112 | Disrupting Norms - How to Make Work More Likeable | Greg Offner Jr.

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

So instead of worrying, if you're an HR professional listening, instead of worrying about how do I make my place the best place to be? How do we keep 'em, keep 'em, retain, retain, retain? How do you become the best place to be from? How do you become the organization that everybody wants on their resume because of where it helps them go?

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. You are very, very welcome back and thanks for joining us. Before I forget, because I always do, I always think you must say this at the end and then I forget and you might have gone by the end, which I hope you won't be. Please give us a 5-star review and a bit of a comment on Apple. It really does help and it's really very, very much appreciated. Also, as I always do, big thank you and a shout out to Workvivo, our friend and supporter. They are up to about 20 or 30 episodes now that they've sponsored, and we are very, very grateful to them for their support. Um, if you want to find out more about them, you can hear more a little bit later, or you can pop along to workvivo.com. So today's guest is very interesting, um, describes himself as a keynote speaker, a former dueling pianist, most recently the founder of the Global Performance Institute where he helps to transform employee experience, or as he said himself, as we were just chatting before we came on air. He's the guy that takes the irk out of work, and I quite like that. And I'm going to start using that, Greg, if that's okay.

Please.

You're very welcome. How are you getting on?

I'm well. I'm well. Thanks for having me here.

No, listen, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Listen, let's kick in, as I always say, we always do, by letting you tell the listeners maybe a little bit about you, your experience, and what you do now.

Sure. Well, as you mentioned, I'm a former dueling piano performer. I've played at on 5 continents at piano bars all over the world. I like to tell people, from Vegas to Paris, Manhattan to the Middle East, I've entertained audiences of all walks and all sizes. Um, and that really filled my cup in terms of passion and purpose and enjoyment. And all of that ended in 2015 when I suffered a pretty severe vocal cord injury. Doctors were concerned that not only had my singing career ended at that point, but I may never speak again because of the damage. It was so pervasive and they were worried that if I didn't make immediate lifestyle changes and undergo surgery, my vocal cords would become permanently paralyzed in about 2 months. So I had some choices to make at that point in time. And as we started to go on and on with the surgical procedure and the vocal recovery that follows and the vocal therapy that follows, they realized that the first surgery was only the beginning. And over the course of a decade, I had 15 surgeries to repair and rebuild my vocal cords. And during that process, I ceased to be able to perform at the piano bar, but I also couldn't perform in, in my day job. You know, the piano bar is very fulfilling and rewarding, but not financially rewarding enough that that could have been my only gig. And so during the day, I had a day job, but I couldn't keep up with that either because I had to speak and communicate in that job, and I just wasn't able to. So there I was, failing at the things I loved and the things I needed, and feeling sort of out of place and hopeless. And a mentor came into my life, a complete stranger, that suggested if I got my voice back, would I consider that maybe all of that experience I had gleaned throughout life was best put to use on stage serving others? And that idea hit me like a bolt of lightning. I got chills the moment she said it, and it was just one of those Yeah, yeah, that's it moments in my life. And so I began plotting my escape from corporate America and my new life. And, and now for almost 4 years I've been delivering speeches, many of them virtually because of the pandemic, but now we're back in person, coaching and consulting with individuals and organizations to do, as you said, to help them take the irk out of work. There's this schema that we have that work sucks and that work has to be work, and that there's work and then there's play, and work is work and play is play. And the thing is, that's bollocks. It's bullshit. It's, it's not true. Work is 8 hours, if we're lucky, of our life every day. And not everybody gets to do something they love But couldn't she at least like it? I mean, what's wrong with trying to make work a little more likable? And so that's what I do. I take these principles that we used to implement in the world of piano bars that got strangers to engage instantly, organically. We weren't paying them, and yet they became our choir. And I bring them into the world of business. And over the last few years, I've been doing research as I'm, as I'm writing a book right now, which should be ready in early 2024. And I've been interviewing business leaders who have taken those principles without knowing that they were piano bar principles and put them into place in their business and to phenomenal effect. And so what I'm able to do now is say, look, this is what I did at the piano bar. And I model that behavior in my keynotes. We actually bring a piano along. That's a lot of fun. I say, this is what we did at the piano bar. This is what's being done in the world of business. And then I provide a framework that leaders and even individuals, 'cause I, I believe everybody's a leader. You lead the person you see in the mirror that they can take back to their organizations or take into their own daily life and implement to take the irk outta work.

Nice one. Nice one. And I think what's, what's really interesting about that is, and one of the things I wanna focus on in today's conversation based on the chat that we had before was particularly around change, because I think it's change. In organizations that cause a lot of that irk coming in on a Monday morning. I don't think anybody ever walks into work on a Monday morning thinking, "Gee, I wonder what's changed. I'm so excited to get going on the change program." That's something I don't think has ever happened ever. So, when we think about that change that happens in organizations, of course, people are at the heart of that change. And that whole idea that organizations don't change, people do. Of course, at the core of that change is disruption.

Yeah.

Is disrupting the norm of what people do every single day of the week. And tell me a little bit about why you believe that's so, so important to disrupt that, that norm.

Well, I mean, I can tell you what happens if you don't. I mean, I'm living proof of that. I mean, my work experience prior to losing my voice was all about me trying to avoid change. My day job was my day job, and the goal every morning was to not get fired. My night job, a little bit different, you know, but my daytime experience was that of, I think, so many people around the world, that work kind of sucked, but it was supposed to because it was work, and the goal was to make as much money as possible with as little effort as possible and not get fired. Like, that was it. You make as much doing as little and hope nobody notices so that you can keep on with that. And the problem therein lies that change is how we know we're alive. Throughout this conversation, at a cellular level, you and I are changing. Just the act of breathing in and breathing out, the cycling of air, that means that we're alive. But so many people aren't living in a metaphorical sense at work because they're trying to remain as steady and as constant and as unchanging as possible, and they want to keep everything that they've got, and they're unwilling to let go. You know, I, I mentioned I have a 2-year-old daughter and we just started her in swim lessons. And the first step to swimming is letting go of the side of the pool. And in an organization, the first step to change is letting go of what is so that we can embrace what can be. The problem is our brains are wired to hang on to that side of the pool. Our brains are actually wired to avoid loss. Even at the cost of something we could gain. Because if we take this back, you know, from an evolutionary perspective, our brains were wired so that we made choices that kept us alive. Don't die. That's our prime directive. Don't die. Second directive: make more human beings, right? Procreate. But imagine that you're in the process of procreation and you see a bear. You're going to run. You're going to stop the procreating and you're going to run. You're going to vacate the premises because we got to Follow priority number one: don't die. If we die, we can't procreate. Now, having a little bit of fun with that analogy, but let's bring it back to the work world. Don't let go of what we have because we see that as death. It doesn't matter that what's on the other side could be better. Our brain is still wired in that ancient way so that we go into work and we think loss equals death. And until we rewire our brains, or if you're a leader, until you help your people learn these skills, understand the psychology that's going on, we're going to have this. Even with the best processes, whether you use Prosci, ADKAR, Six Sigma, doesn't matter how many certifications and designations of change management excellence you have, you got to get past the psychology of change. That's the biggest problem facing organizations today.

And I think what's really interesting is, and it's a great point, that all that work that William Bridges did around change, and he talked about kind of helping helping people to put the past to bed, to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but actually to give them an opportunity to say goodbye to the past, almost like kind of in a funereal kind of a way, as if something has died, rather than just expecting them to get on with the change. We have to let the past go before we can get on with starting to create a new future. And I think that's really aligned with what you just spoke about there.

Yeah, so much of the therapeutic process is helping people let go of what happened so that they can embrace what will happen. And, you know, many coaches and consultants are effectively business therapists. I mean, in many ways, that's our job, is to help people address these issues at work.

So why then, why is that disruption so important when it comes to a work context, when it comes to the, the context of, of organizational change, which is people change ultimately. Why is that disruption so important?

Well, the quick answer is because most businesses aren't creating real disruption. They're creating what I call interruption. You know, they're effectively making decisions that are like television commercials. What I mean by that is the commercial interrupts the thing you were watching and the thing you're going to go back to watching, and it's really quite irritating to most people. That's why TiVo became a huge business and why I think Netflix took off and all these other things. Uh, the commercials are really annoying, and most business initiatives, these little pet projects that managers and directors and VPs and everybody else creates, they're just interruptions. It's just going to go back to the way it was in some shape or form. I mean, think about This idea— we went from offices to this open office concept, which everybody knew was just the worst. I mean, you— wait, you want me to sit at a cafeteria table with a bunch of other people? And now, lo and behold, all of the research is reinforcing what we all knew 10 years ago, that it sucks productivity out of organizations. And so we're moving back to offices. And even remote work— workers have been more productive over the last 2 years because they could do it from home at their own space, in their own pace, without being interrupted. So people actually crave productive change or disruption. And it's important to define disruption. Most people, when I ask them, can't. They, they say, well, it's, you know, Uber, right? Disruptive technology. But how do you define it? Well, I define disruption as a change that sustains and sets a new standard. And it's really important that we understand that it's a sustaining change, and probably more important in that definition is that it sets a new standard, because not every change sustains forever. You know, at some point we went from those little old, uh, I think of them as like Mary Poppins because of that old movie with Julie Andrews, you know, the phone that you put the one part up to your ear and you sort of ring the bell and, you know, hello operator, connect me with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You know, like we went from those to corded telephones to digital dial pad telephones to cell phones. Well, neither of those— none of those transitions lasted forever, but they all set a new standard. We're not going back to rotary phones. We're not going back to the old put it up to the ear and ring the bell phones. We're only going forward. So how, as an organization, do we create true disruptive change? So that each one sustains and sets a new standard. I'd argue that that open office concept I mentioned was an interruption because we're going back to closed-door offices. It didn't, didn't set a new standard for anything. It was just an interruption. And so that's why people come into the office and go, oh God, what's going to happen today? What are those idiots up in the ivory tower going to concoct, come up with next? Because we're creating these interruptions and not true change.

So, if we believe that organizational success is based around disruptive change and that actually building on that, it's not organizations that change, it's people that do, then knowing your people, knowing what your starting point is when you're trying to bring people on that change journey is really, really critical from my perspective anyway. I know that you've created this idea of 3 archetypes, 3 employee archetypes, the keeper, the leaper, and the sleeper to try and kind of bucket up those 3 types of people. Tell me about each one, tell me about their strengths, and tell me how best you can address them and bring them on that journey. Yeah.

So a bit—

I'm sorry, that was a very, very directive question. I'm sorry.

I should have said at least, I should at least have said please. It's a very hard pivot though from talking about disruption to these archetypes because they're related. But I think it's important you talk about people changing And people have to be engaged in the organization to start with for that change to happen. And right now we see 79% of employees are disengaged in some form. They're either actively disengaged, which is kind of like, you know, open rebellion, rebellions, you know, like guerrilla warfare tactics in the office, or they're just passively disengaged, which means they're not trying to upset the apple cart, but they're not trying to help pull it either. So When I started working in piano bars— let me tie these two themes together— when I started working in piano bars, one of my first mentors told me the most important skill that you can, can learn and develop is to read the audience. Yeah, being a good piano player helps, being a good singer is nice, being able to play all the different requests you get, that's great. But if you can read the audience and understand what they want, what type of experience Do they want the wild, wacky, crazy piano bar guy, or do they just want some soulful tunes? When you can understand that, you can rock any room. That applies to business because I don't really think many leaders spend a lot of time learning how to read their audience. In fact, it's very telling when you ask a leader what their leadership style is. There's only one right answer: whatever my subordinates need. We need to be able to flex to meet the demands of our audience, whether we're a piano player or a leader in business. And I've learned working over the years in piano bars that there's 3 archetypes within an audience, and I've seen that those archetypes also apply to business. And so, as you mentioned, those archetypes are the Keeper, the Leaper, and the Sleeper. Simple to remember. Let me explain what they are. The Keeper You're probably thinking, okay, I bet I know what that is, Greg. That's like the A employee. Yeah, we think of those as like rock stars, you know. Those are the folks that we want to keep on our team. At the piano bar, they're our regulars. But there's also a different type of keeper— not necessarily a rock star, uh, but a rock steady, you know, or rock solid. They're the folks who, they don't want to get promoted, they don't care about blowing out last year's number but they will consistently deliver, and we need them. A lot of times those might be the receptionist, somebody in accounting, somebody who's not necessarily a, uh, you know, sales contributor, but who is vital to the operation of that organization. And so Keepers are very important archetype. What they want is as little friction in their job as possible. Your job as a leader is to remove unnecessary friction. Help remove obstacles that make their job unnecessarily difficult. Then we've got the Leaper. The Leaper in the piano bar were the bachelor and bachelorette parties, the, the corporate parties, the folks who were there for a good time but not a long time. And we had to understand that, you know, trying to get them to stay all night and waiting them out with requests, meaning they put a request slip on the piano and we We push it to the side and hope that they won't leave until they hear their request. So if we make them wait another 15 minutes, they'll stick around longer. Uh-uh, that pisses them off. Give them what they want, let them have a great time, and then understand they're going to leave. But what we saw happening, they would go to other bars, and people naturally want to gravitate towards big parties. Hey, what are you guys doing? You celebrating a birthday? Oh, that's cool, let's buy you a shot. You know, where were you tonight? Oh my God, we were at this piano bar, it was amazing. We would start to see business come in later in the night because they'd heard about us from those leapers. And this is really valuable for business leaders to understand. There are folks in organizations right now who aren't there for a long time. Their, their goal is not to retire from your company. They, they probably don't even want to stay there more than 4 years. In fact, according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, most new entrants to the workforce are only staying 2.9 years at an organization. Then they're moving on. Instead of trying to convince them, oh, you should stay here, make a career, this is great. If you stay another year, we'll vest your stock or you'll get promoted or we'll do— help them make the leap. They're there to build career capital. But what happens when they leave is they start to talk, just like our bachelor and bachelorette parties and our leapers. Your leapers go out and talk and they are your unofficial brand. And talent ambassadors out in the marketplace. And when they tell people how well you prepared them to make that leap, all of a sudden your recruiting department starts getting phone calls and emails and inquiries and saying, I heard about you from so-and-so and I want that. So instead of worrying, if you're an HR professional listening, instead of worrying about how do I make my place the best place to be, how do we keep them, keep them, retain, retain, retain? How do you become the best place to be from? How do you become the organization that everybody wants on their resume because of where it helps them go? Then we've got the Sleeper. Hi, I'm Klyna from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from. For more, see workvivo.com.

Just to build a little bit on the leaper, it's, it's, it's, it's such a well-made point, and I just don't think that organizations today are built for that 2.9-year average tenure. They're built for 5 and 10-year average tenure because their processes, their systems, you know, when you think about somebody coming on and doing onboarding and their training, well, yeah, you know, we'll put you through, you know, a day of training every week for the next 6 months, and that's your onboarding, and then by in 6 months' time, you're really good to go. That's a quarter of the time you're going to have them, potentially a little bit, maybe a little bit, a little bit less. So organizations have to think very differently about their systems and their processes in order to get into that mindset where I've been saying to our clients, you've gotta work out what you need to get from people when they come in, what you're going to give to them before they leave, and completely rethink the process of what that looks like rather than going, oh God, these Gen Xs, these Gen Ys, these millennials are coming in, they're only staying for 3 years or 2.5 years, it's a right pain in the neck. Well, it is what it is.

Mm-hmm.

So suck it up, do something about it, and change the way you're doing things to be able to take advantage of it. And as you say, make them amazing advocates for your business when they go to their next job.

It's a flip. And if you think about, you know, I, I mentioned Uber earlier, and, and this probably is a, a, an apt analogy for everybody. If you think about the way the taxi business used to operate, it was very convenient and set up well for the taxi business. They took the calls, They routed to the taxis and eventually the taxis would get there. And if you were an unhappy customer, you had to call again and, "Where's my taxi?" And call again and, "Where's the taxi?" And eventually hope the taxi gets there. Now you're in direct communication with the driver.

Hmm.

Organizations need to be more like Uber and less like the taxi service. It's not about what's convenient for you as a company. It's about what's valuable to your talent. And if you deliver that, they will deliver what's valuable to your company. And this is all, this is all on the back of that shareholder supremacy model that, that really corrupted business over the last 30 or 40 years. But we're seeing that now it's stakeholder supremacy. We have to deliver value to stakeholders. And, you know, Simon Sinek wrote a book called Leaders Eat Last. Maybe I should write a blog post called Shareholders Eat Last, because I think now instead of the shareholder being paid first, we need to acknowledge that the shareholder is who should be paid last, and the employee needs to be paid first because they're creating the value for the organization. Then in effect the customer is paid second because they're reaping the benefit of whatever product the organization is providing. And if that's done well, the organization has profit left over to reinvest in innovation and new products. And if that's done well, the shareholder gets money. And if we do it any other way, it breaks. It breaks.

Yeah. Yeah. So tell, so I cut in on you. Tell me about the sleeper. Tell me about that third archetype.

The Sleeper is that 79%. They're the people who are disengaged, but it's not uncomfortable enough that they need to leave. And so they just, they kind of go to sleep. And we see that at the piano bar. You know, I always joke and I say it's the guy who's dragged in by his wife, which, oh honey, let's go to the piano bar tonight. He's just sitting there on his third Miller Lite, you know, he's like, oh God, when can I leave? And I used to dread those people in the audience because Damn it, nothing's worse as a performer than looking out there and seeing somebody who just doesn't give a damn. But then a mentor came along and said, you know, Greg, I get that you're paid to be here and, and play the songs, and I understand your perspective that, well, if you're playing the songs and nobody else is coming up and giving requests because they're kind of asleep out there, well then just play the songs you want to play and that's great. He said, but I wonder if you'd be open to trying something on your next break. Maybe just go out and talk to some of those people who aren't paying attention. Introduce yourself. Maybe they don't know the protocol. Maybe they've never been here before. See if you can make a connection. And I'll be damned if I didn't start doing that. And all of a sudden, those sleepers woke up. I learned who they were, where they were coming from, what I could do to create an experience that would engage them. And this is the challenge that, that leaders have today. Is to go out and speak to those sleepers, to make a real connection with them. Not just, hey, uh, Frank, listen, we're gonna need to figure out how to get you motivated here. We're gonna have to put you on a performance improvement plan. That's corporate bullshit. Talk to them as a human being and find out why they're here. And there are some questions that leaders can ask their people to figure out: are they a keeper? Are they a leaper? Are they a sleeper? And those questions are going to be in my book. But I'll tell you, you know, one real, real easy one is What is it about the work that you do here each day that lights you up inside? And if there's an uncomfortable pause, there's a good chance you're not talking to a keeper.

Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. It's a great point. And actually, I love— and it's not about— I don't think any of this is about labeling people. It's not about labeling keepers or labeling lifters or labeling sleepers. It's about just recognizing that different people are coming from different places. Places and are on the journey and are therefore, they're going to go on different routes, they're going to take different journeys, they're going to take different paths and trying to work out as a leader, which person is taking which path and how you can therefore best support them.

Yeah, listen, you can, a leaper can easily become a keeper. Somebody who thinks they're at a place to build career capital can easily become a keeper just by answering one question. When you make that leap, what will that allow you to do? If I, as your leader, understand what you think is going to happen to your life or to your career by making that move, and I can show you that actually we can get you there faster here, you're going to stay. You're going to stay. But many times organizations get the sense that somebody is, you know, itching to leave, or they're trying to jockey for some sort of career capital, or— and they just, they shut down. It's that old mentality of, well, you know, if I invest in them and they leave, all that money walks out the door. But the truth is, we're seeing boomerang employees— that is, employees who leave an organization, get some experience somewhere else, and then come back a few years later— we're seeing boomerang employees grow in number. This is happening more and more, that people are going back to companies they used to work for because the grass wasn't greener. That's— that money returns to you. I mean, that's the way I look at it. Any investment you make in people when they're with you is an investment you're making in the community, because the skills that we develop in employees don't just— they shouldn't just stay at work. They shouldn't just be job-specific skills. They should be skills that make people better, because as you said earlier, Organizational change is really people change. Well, organizational growth and success is really individual growth and success. How are we helping the people within our organizations become all they're capable of being? You know, the innovation director of a company here in Pennsylvania, his name is Bruce Cohen, um, company works for is called CSG. He believes that by investing in their people, we enable those people to make an investment in us. And I think businesses right now, the reason that they're having such a hard time with the Leaper mentality is because they're selfish. They're managing to the quarter. They're wondering, what can you do for me? What have you done for me lately? And all they have to do is flip that mentality from scarcity to abundance and say, look, there's plenty of talent out there. There's plenty of time in the world. What can we do to make you a better you? Because as those people grow and develop, they reinvest. They reinvest where they are. And whether that's your organization or the community that you serve, we all get better together.

Yeah, for sure. It reminded me when you, when you said that line there about what if we, what if we invest in them and they leave It reminded me the flip side of that, which was an anecdote from years ago. Well, what if we don't invest in them and they stay?

And, and that's your sleeper, and that's what's happening. 70%— 70% of millennials say that they would consider taking another job right now that offered more training and development.

Wow.

86% of those millennials want more training and development from the place they're at now.

That's an easy fix.

Easy fix, isn't it? And yet, according to the Association for Talent Development, right, like the largest training and Development Professional Association in the world. In the US anyway, employees spend less than 40 minutes a week developing new skills. What's— I think that's like 1/100. I'm not a math major. It's— I think that's 1/100 of a 40-hour week. Maybe it's 1/10. Either way, some—

something. Neither of us are math guys.

Pretty terrible number when you think about the flip side of this, right? So You're probably a football fan. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. I like ice hockey. On average, elite athletes spend only 20% of their entire career in game time scenarios. 20% is actually spent performing on the field. 80% is in the gym training, at practice, working out. We are so ass backwards in the corporate world that we spend 90% of our week working in game scenarios and only 10% sharpening our skills. What if we just flip that just a little bit? What could we achieve? I think a heck of a lot. That's why I get passionate about talking to organizations about this stuff, because it's not a huge change that you need to make. It's a really small shift that produces a tremendous impact on the outside.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Yeah, and I think what the incredible irony of what you just said there about people would stay if they got more learning and development opportunities. It would probably cost an organization less to provide those learning and development opportunities to make that person a better version of them than it costs them to replace that person when they leave. Just, just leave that hanging in there for a second. You know, that, that's insane. Isn't it? That's absolutely insane. So, invest the money in the learning development, invest the money in making your people better, and you'll get it back in spades. Absolutely. When we talk about change, so we talked about the change journey going on change, and it's people that change and not organizations. And I think often in change, and again, this is something we spoke about before, we try and, and I talk about vision and I talk about North Star and I talk about purpose. And often in change, we talk about what will be, what are we going to get when we get there? What's that going to look like? Like. But what we were talking about before I thought was really interesting was, you know, the importance of talking about what won't be. Why is that so important?

Well, we're loss averse, right? We're loss averse, so we're always concerned about what we're going to lose. And instead of minimizing that, the way to combat— you know, what do they say, the, the best cure is sunlight? Yeah, or something like that. The best way to address the fact that we're loss averse is to address the fact that we're loss averse. So talk about what's not going to happen anymore. Bring that to the forefront so that the conversation can be had. You know, Brené Brown, uh, says that the— it's calling— it's called rumbling. We have to rumble. We have to have a tough conversation. Leaders can't be afraid to rumble with their people. We need to have those tough conversations, those candid conversations about what won't be. And then create the space to say, so what do you think? The one of the biggest enemies of corporate change is lack of context. And so many times people feel they don't have any context for the change. And maybe that's because leaders want to protect their people. You know, maybe, look, you don't need to know this, you just need to know that. But we live in an information age. I can go on Google, I can go online, I can find out almost anything. Why can't I find out the context for this change at work?

Yeah, it's tough. And I think about— when I think about that context of change and then I extrapolate that out into these— and we were just before we came on air, we were chatting about that difference of kind of lots and lots of micro changes versus the big giant transformational change programs that many organizations go through and are going through. You know, when you think about those those big giant transformational programs, they run over months and years and years. And an IT system upgrade for a bank could be a 10-year gig. I was at a, it was interesting actually, I was at a conference yesterday and the strategic HR director from NASA was one of the speakers. And he said, we've got a huge problem because people that were working on the Artemis project, which has just been deemed successful because the rocket went up and it went around the moon, they're now all leaving. That was a program that ran for 10, 12, 15 years, and now all those people are going. But I wonder from your perspective, when you talk about that context of the change, how do organizations and leaders keep people engaged on those journeys that maybe do last 3, 5, 10 years? What can they be doing?

So, I have mixed feelings about this, yeah. Because on one hand, many of those people in the project are probably like the Leaper archetype. So they accomplish that project and now they want to move on to the next thing. And the challenge that you, that you so aptly bring to the surface is that organizations want one thing, but they want to do the other. And I'm probably overgeneralizing here, but, you know, so many companies manage to the quarterly result And yet they want employees to take the long-term view. Well, in 3 years, I mean, it's like in the States we have a road called 95, and if anybody is on the East Coast, they're laughing about this. Like there's memes that go around that say, treat yourself like 95 and never stop working on yourself because it's like it's this expansion project for this road has been going on since I was a kid. It's like, take the long-term view of that, but we're going to manage your costs to the quarterly short term. There's, there's an incongruency there. There's an asymmetry and that needs to be addressed if we're gonna keep people engaged. We have to set meaningful wickets of progress measurement and then reward them for meeting them. There's a principle in my keynote that I talk about called discretionary incentive. Me playing a request that you put on the piano is discretionary effort. God, it's hard to play Bohemian Rhapsody if it's just me hitting those high notes. Oh my God, that's— I'd really rather play something easier. But if you request it, I'll play it, so long as that request is accompanied by something, at least here in the U.S., green and presidential. You know, a little, little bit of money, you know what I'm saying? Discretionary incentive. When we want our people to maintain focus on multiple projects or take on additional responsibilities, where's the discretionary incentive? It doesn't have to be a pay raise. There's a concept going around right now called gain sharing. Which is to say that, you know, let's say you and I are part of a division, and if we're able to manage our costs or keep our costs, you know, 10% below projection for the quarter, we're not going to take that money and divvy it up amongst the team. We could, but what if we take that money and say, all right team, you were able to generate this savings, what should we spend it on? There's 3 initiatives that we've been looking at, what would you like us to work on? Oh my God, now you've given your employees autonomy, you've given context, and you've given discretionary incentive. If you want to keep people engaged for the long term, you have to make it worthwhile for them to be engaged for the long term. And for most people, it isn't. Cost of living increases are crap, but if you jump ship, go to another company, you can get a 10 or 20% salary increase. It's, it's sort of, it's sort of like the cable companies are willing to drop their pants for new customers, but if you're an existing customer and you want a bit of a decrease on your cost, hey, good luck, pal. That doesn't make logical sense. So providing context during that long-term change is important, as we discussed, but providing incentive for staying with it is important too.

Yeah. And that, and that needn't necessarily always come from the company. I mean, you talk about discretionary incentive, managers have discretionary spend. So actually it should be okay for me to say to you, Greg, that you really pulled it out the bag this week. That was an amazing bit of work you did on the project. You know, really got us through the gate. Why don't you take your partner out for dinner? Why don't you take a day off? Why don't you go to a ball game? Here's a couple of tickets that I got given by a sponsor and look, you take them and you go and use them. And actually it's those little things, almost those little acts of kindness that actually in the eyes of the recipient aren't all that little. They're actually quite big. And that can make a difference, right?

Yeah, well, and I would argue that that is the company. I mean, the manager is the company, the director is the company, the VP is the company at all. So, you know, culture shift starts from the top, but it often stops in the middle. And so that needs to be endorsed and expected at all levels of the company. Almost like when I worked at a bar as a bartender, we had a spill and a regular tab. Spill meaning, oh, I knocked over a drink, I made the wrong thing, I was busy not paying attention. So you don't just let the liquor go unaccounted for, you put it on the spill tab. Then you also had a regulars tab, which is, hey, you're in here all the time, drink on us, thanks for coming in. There should be an expectation that managers are spending a certain amount of money catching their people doing something good, to use that old cliché. But that has to be endorsed by the organization. Otherwise, it's only the very few managers who I would actually call leaders or coaches that take the initiative to do that themselves.

Yeah, it needs to become a norm, and it needs to become a norm in the organizational culture.

Yeah, but to your point about, you know, the tickets I talk in my book about this idea of habituation, uh, or adaptation as it's more appropriately called. And there's something called hedonic adaptation, which really means that, um, we get used to something good and then we need more of that good thing to get the same dopamine hit, to get the same feeling. Yeah. So if you get a raise, it feels good today, but in a couple of months, that's— it's just your salary. It is what it is. And now you need another raise, probably a bit bigger raise, to feel good about it again. But experiences are funny because experiences don't fall prey as easily to hedonic adaptation, which means that this month I could give you tickets to dinner and a show, take your family out, and next month I could give you tickets and it would still have that same hit. You would still feel good. And the memory of that experience stays with you longer because it's an experience, not a commodity. So organizations that are leveraging this, for example, incentive travel— you're a top performer, I'm sure you're getting paid well, but in addition to all that, you're getting a 4-night trip with your other top performers where they take you on excursions and give you experiences that you couldn't buy on your own. That goes a long way towards long-term retention engagement. And I think more organizations, you know, there's a great association called SITE, the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence, and I think more leaders and organizations should be aware of the things that you can do in terms of incentives that aren't cash that go a long way to celebrate your people.

Yeah, brilliant. Greg, you know what, we've run out of time, and I'm looking forward to receiving my tickets for a game and dinner with my family, um, so I'll be checking the mailbox in the morning. Thanks very much. Um, if people want to, uh, read or, or know more about you, what's the, what's the best place for them to go?

Yeah, go to my website, gregoryoffner.com. You can hit me up on all the major socials, I'm there too. But, uh, the book, like I mentioned, will be coming out early 2024, and I'll start to tease little bits and pieces of that on social media, uh, in the coming months. So, you know, connect with me, let me know what ideas you heard today that resonated, let me know what ideas you heard that were full of crap. I I want to know, I want to have the discussion. I think it's important.

Brilliant. Listen, Greg, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks a million for joining me today.

Thanks, Scott.

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