What's Love Got To Do with Business?

Ciao. We are going to go to Watford. I know it seems strange to be saying ciao when we're going to Watford, which is just in North London, but today we're going to be talking to a professor of marketing and we're going to talk about what love has got to do with it. We're going to talk about what love has got to do with your business. Because when you run a business where you take into account stakeholders rather than just bottom line or triple bottom line, you're going to get an improvement in performance. But it's not that easy. So if you are struggling with how to build love into your business, my guest today is going to give you some amazing, amazing insights. We're joined by Dr. Bruno Roque Signaco.

Bruno, thank you very much. I feel very honored to be here. Thank you for the invite. Thank you again.

Well, thank you. Because you've got a new book, it's just come out and we're going to talk about the Art of Compassionate Business, which is your book published by Routledge. So well done. You've got an established publisher and we're going to talk about the importance of compassion and how we can, if you like, dovetail that with the need for profits as well. And what happens if people don't take into account building some love into their business, into their relationships? Because for most people, that's not really taught about or even spoken about much, except for maybe in CSR practices. So, Bruno, help, help me, my fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. You know, why do we need to put love into our business when really what we're worried about is profits and cash?

Very interesting question. Thank you very much. When we talk about love, there are two connotations of love. The traditional connotation of love we use in a sentimental way. For example, when you say love to your friend, your family, relatives, and then we have a humanistic connotation of love that can be applied to business activities. And this humanistic connotation of love includes compassion, care, generosity, gratitude, support, empathy. And why is so important this type of love we call humanistic aspect of love in business? Because the most important factor in business is not technology, it's not money, but it's the human being. It's about relationship. The pillar of any business project is relationships. And there is a very important principle that most companies should know that is that you cannot succeed in business without building strong, long lasting relationship with different stakeholders. This means mutually beneficial relationship with different stakeholders. Internal stakeholders such as management and employees, and external stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, community members, why they are so important? Because anything in business is interdependent. If you care for this relationship, these stakeholders tend to act in a reciprocal way. They tend to support your company, they tend to recommend your company. Customers will leave positive reviews online instead. When you are not caring with this stakeholder, when you are uncompassionate, when you are uncaring, when you are unsupportive, when you take advantage of these stakeholders, in many cases, like some companies do, these stakeholders are against you. You want these stakeholders on your side. You want this stakeholder to contribute in a positive way to your company. Instead, when they are against you, the opposite happen. Your profit tend to go down, market share go down, and obviously the workplace become messy.

In this day and age, Bruno, where most of us don't even see the people that own a company, or we don't even meet the employees, how do business owners manage to demonstrate that they have compassion for their employees and for their community and for their customers, when really most of us are separated by technology from the stakeholders. How do you do that?

Technology is very important. It has a positive effect, make things easier, quicker. But technology can, in my view, my modest view, can never replace the humanness of a workplace, the humanness of a relationship with customer or any other stakeholders. So this means that technology can be useful as a tool, but will never replace the human aspect. And it's important to understand that all stakeholders have needs. Most companies tend to focus on the economic needs of a stakeholder. For example, an employee, the company will try to pay a good salary, or customer, they will try to offer a good deal to this customer. However, we have to understand that there are other human aspects, such as emotional needs, mental needs, social needs, spiritual needs that need to be addressed to build this strong relationship with the stakeholders. What I observed in my consultancy activities that most companies tend to focus on what we call quantitative aspect of business, what can be measured, what can be counted, such as profits, market share, productivity. But there are aspects that we call qualitative aspect of business, what cannot be measured, what cannot be counted? There is a philosopher that observed, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. So we have to focus on this qualitative aspect of business, which include empathy, camaraderie, loyalty, commitment, support, that cannot be measured in a precise way. Why so important? Because when we nurture these qualitative aspects, these relationships become stronger. They become stronger over time, more robust. And these stakeholders are more prone to support our company in our business journey. Instead, when we don't nurture this relationship, these stakeholders tend to withdraw. They tend to switch from our company to other companies. For example, in the case of customer or employees might leave the company because they don't feel at ease, they don't feel supported. So nurturing relationship with the stakeholders bring about positive key performance indicator. Why? Because these key performance indicators are the natural result of solid, sound, robust relationship with these stakeholders.

Bruno, that's a really comprehensive reply as I'd expect from you. From a practical point of view and I know you do consultancy and you go into companies as an entrepreneur, if I've bought into the idea of needing to be compassionate and maybe I'm already giving, you know, paternity leave or paternity and paternity leave, maybe I'm already allowing people to bring their animals in to work, maybe got a comprehensive program for customers to come in and discuss their issues. Can you give some practical tips of the kind that you train business owners on which help them to make a culture of compassion rather than tactical implementation of compassion acts?

Yes, tactics and strategies are important, but my book is more focused on my activities on consultancy in this area are focused on principles. Some important principle that companies should take into account is for example the principle of generosity and gratitude. You can create a much more compassionate workplace when you continually encourage gratitude. This means that for example, an employee has been working hard over time for many months. Well, you can demonstrate your gratitude if you are the manager in a very simple way. Maybe a personalized sign, thank you notes and maybe organizing an event, a public event to recognize and acknowledge this employee publicly. And also maybe also giving some economic incentive like a bonus. But employee will also appreciate this emotional recognition. This means being grateful, being connected to them and making them feel that they counted, they count and they counted, they are valued. Another point will be generosity. Generosity will say oh, many companies tend to focus on getting. We want more market share, we want more sales, we want more customers. This is getting. But there should be an equilibrium between getting and giving. Companies that are very generous, like Google for example, give away a lot of products. They give away Google Translate, Google Maps and so on. And they're very successful. So by giving away you bring about a positive cycle. For example, let's put in a in a very specific case, so how you can be more more generous supposing that the employee has been very committed to this company. What you can give, you can give tangible things like a bonus, but also you can give an ear. You can listen to these employees concerns, you can give some coaching, you can give Some mentoring you can provide this employee with technical training or technical advice. You can provide employees with contact. For example, I have a case of a company during the pandemic that were fighting the employees and this company recommended their employees that were about to leave the company to a competitor. This is incredible. So this is an act of generosity. Because generosity, according to research, begets generosity. When you are stingy, when you try only to obtain and not to give back, well, you are hindering the flow of economic prosperity.

BRUNO I love that. So this idea of, as you say, giving people time, giving them some recognition and making them feel human, especially in this day and age where people are working remotely and not connected with their team, is especially important. Why do companies not do this? Bruno because we're all humans. We've all got families, friends. And yet somehow the implication is that we go to an office or we run a company and we're different. We're not that warm hearted, generous person that we might like to think that we are. What happens and what There are many reasons.

I can mention a few reasons, but there are many. So one of the reasons is the lack of time. So, for example, you see some companies that have very tight deadlines. They encourage people to multitask. They don't encourage people to have non business conversations that are good to know each other. Because if we're working as a team or we're working in the same space, we need to know each other personal level. But also, in many cases, companies cannot foster a compassionate attitude because they are full of fear. This means that technically speaking, we call this company they lack psychological safety. This means that employees feel unsafe. They're always triggered by their fight, fly, flee mode. And they are continually fearful of making mistakes, fearful of innovating, fearful of sharing information, fearful of losing their jobs. How can you be compassionate when you are fearful? They are incompatible emotional states. So this means a company should approach and analyze the workplace and see, is there any fear in this workplace? If so, how can we make this workplace much safer, much more supportive, so that people can express their ideas without fear? And when the psychological safe workplace is developed, there is research on this, people tend to become much more innovative in much more innovative idea, tend to become much more productive. Why? Because they like to share resources, they trust each other. Psychological safety bring about trust, higher trust.

BRUNO Having run my own businesses for nearly 30 years, my experience is that when cash flow gets tight, emotions run short, tempers get frayed. We do then focus on the short term, meeting payroll, paying rent, and then we start to notice when people are not pulling their weight. We notice when customers are delayed or customers are asking for more than we should give them. How do you advise that we break that pattern of. You could call it almost sort of a reducing balance of compassion, you know, because you get into a bit of a downward spiral. Yes. When you head down that path. So how do we break out of that cycle?

Very interesting question. So very simple. Because when you have, for example, a potentially negative event or perceive as a negative event, for example, drop in sales, this is a potentially negative event. You can frame in two ways. You can frame in a negative way. This means that it's a loss for the company, we cannot do anything, Everyone will get defeated, and this will create a negative cycle. And, well, cognitive psychology will say that you can frame this in a different way. This might be an opportunity to try other strategies to build a stronger relationship with the stakeholders, to analyze what we are doing wrong and try to offer higher value. So this means instead of framing as a threat that will trigger naturally the freeze fight fly mode, you put this as an opportunity, an opportunity to grow, to strengthen the relationship with stakeholder, to do things differently, to converse with customer what they want. Okay, if they're dropping sales, there might be some customers are not happy. Can we do a survey to check what we're doing wrong? Can we be humble and admit that there are things that we can improve? Also, humility, framing things as an opportunity implies that you are expanding your mind and expanding. You have what we call expansive emotions. So you are much more positive. And when you are more positive, you are more prone to discover alternative views on an issue, more innovative course of actions.

Bruno, you've touched on a point there around being positive and being optimistic. As the entrepreneur, our own personality traits and our own behaviors of course impact the rest of the team and by extension, the community, the partners, the customers, all the way down the stakeholder chain. What's your view on how entrepreneurs should deal with that? Stress? Because it's a sophisticated emotion to look into a situation and say, oh, I can see this is going wrong. I'm going to be compassionate. Today most of us say I'm compassionate. I'm the only one working hard. I'm the only one getting up on a Saturday morning worrying about this. At that level, Bruno, how can you guide us?

In the book, I included a full appendix on stress and business activities. And I find that the stress is one of the most important hindrances to becoming compassionate. How you can approach this on a practical level? Well, very simple. Most companies focus only on business activities, but they don't have any type of activity that we call non business events. Some companies changing their approach, they're introducing within the work time some activities like mindfulness, yoga, meditation. In the case of Google, they have places that the employees can have a very small nap, for example 30 minutes nap to recharge their energy. In some cases the company tries to surround the workplace with natural environments so that the employees can take a walk during the break. But also encouraging. I mentioned also in my book there is a full chapter on playfulness. Companies that are very productive tend to encourage playfulness. And you can say oh, playfulness is related to irresponsibility or lack of commitment. And so no the opposite. When people in the company organize, for example once a week or once a month, activities that are playful, where people can connect to one another on a social level, people recharge this energy. They are less prone to become stressed when they face challenging situations. Why? Because they have this escape valve. They have this type of activity that they can resort to and they feel connected to others. Not only on a role level because also this is a very limiting way of connecting to other manager subordinate. But we have there two human beings that in many cases they have been working for years without knowing each other on a personal level. So this type of activity, playful activity transcend this role masks that many companies only focus on and they, they help people connect on a human level, human level.

And I think Bruno, one of the things you've mentioned there is is the company could organize. But yes, my experience is that it can be more powerful if the entrepreneur lets go of that and asks people in the organization to organize it right to. If I democratize the playfulness and get other people involved in deciding what they would like rather than the entrepreneur feeling they've got a pressure to create a whole new playfulness activity. For example. What's your view on that?

Yeah, both are correct. Depending on the companies in the. But what we have to understand that the company, the manager can organize this. Employees can organize this depending on the culture of the company. But also there are companies outside any organization that are specialized in this type of activity. You can research online and you will see that there are companies, for example that they have like said, treasure hunt, they organize for other companies this type of activity and they're very successful. Big companies are using this type of approach. We're talking about the top 100 companies. So this means that there should be something interesting to discover. Playfulness is so important because people when they come back, they feel refreshed, revitalized, and they know each other in a different way. There is like an alchemic effect. So it means that people relationship are transformed because you don't see them in the same way. When you connect on a personal level, they're not only their managers or your managers, but also they are human beings that you have similarities because most people focus on differences in business. But we are human beings with fears, expectations, dreams, setbacks. And this type of activity help people connect on a. On a more personal level, mental and emotional.

Bruno, you've mentioned sort of fears and anxieties and one of the fears and anxieties that many people have right now is about AI supplanting them. And I'm just wondering what's your view on how AI is going to impact people's desire to be compassionate? Whether people feel as though actually a lot of these members of staff I've got now or even suppliers are not going to be even part of my business in a year to two years because I'm going to replace them with AI. What's your view? You've written this book, the Art of Compassionate Business. What's your impact of AI on the compassionate business?

Yes, in the book I talk about technology in general that include AI. And what I say is that technology is important. AI is important, a very important tool because make things easier, quicker might replace some tasks that were done manually before. But in practice up to now, we cannot replace yet the humanness of the human contact, the human touch, as many specialists will call this. For example, if you talk to a bot that is AI driven, it's not the same as if you connect to a customer on a personal level, see their body language and try to understand their emotion, how they think, their fears. So this type of hot connection, much more intimate connection that you have with the stakeholders when you connect to them on a personal level and you obviously iterate, means that you engage in a real conversation and you understand their fear expectation and you try to support them in a kind and empathetic manner. I haven't seen that this was developed yet by AI. Maybe in a couple of years we will see this. And also technology and human touch complement each other. So this means that you can use technology to, for example, for researching or to for example, develop a nice design. But in practice I find this difficult, that this will replace, at least in the short term, the humanness. This means that the human connection, we connect to others, we try to support them. Compassion implies that you understand also that Others have difficulties. So this means. And you try to understand it on an emotional and a mental level and you try to support them in a kind way as much as possible.

Presumably, Bruno, as humans ourselves running companies, we would like compassion, you know, towards, towards us as well. So that dictum about getting a culture built that we thrive in ourselves makes a lot of sense that it's compassionate. As you say, humorous and introducing. Play is something that we don't really think about too much, especially when times seem to be getting tough. But actually of course play is probably is free. Right. So it's actually a very cost effective way to motivate people. Bruno, can you just tell us you're an author yourself. You've got two books, you've got the Art of Compassionate Business. You've also got another one, the International Marketing Fundamentals for Small Medium Sized Enterprises. Can you give us an example of a book that you have found inspirational that's by your bedside?

Okay, well, I have the. This book in front of me. The Marketing Imagination is a classic book is on marketing. Theodore Levitt, I consider one of the most relevant marketing gurus. I feel that this book even is old. I have the original edition didn't get outdated. These are we call perennial books. These are books that get even better with the time like the good wine. So I find that if you can find, you might find a very affordable copy online. I recommend because it's, it's delicious like a good, like a good dish in a fine restaurant.

Bruno. Because you may hear actually Bruno's accent because he's Italian but grew up in Argentina and now lives in Watford. So he's. He's plainly gained his appreciation for fine wine by living in Watford. Not for the rest of his history. Bruno. And also as an author yourself and you're coming on podcasts, can you recommend a podcast that you think is useful?

I listen to different podcasts. Well this podcast I listen to this podcast is very good. I recommend listeners too to keep on listening to this. Thank you very much. And also another podcast that I listen to is Andrew Huberman Podcast is a Huberman Lab podcast that talk about not about business activity, but talk about much more. The human being from the neuroscientist perspective. Talk about motivation, they talk about emotion, physical fitness. Very interesting because they give you actionable tips. I think that is worth listening to.

Bruno. We'll check both those and the Huberman. Yes, I've seen that come up on my Apple podcast recommendations. More and more of these amazing podcasts exploring these topics like the Compassionate Business. If you want to find out more about you, Bruno Signacho, how do they find you?

Well, they can check my website, www.bunosignaco with double C@the end.com or they can find me on LinkedIn. I have a couple of followers, 21,000 followers. And also they can find my book online. They are to compassionate Business. They should check that. This is the second edition. It's a white cover and has been launched in December 2023.

Wonderful. Well, thank you for introducing some amazing topics around compassionate business. We don't really talk about it in the sort of cut and thrust of talking about technology and systems and processes and vision. You've really brought us back to a human centered topic today. So, Bruno, thank you so much for doing that today.

Thank you very much. I feel very honored to be here.

Thank you. Well, we're honored because you're a learned man and you've really brought us back. And one of the reasons that Theodore Levitt, which is a book I read when I did my postgraduate degree in marketing, Theodore Levitt had his book, I think then as part of our course book, is that some aspects of marketing are evergreen. Right? There are some basics around human psychology, human motivation, but also around human spirit, around the desire for compassion, for the need for recognition and the idea that as an entrepreneur, as a founder, you're responsible, you're the guardian of the culture of your business. So we have the responsibility and the opportunity to build the environment that we want within our companies. And it's based on compassion. Then as Dr. Signarco has told us today, Aangshi will have better staff retention, we'll have better customer loyalty and ultimately our business will survive and thrive into the long term. So thank you for joining me, Jim James, today with my special guest, Dr. Bruno Signacco, and talking about compassionate business. If you enjoyed this, do please share a link with a fellow entrepreneur and leave a review on the player that you listen to this show. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.