It's DO-BE Time

Charles Bernard, Founder and CEO of Criteria for Success, continues his conversation with Tony and Brian with the premise that during unstable times you should be making promises to your customers. He describes how to do so with integrity and candor. The conversation also addresses the application of a Management By Objectives approach to performance and incentives.  But perhaps Charles’ most innovative idea in the podcast is how to establish leading indicators in sales that literally drive a change in the behavior of your sales team.

Criteria for Success Founder and CEO Charles Bernard joins Tony and Brian for a discussion of leadership and management in a Covid and post-Covid workplace. While Charles focuses much of his work and many of his examples in the sales arena, they are equally applicable in all areas of the organization. In Part 1 of the conversation, we talk about everything from “managing down vs. managing up” to when and how to have team meetings to reimagining 1:1 sessions with your reports.

Mark Iorio, Founder of the Mega Group and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Brand and Culture Alignment Toolkit (BCAT), Tony, and Brian focus in on specific ways in which you can align your brand with your North Star, as well as the commitment that it takes to do so. Mark uses a music metaphor (consonance, resonance, and alignment) as a framework for assessing whether the organization is delivering on the Brand Promise, and if not, where it is breaking down.

If you have an organization, you have a brand, whether intentionally defined or not. In part 1 of this discussion with Mark Iorio, Founder of the Mega Group and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Brand and Culture Alignment Toolkit (BCAT), Tony and Brian discuss what goes into defining your organization’s brand. What are the roles of leadership and others throughout the organization in fostering and shaping that brand? How do those inside the organization deliver on the brand promise? Mark describes the importance of identifying observable behavior changes as you work to build brand alignment.

In Part 2 of his conversation with Tony and Brian, Kettle Co-Founder Nick Iovacchini discusses how to succeed in addressing the uncertain future of work and future of the workplace when there are no clear playbooks. How do you align people, purpose, and place, and use data to help you do so? Nick hypothesizes that it could be 5-10 years before the new models and templates for hybrid work settle out.

Nick Iovacchini, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Kettle, identifies himself as a “man on a mission.” These days, his mission is to support businesses who are seeing the office as a purpose-driven destination. Kettle O.S. is designed to foster, track, and facilitate how, when, and where workers get together. In part 1 of this podcast, Nick, Tony, and Brian discuss the importance of being intentional in shaping the usage of the office going forward.

In part 2 of our conversation, Noah Pusey (co-founder and CEO of Ripple Analytics), Tony, and Brian tackle some fundamental leadership and management behaviors that need reframing. Words do matter; they affect mindsets and behaviors. While most employers and supervisors talk about their "employees" and "direct reports," Noah refers to them as human beings; Tony and Brian call them people. It is important to not only listen to what they have to say; it is important to act on it.

Who cares if your employees are happy at work? You should! In this episode, Ripple Analytics co-founder and CEO Noah Pusey shares Gallup data on the benefits of employ engagement and satisfaction. He tells Tony and Brian, “How managers and leaders do things is as important as what they do.” The toxicity of the annual performance review process, which Noah did in his role of partner in a large law firm, inspired him to create Ripple Analytics. By providing ongoing feedback across an organization, you can strengthen your people, strengthen your culture, improve employee happiness, and grow your bottom line.

Christine Pietrowicz-Joanis (Puzzle HR), Tony, and Brian discuss the importance of feedback and how to best ensure that honest, direct feedback is provided to managers at all levels of the organization. Perhaps now, more than any time since the industrial revolution, leadership training is essential to successfully addressing the shifting workplace and the changing expectations of employees. That training needs to address not only leadership skills, but also shifting mindsets that affect how they show up and interact with their employees.

Puzzle HR’s Christine Pietrowicz-Joanis joins Tony and Brian to share some of the insights she has gained on the role of Human Resources in the future of work. The conversation begins with a focus on the importance of empathy both within HR and more broadly with leaders across the organization. We move on to exploring the significant changes that have been taking place in the workplace and what those changes mean for Human Resources.