Human Empathy in the Age of Automation with Bryan Kramer

Foreign.

Hi, I'm Susan Drum and welcome to the Enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to Meritage Leadership to learn more. And if you are interested about your own path to development, take our free 5 minute quiz for enlightened leadership@susandrum.com to discover your superpowers and the roadblocks that could get in the way of effective leadership. Today we're focusing on human to human philosophy and how sharing powers the economy. And I'm happy to introduce Brian Kramer, called the Zen Master to digital marketers by Forbes. Brian Kramer is a renowned business strategist, global keynote speaker, executive trainer, and two time bestselling offer and Forbes contributor. He is co owner of Pure Matter, a Silicon Valley marketing agency, and CEO of H2H, an executive coaching company. Brian's first book, There Is no B2B or B2C. It's Human to Human or H2H, started a global movement about humanizing business through simpler communication, empathy and celebrating our perfections. And it sold over 15,000 books. And his second book, Shareology How Sharing is Powering the Human economy, made the USA Today's bestseller list and sold over 40,000 books. So welcome Brian.

Wow, what an intro. Thank you so much. I really appreciate all the nice things and it's wonderful to meet you.

It's great to meet you. And we were just talking a little bit about where you live. Share with us the interesting decision you made. What was it, about 10 months ago?

Yes, we made the decision to move to Lisbon, Portugal. My wife and I, we became empty nesters the year before, not far before that. And, and we looked at each other and we said this is our window of opportunity if we ever had one. Parents are semi okay and there's no grandkids that we know of on the way, so let's, let's do something. And, and we looked at each other. We sold everything we owned down to 13 bags in our dog, went through the visa process which could be a whole nother podcast. And yeah, we, we had our, our alignment conversation about how we were going to approach it together and what we're going to get rid of and what we're going to leave behind and what we're going to let go of and how we're going to move into a new country and be with that. And I remember we got here and we eventually arrived and I, we slept on an Ikea mattress because the place had no furniture and our bags and our dog. And I walked out in the back patio and I went, oh my God, what did I just do? And from that, I can honestly say though, from that point forward, every day got even better and better and better and better. And I am just pinching myself for what we get to do and how we, how we pulled that off. I'm really proud of us. So I was wondering what you learned.

About yourself in that process.

Oh, man, so many things. I think, I think the biggest thing that we learned was, you know, gosh, I would say that letting go of. Of things was the most cathartic experience I've ever been through. And you know, we talk about like, oh, if I just clean my garage or if I just cleaned a room out, but we cleaned everything, like, and we just, we just let go of everything except for a box for each of the kids and they. That they, we ship to them. So we kept everything that like really had to ask the question of, does this serve a purpose in our life? And most of it was no. So I was surprised and learned how much I could let go. That'd be the answer.

I love that question. Does this serve a purpose in my life? You know, I think we think we, we need to have more stuff than we actually do. So amazing that it was so cathartic for you. Well, tell us about the H2H movement, the human to human movement. What does that mean? What's the philosophy behind it and why has it been so powerful?

Thank you. The reason that it was, it was received, I think, or. Or well received, thank God, in 2014 was because I was giving a keynote at Bloomberg west in San Francisco and the room was full of CMOs and executives and our market marketer executives. And it was the right place, right time, but also at the same time, it was just when social media really was sparking, really meaning, like we're gonna have to reinvent the way that we have conversations as a marketing tool. And not just marketing, but what does this mean for the rest of the organization? And, and at this. And I just remember standing there and behind me on the screen was, was the exact words, there's no B2B. There's no B2C. It's HH, human to human. And the reason that I had that up is because there is no difference to the customer. They don't care how your company works. They care about how the product is bought and that's all they care about. So also when you look at social media now, all Of a sudden, geofences are dropped. Anybody can have a conversation about anything, anywhere, anytime. So if my pizza is not delivered on time and I want to go online and I want to say bad things about my pizza delivery timeframe and I wouldn't do that because I was a former pizza delivery driver in college, so I have some respect for them. But if I did want to, I could put that online. So now all of a sudden companies had to worry about what other people said about them. And that was an awakening moment for brands. Now fast forward, this is table stakes. Like we think about that now and we're like, yeah, of course, like brands have to be careful, but they're still not good at it. Like there, there's still a lot of work to be done there. And now when you think of like human to human and what we can achieve, it's been around since door to, I mean well before door to door salespeople. But now all of a sudden we're having to get, we have remote teams and we have all these other AI and automation and bots and, and so you can rest medicine. So what does that mean? That means we have to work harder to have human to human relationships. But it's what everyone craves the most. And so if we know that connection is what everyone craves, then that's what we should be chasing after, not how do we automate more.

And so if it's about that connection, what tell us a little bit of what that means for executives and entrepreneurs in how they run and grow their business. What do they need to be thinking about perhaps differently than they have before.

Same. I will say it's differently. I just say the same thing is accentuated. And I, I, I personally broke it down and, and did some research on this and put it, put this out and I'll shorten it so that everybody doesn't have to read this part of, of the book. In fact, I'll ask you some questions and whoever's listening, I'd, I'd invite you to think up your answer or even speak your answer out loud since we can't hear you. So just shout it out. I know it's gonna be weird, right? But we'd love to hear. So the first one is, the first pillar is simplicity. So think of a brand that you think embraces simplicity. What brand do you think embraces simplicity?

Hmm, simplicity. I mean, pretty basic, you know, Apple I think is somewhat in terms like how they're, if you think about their ads and how it doesn't really get into a lot of detail. It's just about this is what we stand for.

Totally. Yeah. Oh, it's a great answer. And think about how easy it is to buy. Like, you know, exactly what they sell. Like, how many people can't spell out all the products that Apple really sells. Like, it's really simple, yet they're the most complex company that's taking complexity and turn it into simplicity. I could not agree more. Then the next one's empathy, which. And this might be more like a customer. You might see it more often in customer service, but which. You could see it in other ways, too, like how they give back or. But what company do you think embraces empathy, like, stands out for you?

The. I'm. I'm. Why am I blanking the name? The car company that's the safest.

Oh, I know which one you're talking.

Is it Volkswagen?

Volkswagen.

Okay. All right.

Yeah. They're really. In fact, over here, they're really good, and they do a good job with that. And so, you know, empathy comes across in so many different ways. Right. Like, think about, like, Amazon delivers, has, like, they don't question you most of the time. Like, nine out of ten times, you can return a package globally. And yet. And that's empathy to me, because they're. They're like, they figured out how to care about your return and make it so easy.

Right.

And then the last one is imperfection. So things happen to every company. And when they happen, how do you embrace that? Can you think of a company that embraces imperfection? Really?

Well, things happen to the company or things happen to their customers, and they.

Or both. Yeah. Either or.

Gosh. Yeah. I don't know.

So imperfection. Dove. Dove's a good one. Dove is in. Celebrates the imperfection of skin. Skin color.

Yes. And.

And skin itself.

Yep.

In the way that they market and advertise. And they do a beautiful job of that.

I think also Athleta does a good job.

Yeah.

Too. In terms of showing athleisure in lots of different sizes, lots of different colors in terms of their models.

Totally. Yeah. I love that. I hadn't heard that one before. So you take all three of those and you put it into a person, and that's actually. Those are the things that we get attracted or connected to other people for. We love imperfection. We love simplicity, we love empathy. And when we see that in someone else, we connect even deeper at a deeper level. So why wouldn't that be the same for a company? And if we can embrace the same things about being a human driven company, then that would drive us to be a more connected company with our customer or with the people that work for us. So, so those are the three things. Sorry to circle back in a long, long.

That's super helpful. I mean, I think those examples give a lot of richness to it and I'm wondering how people will integrate this into what they're doing. Right, so with the power of AI, as you mentioned before, getting in the way of this human to human connection, like I'll give an example. I know there's these bots out there that will reply to your LinkedIn message as if you think it's the person replying, but it's not, it's just an AI that they've set up. And so you, you talk about like, okay, totally lost the connection there. And how do you, you think you're replying to a human, but you're actually replying to a bot? And at that point, what's the purpose?

Yeah, you know, transparency in that area is not, not good right now. And that's gonna, that's gonna lose a lot of trust. It's gonna, I, I wouldn't want to do business with that brand as it wouldn't be a desirable brand for me to do business with if it's gonna disconnect from transparency of that level. I mean, you've also seen the opposite where they've done it well and they say, and they say this is, you know, a bot and they've named it a cute name, but they at least didn't hide that it was a bot. And you know, at the end maybe we'll connect you with a human if, if we don't get through what you need. So I think there's ways to create and still have automation. I'm not a, I'm not a person here to say that we shouldn't have it, but where are the human moments of truth in everything? Are we trying to over automate so that we don't have the human moments of truth? Because those, if those go away, you will lose your customer.

Mm, yeah, they, well, they won't feel seen for one. And you bring up a really important point is around the trust. Like I, I don't, you know, start to trust. If you're going to put that bot in front of me and not tell me that it is, then I don't. What else will you do that I won't have any idea and not be transparent about.

Right, exactly, exactly.

And so tell us, talk to us about the, how Sharing is powering the economy, that concept. And that was part of your second book.

Yeah. And in that book, it was really neat because I did over 150 different interviews with all walks of life and really was chasing after the one thing that. Which turned into a lot of different things, as every book does. But the main goal was really to figure out why do we share as humans and what is it that we all have in common? What's that consistent thread? And when I took all of the transcripts and threw them up into a word cloud generator, the biggest word that showed up was connection. And so the reason kind of boiled down again, saving you time from having to, you know, figure that part out of. Of the book, is that we all want desire connection less. You know, maybe you're the Unabomber, but. But for the most part, that's. That's what we're all after. And so, so now we know, like, if we're all sharing because we want connection, then what does that mean for us and what we share and how we share, and when we share inside a company or when we. What we share on social media or what we share, what is it that we are able to share and peel the onion with our friends or our family? There's so many different levels of sharing and what we do, and it really percolates into every inch of our life.

Yeah.

And so I just find that fascinating that, you know, we're working through what those communication levels are and how others are impacted from our communication. I mean, you know, as a person who's been in leadership for as long as you have, that this is like a really big, hard challenge for most humans. And I think that it's fascinating to work through.

I think making the translation between what's going on in the inside to how we're communicating with the other person, that's the biggest gap. Right. Because when I hear executives communication, sometimes I'm like, well, what do you really think? What's really behind that? And there's so much masking going on that that authenticity piece that you talked about before doesn't show show up. And so I think it's very subtle, Subtle ways in which we lose trust with one another based on some of that masking.

Yes.

Examples of some of the, like what you found through these interviews around sharing and, and the critical piece it plays.

Oh, my God, they were so enlightening. Yes. Let me bubble. Let me bubble one up. One of my favorites was with the head of digital and communications for Ben and Jerry's and he had conversations with. The interesting thing about Ben and Jerry's is that their ice cream is localized. And so all of the pastures. Pastures that they generate the milk from come from the towns where the ice cream is actually made and generated from. From the farm. So that they're growing it locally and still not putting it out as a. As a national or international brand across seas. And so they're taking advantage of the localization of that. But they wanted to find out, how can we kind of give back and help to shine a light on these people that are doing all this work? And so they. They helped to share this by encouraging everyone to create concepts about what the. The ice cream flavors and what things meant to them inside of these towns. And they took all these different submissions from everyone. Photographs and memories and. And moments and all these submissions, and they turned the winners of each of these towns into the campaign that they then reflected back onto billboards in the town. So they made them their own star of their own community in enriching the idea or the concept behind what they're doing to support the town and then leveraging that as the marketing material at the same time. I just thought it was brilliant. Like, I think that's. That's such a great way of not. It's not Ben and Jerry's coming in and putting their Ben and Jerry stamp of approval on the town. It's rising tide lifts all boats is basically what it is.

Right? Right. The personalization there is really fascinating. Incredible to think about. You know, they wanted to celebrate these people, and they found a way to do it in where the most meaningful. Like, it may not be so meaningful, you know, in Arizona for these people, but. But them getting to see themselves up there promoted, I think really highlights the way that they showed they valued what they produced for them. So really, really interesting example. So what tell us a little bit about what are your recommendations for leaders as they think about us moving into this age of AI and age of questionable. Like, is this a real human talking to me, or is this a recorded AI voice? Or is it a like, fake, you know, taking my likeness and making it into some. Something that they think is talking to them? What is one thing that leaders need to start doing? How should they think about this when.

It comes to AI? I think that the only way to know is to use it. Don't shy away from it. Don't say no. There are different industries that are going to be affected by this differently at different paces. When you look at the music industry or the movie industry, they're quickly getting a little concerned. When you look at, you know, other industries like marketing, they're getting excited because now they have who, what marketer doesn't like new tools? And then when you look at, you know, other industries where, you know, it just depends on like what you're looking at. But if you look at insurance and you look at fraud, so there's different ways that this is going to affect us all. But as a leader, the only thing that you can really do is just to get to know it. Like, like it's like everything else. Like, don't shy away from that, Dive in, understand it and then see where the benefits are and see what. Do a strengths analysis, do a SWOT analysis and figure out where you want to use it, where you don't want to use it and where is the human moment and all that, as I've been, you know, saying. But I don't think that, I don't think there's a silver bullet yet. And I don't quite frankly think we all know what the answer is going to be for where it's moving forward. I do think, you know, there's going to be a lot of change that's coming and we're going to have to adapt and adopt to it. But as a leader, I would say dive into it, get to know it. I know that's not like this big epiphany, but it's the only thing that we can do right now. The thing that worries me is the biggest concern, if you look at the dark side of that is, and I said this a long time ago, I'll say it again, which is that we have to be careful about where we let the lines of AI cross. And so we, it's up to us. We have, you know, we're going to be always fine if we let AI work within a sliver of what it's supposed to do. If it does AI scheduling, let it just do AI scheduling. But the more that we give it all these different things and we start losing track of the layers of what we actually, the meaning behind why we started it and it's just doing multi level, multi layer computation, then that's we're going to start to lose touch with it. So that's beyond what you asked me, but that's where I start to worry.

Yeah, I think as a leader though, that these are the important questions, like where is the line for you in using AI generated tools for producing the work that you need to produce or the connections that you have with your customers? And have you set those guidelines for your team? Like I don't know that leaders are really thinking about that. And the example would be your team could be using AI in a way that isn't aligned with the way you want to come across in your brand. And you won't know that unless you have that conversation with them of how are you using AI today? Where can we agree that this is helpful and where do we not feel that this is going to serve the brand most effectively? Right.

Amen. Amen. Yeah.

Having that conversation and I don't think people are having that conversation with their teams.

Yeah, probably because they don't know what to have the conversation around, which is why it's good to tinker and, and I, I, I've, I've seen some companies actually still already assign head of AI to figure out what it means, what it could mean to the company, what it shouldn't mean to the company. They're building positions around it, which is a great idea if you can afford that, so that you can start to learn what those lines are.

Well, but you also need to know how is your team, I mean just asking the question, are you using AI and any of our workflows, processes and if so, how are you using it? And just get educated and then see does that match up with yes, that's an efficiency play. Love it or actually that's crossing a line that's going to harm this trust and empathy and some of the key pieces of our brand. Right. Just having that conversation. So yeah, absolutely. What else do you recommend leaders do tomorrow? To be more human to human focused in the way they approach their go to market strategy.

I am a fight for taking on a coaching mentality and as a fellow, you know, leadership coach and leader to companies, I think you'd, you would probably say or agree to this as well, which is if everybody adopted or just started to understand what a coaching mentality is and how to be there to support and speak the language a little bit more of the language of coaching or coaches and start to maybe even take some courses or start to build the muscle around how to be within that coaching mindset, that those are the companies that are, that are doing really well that take on those kinds of modalities. And if you know you can invest your time and your people in those sorts of things, you're going to see all kinds of things come out on the other end for how people treat each other and how they communicate and how teams get built and how strategy starts to formulate and how your Company starts to see that, that to the bottom line. And it's all based upon human interaction and connection and managing others and, and managing up and managing down. And you know, this is so. So build the coaching mindset so that you can start to, you know, create the kind of company you want to create.

Yeah. And I think when we talk about coaching mindset, we're talking about asking powerful questions just like the ones that I outlined for understanding how AI is being used in your company right now. Right. And having. Asking them how they think that's helpful or not helpful. And ultimately it's the power of inquiry, but it's leveraging the thought processes of your team versus push down directives of what needs to happen. And so when you can actually unleash the potential of your people through the power of coaching, then you're building capacity for scale within your company versus if it's always dependent on you directing the pieces, then you're not actually creating any scale.

You know, how did we not know each other before this?

I don't know. But there's always perfect timing in the universe, right?

Amen. Amen.

Yes, absolutely. And I think now, because I need to go visit Lisbon and see what it like living there now. Now I have someone I know there that can show me around and what it's like to be an expat there. I'd love to do something like that. You know, three months the year, the sort of a dream of mine to create that. So I think it's going to be here sooner than I think.

Well, you have an open invite anytime.

Well, thank you so much. So where can people learn more about you and your work?

If you go to my website@brian kramer.com and I spelled my name with a Y or my mom spelled my name with Y, Brian with a Y and Kramer with a K.com and then you can subscribe to my newsletter or listen to some. I used to have a podcast with a lot of different wonderful people and, and I've got all my articles and I write weekly articles. So a lot of good stuff.

There's great, great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Loved our conversation. And if you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Rob Wolcott, who specializes in the proximity revolution and being able to get your customers directly at their time of need. Let's all lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.