Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan

Latest Episodes:

Employee Experience Cannot Happen Unless We Embrace Empathy Dec 27, 2018

Show notes

What is Empathy and why do we need it? A lot of times we confuse empathy with sympathy. In the past organizations have been good with being sympathetic to employees, but in the future of work it is empathy, not sympathy that is crucial for organizations to have.

A lot of people confuse empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone else's circumstances, empathy on the other hand is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It means putting yourself in someone else's shoes to not just say you feel sorry for them, but to actually imagine how hard it must be to be in that situation.

In the past organizations have been good at being sympathetic, but they have struggled with being empathetic. Unlike in the past when most organizations had hierarchies where there really was no need for upper management to be empathetic, in today's organizations we are beginning to see why it is so crucial to have empathy in the workplace. We have different generations of workers, we have work/life integration that is starting to happen, we have a war for the best talent and many other reasons why employee experience is becoming a priority for organizations.

But the fact is, employee experience cannot happen unless we embrace empathy. We have to be understanding when an employee has a sick kid, we have to be genuinely interested in getting feedback, we have to build collaboration and increase transparency. To do these things we have to have empathy.

Don't be a sympathetic organization, be an empathetic organization. Empathy is the one thing that is going to differentiate your company from all the other companies out there.

How One Of The Largest Law Firms In The World Is Changing The Way They Work, Collaborate, And Lead Dec 24, 2018

Show notes

Andrew Glincher is the CEO and Managing Partner at Nixon Peabody LLP, one of the largest law firms in the world. Andrew started at Nixon Peabody 30 years ago. He is a first generation college graduate, having grown up in Brockton, Massachusetts. He studied business at Boston College undergraduate and has always prided himself as being as much a business person as a lawyer. He ran his own snack bar and concession in high school, was very entrepreneurial, worked in business, and then went to law school. Initially he went to work for a small firm for about a year and a half to do business and commercial real estate. Eventually, Andrew made his way to Nixon Peabody, running the Boston office with a large corporate and commercial real estate client base which has evolved into his current role of CEO.

Nixon Peabody LLP is one of the largest law firms in the world - with 16 offices. They have international alliances throughout the world, particularly in Asia. In the United States, their major metro offices are located in Boston, New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. They employ about 700 attorneys and 1500 total employees. They work on almost everything except criminal defense work - except white collar. They do not do personal injury work on the plaintiff's side nor do they do divorce work. They particularly excel in corporate, real estate, labor and employment law.

Some of the changes in this law firm that Andrew has seen are:

Moving away from hierarchies
One size glass wall offices
A shift towards encouraging collaboration
No more corner offices
Unified office furniture for everyone
More open spaces with cafes and collaboration space

Nixon Peabody isn't an ordinary law firm and Andrew isn't your typical CEO. In fact, as you will here in today's discussion, Andrew is simply not content with the traditional ways that law firms are used to operating. He and his team at Nixon Peabody are finding ways to increase collaboration, change the way they think about space, encourage leaders to be empathetic listeners, and use technology to be more efficient and productive.

How do you deal with people who are resistant to that change? Andrew says you can show them companies that aren't fairing well who have resisted change. He also says you should have discussions about change and acknowledge that change is difficult. You have to keep encouraging people to do things.

What you will learn in this episode:

How law firms are changing
The role AI and technology may have on the the field of law
How to be an empathetic listener
How to deal with people resisting change
Advice to leaders looking to change their work spaces

Contact:

www.nixonpeabody.com

Change Takes Time to Happen, Don't Give Up! Dec 22, 2018

Show notes

Creating a true human organization has been a topic for decades and there has been a lot of smart people, wonderful books, case studies and research reports out there that talks about leadership, employee experience, and management skills.

But still, a lot of organizations all over the world struggle to embrace these things. Still, a lot of employees out there don't like their jobs. So a part of me wonders, does any of the work that I do matter? Why isn't change happening? why do these companies still exist?

Then I remember the emails I get or the stories I hear from all of you about how change is happening in your organization. It might be hard for us to see change because it takes time, but change is truly happening.

It's like going to the gym. I have no idea how long it's gonna take for you to look better or feel better, but I know that over time, as you exercise and eat healthier, you're gonna start to look a little bit better and feel a little bit better. One day you will wake up and look and the mirror and think "I look and feel pretty darn amazing!: Stay optimistic. You too overtime, will start noticing change.

How This Fortune 500 Company Gives Its Employees Ownership Of Their Learning, Development, And Success Dec 17, 2018

Show notes

Caskie Lewis-Clapper is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Magellan Health, Inc., ("Magellan "). Prior to joining Magellan, she served as senior Director for Human Resources Operations for Helix Health, a Baltimore, Maryland-based health care system. At Helix, she held a variety of senior leadership positions, including Sr. Director of Human Resource Operations and Director of Training and Organizational Development. Prior to joining Helix, she was a consultant with General Physics Corporation, providing training and performance improvement consulting services, and conducting human performance improvement research. She is a published author of articles on team building and human performance improvement. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maine and her Master of Science degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Magellan Health is care management for the fastest growing and most complex areas of healthcare, including special populations, complete pharmacy benefits and other specialty carve-outs. It is "the right care at the right time in the least invasive way". With 10,000 employees, they work relentlessly to provide the best care.

Workplace flexibility is something that has been discussed and worked on over the years. Magellan was on the cutting edge of this issue as they were finding ways to allow employees to work off site since the early 90s. And they continue to make flexibility a priority for their employees. Currently 40% of their staff works from home.

A lot of organizations question flexibility because they feel that the best collaboration and innovation happens when employees are in the same location and able to talk face to face daily. But Caskie believes that Magellan is able to make it work because they focus on having purposeful, meaningful in person meetings from time to time that allow everyone to stay on the same page. But they a majority of the time they are able to collaborate and innovate through phone calls, Zoom, and online resources.

A lot of times when teams are in the same location, they tend to waste time in pointless meetings just to say they met. The important factor, whether your team is onsite or not, is that during meetings the leader is clear about what they are there to do. Caskie says, "Let the work drive when you need to be in a room together." And then when you go your separate ways everyone knows what they are aiming towards and what needs to get done.

Another topic of debate these days is around who is responsible for the development, advancement, learning, and success of employees. Is it up to the organization? Is it up to the employee?

According to Caskie, Magellan places the main responsibility with the individual employee. Caskie says, "You're the driver of your work. You're the driver of your development, you're the driver of your successes, you're the driver of your learnings. And that means that as a team member at Magellan, and I'm going to use a word that's a really overused, but you're empowered to, you have the power to make things happen for yourself and for our company."

They feel that it is important for employees to have goals, to be proactive in advancing their careers, and to find ways to keep learning.

What you will learn in this episode:

How employees at Magellan collaborate while working in different locations
What mindsets/skills/traits they look for in potential employees
How to help people navigate change
How to be a digital citizen and a perpetual learner
How Magellan is giving employees ownership over their learnings, development and success
Interesting programs inside of Magellan--Vern and Rita
What it's like to work at Magellan
Changes Caskie has seen at Magellan over the past 20 years

Contact:

Caskie Lewis On LinkedIn

This episode of The Future of Work Podcast was made possible by our friends at ServiceNow. Please show your support by checking out the great work they are doing!

Give employees the service experience they deserve because everyone deserves great experiences at work. Eliminate frustration and improve employee satisfaction with a single access point for efficient, personalized HR services. ServiceNow helps you put service at the heart of your business. Start today.

A Shift In The Way We Think About Work Dec 13, 2018

Show notes

There has been a major shift in the way we view work. In the past when a company had a position to fill they announced the opening and people jumped at the opportunity. There wasn't any talk of employee perks, health and wellness programs, workplace flexibility or workplace design. Someone needed a job, they found out about the job and they applied.

Now if an organization has an opening people don't just jump at the opportunity. They want to hear about what it's like to work at that company, they want to know what the company perks are, they want to know whether the office is an open floor plan and whether or not they have the latest technology. People have options now, so they don't have to jump at the first opportunity, they can wait for the job that is a perfect fit for them.

That is why it is so important for companies today to focus on employee experience. Companies have to be able to understand their Reason for Being and they have to be able to answer questions like, what is it like to work for your company and why should I want to come work there?

Organizations, we need to do a better job convincing people why they should work for us.

This episode of The Future of Work Podcast was made possible by our friends at ServiceNow. Please show your support by checking out the great work they are doing!

How The World's Largest Employer Is Evolving For The Future Of Work Dec 10, 2018

Show notes

Jacqui Canney, is EVP and Chief People Officer at Walmart and Clay Johnson, is EVP and Chief Information Officer at Walmart.

Jacqui has been with Walmart for three and a half years. She is focused on the development, the retention and the rewarding of their 2 million employees. Clay joined Walmart 18 months ago. He focuses on the technology but also the shared services for the company. He is charged with putting those two together to create more productivity and automation.

With over 2 million employees, Walmart is the world's largest employer. They have 5000 stores in the U.S and 10,000 globally.

Skilling and training employees on a massive scale

Investing in people is a focus for Walmart, in particular the last few years they have made investments around salaries, training and education. As Jacqui puts it, "we are people led and tech enabled. So investing in our people and humanity is what Walmart is rooted in and is our competitive advantage".

Recently, they have been moving wages and announced new education benefits that employees have been asking for. One of them is a dollar a day college opportunity. Both full-time and part-time employees who have been with the company for at least 90 days are able to attend college for $1 a day to get an associate degree or a bachelor's degree.

They have also created in-house training called academies and have about 200 of them in the United States, as well as others outside of the United States where they are teaching employees retail fundamentals and leadership skills.

New jobs or skills that Jacqui and Clay are identifying as being important at Walmart include:

Digital literacy,
Data-driven decision making,
Growth mindset,
Flexibility and adaptability and then the
Empathy

One of the things recently implemented at Walmart is called BYOD at work. It stands for bring your own device. So they can bring their personal phones into work and also have access to any kind of the work content they would have on a desktop. So, if an employee is on the floor, they can access all types of training content, just like they were sitting at a desk. The idea is to create more productivity and allow people to learn in a lot of different ways.

They also recently announced a game that it's on the App store called Spark City - that anybody can actually play. It's the gamifying of how to run a store. So, people that want to work at Walmart can use it, even before they are hired.

You may not realize how technologically advanced Walmart is when it comes to their workforce. They are leveraging a lot of cutting edge tools to train, retain, and upskill their employees. Here are just a few examples:

Using IOT – Including having sensors in freezers that 'go bad' and allowing employees to connect with their personal devices throughout the store
Applied blockchain to food safety – to be able to identify the original source of the food the supply
Jet Black – Which allows anyone to find and order gifts tailored to the recipient

Jacqui and Clay say that Walmart is running, not walking, into the next 5-10 years and they are excited to see what new tools, tech, and resources become available to allow them to stay ahead.

What you will learn in the episode:

How Walmart is evolving and using cutting edge tech to train and upskill their workforce
How they are using Blockchain to track food
What the future of Walmart looks like 5-10 years out
Trends Jacqui and Clay are paying attention to
What is store #8 and how is Walmart using it to test new trends
What role leaders play in Walmart's transformation
How HR and IT can collaborate
How Walmart uses VR in empathy training
How they balance what is right for the shareholders vs. what is right for employees and customers

Link from the episode:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquicanney

https://www.linkedin.com/in/claymjohnson/

This episode of The Future of Work Podcast was made possible by our friends at ServiceNow. Please show your support by checking out the great work they are doing!

Work Life Balance Vs. Work Life Integration Dec 06, 2018

Show notes

There used to be a time where work and life were kept separate and they did not overlap. Once you got home at 5pm everything that happened at work was put to the side and you focused on your personal life. But today there's no longer boundaries between work and life. It is more of a blending of the two and it's only going to keep becoming more and more blended in the future.

If the work side of your life is not going well, then most likely your life as a whole is not going well. Work is life and life is work; the two things are becoming one. Therefore it matters greatly what choices you make in your work life. It matters what career field you choose to go into, what organization you choose to work for and how you interact with others you work with. If you want to have an overall meaningful, happy and satisfying life you also need to have a good work life.

This episode of The Future of Work Podcast was made possible by our friends at ServiceNow. Please show your support by checking out the great work they are doing!

The Future Of Work Is Talent: Organizations Will Win Or Lose Based On Their People Dec 03, 2018

Show notes

Dan Shapero is the Vice President of Talent Solutions, Careers, and Learning at LinkedIn. Prior to this, Dan held several positions at LinkedIn, from Vice President of Talent Solutions and Insights to Vice President of North America Sales, Hiring Solutions. He has also served as the Manager of Bain & Company, as Senior Marketing Manager of Paramark, as Product Marketing Manager of Zembu, and as an advisor for Dropbox.

LinkedIn currently has over 575 million members around the world. They are the world's largest professional networking site. The idea originated to provide a platform for professionals to join and start to run their careers much like a startup would think about building their own businesses. Over the course of LinkedIn's history different capabilities have evolved. They started with 300 employees in 2008 and currently, in 2018, employ over 12,000 employees.

Three things LinkedIn offers employees:

Every two weeks they have a company all hands meeting hosted by the CEO Jeff Weiner
They have a thing called InDay. Once a month, people are encouraged to clear their calendars, invest in themselves and invest in their teams
A program where every employee, every year, gets a budget of money to apply towards any number of things that help make their life a little easier.

When asked how work today compares with work 10 to 20 years ago, Dan says the biggest changes are around talent.

"If you look at the most important companies in the world, if you look at the companies that we tend to talk about in the news and the areas that are really driving industry, the new reality is that companies are realizing that they win or lose on their people."

Because of this, there's a new focus on how to help people really thrive at work

LinkedIn has done some research on the idea of 'career sleepwalking', which is

when someone is in a role that they aren't sure they want to be in, but they just

don't know how to get out of it. Dan says there's a whole population of people - as

large as 40% in certain categories -who are 'career sleepwalking'.

There is a ton of window shopping on LinkedIn for careers. People go and look at

jobs that are either different by industry, different by function, different by

location, and as a crazy stat, near 22% of people on LinkedIn say that "they really

fell into their current job versus actively choosing it". And another 23% say that

they feel like they're on a treadmill going nowhere.

Dan's advice for sleepwalkers or those on a career 'treadmill':

Visualize a path to make change
Find a friend to nurture your career path
Find a role model to help understand the steps to take
Have a plan B if it doesn't work out

What you will learn in this episode:

What do non-HR people need to understand about HR?
How employment has changed over the last few decades
Three unique things going on at LinkedIn
Dan's view of Millennials
What is the future of HR?
How LinkedIn is doing perks differently
What is Glint and why LinkedIn acquired them
Suggestions to pivot your career path

Contact:

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dshapero/

How To Keep AI And Automation From Taking Your Job Nov 30, 2018

Show notes

A lot of times I hear people discussing AI and Automation in a way that makes it seem like once everything is fully automated we will all lose our jobs. But is that the right way to think about it? When you lose something that means you misplaced it, you no longer know where it is. It has an air of carelessness or passiveness.

I don't think we are that careless or indifferent. The truth is, we don't lose our jobs, we allow them to be taken from us. There are things we can do to ensure our job security in the future of work.

First of all, we have to be perpetual learners, we have to learn how to learn. We cannot just rely on our companies or schools to teach us the skills we need for the future, we have to actively seek information out and learn things on our own.

Secondly, we have to pay attention to the tangential. We cannot keep our heads down or only look forward. We have to be looking forward, sideways, behind us, etc… We have to broaden our scope so that we are prepared for anything that may come our way.

So what are you going to do to actively make sure your job is taken from you?

Bringing A 165 Year Old Company Into The 21st Century: Upskilling Employees, Utilizing AI & Data, And Creating A Meaningful Culture Nov 26, 2018

Show notes

Judy Marks is President of Otis Elevator Company, a 165 year old company that helps move over 2 billion people a day. With 27 years of experience serving federal customers across multiple agencies, her experience spans multiple disciplines including positions in systems engineering, engineering management, business development, capture management, subcontract management, program management and executive management. She has also served as the CEO at Siemens.

Additionally, she was the President of Transportation and Security Solutions of Lockheed Martin Corporation. In total, she served 27 years with Lockheed Martin and its predecessor companies.

Otis Elevator Company began in 1853 when Elisha Graves Otis invented the safety elevator. Over the last 165 years they have delivered products and services for 2 million elevators, in 1000 offices found in 200 countries around the world - every day. The 12.5 billion dollar company's focus of their 68,000 employees is on their customers and working to keep them satisfied and safe day after day. The foundation of the company is to know their values and stay true to them. This is especially critical in this global company.

The population of the world is a little over 7 billion, so in three or four days Otis has the opportunity, and the responsibility to touch the world, and keep it moving safely. That's more people than fly, and so, it's a tremendous life safety responsibility. Of the 68, 000 colleagues, 33, 000 are mechanics who really live at the customer's facilities, who do multiple service visits, and repairs as needed really to keep cities moving, to keep buildings moving, to keep people safe, and having access to their homes, and to hospitals.

There are multiple types of data that is collected and used in elevators. In a typical elevator the data you collect is everything from door mechanism, and door openings, how many times, how many floors it's been to, etc... All of that's pretty standard information, and really as you think about the ability to use that brings you to preventive and predictive maintenance in the future.

But, the more exciting - in some of the elevators you probably see on the West Coast - have something in them called destination dispatch, which allows riders to get to their destination faster. It acts as a virtual concierge, directing passengers where they need to go. The rider enters their destination and then they receive an elevator assignment. The software groups passengers and stops together to ensure the fastest transport possible.

There are 5 culture statements at Otis:

We celebrate imagination, which means we encourage new thinking, and smart risk taking.
We are family. We believe in us.
We're many voices. The greatest ideas come from diverse teams of thinkers with different points of view.
We're better together. We align as one team, and collaborate to serve our customers
We strive to be the best. We set big goals, we rise to achieve them, and we win together as a team.

What you will learn in this episode:

How elevators and escalators have changed over the last 165 years
Trends Judy is paying attention to right now
How they ensure that Otis has the right people in leadership roles
How AI and data is being used in the elevator/escalator space
How Otis is upskilling their mechanics
What it is like to work at Otis

Links from the episode:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judy-marks-otis/
judy.marks@otis.com

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected