Doing Business in a Chaotic World PART 3: What We Can Learn from the NYT Connections Game

Well, you know, it's funny. So by the way, I'm completely aligned with you. I love that because that's my— it, it fits in with how I think about things. You know, one of the things we've seen a lot since— I felt like during COVID people were really good at giving each other grace, right? Where no one knows what the other person is dealing with. No one is quite there. And, and sometimes even when we're working for a company we believe in, we love our colleagues, we're family. Sometimes we say things that we shouldn't say. You know, we just, we've had that week that's been really tough with our child and we didn't tell anyone we had a bad week. So our fuse is short. We're not, we're just not, we're not at our best. And one of the things I'm trying to figure out is how do you help people keep having this space of giving grace Yeah. And, and, and keeping and keep moving forward through the challenges when people's fuses get short. Have you seen a lot of that in, in, in as you're, as with what you're doing and any ideas, thoughts on that?

So, so there you're highlighting something beautiful and it, it, and the one, and the reason I think it's beautiful is because what, what lockdown proved to all of us is that deep down inside, we know what to do. Deep down inside, we have the innate ability to know how to treat someone in a time of stress and uncertainty. And it goes for leaders as well, right? Whether someone was a good leader or an ineffective leader prior to COVID, overwhelmingly, we saw people pick up the phone, call their team one by one and say, "Are you okay?" You know? And when somebody's kid ran through the room on a Zoom call, we smiled instead of got frustrated, right? And when somebody was stressed out, we had it in us. We knew what to do. And you're right, we kind of fell back into the old rat race of it all. And so, the good news is we have it in us. We know what to do. We know what right looks like. But I would go further to say that you get the behavior you reward. And so, if we're rewarding people to pile through each other, you know, and sometimes accidentally, we offer commission structures or whatever that encourages bad behavior, then we have to reevaluate those. And there are informal recognitions and rewards that we can give to the person who shows the most grace. I'll give you a real-life example. I'm a great believer in peer recognition because when you work for what is the traditional recognition system, it's everybody working for one person's approval., right? My boss, right? But, and, and that, that plays one role. This, this is a, it's about a blended model. It's not either or, it's both. So there's a, there's a, there's one company I'm thinking of in particular that does peer recognition brilliantly. And what they do is they say, please nominate someone with whom you work. And it doesn't have to be, can be, you know, just in the whole span of people you work with, right? Who exemplifies our values more than anybody else. And, uh, who you want to be more like, right? Um, and you have to write an essay. You can't just like send in a name on an email. Like, you have to put in a little effort. And there's a committee of volunteers that reads all the essays, interviews all those people, and then they will select someone who they believe best represents their values more than everybody else, as chosen by their colleagues., and they have an all-hands meeting to announce it, and they read the essays that describe this person, and, uh, one of the things they do, which I think is magical, is they secretly fly their parents in and keep them hidden until the name is announced so their parents can see the kind of human being they raised that everybody admires and loves. There's always tears. Nobody's ever angry. It's like, they're like, he doesn't deserve that promotion, I do. Nobody's angry that somebody won this award. Everybody aspires to is excited and aspires to be like that. And it is rarely the top performer, right? It is the person who allows the space for the top performers to perform at their best. They're not underperformers, right? But they're the ones that are really good at just making sure everyone feels taken care of, that allows the grace and space for the rest of us to work harder because we know someone's got our back. And here's the joke. What they do in this company is they, they own a sports car, like a fancy sports car, and they give them a certificate and they let the person drive that car for one week. And that's it. It is such a deeply emotional recognition. There's no money that comes with it. There's no promotion that comes with it. There's no bonus that comes with it. It's a little bit of fun and the symbolism of this car., and that certificate that says, people like me, I'm valuable here, which makes me work doubly as hard. So there are wonderful, very sophisticated systems that can do this, um, um, that don't revolve around the traditional incentive structures we use. Um, and, and it's— they're very emotional and very symbolic and very powerful.

We actually have a peer-to-peer recognition system that we have called Eastars. And if we look in our turnover data, and if we look at people who stay, or people who talk about their experiences, that those who get more recognized by their peers are happier working here than— I mean, it's, it's, it's almost like empirical data that shows that, that you've got all that happening and seeing what's there. So again, just another reinforcement point for us. Okay, I've only got 2 more questions because I, since we started a little late, we're just going to go a couple more minutes. So I promise not to keep you too much. But one of the things we've been talking about a lot is the importance of curiosity in and asking questions and being a learner. And I love asking questions. And I'm just kind of curious how you see. I'm curious. That was not intentional, by the way, that I just said that. I am just wondering. How have you seen curiosity as you've talked about the infinite game or people's why or how that all fits together with curiosity?

And curiosity is one of my favorite leadership attributes, right? And it is valuable on so many levels. One, those who are curious know that they don't know more than they know, which means they have genuine curiosity to get other people's points of views. They may not agree with them, but they want to hear them, right? I'll give you a real-life example. We do— I don't know if you ever— do you know Connections, which is this game on the New York Times? You know, I can't win very often. Okay, so you know what it's like. You stare at these words on the grid and you have to find the patterns of 4 of them, you know, at a time, and you stare at them like, I— what? And it takes. It can take a day, it can take hours. You make mistakes. We do it as a group. We're done every week perfectly with no mistakes in about 30 seconds. And it really proves that when you get different points of view and different eyes on, the speed at which you can solve problems is, is kind of amazing. So curious people are genuinely interested what other people see, right? What other people have learned. That's number one. Curiosity is the best way to give feedback or to find out what happened if something went wrong, as opposed to just attacking somebody. Like, hey, what happened? Like, that thing kind of went sideways. What happened? Versus, what did you do? Right?

Right.

And so curiosity allows for grace. It's also much— curiosity is also good for team building, as opposed to— so here's an example. Right? It's, and it's, we create narratives about people on our team. Oh, he's lazy, right? Oh, he, he would stab his own mother in a back, in, in her back to get a promotion, right? We create narratives about people and it's really dangerous when we do it in, in leadership. When we talk about our teams, like, oh, there's Dave, death of a party, right? Like, ugh, right? 'Cause what ends up happening is that now that narrative becomes the narrative for all of the people on the call. And now we all treat that person like they're lazy or like they're a two-timer or like whatever it is, right? And so curiosity interrupts that. All it requires is one person to say is, hold on, hold on. They may be lazy, that may be true. Or maybe we've put them in a job they don't know how to do. Maybe they're stressed out about something we don't know about. Maybe they're not properly trained. Maybe they're tired. Maybe they're scared. Like, we don't know. It could be lazy. It's on the list, but there are other things on the list as well. And that idea of curiosity allows for all the other things that we want to see in a company— grace and empathy— but they all start with curiosity. So yeah, curiosity is magical. It has so many wonderful, wonderful, wonderful things. And you start finding solutions in different companies. And like, I stopped reading my own trades and I started reading articles about other companies, and I found out that I was making— I was finding better solutions for what I need to do about reading about people that did nothing that I did because they found solutions to common, common human problems or common logistical problems, even though it was a different industry, because I was curious.

I love curiosity. Um, and I— connections is one of my hardest things that I try to do, and I get so excited when I win. I'm just gonna say it feels so good, but it happens.

It's a finite game. There's a beginning, middle, and end. It is a finite game.

I do feel like I have to win. Okay, so I, you know, it's kind of like, it's also like playing Wordle on the same New York Times thing, right? I like that too.

That's a game of luck.

That is a game of luck. I agree with that, by the way. Let's bring it home because I know we've gone a little over because we started late, but you've done work with some amazing companies, some amazing people. You know, you've learned a little bit about Eaton.

Also some not amazing ones, but yes.

By the way, there's always a mix. And kind of knowing what you've learned about Eaton and hearing where we are, you know, what are some thoughts you'd leave us with? What are things you'd want us to be thinking about based on all you've seen and learned?

So I think there's, first of all, there's a humanity that underlies your company that I love, right? That I've already learned just in the brief interactions with you and the way you've described the place that you live. I love that. Like any large public company, you're going to have those stresses of the short-term shareholder-driven decisions that will frustrate you at the front line where you're actually dealing with the customer. How you mitigate those tensions, I think, is an opportunity. But those tensions definitely exist. I think one of the things that I would challenge you on or push you is when you talk about your why, It's more of a product description, right? It describes the value of the product, but it doesn't describe the value of your culture. Now, if that is built into your culture where you're striving for the same things for each other as you do, you know, through— and it's just a nice coincidence— then have at it. But for me, when I think about a company's why, that foundation, it sort of describes their culture, which is you know, which is why I love working here is because of this, that is disconnected from the product or service we sell. And so the question I'm asking, and it is a question, is, is that distinction clear? Is it a description of a value of a product, or is it a description of what makes our culture a magical place to come and visit? Because the more you can understand the latter, the more you can continue to build upon it and amplify it.

You know, it's interesting. I said to you when we first talked that one of the differences of a sales, you know, we run the sales organization, which is different than running a product division because for us, our product is people.

Yeah.

So we're about how do we build great people because we have great people in the front who then help us sell all these things. So when I think of we make what matters work, the truth is I think to make what matters work means we're building the people. That's all about that culture piece. So maybe in my mind, I do connect those things, but I'm not sure other people who are in a product division would think of it that way because it's really tied together from my, from where I sit about how important our people are to get where we need to go and to win.

Well, language matters and language is the, is communication is the language of leadership. 'Cause words and actions, I mean, that's all you got, right? And so the more that you can be explicit about things and never assume that people understand it the same way you do. So if we work hard to make people feel like they matter, then they will build things that have way more impact in the lives of our customers and our customers' customers, right? So the more that you can, that you can, you can, It's the same reason we have to stage a house. You know, like you go visit a house that's for sale, it's never just empty, right? They put fake furniture and fake pictures on the wall because they know that if you walk into an empty house, people are like, "I don't know." But they put fake furniture and everybody's like, "Oh my God, I wanna live here," right? Because people have no imagination, right? So you have to stage, You have to stage the house. You have to put it into such clear words that there's no mistake about what I'm trying to tell you here and make no assumptions that they can imagine their own furniture in an empty space.

I can assure you, I'm one of those people who needs furniture. I have no—

Most people do. Most people do. And if you're one of those very few lucky people who doesn't, you can get a better deal.

There you go.