to start. But I love the dream big. That's a real drop the mic and and statement.
So thank you, Stephanie. Thank you again for joining. Amazing. And we will, I know we're going to continue our conversations. I know we've had brilliant ones even up to this day, and that's not even, Recording a podcast, just general chit chat and exchanging how we view the world of EX.
So thank you so much. I'm genuinely grateful. And yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[00:48:15] Stephanie: This was so much fun. I loved it. So, many, many, many thanks to you.