Expert Interview: James Kerr
In this Expert Interview, AdvancingWellness CEO Mari Ryan is joined by James Kerr, one of today’s foremost authorities on leadership and company culture.
Mari Ryan: Welcome to the Workplace Wellbeing Essentials Series. I'm Mari Ryan. I'm the CEO and founder of Advancing Wellness. It is my pleasure to welcome you today to this expert interview where we explore topics that impact employee wellbeing. My guest today is Jim Kerr.
Jim is one of today’s foremost authorities on leadership and company culture. His clients include the Home Depot, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, and General Dynamics. These companies to this day use his vision, story development, organizational design, and culture transformation theories. His work is featured in a variety of business magazines including Fast Company, Business Week, and Bloomberg. Jim sixth book, Indispensable – you can see my little notes here – the subtitle Build and Lead a Company Customers Can’t Live Without. This was published earlier this year.
Jim holds business degrees from both Bentley University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Jim, welcome. So exciting for me to have you here today.
Jim Kerr: Mari, it’s great to be here. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and share some ideas with your audience.
Mari Ryan: Fabulous. Let’s dig into our topic today. We know that organizations have had a lot of challenges on their hands in the last year. As employers prepare for the post-pandemic world, there are still going to be many more changes that they are going to have to take into consideration and plan for. In today’s conversation were going to talk a little bit about some of the strategic aspects of thinking about people in organizations and how we think about those employees.
I’m curious, in your work with organizations helping them develop strategies helping to create organizations that builds strong customer loyalty, how do you guide your clients to create an employee experience or that employees value proposition to become and to be sustainable at being indispensable?
Jim Kerr: that’s a terrific question, Mari, and I will say this. The biggest thing that we can do as leaders and cultivating a culture where staffers feel like they are really part of something special, is to first articulate a vision that vividly describes where you want to bring your organization. You’ve got to, of course, include in that story a lot of critical details that shows staffers how they will be successful by helping you achieve that vision. So you want to make sure that you have elements around creating new opportunities, development opportunities, strengthening community, the whole notion of resilience and so on, should be baked into your company vision story so that like I say, staffers want to be part of that and want to make it happen, not only for you but for them.
Mari Ryan: So you are really creating that environment where they are both getting something for themselves out of it like the professional development and growth opportunities, but also connecting to feeling part of something bigger -- is that right?
Jim Kerr: Yes, absolutely. That vision story should be part of almost a rallying cry. It’s the thing that unites all of your staffers in a common cause. That cause has to be important enough for them to want to be a part of, and as a consequence if you can do that, you are going to have some committed people who are going to help you get to where you want to go.
Mari Ryan: That’s great. When you talk about people, so in your book you have a whole chapter on the right people, and yet in that chapter you talk about “customer first” is the most important value. So I’ve got a little problem with that. I want to challenge that and say shouldn’t it be “people first” in terms of your employees and not customers first?
Jim Kerr: Of course. The agenda that was set forth in the book outlines six things, and people is certainly one of them, as is the vision, the culture, transformation, engagement, and all that kind of stuff. So it’s hard to separate anyone from the other. The book’s focus was how do you create a company that customers can’t live without? Really satisfying the customer and making them feel like you are the best provider of choice available on the planet is absolutely critical. Yes, I said in the book “customers first” but of course, people first, culture first, vision first – all the main elements that were brought out in the book have to be equally covered and equally committed to in order to create an indispensable business.
Mari Ryan: I figured you couldn’t do it without your employees, so they have got to be high on that list in there somewhere. Good. I know that you’ve been writing a lot of late about the topic of resilience, both from the organizational and the individual perspectives. I’d like to explore that a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your thoughts on this concept of resilience.
Jim Kerr: Particularly in the times that we find ourselves in, it’s been incredibly challenging with the worldwide pandemic and trying to keep everyone’s spirits up and focused on doing the work at hand. Resilience becomes even more important than it ever was. I’ve been writing about and talking about helping clients build resilience programs long before there was a pandemic, but the pandemic definitely amplified the need for this kind of thing to be weaved into your company’s culture.
In regard to the way I suggest people think about it, is that it’s not a single thing, rather it’s related to making sure that staffers are taking care of themselves physically. There is a physical element to it. Mentally, spiritually, and what I mean by that is they need to feel like they are part of a community and they can find satisfaction in the work by being part of the community. It’s those things that really make up a solid resilience program, in my opinion.
Mari Ryan: Are you seeing in the clients that you are working with now in this post-pandemic, are there different things that they have to do now than you might have suggested before?
Jim Kerr: Yes, certainly the notion of having such a virtual workforce is quite new to most organizations. There were some companies that were already kind of heading in that direction, or maybe already there. But the clients that I’ve been working with, that was the exception, not the norm. Now with the pandemic it has become the norm, at least for the last year or year plus. As a result I think leaders need to work even more deliberately to forge that sense of community because I think it’s really easy to feel disconnected when the best we can do is talk to each other through a computer.
Mari Ryan: Right, absolutely. Let’s explore this topic, the “work from home, work from anywhere” is the workplace of the future, especially in office settings, which is typical of the clients that you and I both work with. From the work that we are doing we know that this sense of community, culture, are all essential to create thriving organizations. What do you see as the implications in this “work from home work from anywhere” setting when it comes to organizational culture?
Jim Kerr: I guess I would say a couple of different things. First, let me react to the idea of is this going to be a permanent fixture in the future. I know a lot of folks are saying that a lot of thought leaders are having that opinion, and Mari, it might even be yours, I don’t know. I push back on that notion. I think temporarily as we start to move into a more normal setting where there will be that model in place, but I think there are huge implications, particularly for someone who is early in their career that will miss out on the opportunities to be coached and mentored if they stay virtual.
Think about our own careers and how we were probably personally developed by several mentors over the course of our careers. I know I’ve got two or three that I can recall off the top of my head who made a huge difference in getting me right here in front of the camera talking to you today. I think that’s the thing that will suffer potentially for people who are early in their careers.
Additionally, if you think about it we are staying in a virtual world, if you will, for the next several years. Will someone who is hired out of college be prepared to inherit a supervisory role? Probably not. My guess would be that it will continue like that and soon will have hybrid models sometime into the near future, but I think eventually there will be a need to get people back together in office spaces again. So that would be the first thing.
The second thing, culturally in the short term if you are having good culture chances are you still have a good culture even though it has gone virtual. If you have a culture that was a little spotty, that was weak in places, this virtual model hasn’t helped that. It’s probably gotten worse. So there are huge implications for what we’ve been going through over the last year plus on the culture of companies.
Mari Ryan: It’s interesting because I think your comments about the early career individuals in particular, we don’t have the same opportunities to develop and nurture our social networks within organizations when we are in situations where we are working remote. The jury is still out. Is this going to be the long-term … I hear stories every day. I heard one this morning about two people who gave up their home and they are living on a sailboat and traveling the world, and that’s where they are doing their jobs from. So people are making lifestyle choices in order to be able to, and finding the jobs that will be able to accommodate those lifestyle choices. But whether you can do that early in your career or not, I think you may have some good points there.
Jim Kerr: Even someone who is really experienced, if they are going to be fully remote they are not going to be able to contribute in ways that they should in developing the next generation of leaders. Yeah, it sounds great to be on a sailboat. In fact, my wife and I spent some time on a houseboat last year as a little getaway. It’s a great concept, but again, I don’t know if it’s really a long-term prospect.
Mari Ryan: It’s going to be interesting to see how this all works out and whether people’s lifestyle choices create this massive “talent war” where people are going to vote with their feet as to how they want flexibility in their workplace and in their workday. They are not waking up in the morning saying, “can’t wait for that two-hour commute!” So, we’ll see. Time will tell.
Jim Kerr: It sure will.
Mari Ryan: You mentioned a couple of times “connection and community.” These are core elements of our wellbeing and certainly they are core elements of the workplace when we think about culture. Yet, we’ve also been challenged in this remote working era of how we are going to maintain connection and community. What are you recommending to your clients to help keep those strong connections and that sense of community in their workplace and in their culture?
Jim Kerr: Some of the things we are seeing people do are having virtual happy hours at the end of the week, sending a little trinkets, logo ware, and things like that and having people were those during meetings to promote that esprit de corps. The biggest thing I counsel my clients with right now is to just try and make sure that you are pulling people in by providing them opportunities to work together on projects. It’s not just the basic blocking and tackling of running your business, but also try to identify some things that will actually create change that people can get engaged in. I think it’s through that engagement that we forged the community that we need to keep the glue that holds the company together.
Mari Ryan: Excellent. It’s what we have to do. It’s got to be intentional and I think that’s the key piece that perhaps is a little different now, is that leaders and managers need to be working intentionally at those efforts.
Jim Kerr: For sure, yes. It’s a deliberate thing and it really pushes us to be very creative as leaders. We can’t let people feel as though they are an island unto themselves. They have to feel like they are part of something. It’s critical to the long-term success of any business, I think.
Mari Ryan: That ties back to your earlier comments about creating that vision in being able to make people feel connected to that vision so they feel they are part of something bigger.
Jim Kerr: Absolutely. Without that story, and I am a strong proponent of convey that vision, not as a statement that you could print on the back of a business card, but actually articulated in the form of a story. Why a story? Because is human beings we learn from the earliest stages, as soon as we become aware of the language, we learned through storytelling. It’s important as you define where you want to bring your organization that you tell a story that is compelling and engaging. Like I said earlier people can see themselves being very successful within.
Mari Ryan: Excellent. Jim, if our audience wants to learn more about you and the work you are doing, where can they find you?
Jim Kerr: Look for indispensable-consulting.com and you’ll find all kinds of information about the company and its services, and even some canned consulting offerings that we have their on the website.
Mari Ryan: Fabulous, and of course we want to remind everybody to pick up your newest book, Indispensable. Jim, it’s always great to spend time with you. Thanks so much for being here today.
Jim Kerr: Mari, it was a pleasure, and thanks for the opportunity.
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