Sparks: Think Beyond Borders: How to Cultivate a Global Citizen Mindset With Solvay CEO Ilham Kadri

Sam Walton was the creator of Walmart and Sam’s Club, two hugely successful retailers that have been around for many, many years. He had a practice that he carried out for many years at the beginning of his career that we may view as simple nowadays, but it was extremely effective and, I think, something we can learn from today. Sam would take a yellow notepad and walk around his store. He would stop and engage with both employees and customers as he walked around and he would ask them questions--how’s it going? What is it like to work here? What do you find frustrating? What do you like about the store? He would then take his notes from these conversations to the leadership team and they would make decisions based on the feedback from the employees and customers. My question for you is, what are you doing today to replicate that practice? Where is your yellow notepad? With technology, of course, we are able to do this at a much larger scale. But it is important to be human, it is important to get face-to-face feedback and to engage both employees and customers to find out where we are succeeding and what areas we need to improve upon.

16 Maj 20192min

Amy Philbrook is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Fidelity Investments, a financial services company with around 50,000 employees. She’s been with Fidelity for 24 years working in almost every department. She started her career there in customer service answering phones. “Diversity is the presence of differences and inclusion is a leveraging those differences to create value,” Amy says. They are two separate things and you can easily have one without the other. It’s easy to feel included on a team full of people who are just like you. And you can have a very diverse team, but if you don’t create an environment that is inclusive and that encourages everyone to share their ideas, those differences won’t really matter. You have to have both diversity and inclusion. As the head of D&I, Amy works closely with the People Analytics team at Fidelity to make sure they leverage data in order to are make the best choices for the organization. “Data is the foundation for every decision you make in corporate America, and human decisions are no different. So working with the leaders in one sense means doing heavy lifting on people analytics and data analysis and then sitting down with the leadership team and putting that data on the table in a way that they can understand. And that motivates them to take action”. Amy shared an example from a recruiting issue at Fidelity that was solved using data analytics. They found that they had a challenge retaining women in their first year at the company, no matter what role they held or what experience level they had. After conducting interviews, analyzing internal social networks, and finding out what managers were observing they were able to pinpoint the issue, which was that in the first year at the company women were more focused on learning the job vs. building a network. Because they used data to pinpoint the main issue they are now able to work on a direct solution for the problem. They are currently modifying their onboarding process to ensure that everyone coming into the organization has a network of people around them that they can connect with and turn to for help. In a perfect world we wouldn’t need a D&I team because everyone inside of organizations would be focused on staying diverse and inclusive, but we do not live in a perfect world. When it comes to getting leaders to buy into the importance of D&I, Amy says she tries to say away from technical D&I language she talks in terms of business, productivity, outcomes, etc…”I think it (D&I specific language) comes with baggage that creates barriers that waste time and energy trying to get over them.” What you will learn in this episode: How to use data to improve diversity and inclusion in your organization Why she has stayed at Fidelity for 24 years Why everyone should care about D&I and not just leaders How to get leaders to care about D&I How Amy works with People Analytics to improve D&I inside of Fidelity Trends Amy is paying attention to Link from the episode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fidelityamyphilbrook/

13 Maj 20191h 4min

One of the common questions I have been asked in the past is, how do we empower our employees. For me the answer has always been about investing in employee experience. But lately I have been thinking about the root cause of this problem. Why do we need to empower our people in the first place? If you think about an employee’s first day at work, they are already engaged, excited, they want to be there. They are already empowered. The problem lies with us as leaders. We actually disempower our employees, not on purpose, but over time it happens. We bog our employees down with rules, regulations, policies, hierarchy, bureaucracy and other outdated workplace practices. And then once we bog them down and strip them of their power we ask, “how do we empower our employees?”. Instead of empowering them, we need to figure out how to not disempower them to begin with.

9 Maj 20191min

Having great leadership inside of an organization is critical. An organization can succeed or fail based on how it is lead. I’ve had some great discussions on the podcast over the years on this topic of leadership and today I’m sharing a few of my favorite clips. Garry Ridge is the President and CEO of WD-40. Garry knows a lot about leadership as he has been a leader inside of WD-40 for over 30 years in various roles including Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. He also co-authored the book “Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A”. Garry defines his role as a leader as “taking care of people” and he believes wholeheartedly in the concept of servant leadership. He says, “As we stand as leaders, it's our job to ensure that we have a viable strategy, we have a business model, we have resources, we have goals, we have all of the things that it takes to have a business that can perform. Once we've done that, we become the servant. And it's our job then to help people step into their best personal self every day” It sounds simple, but there are a lot of people who do not lead this way. Why? Garry says it’s because a lot of leaders are afraid to admit they don’t have all the answers, they are afraid of giving their people a lot of responsibility, and then cannot allow empathy to prevail over ego. Kimberly Samon is the Chief Human Resource Officer at Weight Watchers, now known as WW. She has been in the HR space for over 20 years, but she is just as passionate about HR as she was the day she started. Weight Watchers is evolving and modernizing and in my interview with her back in February 2018 Kimberly explained how they went from an industry in turmoil to one that is thriving. When it comes to the future of leadership Kimberly believes it needs to be less about command and control and more about giving people a purpose and helping them understand the impact they are having on the organization and the customers. People want to follow someone they trust and believe in, not someone who sits up at the top and barks out orders. She also feels that data will play a huge role in the future of leadership. She says, “We sit on a tremendous amount of data that can be so powerful to our consumer particularly as we refine our approach on personalization. We have a saying here that consumers want us to “show me that you know me”. How do we take all of this data and really turn it into something that is personalized to the consumer, to our members? From my perspective, I'm thinking through the same on how do we do the same for our workforce? Is there a world in the future where everyone doesn't have to have the exact same benefits or everyone doesn't have to have the exact same work schedule? I don't know we haven't done a lot work on it but I do believe with the advent of all the data analytics we can craft some pretty specialized programs not only for consumers but for employees alike.” Clay Johnson is the EVP and Chief Information Officer at Walmart and Jacqui Canney is the EVP and Chief People Officer at Walmart. With over 2 million employees, Walmart is the largest private employer in the world, so as you can imagine it is a huge challenge to be able to retain, train and upskill that big of a workforce. One of the things we touched on during the podcast interview back in December 2018 was how leaders can balance shareholder value and doing what’s right for the employee. Clay and Jacqui both agreed that treating your employees well and equipping them with the tools and resources they need have a direct correlation with shareholder value---they aren’t two separate issues. Jacqui says, “What drives us is that shared value concept and having our associates have the benefits, the training, the education, the wages that are market relevant in leading in many ways that's how we differentiate as winning. So we talk about our people make the difference that's absolutely what we believe and I think that you'll see that people talk about companies and they say our people are our asset. Our people are our company and investing in our people is investing in our company and I would say if you look back at our results, since we made that public announcement around where Wall Street kind of dinged us on the share price our results continued to climb and I do believe because we are providing a better customer proposition but that's because our people are better equipped with the tools, the education, the training that they need to serve the customers whether it's online or in the store” What you will learn in this episode: How Tracy Reinhold became the Chief Security Officer at Fannie Mae and what he attributes his success to How Peter Walmsley addresses employee engagement and performance reviews at GSN Games How the leadership model at Lego has changed and why Why focusing on shareholder value alone is a bad thing How to get leaders and managers to buy into change What skills and abilities WW (Weight Watchers) is looking for in leaders for 2025 and beyond

6 Maj 20191h

AI and Automation is still at the forefront of so many conversations that business leaders are having. And the core issue that continues to be the main focus of these conversations is whether we are going to create more jobs than we replace or vice versa. I have a different concern when it comes to AI and Automation. My concern is, are we going to create jobs that people actually want. What if we are able to create enough new jobs to make up for those replaced by technology, but they are jobs that people hate. What if they are jobs that make people feel like cogs? What if these jobs leave them feeling disengaged or undervalued? Are these jobs worth creating? So the conversation I think we need to be focusing on now is, how do we create new jobs that people actually want to have?

2 Maj 20191min

Ashley Goodall is that SVP of Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco and the author of the new book, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World. Prior to Cisco, Ashley spent 14 years at Deloitte where he worked in several roles, including Director and Chief Learning Officer, Leadership Development. When conducting research for the book, Ashley and co-author Marcus Buckingham found that a lot of the “basic truths” people think they know about work are actually not true at all. These nine lies that they found are based on data and evidence from the real world of work, it’s not just an opinion or a philosophy. These nine lies found in the world of work are: People care which company they work for The best plan wins The best organizations cascade goals People are well rounded People need feedback People can reliably rate other people People have potential Work life balance matters most Leadership is a thing If you are like me, reading through the list you may be surprised to see a lot of statements that you have held as truth for many years, even decades. But as Ashley went through and explained the reasoning behind why these statements are lies it made complete sense. Taking number one as an example, people care which company they work for, it may seem like an obvious statement. But the truth is people don’t care what company they work for, they care about the team they work with. The experience inside of a company varies from team to team. Ashley says, “We discovered at Cisco, I mean I think this data point is the one that sort of puts the whole thing into a fairly sharp focus, if you go from one of our 50% most engaged teams to one of our 50% least engaged teams, in other words, you pass the sort of median point of team engagement in a downward direction, your chance of voluntarily resigning from Cisco goes up by 45%.That's an enormous, enormous, enormous difference. And the point is, of course, as you go from a great team to a horrible team, you're still working for Cisco, so if it were true that you cared which company you worked for, that hasn't changed. But clearly, every time what trumps this idea of company is team.” Another example is number eight, work life balance matters most. We hear a lot about work life balance, but Ashley says it is an unattainable idea and the phrasing is deceiving. Saying work life balance implies that everything about work is bad and everything about life is good. And trying to keep a perfect balance between the two is fragile and stressful. “More useful is the idea that whether it's in work or in life, there are certain activities that fill us up, that rejuvenate us, that express who we are as people, where we want to make our biggest mark on the world. Activities that replenish us, activities that express, if you like, our love for the world around us, and that it's not really work life balance that we should be after, therefore, it is love loathe imbalance. We want to intelligently work throughout our lives to create more of the activities that we love, and fewer of the activities we loathe, whether that's at work, our outside work.” So what is the purpose of the book and redefining the workplace truths? These lies cause dysfunction and frustration inside of organizations and they keep leaders from achieving their true potential. By identifying and addressing these lies in the workplace our organizations can function more effectively and our leaders can be more successful. What you will learn in this episode: Ashley’s role inside Cisco The nine lies about work that we generally accept as truth The data and evidence Ashley and Marcus used for the book The 3 problems with the annual performance reviews and what Cisco is doing instead What makes a good team leader

29 Apr 20191h 11min

Most organizations set aside specific time to appreciate employees. Sometimes it is one day a year, sometimes once a month, but it is usually sporadic. Usually it consists of one day a year where the company provides food, games, activities, prizes, etc… to celebrate their employees. But I believe everyday should be employee appreciation day. Not necessarily having a party everyday, but doing things to show your employees that they matter and that they are doing a great job. Something as simple as having an open door policy for a set time every single day as a manager. What would your organization look like if you treated every single day as a People Day or an Employee Appreciation Day? Would this make your organization a place where your employees want, not need, to show up? How would it improve the morale, productivity, happiness, work ethic and atmosphere in your organization?

25 Apr 20191min

Thomas Kochan is the George M. Bunker Professor of Work and Employment Relations at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and co-director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research. Thomas has actually been a faculty member at MIT since 1980. In 2010, he led the formation of the Employment Policy Research Network, an online think tank on the subject of employment. In 2015, he was honored by the Aspen Institute with a Faculty Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award for his research and teaching on business practices that contribute to an economy that works for all. Thomas is the author of Shaping the Future of Work: What Future Worker, Business, Government, and Education Leaders Need To Do For All To Prosper and Restoring the American Dream: A Working Families' Agenda for America. Thomas has been looking at the future of work and employment for 40 years, he has seen the workforce and the economy change quite a bit over the years but he says our policies, values, and practices in America have not kept up with that pace of change. It has been his lifelong work to advocate for innovation, policy changes, and updated workplace practices. Since the 1970s there has been a disconnect between how the economy is doing and how the average worker is doing. Prior to the 70s when productivity went up and the economy got stronger, the compensation for the average worker also went up. But now, Thomas says, due to deregulation, the rise of Wall Street, a decline in unions, and advances in technology we have a disconnect. We are still using the policies, practices, and social contract of the 50s and 60s, which no longer works. Thomas says it is critical for organizations, educational institutions, government, and individual employees to engage with each other and work together to build a new, updated social contract. We’ve got to invent new policies, practices, and institutions as we move forward and shape the future of work. When it comes to the future of work, some people are worried about the future of jobs. They are concerned when they hear about automation, AI, and other technologies because of the effect they will have on jobs and the economy. Thomas is optimistic, as long as we are proactive in shaping the future of work ourselves and we don’t just let the future happen to us while we sit back passively. Thomas says, “If we are proactive, we can shape the future of work in ways that really help to broaden the distribution of benefits, augment work more effectively and change the way in which tasks and work, our jobs are done rather than to just see it as a way of displacing labor. And then for those people who will be displaced, and there will be people whose jobs are negatively affected. We then have to figure out how we can help them just provide retraining or provide compensation so we don't have a big gap between the winners and losers in this race with technology. So our perspective is let's get on and let's talk about what we can proactively do to shape the future of work. And I think it's a healthy way to approach this issue.” For people who are worried about the future of work, Thomas’ advice is to be a lifelong learner, don’t just put your head in the sand and think you have a degree so you are good for life. That is no longer good enough. He also says it is important to have a mix of behavioral skills--be reliable, be flexible, learn to communicate well. If you need training in a new technology or program, speak up and be assertive. What you will learn in this episode: Big trends Thomas is paying attention to The changes Thomas has seen in the world of work over the past 40 years What we need to do to move forward and shape the future of work What leaders will need to adjust in order to be effective in the future of work What is the voice gap and how can we close it What does lifelong learning mean and how can you practice it Whether Thomas is an optimist or pessimist when it comes to the future Contact Info https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-kochan-898ab917/ https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/thomas-kochan

22 Apr 20191h 8min