Rizing Evolution – The Future Proofed Enterprise Podcast

Episode 9 Transcript: Culture, Strategy and Tech: What Eats What for Breakfast? Part 2

(Editors note: this transcript was machine generated then lightly edited. You can read a summary, watch the original episode or see the list of all podcast episodes.)

Narrator

Rizing Evolution, the future proofed enterprise presented by Rizing, a Wipro Company, you’ll hear from business and technology innovators who know how to use the latest technologies and business strategies to transform industry. And importantly, how these technologies and strategies can be shaped to your business needs in your way? Help your organization move in exciting new directions. Now here’s your host and moderator, Bonnie D Graham.

Bonnie Graham

Bonnie Dee in the house, happy to be here. Rizing Evolution. We’re talking about evolution, and we’re talking about a topic. Part 2 of something we did a couple weeks ago. It had so much. I’m going to use a terrible food metaphor -meat on the bones. It’s a food topic, actually, but not quite. I’ve invited back the whole panel, but one of them couldn’t make it. So we have three wonderful thought leaders with me, and I’m going to do my opening before I do anything else. I have this little poem you all know. I write my monologues with ChatGPT. It’s a collaboration and. I had a CAT scan in my brain two weeks ago Patty, and they discovered that I still have a brain, so I’m the human, and Chat GPT is the AI. So it is a  collaboration. Just want everybody know it’s not straight ChatGTP so here. Go the first part I have to give a little historical background, so bear with me. Peter Drucker AH, was a management consultant who contributed to the foundations of modern management theory. He maintained that here goes the food part. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, meaning the best laid plans will fail. Uh oh, if your culture doesn’t embrace the plans. OK, so now I’m going to do my poem. And when I call your name, dear panelists, please wave welcome listeners and viewers to a voyage profound where culture, strategy and tech are intricately. Around join us as we travel the tales untold of how these forces shape business. Oh so bold, our panel of experts, leaders of industry diving into stories, strategies. They are a symphony cultures embrace the choices of tech strategies. Dr. Transformational Trek in this synergy lies a business. Revolution, revolution. A Nexus of forces. A dynamic solution. Sherri Ann Meyer wave. Hello, Enrique Rubio wave. Hello, doctor. Patty Fletcher. You too. Wave. Hello. All so bright. Join me, Bonnie D shedding new. Light on Rizing Evolution, where the future unfolds, culture, strategy and tech. What eats what for breakfast. Part 2 we ask to be bold so audience be ready for this journeys delight as we explore the fusion where these elements unite TuneIn absorb. Let the discussions brew. There’s another food term, but in for in the convergence. Lie business evolution anew. What y’all think. You like it?

Sherry Meyer

I love it.

Patty Fletcher

Love it.

Bonnie Graham

Already, yeah, pretty cool.

Patty Fletcher

Love it? Yes.

Sherry Meyer

I like the Symphony part, yeah.

Bonnie Graham

I know you. I knew you would. I know. So we have breakfast and we have food and we have the brewing the coffee and we’ve got music too. What could be better? I asked my guests on some of my other shows how long they think it took for that core poem to be written by ChatGPT. And those who do not use it. Estimate 20 seconds a minute, 15 seconds. Do you all want to take a guess? Do you all know the answer? Do you all know the answer? Long.

Enrique Rubio

Or seconds right? Couple of couple of minutes.

Bonnie Graham

3 seconds.

Sherry Meyer

Such as.

Enrique Rubio

3 seconds.

Bonnie Graham

I can’t 1001 one thousand 21000 there it is and then I take it I copy it in and I start making adjustments. So there you go. We are back and I’m delighted to welcome back Sherry. Sherry. You’re going to be Sherry today or Sherry Ann. Who do you want to be?

Sherry Meyer

Sherry, I’ll be.

Bonnie Graham

Sherry, Sherry and we have Enrico Rubio there you are. And Doctor Patty Fletcher, Patty and I worked together at SAP 1000 years ago, and it’s always nice to run into you, Patty. So let’s go around the table now. I have to tell you, I have a special Rizing Evolution calculator. OK. And I put in the names of all, all three of your names. And I said, who in the world didn’t hear them on part one a couple weeks ago and or who doesn’t remember them? And the number came up pretty well for the same for all of you. It came up to about 14.2976 people, not the same 14.2976. Don’t remember you, Sherry. Don’t remember you and Ricky. And don’t remember you, Patty. So please refresh us. Give us your bio. What do you do? Why is this topic important to you? Why are you here? What’s your passion for it? And talk to those 14 point something people. Patty, I know you’re doing the calculation thing. How did she come up with that for me?

Patty Fletcher

I just blame them and not myself, yes. I would have had. Fewer people who don’t remember Me. I don’t know. I’m Patty Fletcher.

Bonnie Graham

Sherry, I’m putting you on speaker view. Would you please do me the honor of reintroduce yourself? Take your full 3 minutes, make something up and tell us why this topic still resonates with you. Sherry, welcome back.

Sherry Meyer

Hi, thanks, Bonnie. I’ll 2 words. I’ll say that my career is humanizing technology. I’ve worked in human resources. I’ve worked as an IT manager, I implemented SAP many times, 27 countries, and I’ve always written about it and spoken about it, and now my current position, I’m head of corporate comms at Rizing and I always say my job is or I look at my work as dumbing it down for the rest of the world to understand.

Bonnie Graham

The culture who’s eating? What is the culture reading, the strategy, strategy, eating the culture of IT coming out of there on clave and saying, wait a minute, I’ve got it over both of you. You’re in my breakfast shake this morning. What? What’s your take? Quickly. What do you think? Who’s coming out on top here, Sherry?

Sherry Meyer

I’m not sure yet. There’s a little bit of nibbling going on in all different directions. And I at this present time, I think tech is winning.

Bonnie Graham

Ah, this is the food show. OK, thank you very much. Enrique Rubio. So happy to have you back. I know you got a little bit of a cold. And so we’re very honored that you’re well enough to join us. Would you please reintroduce yourself? Welcome.

Enrique Rubio

Thank you, Bonnie, for inviting me again, excited about this conversation. My name is Enrique Rubio, and I have this glamorous, sexy voice today. It’s my call. Old boys. I’m trying to get out of it very soon, so excuse me. My name is Enrique Rubio. I live here in the US in the in the northern part of the state of Arizona. In in the city of Flagstaff, there’s a snowstorm, you know, pounding down a lot of snow. Right now we got we’re going to be getting like 12 inches in the next couple of days. So very exciting. I am the founder of a global community of HR people called Hacking HR. We bring everybody together, leaders, practitioners from the outer space to learn about all things that are the intersection of future of work, technology, innovation, transformation, people and culture, of course. And we do this in the form of events, learning programs, certificate programs. And many other activities that we put together for the community. So that’s me.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. And well, we haven’t heard you cough yet and I know you probably will because it’s winter. What can I say and be safe with that snowstorm. So who’s winning culture strategy or tech? the IT people who do you think?

Enrique Rubio

I will. I think tech is waning. I would agree with that too. Yeah, I mean we because there’s a, there’s a difference between the talking and the happening. Right. I think that if you count the talking, then the strategy and culture may be winning because we talk a lot about those, right. But in the happening in the real life of you know implementation technology is definitely you know ahead of ahead of everything else. So we you know cultural strategy we got to catch up with technology. If we can and hopefully stay ahead of, stay ahead of that curve.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. We’ve got two votes. Let’s see where Doctor Patty Fletcher comes in. Patty, welcome back. You are so glamorous. I think you’re on the wrong show. Are you doing a Hollywood try out today? I don’t know. I hope our viewers are watching very, very glam. I can say that because I’ve known her for so many years. Patty, I’m putting you on speaker because everybody can see your beauty. Would you please reintroduce yourself? Tell us who you are or why you.

Patty Fletcher

I am.

Bonnie Graham

Are you still passionate about this topic? Welcome back, Patty.

Patty Fletcher

Thanks, Bonnie. It’s so good to be here. So, yes, I’m doctor Patty Fletcher and I grew up at SAP and I’m no longer there, but I grew up there and I’ve been very, very fortunate to have this career that does keep me passionate about the topics around work, tech, future of work. My career has been founded by large scale transformation, right, the culture. Piece the strategy piece, the tech piece, and I’ve always worked at that intersection of people, business, tech and then eventually data and of course emerging. Tech is my life’s mission, I align my passion with my profession like each of you do as well. And for me it’s all about leveling the playing field so that all talent can thrive, not just some talent. And there’s a lot of work we have to do, which I’m going to answer your question. I think it’s culture that’s winning. And let me tell you why. There’s a lot of bad decisions being made now. Bad decisions around how we treat our people, bad decisions around how we’re going to ethically use AI in all of its different forms, and we are focused mostly on the automation component of tech, not on how we can help to define a workplace with more rich. Experiences with more contribution, with more leveling of the playing field. And for me, you need all three of those components right in order to succeed. But the negativity of, you know, kind of pre pandemic culture and post pandemic is really, really inhibiting us from taking full advantage.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. And talk about disrupting, I see that sign behind you. Keep on disrupting. I know. That’s the other. The other side. Move. There you go. That’s. That was your. That was your book. Just tell us briefly about that, Patty, because I know everybody. I’m sure they remember, but they want to hear you say it again. Go ahead.

Patty Fletcher

You bet. Yeah, absolutely. So yes, that’s from a fan who I’m not sure who it was. So if you’re listening. Thank you. I don’t know how you got my home address. So my book disruptors success strategies from women who break the mold, I’m actually working on a follow up book out loud right now on LinkedIn. So please check those out. I want to put you in my next book, but this book was the anti lean in lean in was wonderful to bring the topic of gender equality which is what Cheryl focused on. I will focus on equity. In the workplace to the mainstream, the challenge was the message was wrong, right? It was all about the. About women having to morph into what their traditional view of success looks like feels like. And who gets to be successful. And so this book tells stories of amazing women who came from many different walks of life, who have created real positive disruption, created more efficiency, effectiveness, and equity in the solutions that they’re bringing to the table. My and that book’s being shopped around now for a docu series. So very. Exciting and. And then this next book is really going to be about launchpads, right? And what do these women do? It doesn’t matter where you start. It matters. The progress that you make every day. So thank you. For that.

Bonnie Graham

Well, thank you, Patty. I know people would be interested. I think we’re all disruptors here, aren’t we? Myself included. We’ve all found a way to do something that people didn’t expect us to do that we not even us. We didn’t even know we were going to do it until.

Patty Fletcher

Next.

Bonnie Graham

I say look for that little crack of light coming through the window or the door. Lift the window, kick open the door, see what’s on the other side, and go take the opportunity. And Enrique, I still have to compliment you on hacking HR, because hacking had a bad name for itself years ago, and now it’s. Wow. I mean, if you’ve named your company hacking HR then.

Enrique Rubio

Yeah.

Bonnie Graham

Something very, very positive and provocative, and that’s part of that’s disrupting, right? He’s disrupting the nomenclature. He’s saying hacking is a good thing. We’re gonna come out with positive on the other side. But I digress. Thank you all for the BIOS and to you, 14.297673. Somebody better take those decimal notes.

Enrique Rubio

Yeah.

Bonnie Graham

I don’t remember. I hope you’re happy now because we have three very, very interesting people back on the panel and I’m thrilled to welcome you all back. Now it’s time to go to the opening quotes. I’ve asked you each to send me another fictional quote from a movie or TV show or a song lyric. Oh, by the way, we have two votes for tech and one for culture. I’m keeping score here. OK, I’m keeping score. We’re going to have to see how this. This turns out at the end of the show, we’re going to go to the quotes now and I’m going to read the quote with a little tiny bit of background and. You to tell us what it has to do with our topic? So Sherry Meyer has picked a quote from Doctor Gregory House, played by the wonderful Hugh Laurie. It’s American Medical drama TV series that ran from 2004 to 2012. For eight seasons. Doctor House unconventional, misanthropic medical genius who, despite his dependence on pain. Medication leads a team of diagnosticians. I had to read that quietly at the fictional Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital PTH in. New Jersey. The premise was with Paula Demacio blah blah blah blah blah, he clashes with his fellow physicians, including his team, because of his many hypotheses about patients illnesses based on subtle or controversial insights. There we go. Here’s the quote cherry. I can’t wait for this one. Pain makes us make bad decisions. Fear of pain. Is almost as big of a motivator. What does this have to do with what’s on the table for breakfast today? Sherry, go ahead, get your everything, alright.

Sherry Meyer

Everything. Doctor House is. He’s definitely a disruptor himself in the medical field. If any of you ever watch the show, you’d agree. But really in business, I’ve seen so many decisions made because we are either afraid of the competition and we’re in a hurry to get things done and we put ourselves in a tight timeline instead of really thinking through the change management piece or because. We are in so much pain already that we’re just like, Oh my God, get me out of this and that can be very individual as well. I mean, not the company as a whole, but usually it’s our leaders that are feeling the pain and are reacting. In an abrupt way.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you very much, very interesting. And pain is where we don’t want the company to be. We don’t want the employees to be, we don’t want the leaders to be unless it’s a disruption of the status quo which does come with some pain, doesn’t it? And then we will move in positive direction. So thank you, Sherry. Let’s go to Enrique. You have sent me a quote from Dr. Ian Malcolm. Played by the wonderful Jeff Goldblum, I remember him in the fly. I won’t tell you many years ago that was scared the crap out of me. Jurassic Park 1993 sci-fi action film. Directed by, of course, Stevens Gilberg and starred Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough. The first installment in the Jurassic Park franchise and the first in the original trilogy based, of course, on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel set in Isla Nublar off Central America’s Pacific Coast near Costa Rica, where wealthy businessman John Hammond Richard Attenborough. And a team of genetic scientists have created a wildlife park of de extinct dinosaurs, when industrial sabotage leads to a shutdown of the power facilities and security precautions. A group of visitors, including Hammond’s grandchildren that struggle to survive and escape the now perilous island. I’m doing my own version here, so here’s the quote and Rico has picked the kind of control you’re attempting is not possible. If there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers. Painfully. Is that pain word again? Maybe even dangerously. But uh, well, there it is. Life finds a way. Wow. OK, Enrique, what does this have to do with our topic? Go ahead.

Enrique Rubio

Yeah, well, you know, it’s well, first of all, Jurassic Park, to me is one of the best movies ever. Jurassic Park one. And I always think about that quote. Because, you know, we end up forcing so many things, right? We want them to go to behave a certain way. We want things to happen in a certain way, or we have an expectation about how they have to end up working. And the reality is that at the end of the day, there are so many variables about, you know, all the changes that are happening in the world over which we have no control of. You know, we have we have no control over most of the variables that are impacting the life of an organization, the life of the people in that organization, right. And life finds a way. Means, you know, sometimes you, you, you, you do have to plan. You do have to prepare yourself for, you know, for the impact of all these variables. But some of the times it’s really, you know, just about being OK with, you know, some of the, you know, like adapting and some of the changes that are happening that you can’t control. And just letting it, you know, letting it flow right, I mean, let me give you one example of this. Yeah, talking about culture, for example. So there’s to me life about life in terms of how people want to work at work, found a way people want to have flexibility, that is life. Having found a way. So because that’s the that’s the reality. And that’s a variable that you can’t control anymore because life. Bound away. Way you know, rather than trying to change things and force your own hand into something that won’t ever change again to the way things were before, just ride that wave. Just let it flow. Adapt to that right. And that’s the way you kind of like have to go about that. And that’s one very small example right. There are many. Mainly that, but that example of how people want to work today to me is the equivalent of life. Found a way to. You know to have a different expression, so to speak, in this new world of work. And we just have to be OK with that and go along and progress from there by accepting that life found a way.

Bonnie Graham

Until the next major disruption.

Enrique Rubio

Until the next major. Finding of a way of life.

Bonnie Graham

Right. It’s like water. It’s it finds its level. It’s yeah. It seeks and it seeps. Thank you very much. Very interesting quote. Patty, I’m using the whole quote you sent me. I said it was too long. But after I took the one from him week, I had no choice. So here’s the one from Denny’s Ledger. She this is from Jason JAYC. Ian Jennings, played by Snoop Dog the it’s a comedy drama film American Sports Film. This year, 2024, called The Underdogs with 2G’s, of course, because Snoop Dogg, with 2G’s drama film directed by well, it’s comedy drama Charles Stone, the third, written by Danny Siegel and Isaac Shamus. It stars, of course. Snoop Dogg, Tika Sumpter, Andrew Schultz, Mike Epps. I like him. Candy Burris. And George Lopez, I like him, too. A released by Amazon MGM Studios as a Prime Video exclusive Live on the 26th of January. That was about two weeks ago. Here’s the story, Jason two Jays. Jennings is an aging former NFL star with the reputation of being arrogant, self-centered, and disrespect. Sounds like House Jerry following, except in in basketball. Following an argument with his longtime agent, he angrily drives off. Runs an intersection, resulting in his car getting struck by a city bus charged with property damage. He sentenced through community service back in his hometown of Long Beach. He reconnects with an old friend, Kareem, and completes his probation by coaching and local football team. Well. It’s one of those movies initially motivated to use the team to relaunch his own career. He realizes the struggle. Of young, untested players remind him of the obstacles he once faced. So here’s the quote Patty has selected. I’m sure there are 1,000,000 good quotes from this one. Now when I first started coaching this team, I didn’t believe in none of y’all now, not even a little bit. Not until I got mine tricked into realizing that I underestimated y’all same way you did me. See we the same. We underdogs, when I look at y’all now, I don’t see a bunch of poop. I see me and every last one of y’all ain’t no limits to what y’all can do with Jason Jennings on the sidelines. Patty, how’d I do? That was a cold read. How was it?

Patty Fletcher

It was almost as if you were acting in the movie it was great and it is a bad news bear football, right? And you know, it was fantastic. And you know what I love about this quote guys is that you can find inspiration anywhere, right, anywhere. And what I love about this quote is it is the perfect example of leadership. Disruption starts with the person in the mirror, and when leaders understand that leadership is not about the leader, right leaders are only leaders when followers enable. To be when they focus on themselves, they erode culture right, which means they make stupid strategy decisions and stupid technology decisions, and instead, when the leader understands that their job is the culture right, that they create, which is what this character did. And everything changes. If we start to focus in on how we meet. People where they are right, but putting inclusion, not diversity first, how we understand their strengths and put them in those positions of strength instead of constantly telling them what they don’t do. Setting clear expectations, right. The thing about Drucker is you have to focus and measure. Period, end of story. That includes culture. So set clear expectations not just on the what you want them to achieve, but how and why. Give them opportunities to develop and upskill those new and soft skills that they need. You know to. To everyone’s point here, things are going to continually to disrupt and change. It’s your ability to be successful because of it, not despite it. And really that whole thing around and this won’t change regardless of all the morphs, the global or talent economy is going to take. It is about being able to transform that group of individuals into a high performing team. I focus in them again on the conclusion inclusion of each other, but really to be that leader who sweeps the. Debris out of the. Way so that they enable the team to stay focused on their progress goals. Focus in on learning to take it with them to the next step and not just on the outcomes.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Patty. I have a question for you. When you ask a team to be focused on the outcomes that assumes or it’s predicated on the fact that they bought into that focus, that team event, that team goal in the 1st place isn’t the challenge in finding people to be that team in the beginning and then? Motivating them to focus just a brief answer, but it dawned on me that we’re almost missing a step. Here is how do you get the right people to be on that team so that they will focus?

Patty Fletcher

Yeah, they have to believe number one in the mission and vision and why it’s so special and that that thing about the impact, right, that that end goal, it’s about how do we know we are successful, what are those measurements that are going to change. And when you ask people like that versus tell them everything changes, cause everything becomes a lesson learned. In achieving that goal, that thing is just an indicator that metric, that’s all it is.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Sherry Meyer

You know, I’m listening. What you’re saying and I agree with that 100% and on the other hand, I’m thinking should we all be making these companies where there’s a mission and a vision, I mean and, you know, slamming a square peg into a round hole or only hiring? The round pegs.

Patty Fletcher

No. No, and I saw your note. And so what’s your? Had talked about. Is, you know, it’s when you keep hiring the same people, same values and this is a great question. Sherry. And I get it. We have to be willing to add in supplement to our culture, not higher for the culture we already have because that’s not the culture we’re going to need tomorrow. And that’s why you focus on inclusion 1st instead of diversity. Inclusion is every walk of life, every belief, what can not, what is going to be hard to rally people around. I I worked in entire careers as each of you on someone else’s dream. My job because I aligned my passion with my profession is this role, this job, these people, the right channel at this point in time of my life, in order to execute my part of this dream, the skills, the people that you know, maybe it’s aligned. And so that’s really critical. And I can’t do that if everybody thinks and believes and values. The same things I do. I simply can’t do that. It’s a good question.

Sherry Meyer

Right. Need fresh ideas?

Bonnie Graham

OK, I want to move on to our discussion statements. You’ve each sent me a couple of new ones different from what we a little bit from what we talked about in part one a few weeks ago. So Sherry, I’m going to read your statement, number one for today’s show and let’s see where we go with this and then I’ll go to Enrique and ask you to agree or disagree and then I’ll go to you. Patty, same thing. And Patty, you can agree or disagree with Sheri. And or with Enrique. You’ve got double trouble here. OK, so here’s the statement. Sherry says when you hear experts here, quotes, please talk about digital transformation. You hear how much things have changed from the Industrial Revolutions Command control way of doing things. What she’s heard is you have to standardize and simplify. And do it the way the system is designed and Sherry comments that sounds like command control. It ignores culture. Maybe it should, but should it? She’s going to answer her own question. Sherry. Go ahead. Very provocative.

Sherry Meyer

I’m very good at debating with myself and it’s kind of like which came first, the chicken or the egg, the culture or the tech? I don’t know. I think that in many of the organizations I’ve worked with, culture has driven tech in terms of beliefs of the leaders. And that belief that we are a certain company and we will pound this square peg into this round hole. OK, whether it fits or not, but I I think that over the years, people have rebelled against that and tech has started to evolve. I mean, look at ChatGPT to the point where it’s more accessible. To the average person, we don’t always need an IT team to give us all the. Users, it’s so accessible that I think people are they know what they want and they also know how to use a lot of tools to get them what they want. You can’t control them as much as you could before, and I think that’s a good thing. But what it’s doing is driving up demand for things beyond that plain vanilla piece of paper. And I think that’s a good thing. But we have to be willing to listen to those voices that are saying no, I need to be doing something different or this, you know, let’s say my benefits. Enrollment is taking too long, could be a lot easier. I get online with my bank all the time and 123, I can transfer money. Why isn’t it that simple on my benefits platform? UM. Those human experiences that we’re all having, and we’re all having more of them now, as you pointed out, Bonnie, because of ChatGPT, you’re writing poems in three seconds. We have to consider that no matter how much we want to push back against and say, now wait a minute. Ethics, how are we going to handle this? What are the? Rules around it. All of which are important to the wider worldwide global culture. We can’t sit and wait either and I think that what we’re seeing now is some cloud products beginning to show us the way to customize, if you will, the. Way. The way we used to do in the past when you wrote your own systems, but customize and still leave that core intact, and maybe that’s the future.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. I think you answered your own question. I’m going to go to Enrique right now. I’ve got you all on group view here on a gallery view. So you’re all being seen on camera. I’ll leave this view up while we’re talking to Sherry. So Enrique, agree or disagree with Miss Meyer, what do you think?

Enrique Rubio

I agree. And I also think that there’s A to me there’s a different conversation that has to happen around the conversation of technology, right. Because technology, first of all, is not the panacea. So you won’t solve all the problems that your organizations are dealing with. Technology I I’ve always said this and it’s, you know, I am an electronic engineer by the way. So I worked for a very long time with technology and I realized that technology will end. Once whatever you have in place, whether it is doing the right thing or the wrong thing. So I like to bring this this idea, this component up of using technology. But before doing that, making sure that your processes, your mindset, your culture. Are the ones that have been worked on before you bring the technology on board? Because if you have the wrong culture then the technology that you may be bringing, first of all, you may not even need it to begin with. But even if you need it, maybe it is amplifying. You know, sort of the crappiness of the processes that you have in place rather than improving sort of the performance of your people and the performance of your organization. So to me, I agree with the statement. I just want to make sure that people understand that technology is just an enabler of culture. And it’s an enabler of the good things or the bad things of culture. So that’s why before you bring technology on board, you gotta step back and say, do we even have the right culture before we ask the question about what technology we’re bringing on board? So that to me is the yes. And to the statement that Sherry had before.

Bonnie Graham

And I just got some confetti to go on the screen and episode. There were new hands. There are new motions.

Sherry Meyer

I saw that.

Bonnie Graham

That Max Sonoma just put in brand new hand motions that you can do on any platform on zoom, on FaceTime, on others. And somebody taught me to this. So I was giving you a confetti parade for that. Enrique, thank you. Patty Fletcher, join us. What do you think? Agree. Disagree with either or.

Enrique Rubio

Thanks.

Bonnie Graham

Both your turn.

Patty Fletcher

Yeah, yeah, I think I agree with some things and disagree with some things. So you know, going to what Enrique said, right. And what I know that all of us know, tech is an enabler and. What we have to know when talking about Sherry’s command control? People do not change when you tell them to change, right, Sherry? That’s the challenge. They change when you enable them to change. And what that means is things will be better because right, and get them to understand that change is afoot, why it will personally make their lives better and then enable them to be able to do it through the tech. Through the new processes that we have, but what Sherry said is so important and then carried further from Enrique. And you know, we this industrial revolution we’re in is a big switch, right. We got cognitive stuff we we’ll probably talk about today. Maybe not, right. But the whole thing around Tech today is up until now, it has been all about how do people interact with technology. And now we are focused on how does technology interact with people. That’s the difference that AI brings to the table. That’s what we started back with big data when I worked on HANA. And you know all the other stuff, right? So that’s really, really important. Now let’s add on this. Act technology the playing field has leveled I it could be a citizen developer. I go work in a company, I create a bunch of bots to do the stuff that you know is probably more efficiency focused, right? Doesn’t I just need it to go get done and get done well. And then I leave the company and that box stays there, right? And kind of continues to work and. Collects the data and it’s those kinds of conversations you know for this topic, Sherry, that you bring up that we have got to get in front of now. What is our culture going to allow? What feels good about working here? What do we want people to be able to spend time on? How do we want them to continue to contribute to the economical growth of our organization? How are we going to and I’m going to say the word control which you guys all know. I rarely do control maverick behavior. We have the problem of being out of control and many of us face that in the early days of big kind of SAS automation, right, the acquisition of HR was. So I agree, none of us have the answers to this. We haven’t been down this path, but yet everything is human. What do we want? People to focus and spend their time on. 90% of workers are going to say I spend the majority of my time on non value add activities. How do we use that? Through with command control, right growth has to be profitable. How do we use that part of the culture not to take over and supersede the innovation and the growth and the ability to be an individual, but instead to enable us to do exactly that kind of innovative work.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Sherry. I want to make a comment here before you get back to them, if that’s OK with you. Of course it’s OK. Bonnie, you’re the host. Comment is if we think people say right not to sell more but write your obituary before you die. What? What do you want to be? Well, if you go on LinkedIn, we all are. You’ll see. Exit posts from people I worked at such and such and all the amazing people and I want to thank this one and that one they helped to propel my career and I learned so much from this one and the opportunities the company gave me. I’m leaving anyway. But all of the things, if you think about an employee writing that exit post on linked. Then what would they say about their experience? That would be true that you would say that’s exactly what happened. Yes, I was part. I was their manager. I was their colleague. I was somebody in that team. I was the person in HR, the person. What would reflect on honesty? Isn’t that an interesting way of thinking? How would you want somebody to write? The other thing I want to say is about culture. I’m not going to talk about tech for a second, just culture and the companies I’ve worked for over the years. They’ve been a few. The culture was determined by the person with the loudest voice in the executive suite, the one who yelled the most, the one who insulted the most, the one who controlled the most, the one who redlined your worked the most, the one who criticized you for leaving one minute before 5:00 the most. The one who threw out your HR review every year and never gave you a raise in five years. The ones who ran the company into the ground, but they did it with a big salary and a lot of chutzpah. And those are the people to me, the people who said you’re not doing this right. You have to change everything about the way you work because it doesn’t go with the way we see the company going and made you completely change your values. Not for the worst, maybe for the better. But the people with the loudest voices to me, have always been the ones who controlled. There’s that word again. Sherry controlled the tone of the culture of at least the team or the entire company. Anybody want to rebut what I just said? Go ahead, Jerry.

Sherry Meyer

100% Now there have been a lot of programs over the years that have been brought into companies to try and erase that leader. Focus productivity improvement programs. You know, six SIG and everything to get hear people’s voices on the plant floor, but it’s still very hard. First of all, there’s never been. A lot of trust. From people on the plant floor that what they’re saying will be put into action. Then you have to have a really good strong program to make that happen. And second of all, there’s no evidence that really leaders have listened to those things. So being the small dog and the campus can be you might have a lot of great ideas, but you’re never going to be heard. And we are probably never going to hear from those people because they figure, why should I be? Other so which all gets back to how do you build a motivated, inclusive workforce, an inclusive workforce where all ideas and thoughts are heard?

Enrique Rubio

And how do you do it? I want to add something to that. How do you do it so that the explanation that that culture actually exists doesn’t have to be explained by the CEO saying we are a great place to work. But because the way people behave with each other, but what they say about their coworkers, but what they say when they leave? Oh my. As I am heartbroken because I’m leaving this company. Yes, it’s for another different opportunity, blah blah. But I’m going to miss my coworkers. I’m going to miss my boss. I’m going to miss the culture. That’s the kind of talk that that makes you realize this was real. It was not an accolade that this company got from who knows who. Right about or a great place to work or whatever it is. It is real. So to me, you know, I always like to say that great culture does not need to be explained. You just feel it. You know you go there and you’re thrown in there and you’re like, wow, you know, like, look at the look at the way people talk to each other here, like, they’re so kind to each other. Look at the guy helping that other person over there. Look at that leader, telling people like, oh, you, you need some time. Just go and take some time. I’m here for you. That doesn’t need an explanation. You just feel you just. Feel it in the air, right. So, Patty, I think you’re getting closer to my. I don’t know if. You want to add something about that?

Bonnie Graham

I want to move on in a second to one of Ricky statements. So Patty, go ahead. You close this.

Patty Fletcher

No, no, no, no, no. Just I agree. Yeah. No, just fully agree. Just super quick story. So I go to a dentist, the dentist, same person. I have my appointment this morning. I haven’t misaligned whatever. And what I love so much is how they treat each other. I’ve never, nobody loves going to the dentist. I freaking love going to the dentist. They are so professional with each other, but also just so caring. And you can tell they just automatically assume the other person really has their best. Pensions and are giving their best self and that bleeds into my experience as a patient. Everything works better, right? Everything works better. I agree with you. That’s why Glassdoor is so important. It really is, yeah.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you. Good, good wrap up, Sherry for your topic. Let me go to one from Enrique and then we’ll pick one from Patty. Enrique sent me the follow. Corporate culture is not an HR thing. Everyone must be involved. Culture is designed, created, embodied, and celebrated by everyone at work. Leaders, managers, employees, creating a great culture is a collective effort. That’s a  nice follow on to what we’ve just been talking about. So Enrique, won’t you just give us a little more meat on that bone and then we’ll go around the table quickly on that, please. Yeah.

Enrique Rubio

Yeah, you know it’s  pretty self-explanatory right at that. That culture has been relegated. First of all, when we even talk about culture to begin with, it’s been relegated to something that HR has to do or that something that pertains to HR or something that HR is bring to the table just to sound. Fancy and newish about concepts and whatnot, but the reality is that culture is how the work gets done right, that culture is. Culture is the set of literally everything that happens in a company, from the words that people are using with each other to the values of the companies and you know embracing and. Those are the avenues, the outlets, the oil that keeps the machine lubricated to get the work done. And if that is true and it is true. It can’t be just a nature thing. You know, leaders, direct managers, everybody is. It’s funny because, you know, I’ve asked, we’ve done several polls in hiking tour before about, you know, who’s the most responsible for culture. And people always say like, well, you know, the CEO and the leader. And while that may be true, as you know, who role models culture, the reality is that it’s everybody in the organization. If you, if your CEO is saying we want to build the best culture in the world and you’re coming to work, bring your coworkers like crap, then you know that’s not going to happen, right? I mean, maybe you’re not in the right place or maybe I don’t know. That disconnect somewhere in there, so culture is an everybody’s business and it has to be everybody’s business because the work gets done. On in a better way? If you have great culture and the work is hindered, you know the results are hindered if you don’t have the right culture and this is something that everybody in the organization must be concerned about, not just HR.

Bonnie Graham

And that’s the employee experience as being part of that culture. If they know that, that’s part of why they were hired and what the expectation is. Patty, you’re sitting next to Enrique on this round. So why don’t you give up a two-minute comment, agree or disagree, and then we’ll go to Sherry. Go ahead.

Patty Fletcher

Yeah, I agree. Here’s the problem. We can’t stop there, right? And Enrique knows that, right? And so does Sherry. And so do you, Bonnie. And So what do I mean by that? 25 years of large scale transformation tells me one thing, if you do not have reinforcements in place that are tied to the money that is in my check, I’m probably not going to do it. It’s just how it is. We do what we are graded on the best companies I have worked with and worked for. Have those cultures into behaviors. Here’s what it means. Culture based behavior. Not only do they have those for the individual contributors and like what that experience should look like, and it’s as much about how I receive that culture is to how I bring that culture and what I do because we’re only responsible for ourselves, right? Not for the person sitting next to us. But then also to train managers or people leaders on what this means to their leadership, the decisions they make, who gets hired, who gets promoted, who gets paid, all of those things when you put those reinforcement mechanisms in, when you measure them and look at them together as an executive team. And make decisions because of those, when you look as part of the performance review, which they’re God, please don’t let it be once or twice a year at the ongoing feedback. That’s when the shift changes. That’s when we start asking ourselves those questions around what feels different. Now I might be doing the same work. Feels different. We’re getting a better outcome.

Bonnie Graham

Thank you, Sherry. Join us. What do you think?

Sherry Meyer

Lots of different things. First of all, I do think that culture, I totally agree. The culture at your company is part and parcel of every single person. That’s part of it. The problem that I’ve experienced in the past is that. I don’t how to say this without male bashing. I’ve worked for companies where there are a lot of men and they’re the majority, and the culture is driven by that majority. Majority of men who have had the privilege of going to advanced education, knowing each other, having friends from fraternities and stuff, and giving each other favors which. I haven’t had and that means that me coming in different from the in the culture. My voice is, you know, even as a leader may not be heard because it comes from the top down in a lot of ways. And also, Patty, you talked about metrics and you probably know this about me, I really don’t like numbers and metrics. I don’t trust them but it is important because one of the things I always ask my team is like how do we know for doing the right thing? Like you did really good on that. But how do we know for we spent too much time on that or enough time. That. What did we achieve?

Bonnie Graham

What did we achieve, Enrique? This was yours. What do you think? Talk. Back to you.

Enrique Rubio

I love the reinforcement word that Patty brought to the table and I want to add one more in there, which is accountability, right? This things don’t happen just by sheer good luck. You know, you don’t build a great culture. You don’t build a great workplace just by accident. You have to be very intentional. This thing happened by design. And that means that if you want to have a great culture, you can have it by design and you have to be very intentional about it. That means you have to make sure that your leaders are accountable for that. So that means if you have a top star leader, that is a top performer, but then you look at the assessments of engagement, right, for example, from the from his or her team in terms of how that leader provides, you know, coaching opportunities or growth opportunities and whatnot and that leader is failing in every single indicator of culture, even if he or she is delivering value. You gotta do something about that. You gotta keep them accountable because they may be delivering value while destroying. The culture right? So and this is just one example of all the many examples that you can include about culture, so about accountability. So to me, reinforcements and accountability makes this for a great mix of intention and design to build that great culture and not just by accident.

Bonnie Graham

I’m looking back in my memory on manager. I had very briefly you all know the company we don’t have to say the letters again who when we had a group meetings, everybody who was on site with him at a particular location a building was sitting around a big table and they had a laptop with a camera. He liked to eat his lunch while everybody was talking and sharing that, so we had to watch him with the sandwich and the coffee and the soda, which was fine. But when it came time to scheduling one on ones, everybody on the team got a weekly one-on-one with him, a progress Jack or just what are you doing? He seemed to always forget to schedule one with me. So I was lucky if I got one a month and I went back to the person who assigned me to his team and I said is something wrong with me? He doesn’t wanna meet with me. And this went on for months, he just everybody was talking about their one on ones and I didn’t get them. And I never understood. So that to me was a culture that was basically in my face or up, you know what? And I wasn’t told why it was either I was so. Good. I didn’t need one. Or that that was. Let’s go with that. I don’t even remember his name.

Sherry Meyer

That’s it. That’s it.

Bonnie Graham

At the eating lunch, on the table when everybody was sitting there trying to have a meeting was just really, I’m sorry, just agree. Just Enrico. Thank you, Enrique. Thank you so much for that, that topic. And I want to move on. We have 09 minutes left. Let’s see. We’re gonna squeeze in here. Patty Fletcher, statement #2 for Part 2. I like this one, you say? Challenging the status quo. A culture shift towards inclusive AI. And you’re going back to Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker’s mantra reminds us that for AI. Integration to succeed a companies culture fabric must be receptive. It’s now prime time to rethink of the old cultural paradigm, serve the rapid technological advancements occurring in the workplace. So let’s focus our last 9 minutes. Sherry, we might need a Part 3 here. Let’s focus the last 9 minutes on AI coming into the culture separate from Chatty PT and poems Patty. It’s yours. Go ahead.

Patty Fletcher

Yeah, you know, it’s such a human answer to this, which none of you are going to be you know, just shocked by. But right now, you know, sure, you brought it up in the beginning. Right. And Enrique, you and I have spoken about this throughout today, and that is that tech has really been about how can we do things faster? How could we do the with less money? Right. How can we have? Control over those things that are going to cost us money and therefore cost, you know, our shareholders money. And so the things that we would focus in on of course for hard skills, a little bit of soft skills, right, but hard skills in having you know domain knowledge and by the way all of those things are important, but they are quite frankly not enough because so many of those things can be taken over by there are multiple forms of AI, right, but can be taken over by AI. Now that we’re coming into a place, there are more millennials in the workforce than any other generation, right? Than soon after, you know, Gen. Z starting to enter. But even me is a is a GenXer who loves tech and all of us on here. You know, we’re going to embrace, right, Bonnie, you did. You embraced it with your poem and with other. Stuff. So what do we need in? This would be really interesting to talk to Drucker. If he was around, what we need is to build cultures that truly embrace. Under score champion, advocate for practice every day get measured by their curiosity. Their desire to find out what doesn’t work so they can get to what does and therefore. Learning and we have talked about each of these things since I have been in the workforce, but we’ve never actually made them part of a culture. We haven’t since raising, at least in the US, we have no critical thinking skills that are developed in our children throughout school, not one you work with Germans. You hear the critical thinking right, so we do not have that. We don’t have a love of learning Sherry. You know, when you talk about what you just talked about, which quite frankly sounds like sexism and misogyny in the workplace, it’s because you and I and Bonnie were conditioned to believe about perfection. We’re hired for our experience. We’re not hired for our curiosity. Right. We’re not hired to understand how things impact others, and so it would be so great to sit down with Mr. measure everything, right, so that you can have some control over it and say how the hell do you measure curiosity? How the hell do you measure your ability to learn from failure? How the hell do you measure learning? Because it ain’t the e-learning stuff you just put out. This is on the job and it needs to be perpetuated by your leaders and by the people on either side of you, right? That is what I would love to bring to the table. And with that, you can take advantage of emerging times because the cultural.

Bonnie Graham

Measuring curiosity, what an innovative, disruptive thing for you to say? Doctor Patty Fletcher. I’ve got about a minute and 1/2 for each of you to come in. So, Sherry, you’re sitting next to Patty on this round. Go ahead. What do you think?

Sherry Meyer

Curiosity. I love that. That’s something I’ve spoken about for a number of years and we don’t hire based on that. We expect we’re a culture that expects is in America, people to come in the door knowing a set of things you come into your interview, you sell yourself as knowing and doing a set of things. You don’t come in and sell yourself as a curious person. Nobody wants to hear that. You sound unsure of yourself, right? That has to change the ability to have a real critical thinking discussion back and forth to see how people think and feel and how creative and innovative are the they. That’s what’s going to make a difference in companies going forward. I think the tech is wide, they’ll use the tech, they’ll be curious about it.

Bonnie Graham

Take is a skill, but what are we going to do with it, Enrique? I see I said it right again. I said it 12 times and I messed up on one and I apologize. OK, Rubio, I got the O and the I got this.

Enrique Rubio

She called me and Rico and I was going to bring up my opera sing Italian opera singer skills. I’ll tell you.

Bonnie Graham

Well, I got the O from Rubio transposed over to the Ian and Reggie. You got to forgive me. OK, you get a minute and a half. Come comments on Patty. Go ahead.

Enrique Rubio

Absolutely. Well, I want to quickly say this right, a very, very much related to curiosity, right, because it’s all connected. You know curiosity critical thinking, strategic thinking, creativity, innovation, all these things are connected, right, so I was looking up on an Instagram post that was posted by Forbes a few weeks back and they were reposting something from the World Economic Forum saying 70% of employers say creative thinking is most in demand skill in 2024. My response to that was like a joke, right? Employers will want more creative thinking. Employees here are my ideas. Employers. Ah, that’s not the way we do this here. So the question becomes, you know, yes, you want more creativity. You want more curiosity, but only to shut people down when they come to you with creative ideas, with challenges to the status school, with challenges to your leaders and the way they think. So you can’t really say that you want people to be curious and creative if you don’t let them be curious and creative. And in addition to that, if you don’t let them experiment and fail and learn and grow. And that right so to me it goes there’s gotta be an alignment if you’re. If you tell people I want you to be creative, you gotta be ready to for them to be creative. If you tell people I am ready for you to be asking questions even if they are uncomfortable. You gotta be ready for the kind of questions going to be asking that are going to make you uncomfortable. Only then can you really say that you’re walking the talk about curiosity, creativity, critical thinking and whatnot. So to me it is the alignment of asking people to do something, but being prepared to accept what’s going to happen after they are in power. With that idea of doing that, something including curiosity.

Bonnie Graham

Bravo. You said it. There we go. I got fireworks for you. You. See. That they’re the fireworks. OK, good. I’m. I’m planning my thumb action here. Patty, I’ve got about 30 seconds for you to wrap this one up. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Enrique Rubio

That was funny.

Patty Fletcher

I’ll take them. Yeah. So fully, fully agree with you and that is inclusive leadership being able to take in all different opinions ultimately as a leader, I get to decide what to do right, but take in all of those opinions and experiences and respecting them and then going back and explaining why you didn’t take that that on. And here’s the thing that we have to remember. We are dealing with a workforce who will eventually get beaten down like the rest of us, right. But we’ll also understand this one thing right stage, right audience. And if you are not the right audience for this stage of the change that I want to bring as an employee, I will go somewhere else. And nobody gives a crap that I only stayed with you for a year or two that’s not around anymore, at least in the tech intensive industries. Yeah. So, you know, employer beware. Leader beware. It’s literally your fault.

Bonnie Graham

16 times. They’re not staying for the lifetime, and I have to do a quick shout out to Patricia who was my manager at SAP who heard me when I said give me a little bit of money. I want to do a 13 week pilot of a roundtable thought leadership, live radio show. We called it get coffee break with game changers and she called me on the 4th week and said I have news for you and I figured OK she hates it. She said go big. I’m funding you for the year and that one series turned into 48 different radio series for SAP and launched my career as a business broadcaster. She took a chance. I was curious. I pitched her and. She said yes. So thank you, Patricia Harris. I know she’s still somewhere. So anyway, everybody, I want you to raise your finger in a. No, no, no. Come on. Enrique. Sherry Ann. Dr. Patty Fletcher. People say the future is already here and we’re talking today about Rizing evolution in the future-proofed enterprise. Well, that future isn’t here yet. So on the cannabis free, join me in saying no, no, no one. 2/3 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was a little raggy, but it’s OK that future hasn’t happened yet. The future is here. It was 2 seconds ago that was three days ago. That was a year ago. The future is now and we’re going to make it a better one. Thank you too. My engineer Jordan of Voice of America doctor Patty Fletcher. Glamorous as always. Sherry Meyer. What would I do without you and Enrique Rubio, love to have you on the show. Body wave goodbye. OK, Jordan, be out. Wait.

Enrique Rubio

Thank you.

Patty Fletcher

Thank you.

Bonnie Graham

Out. Thank you very much.