Host Intro (Gene Kim)

[00:00:02.080] My tendency is to script everything out because I have that need for helping achieve the desired outcome. [00:00:13.300] And yet, with this panel, having known these people for so long, I have this exact opposite. [00:00:19.600] I'm relaxed. I can't wait for the next hour. [00:00:23.880] So let me share with you this broadest sketch of my desired outcomes that I've sort of sketched out with Dr. Maslach. [00:00:30.420] And then we'll do introductions and jump into questions. [00:00:33.820] So my specific goal for this session is to explore how the discipline of workplace engagement, which we've heard so much about in the last two days, how does that body of knowledge and that literature overlap, relate to the burnout literature? And to what degree do they oppose each other, contradict each other, or maybe even support each other? [00:00:55.920] So that's my primary objective, and I asked each one of these distinguished panelists to, as selfishly as possible, put their desired outcomes as well and use this really unique opportunity to explore these. [00:01:08.280] And so I'm just really, really delighted and relaxed and that's going to be a really worthwhile and amazing event. So ideal outcomes that Dr. [00:01:17.920] Maslach and I, we talked about was how do we find a kind of solution that will make a genuine positive impact to burnout and engagement? [00:01:24.260] How do we get people genuinely thriving in their environment instead of being beaten down? [00:01:28.620] Dr. Maslach, you said, and if that is possible, I want to learn about it, and if possible, be a part of it to help spread the word, to make it so. [00:01:38.240] So that's kind of the broadest sketch that I have. So why don't we start with each one of our distinguished scholars to introduce themself? Dr. Maslach, can we start with you? [00:01:50.500] Okay.

Dr. Christina Maslach

[00:01:52.000] Can you hear me? [00:01:52.980] Yes. [00:01:53.390] Yes. Good. Okay. [00:01:54.080] A round of applause for our amazing panelists. [00:01:58.760] Yay. Thank you, thank you. [00:02:02.300] I didn't even say anything yet. That's very cool. Okay. [00:02:06.900] Hope it's not going downhill from here. [00:02:09.741] So I'm Christina Maslach, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. And for many years, starting in the '70s, when I kind of stumbled across a phenomenon that didn't have a name but eventually came to be known as burnout, I have been studying that and trying to understand what it is, what causes it, what kind of outcomes and effects it has, and what can we do about it. [00:02:34.780] And that, in my first round of interviews, was usually what people wanted to know. [00:02:38.600] Please, we know it's here. Do something, do something. [00:02:42.180] So it'd be great today to really get into some of those things about what to do about it, and that right now is the thing that is the biggest question for me, the one I get asked the most, and the one I really want to find a lot of answers to, which is how do we make positive steps moving forward in the work environment?

Gene Kim

[00:03:03.360] Thank you for sharing your area of interest, areas of study, and if you could both also share kind of the things that you're most interested in these days as well. Dr. Forsgren.

Dr. Nicole Forsgren

[00:03:12.460] I'm Nicole Forsgren. I'm the head of DORA, and I do research and strategy at Google Cloud. [00:03:18.120] I have been leading the largest studies into DevOps or tech transformation or find and replace, whichever your leadership's favorite words are around that. [00:03:28.460] The capabilities and practices that drive value and positive outcomes for the last 10 years. [00:03:36.000] I've been in tech for about 20. [00:03:38.300] And the things that I've been excited about are understanding what drives value and positive outcomes, including the things that our organizations sometimes tend to care about, things like productivity and money, and things that we also tend to care about, things like productivity and reducing burnout, work-life balance, happiness, satisfaction. And when I say happiness and satisfaction, that's also finding work that makes good use of our skills and abilities because those are the types of things that are engaging and fulfilling, and also when I go home at the end of the day, I can shut my brain off and shift onto other types of things.

Gene Kim

[00:04:22.720] Thank you, Dr. Forsgren. Dr. Martin.

Dr. Andre Martin

[00:04:25.260] Hi, everybody. You saw my career timeline last night. [00:04:27.980] Thanks again for letting me spend some time with you today. [00:04:31.140] When it specifically gets into burnout and engagement, I spent 20 years in a very singular space, which is, like I said last night, how do you help talent grow as fast as the companies they're a part of? [00:04:42.610] And you can only grow, develop, learn, be curious when you're thriving. [00:04:49.060] And so this idea of the opposite side of what causes people to get burnout, what do you see in terms of leaders of fast growth companies as they try to pursue sort of the same trajectory those companies do, and how do you just help people stay engaged, which is where you find discretionary energy and effort to put forth against the biggest challenges we face. So that's sort of what I'm interested in. [00:05:12.360] Engagement's been a long, long, long time pursuit of mine, both personally and then professionally in the companies I've worked with. [00:05:19.740] So thanks for letting me share the stage.

Gene Kim

[00:05:22.180] So, you good? Did I interrupt you? [00:05:26.660] No, I'm good. [00:05:27.310] Okay. [00:05:27.770] No, I can talk more, Gene, if you need me to. [00:05:30.080] No. Okay. So just by the way, so as someone who's not immersed in this, this is such a treat to be able to ask really fundamental and basic dumb questions like this. So can you educate me on what is exactly the relationship of workplace engagement and burnout? Are they diametrically opposed? [00:05:47.640] Do they intersect? Do they conflict? [00:05:49.900] How do academics talk about this work? [00:05:54.520] Go. [00:05:57.180] Okay.

Dr. Christina Maslach

[00:05:58.740] Well, academics often come up with very different points of view, and competing ideas, and competing theories, so to think that there's everybody going in lockstep on one particular point of view takes a while before maybe there's some coalescing around that. [00:06:14.448] So I will share where I started with it, and that's not always how people define it. But doing work on burnout raised some challenges, which was that people often didn't want to talk about it. Managers, CEOs did not want to participate in any work to find out what was going on, because it was going to be too threatening or litigious or something like that. But they wanted to know, "What's the answer? [00:06:42.308] What's the answer?" So, at that point, my colleagues and I kind of did a pivot and said, "Well, rather than simply just focusing on trying to understand burnout, why don't we focus on what is the positive opposite that we'd like to get to? [00:06:58.128] What is not burnout? What is in fact better than nothing, a something." And so we were looking at it in terms of our data as an opposite of burnout. So we're talking about people who have energy and enthusiasm, and they're coming to work. [00:07:15.388] They're not exhausted and overwhelmed. [00:07:18.888] They want to get more involved in the work. [00:07:20.668] There's something meaningful about it, and the joy you get out of that and satisfaction, rather than take this job and shove it, cynical, hostile kind of attitude. [00:07:32.848] And really importantly, having a sense of professional competence and efficacy, and I can do this and I can work at it and get better and contribute and so forth. And we called it engagement. [00:07:46.308] And at that time, engagement sometimes was maybe not the best choice because people would be thinking, "Oh, you mean like when people are getting married or they get..." No. [00:07:57.568] But that was what we called engagement. [00:07:59.308] So we did frame it in terms of a positive opposite of burnout. Others have argued that it's not opposite, it's something else, but that's where I am.

Panel Discussion

[00:08:10.268] Well, and it's a fascinating kind of start because I probably picked up not in the academic world, but in the practice- Yeah ... of engagement. And fascinating about probably 10 years ago, I was at a place called Mars Incorporated, this privately held firm, and we were really trying to take the furthest edge of engagement, which was thriving. [00:08:27.468] Under this idea of we were seeing, even back then, in the next 10 years, there will be a company whose employee brand or employee proposition, their selling point, is going to be come to work here and you will walk out physically, mentally, and emotionally healthier than when you walked in. [00:08:46.088] We were actually in a pursuit of proving that on small scales, and still today, I'm blown away that there isn't a company that can do that because it's all within our reach. You can set up a system that actually will allow people not just to be engaged in work, it'll actually allow them to be productive and healthier. It can be done. [00:09:05.228] It's a long way off, but there's seeds both in research and in practice that will tell you it's possible. [00:09:11.608] And by the way, when you think about engagement, if you were to do the literature search and the citations, is that engagement the same as Dr. [00:09:19.068] Maslach's engagement, or are they- Yeah. In how she described it, I believe it is. [00:09:22.988] Yeah. [00:09:23.188] And so whether you take the academic sort of positioning of it's the opposite edge of burnout, or you talk about Gallup, which would say engagement is about the factors that will contribute to someone having greater emotional commitment to the place they work, and therefore have an opportunity to thrive. So it doesn't feel dissimilar or in opposition. [00:09:42.648] It feels like those are just ends of a continuum, right? [00:09:45.048] Yeah. Although I would say, and I've said this before, that Gallup, again, has a different sort of, I think, slightly different point of view. [00:09:52.608] They do. [00:09:53.128] Yeah. [00:09:54.668] And they're looking at it, at the commitment, and what that means is what will you get out of your employees if they are highly engaged and committed? And they have this concept of discretionary effort. [00:10:07.828] Money. [00:10:10.268] Which means people will work overtime, and you don't have to pay them for that because they are so engaged and so committed. [00:10:16.728] And that I think is at odds with some people looking at happiness and satisfaction, and personal health and wellbeing. So those don't always jive. [00:10:27.108] They also wrote a book. One of the most famous books to come out of Gallup in the last five years was "Wellbeing." Yeah. [00:10:31.728] So they've moved beyond that. They started there. [00:10:34.048] I will own that Gallup started in that spot of working with organizations because they were trying to make companies able to grow. [00:10:39.788] Like, it was a pursuit of shareholder value. [00:10:42.708] And then they started publishing this idea of thriving, and that book on wellbeing actually took that same position, which is there's a greater aim- Yeah ... beyond where we started, and they're starting to see even sort of the limitations of the way that they started their company to begin with. [00:10:57.448] And by the way, I just want to take a moment just to analyze and inspect something you said. [00:11:03.408] So there was a kind of a jaded assertion made. [00:11:06.268] Is it true that there's kind of a school of thought that said engagement was all about sort of maximum extraction of value from people, or is that just kind of a- At least out of Gallup. So the Gallup Q12 was termed, if I can- Yeah ... jump in a little bit. [00:11:21.968] Oh, please. [00:11:22.628] The Gallup Q12 was termed engagement, and I think it was maybe a bastardization of the word because engagement was gaining so much traction, and it was a quick and easy way to measure engagement. But it was not necessarily the same conceptualization of engagement as many researchers and many in the field had been thinking about and measuring engagement. It really was a way to squeeze more effort and work out of workers, which when it wasn't used correctly, was perhaps inadvertently leading to more burnout. [00:12:05.248] And I think this is another thing that's important to note. [00:12:09.268] If you aren't careful, You can burn out doing something that you absolutely passionately love. [00:12:16.216] Oh, sure. [00:12:17.056] I feel attacked. [00:12:19.136] Right? I had my startup, DORA, which I loved, and Jane's totally going to be like, "I see you, Nicole." That first year of any very tiny bootstrap startup, I found a way to commercialize and monetize something that was so incredibly dear to my heart, and I still love it. [00:12:37.476] And I don't know if any of you have seen the laser beams come out of my eyes when I talk about something that I love, because DORA's dope, and if I can find ways to make people's lives better in making software better and more efficiently and drive value to organizations and not burn out, and the love is coming from me. [00:12:55.396] I burned the hell out that year, and I didn't catch it because I was doing what I loved, and I worked myself into the ground. [00:13:04.196] And I, hopefully, was making everyone else's lives better, and I didn't catch it. [00:13:08.656] So there's this really careful trade-off where you're engaged, and you're thriving, and it's amazing, and I forgot to eat, and sleep, and self-care. And it's really encouraging that there is research out there, and companies out there, and practice out there that can find this practical balance that we can then share with others to-- You can go to work and you can thrive. [00:13:41.216] Yeah. [00:13:41.596] Right? [00:13:42.096] And the starting point of it all, whether it's Gallup or you use Qualtrics or any of the number of providers, from a practitioner standpoint, it was never about Gallup extracting energy. It just wasn't the way we walked into that work. [00:13:55.916] It was really about you need a mechanism to create a conversation in your company that has to do with something more than productivity. And so it was in the conversation, at least in Mars and some of the places I've been, that was the real differentiator. Right? Because you could have a conversation about, hey, do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my job? [00:14:20.256] Do I have clear expectations? Is someone actually caring about me on a daily basis? Are they thinking about my career? [00:14:27.636] Do I connect to the mission of the company? [00:14:29.076] And so I'm not sitting here as a Gallup advocate. [00:14:31.376] I think there's any number of benefits and drawbacks to any system. I am sitting here saying it's important to allow your teams and yourself to have that conversation in your company, however you get there. [00:14:45.385] Right? However you get there. Whatever instrument, whatever survey, whatever process you want to use, open up the conversation and you're going to find that everybody's struggling with it. [00:14:55.276] Awesome. And so I think everyone will dispute that, no, no, just sort of, I don't think dispute that those are very noble things. [00:15:02.136] So let's go to the next maybe thing to analyze. [00:15:05.576] One of the things that was very impactful for me was a specific thing that the CEO of Compuware said, Chris O'Malley. [00:15:10.556] He said, "In business, for hundreds of years, there's only three metrics that matter, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and cash flow." Cash flow. [00:15:19.796] All right. And I thought that was such a great statement. [00:15:22.036] Then with the very conservative CFO, Joe Aho, said, I was like, "Do you believe that?" And he goes, "Of course." Even a CPA, bean counting finance person will see the logic of that, right? [00:15:34.576] You need to have customers, you need employees who are engaged with their work, who actually want to help customers, and you can't run out of money. [00:15:41.096] So I find that very logically delightful, and I think valid. Could you sort of maybe scrutinize that from a kind of academic point of view? Is that too naive? Is that useful? [00:15:51.296] What are your reactions when you hear something like that? To anybody. [00:15:58.216] I guess I'll just start off by saying that my first response would be to say to him, "What do you mean by employee engagement?" Because I'm finding it's becoming a little bit like a Tower of Babel. We're all using the same word, but we may not actually be making the same assumptions or what it would be, and are we really talking about the same thing? [00:16:21.376] And that's why I mentioned that, in fact, there are some different models that are out there. The other thing- Just say as if it were the word cloud that Andre said. [00:16:29.036] I'll just assume that it's the beautiful words that flew out, that came out of Andre's mouth, right? [00:16:37.416] Yeah. [00:16:39.236] What you're asking? [00:16:40.476] Yeah. Let's just putatively sort of assert that that was his definition. [00:16:44.196] Yeah. Well, the other thing that I'm running into now is that when I ask people how they know, if they do, how engaged their employees are, they are likely to cite some numbers from a survey. [00:16:57.616] And I'm an author of a survey, so I know about this, but that is an index, but it means they haven't gone and actually walked the floor. They haven't talked to people. [00:17:07.156] They haven't gotten a good sense of what do those numbers reflect, really, in terms of what's going on here. [00:17:13.997] And so I think that to, again, that's why I'm asking, what do you mean by engagement? Or if I can put the statement a different way, if you were successful in building more engagement, which everybody is saying, "Oh, yeah, we want more. We always get 30% engaged and 70% are not. Well, we need more, but it keeps being 30%. [00:17:35.776] What's going on?" And I'm asking, what are you doing and what would success look like for you? How would you know beyond a test score? [00:17:45.076] Like it's a behavioral signal. [00:17:45.366] People are high. Yeah. What is the behavioral stuff that's going to be happening? What will tell you, that yeah, we're getting more engaged and things are... [00:17:56.196] So it's like taking those things out of just the numbers on a survey, which is really a bit of a distance from what's actually happening day to day. [00:18:06.596] And so for me, I really am trying to get a better understanding of what people think they're doing and why they're doing it, and is it showing anything that is improving the working situation for the employees? [00:18:21.440] And I think to kind of extend that a little bit, so I am also an author of surveys. [00:18:28.400] Yeah. [00:18:28.600] Sometimes they can be helpful and useful as a signal and as a touch point or as a baseline. [00:18:34.380] Yeah. [00:18:35.300] And one reason I really like MBI, the burnout inventory, is it's multidimensional, right? [00:18:41.640] So you have a few touch points. You have a few pieces. [00:18:45.040] It's still a signal that you want to understand what's happening behind it. You want to understand where you go from there. [00:18:51.400] You want to understand what it will look like. [00:18:54.460] Worry might be too strong of a word. [00:18:57.900] I always make a face- ... when people come back and they want to have- I know that face. [00:19:05.140] When people want to have one number or one metric. [00:19:08.080] What's one metric that matters? What happens when you have one metric? [00:19:11.960] Where's Sam Guckenheimer if he's here, right? [00:19:14.900] He said this to me once, and I was like, "This is genius." If you only have one metric, you know what metric will be gamed. [00:19:23.380] So if you can have a few, particularly a few that may be intention- Yeah ... that at least helps, right? You still will want to understand what's underlying it, what's behind it. [00:19:36.620] If you improve, what that improvement means, what the behaviors will look like. But if you ever try to reduce it just to one, you run the risk of over-reducing behavior. Or once you only throw up one number, people are going to game that. We're not stupid. [00:19:54.660] We know how incentives work. This is business. [00:19:57.640] It is super cool, just to finish the thought, that you're seeing. [00:20:01.580] I get really excited about this space because it's moving. [00:20:06.320] So if you watch progressive companies, it's moving from, yes, we used to do a survey, to we changed that into a meaningful conversation that we opened up in our companies about this issue, all the way to areas of design thinking now being a big part of the worlds that I live in. Because what we're finding is it's actually the design of the employee experience. How do you bring you all into the changes that will impact your life and create experience? [00:20:32.200] All organizations are a series of touch points with you. [00:20:36.040] That's all they are. Thousands every day in terms of spaces and policies and procedures and managers and all the rest. [00:20:42.900] And so you're starting to see this conversation shift into, God, if we just designed with the people who are going to use the product, the product being the organization, and we created something that works for you, actually it's going to be easier to not avoid burnout, but diminish the possibility of it. Not to ensure engagement, but to give us a better chance. And so I'm seeing even the conversation in companies start to move from a survey to let's learn how to be design thinkers. Let's learn how to build products that people want to pick up and be a part of. I think that's a really important shift when you talk about where the space is going in practice. It's been fun to watch over the last few [00:21:20.520] years. [00:21:23.120] Sort of internally debating whether to ask this. [00:21:26.930] But hey, let's do it. And by the way, those are lovely words, but if I were to... [00:21:33.220] I'll just say what's in my head. Oh, Dr. Martin, looks like Dr. Maslach and Dr. [00:21:37.280] Forsgren are saying engagement is a bunch of hoo-ha, right? [00:21:40.400] How do you directly- ... respond to that? [00:21:44.420] Hey, I respond to it pretty simply is that organizations are in its end, in its simplest form, like I said last night, they are a relationship between humans. [00:21:57.120] And in the end, we know that relationships are really important currency. And part of what I challenge our leaders to do every day is your job is to make sure that your people have what they need to be great. Your job as a leader is to unleash full potential of your people. And so I do, I listen to CEOs who talk to me all the time about those areas. Are we growing the business? Are we growing our people? [00:22:20.500] And are we retaining customer loyalty? [00:22:22.760] And all those have factors of engagement, their definition of the term, not a survey, that are really important to understand. [00:22:31.160] And if you see systems that way, to me, it's not hoo-ha. It's like we're all humans working in a singular mission and goal. And so engagement, the more you can flourish it, the better relationships are. The better the relationships are, the more we listen to diverse opinions. The more diverse opinions we have, the more innovation that's present. [00:22:49.709] The more innovation that's present, the better chance we have of growing the firm and building a better world. I believe in the formula, and you have to practice in the spaces I practice in. [00:22:59.100] You have to do the research they're doing. [00:23:01.420] You have to, at some level, believe there's a reason to do more than just treat our people and ourselves as if we're disposable resources, which is, in the end, what I believe the conversation's about. [00:23:13.980] I don't know. [00:23:15.440] Fine. [00:23:15.680] I don't think they believe engagement's hoo-ha. [00:23:19.120] No. I started off saying I defined engagement as the opposite of burnout. Long ago, that was kind of the way I was trying to sort of get at it. So no, I don't think that. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm running into these other issues, which leads me to think that there may be some things that are getting in our way. [00:23:38.190] Yeah. [00:23:38.460] It's not going as smoothly as it might be. [00:23:42.460] In the last few years, I have visited with organizations and they're administering surveys, and usually more than one, annually. How many of you, your company has annual surveys that have all sorts of stuff about everything, right? [00:24:04.020] Okay, so annual surveys, and what I will do is ask, I'll say, "What are you measuring and why? And what are you finding out? [00:24:09.500] What is happening?" And of late, people are complaining that the needle is not moving. Somehow we're getting the same results over and over again, and they're expecting something to change. [00:24:23.740] And the question is, why? [00:24:25.636] And, have they done anything or have they done something and it's not really... Again, what does this success look like? [00:24:32.616] What are they trying to do? And when I talk to the employees who are taking these surveys, they, if I can say this, are getting burned out on surveys because they're answering the same questions every year. [00:24:48.116] It's the same survey. It's not changing. [00:24:50.156] It's not saying, "Okay, we tried X, what do you think about that?" Or anything. It's the same one, and after a while they're saying, "Hell with it. I'm just going to answer down the middle." "I'm going to make it up. [00:25:02.536] I won't answer. [00:25:05.916] The first time I wrote out extra answers to the questions, nobody obviously paid any attention or some... [00:25:12.396] Why should I bother?" Which means that the surveys increasingly are going to be garbage in and garbage out. It's not going to be telling you very much, and that may be one of several reasons why they don't change from year to year. [00:25:24.036] Say, "Well, let's not do the engagement survey or the burnout survey or the job satisfaction survey," whatever. [00:25:29.716] You take the DORA survey. [00:25:33.516] And the- Or they see a survey and then no action is taken because you do a survey and you do a massive reorg, and they're like, "Oh, we'll just do it again later. [00:25:41.936] We'll reset next year." Yeah. [00:25:44.396] Nothing happens. [00:25:45.176] And nothing happens. And so I see that as actually using tools, not in the right way to actually help you understand what's going on, but turning out to be something that is turning people off in the organization. And really what you want to do is to, if I dare say, engage them in how could we move in a more positive direction. How can we identify some of the pebbles in our shoes that are really driving us crazy all the time, and we could do something about it. [00:26:17.916] So the problem with surveys sometimes is those numbers just get a little floating above the crowd of people, and it's not giving you any direction. [00:26:29.506] The other thing that happens is people who look at the results of the surveys, I find in many organizations, do not feed the results back. Nobody ever hears whatever happened, and that just adds to, "Why should I bother? [00:26:43.016] Why should I even think about these questions?" Because nobody ever said what we learned from it, and you just ask me the questions all over again. [00:26:49.416] And now I agree, there's a lot of organizations that use these instruments really poorly. [00:26:55.576] Yeah. That's true. [00:26:55.936] Right? Really poorly because in the end, and the organizations I've had the pleasure to be a part of, they always treated engagement as a team-level phenomenon. [00:27:05.036] The only place you can sort of work on climate really is a person who's surrounded by 12 other people every single day. And so I'll take Mars as example. [00:27:12.886] Mars ran a survey. They used a number of different providers, but their orientation was always, we will never on high fix any of this. [00:27:20.276] Right? And if we do surveys and it comes up to us, it's going to be years before it comes back down to the employees. [00:27:25.985] Yeah. [00:27:26.336] So why not push that all the way down and ask the question of, hey, what can you as a team, who's working together every day, do to work on climate? [00:27:35.425] And then what are the things the system can also take on over time? [00:27:38.756] And you have to do both, right? You have to be working it at both ends. [00:27:42.556] Because in the end, organizations are, like I said last night, they're 10,000 teams over and over again. And so at least when you pull to the team level, people feel like they have some ability to impact- Yes ... their own day-to-day life, which is what ultimately those surveys should do. [00:27:58.276] And if you're in an organization that's using the practices that you talk about, which are valid as well, help to change that. [00:28:04.136] Because the last thing you want is not to be able to use your voice- Huh ... in a way that can drive change in the very place that you're working. [00:28:10.956] I feel bad for the organizations that are in that place. [00:28:13.596] Yeah. [00:28:13.896] Because then you do, you stop hearing the voice of your people. [00:28:17.696] Yeah. [00:28:17.936] And that just seems counterintuitive in the world that we live in. [00:28:21.936] We need everybody's viewpoint in order to make the decisions we're trying to make, given the world that we're living in. [00:28:27.336] Now, to be fair, this isn't just surveys, right? [00:28:30.696] Mm-mm. [00:28:30.896] I know plenty of people who have done in-depth, heartfelt, qualitative, interview-based investigations, and they've just been tossed either because we don't have some kind of resources, whether it's money or it's time or, I joked earlier there was a reorg or we just aren't going to do it. [00:28:52.916] And then how disheartening is that? [00:28:55.056] In some ways, that's almost worse because a survey's like, oh, you wasted 10 minutes or 20 minutes of my time. [00:29:00.556] If it's an interview, I talked to someone face-to-face. [00:29:04.676] Someone personally didn't care about what I said, and it was ignored. [00:29:11.336] No one cared. No one fixed anything. [00:29:14.376] No one did anything. [00:29:17.776] So- I'll take the survey. [00:29:22.376] Yeah. Right. Almost to what Andre said, what we need to do is understand that, in large part, changing or improving our culture or our tools or our technologies or our process, in some ways, in many ways, needs to start, particularly for our culture and our engagement at the team level. [00:29:40.436] Some ways, though, rolling this up on high, sometimes there's limited things that we can do except resource allocation, right? [00:29:49.126] Mm-hmm. [00:29:50.676] Big budgets roll up to the top. If there are any patterns, some things are kind of limited on context because teams shouldn't be compared to teams because if you've got a mainframe team and a cloud native team, that's a little different. Not little, that's a lot different, right? [00:30:05.886] Mm-hmm. [00:30:07.166] But if you're up top and you universally are seeing consistent patterns, find ways to allocate resources and try to fix things because if people took time to offer feedback in some way, they're telling you things. [00:30:22.196] Whether it's through a survey or an interview or like-Somebody just bitched around happy hour consistently, things are happening. [00:30:30.840] And practically speaking, and we could talk surveys and the like all day long, but there's also a really personal element to burnout engagement. And, I just always, in this world, I'm a born optimist, right? [00:30:43.760] I believe we're really lucky to be in the companies we're a part of. [00:30:47.360] And they need to get better every day. Right? [00:30:49.940] So, many of you are working in fast growth companies. [00:30:52.720] These companies are growing 20, 30% year-on. [00:30:56.220] And so, it's outstripping our processes, our tools, our own human resources that we have. [00:31:03.560] And so, again, for me, the very simple things you can do is have a conversation in your company. I just shot a video for our function around this idea that for, hey, about three years, I lost 30, 40% of the use of my hands. I had a back surgery. [00:31:17.980] I spent most of the time in a neck brace and was clinically probably pretty depressed, burnout, working my tail off the whole time. And, you learn some pretty important lessons in those moments where all I needed was just someone to talk to me and know that I wasn't alone, right? That I'm not the only one going that. [00:31:36.300] And then I didn't want to make that the only conversation I ever had, right? Because in large part when all we talk about is what's going wrong, invariably what we're going to get is just more stuff going wrong. And we're caught in that place. [00:31:50.680] So first open up a conversation that, hey, it's okay to feel burnout. We're all going to have moments, right? [00:31:57.080] As a leader, you have to open the door for people to say it's okay to talk about those things, right? I think secondly is then, you really need to make sort of balance and energy a priority. [00:32:08.600] Everyone on my team has a performance goal that is about your energy management. I want you to walk in with the same energy you came-- you walked into your width. Walk out with the same energy. [00:32:19.920] What do you have to do to be able to do that? [00:32:21.360] It's all different for everybody, right? [00:32:23.960] But my job as a leader is to make sure you're doing the things that continually increase your energy and keep you in balance with the demands just the world's putting on us right now. I've got a 14- and a 17-year-old. [00:32:34.699] My job's the easiest thing I do every day, right? [00:32:38.500] And then the third really practical thing I think we all can do is to make sure we are models as much as we can for working in smart ways. I'm in a new company, six weeks. [00:32:52.560] You know what I do is I come in at 6:00 every morning, I leave by 3:30. [00:32:56.610] I start as I intend to continue. [00:32:59.660] And my organization, as brilliant as Google is, it will take everything I'm willing to give. [00:33:05.780] Just will. And you have to model that idea of, I care more than anybody in the world about the success of organizations, and I am unwilling to upend my life because it's just not a good model for anybody else. [00:33:21.540] We can do these jobs, and we can work smarter. [00:33:24.260] And part of that is you got to realize what are the things that matter to you, and every time you compromise those as a value, they no longer exist in the world, at least for the people who are watching you do your work. [00:33:34.440] And so I just think there's a big piece of modeling for us as leaders that's super important to hang on to. So just to talk really practically about some things that are strategies we can use because that's part of, I'm assuming, why you're sitting here, right? Is that you're struggling with this subject in your own lives. [00:33:49.040] It's because they're too polite to leave. [00:33:51.900] No, that was great. That was- I hope that's not the case. [00:33:54.960] By the way, this is great, and I think it's actually very practical. [00:33:58.540] So let's stop doing that, and let's go to something very academic. [00:34:03.500] Because everyone came to a research conference. [00:34:05.920] Yeah. [00:34:07.580] Actually, that's actually a bit of a joke. But Christine, Dr. [00:34:13.140] Maslach, you said something that I just... [00:34:15.380] I think we were walking, and I just stopped. [00:34:17.321] You just said something so startling to me, that was just so surprising. So let me tell you what that observation was. [00:34:24.980] You had made the notion that there's this famous Gallup survey that shows that employee engagement hasn't changed in 40 years. [00:34:32.020] And you said, maybe we're measuring the wrong thing. [00:34:35.801] Are we measuring something that's actually static? [00:34:37.870] That maybe it's actually we're measuring something that's personal and intrinsic versus something that we can actually change. [00:34:43.091] And I thought that was-- And by the way, I have no interest in... [00:34:46.841] I have no opinion on Gallup. I have no expertise, I have no opinion to judge it. [00:34:51.560] But just as a hypothesis, should we care that employee engagement hasn't increased over 40 years? [00:34:59.460] Or do you think it might be some sort of instrument flaw that- Yeah ... Maslach said? [00:35:06.440] Well, when there's something like that that's static and predictably that's static, you begin to wonder what it really is that, you're putting in this fishing line, and what kind of thing are you getting out there? [00:35:20.760] So I raised that as a possibility. Maybe that's the 30%, however that is measured with any of these things. [00:35:29.360] What is it really tapping- Yeah ... at some point? [00:35:32.860] And it's not getting bigger, it's not getting smaller. [00:35:37.380] And it was also a way for me, I think, to sort of think about the other 70%. That's the majority. [00:35:45.620] And it's like what is your strategy for the next 20% after the 30 on some scale? Not the far end, the burnout end, but in between. And what might be the thing-- what is happening with those people? [00:36:03.240] They often get called, if they're not engaged, they're disengaged. And I'm a big believer that those kind of bimodal things are very useless. They are not helpful at all. [00:36:13.900] People take burned out, not burned out. No. [00:36:16.960] We found from the data that there's actually a whole set of profiles that you can gather with the MBI scores that show that people are sometimes a little short of full engagementBut they're okay. They're doing fine. [00:36:32.476] It's not any big problem. What would it take, to say, move them into a better position that they had more exciting things to do, that there was ways they could give and contribute, as opposed to the people on the far end who might be really hard to work with at that point if they're highly burned out. [00:36:51.256] So I'm just concerned, I think, about at some macro level, what is this information telling us? [00:36:59.236] Because it's not giving us guidance as to where to go, to whom, with what sort of things. And I think then people are saying, "Okay, that's great, but what do we do to get there?" What I have also found out recently in talking, I put out a plea last year when I talked here about burnout, to say that if people had any ideas or had tried things and there was something that they really thought was working well to move towards in a better direction, to let me know. [00:37:28.676] And one of the interesting things is that a lot of the ideas that people have submitted and are passionate about and really believe in are almost always, not completely, but almost always things that I would call under the radar. [00:37:44.716] They're not going up to the top and asking for money, asking for permission, saying we want to make a change. [00:37:51.436] It's kind of like it's within our span of control. [00:37:55.856] We could reorganize how we do X or how we're going to deal with Y when that problem arises. [00:38:03.636] Nobody else has to know about it. We can just work it out for ourselves. [00:38:08.236] And what they're often saying is that we try it, we tweak it till we get it going, and it's working well. [00:38:15.316] We're really proud of it now. We get unexpected benefits we didn't anticipate, which is always a nice surprise, and it builds optimism and it builds hope. Well, if we could do that, we could try something else. And it's not about they're the problem, this is whatever, we can't do anything. [00:38:34.696] And somehow changing that framework to say there's probably smaller steps, easier first wins, and they're worth it. Not reinventing the whole business, but making those steps in a positive way and realizing that there is more that you could actually do in concert with the team and so forth in some way. [00:38:56.616] So Dr. Martin, as a 20-year practitioner in the space, so what is your reaction to should we really care if employees have been consistently at this level engagement, hasn't been increasing for 40 years? [00:39:09.116] Is that actually worrisome? What is your reaction to that? [00:39:12.736] Yeah. So I'd start with the mean hasn't moved. [00:39:18.876] But inside every population, there are companies who have moved the needle for themselves. And so I always look at like, hey, in every one of your companies, on the continuum, there's folks who are feeling the pressure, and there's folks who are thriving right now. [00:39:34.036] And so as a person who's a designer of employee experience, I always like thinking about who are the people that right now thrive in the same company you're working in? What are the assets they're using? [00:39:44.756] What are the ways that they've changed the way they work under the radar in different ways, and how do you find those and actually make them more available to everybody? And there's also organizations in Gallup, in Qualtrics, and whatever survey you use, that have moved radically in terms of the conversation and engagement. And those movements are meaningless unless you actually can walk in there. But engagement is something you feel. [00:40:07.776] Walking into enough companies, you feel engagement the minute you walk into a place. Take me to a call center. [00:40:14.286] I used to work in manufacturing, 180 manufacturing spots around the world. I could walk into every one and almost without fail go, that is a highly engaged workforce that is thriving, or that is a workforce who's in danger of being really burnt out. [00:40:29.756] You can feel it when you're in it. And so I love this idea of it is a team-based construct. Regardless of the survey, there's nothing stopping you from making changes that help produce a better day-to-day environment. [00:40:40.556] And I love that sort of ability of leaders say, "Hey, right or wrong, let's give it a try. Let's try to make our own world better in small ways." Yeah. [00:40:48.495] And that starts to add up over time, right? [00:40:50.055] Because you're feeding this sense of finding the better practice. [00:40:53.496] Yeah. I cannot tell you how many people would say, "Wow, it's kind of like it opens up. We could do some other things." Yeah. [00:41:03.216] It's kind of like as opposed to just sort of feeling like you're beaten down and you can't do this, that's not allowed, da, da, da. [00:41:09.876] And sometimes they've even been given seed money to do some kind of things, spend it as you will kind of thing and whatever. [00:41:17.376] But, I guess what I'm saying is I worry sometimes about the conversation, whether it's engagement, burnout, or other kinds of things, getting framed as such big issues that people assume it's going to require millions of dollars. [00:41:34.426] Right. [00:41:34.436] And it's going to require rethinking how we are going to do tech in the 21st century or the 22nd if we get there, that kind of thing. [00:41:44.346] And that kind of stops people because you just don't know where to begin with that. [00:41:47.616] It's too big. [00:41:47.976] As opposed to start sort of in your own sphere kind of thing and get some of those initial positive wins and try something out, and if it doesn't work, try something different, but have a sense that, yeah, we can solve some of these problems. [00:42:02.696] Agree. [00:42:03.576] So. [00:42:03.916] Agree. [00:42:04.316] I have just an open-ended question, and this actually came from you, Dr. Maslach. [00:42:08.976] So what are the most strategic places to spend energy, time, and money? [00:42:12.816] And so you're looking at a group of technology leaders leading rebellions inside of- ... often conservative organizations that don't want to change. What advice would you give them? [00:42:27.176] You guys know tech better than I do. [00:42:28.536] I'm generic, so I'll ask you first, and then I'll add on.Uh-huh. [00:42:35.412] I would say, within your sphere of control, within your span of control, identify the biggest pain point. Whether it's your pain point or your champion's or sponsor's pain point, and also something that is fun or interesting or compelling for you, because let's be real, it's got to be at least a little bit of fun- Mm-hmm ... so that you don't burn out or get frustrated. [00:43:03.752] And then hack around on that, because then it's fun for you, it's creative. [00:43:10.632] If you're just burned out on people, sometimes I joke I hate people. If it's one of those projects, do it by yourself. [00:43:17.892] If you really love collaborating with people, grab a partner, grab a peer, pull something together, and then show somebody else. And the joy of that is that if it's a giant headache for you, even if it's only a headache for you, it's probably a giant, massive headache for somebody else. [00:43:37.972] At minimum, it's a headache for you, and you just made your life better. [00:43:41.032] Yeah. [00:43:41.412] Right? [00:43:42.932] And then you show somebody else this cool thing that you just made. [00:43:47.492] Even if it's only an adjacent headache for them, you've probably spurred some dope idea, right? [00:43:54.752] And then you can show other people, and show other people. [00:43:56.542] And the nice thing is that you've probably ignited this fire, and now, like you said, it's a fun little win. [00:44:03.552] It was a great little side project. [00:44:05.332] It was fun for you because it was something that was exciting. [00:44:09.912] And by it being a headache, you've solved a problem. [00:44:12.472] You've probably solved a problem for other people, and then it's a win. [00:44:15.602] And I am pretty ambitious, so for me, I like doing those kinds of things because then there's also some sort of impact, right? It's a win. [00:44:25.152] So my hobbies are very different things, but for work, I like doing those types of things that solve problems, because then it feels like a hobby at work, but it's also impact, so I can throw it on my perf. [00:44:37.012] Two birds. [00:44:37.692] Yeah. [00:44:38.832] And I love that idea. I love a couple of things that she said, and underscoring the idea of finding the problem. [00:44:45.432] You run teams. Who's the most stressed member of your team right now, right? [00:44:50.392] Figure out where their needs are unmet, and you solve for everybody, which I just love as a premise, right? That idea of find your most stressed consumer, solve for them. I think the second thing, which is this word rebellion. Anybody who's trying to drive transformation in any system, utmost respect, right? Because we're pushing against the ocean every day. [00:45:10.632] And so that idea of small wins, and that idea of the thing that you all will probably do in most of your organizations isn't complete the transformation that you're a part of. [00:45:19.892] It's that you're going to show people that it's possible. [00:45:23.212] You're going to show people that it's possible to push on the system. [00:45:27.132] You're going to show people in small ways that you can thrive and have a good career. You're going to show people that, you know what, the energy's worth it because we're starting to slowly get the wheel to turn. [00:45:38.752] And I have big props to you for doing your job in that way, and this idea of you just got to show people it's possible. [00:45:47.412] Yeah. [00:45:47.552] Right? And once you do that, then you know what? [00:45:49.712] More people go, "Man, you can have a good career and you don't have to kill yourself. Man, you can sort of do small things around engagement. You don't have to wait for the entire organization to shift." And that's just really important to reinforce, especially in the time when we're sort of locked down- Mm-hmm ... with a lot of inertia and reasons why we can't do something, reasons why it's not the right thing. So I would hook onto those same ideas and say, "Just go there. [00:46:11.092] You can't go wrong." Mm-hmm. [00:46:13.332] Anything, Dr. M? [00:46:16.132] Yeah. No, I like all of that. Again, that hope, that optimism, the things that are possible. And if you're saying where would you- Let's see. [00:46:25.452] I think you're full of hoo-ha. [00:46:26.772] Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. No. [00:46:29.352] I might be. [00:46:30.792] I'm kidding. [00:46:31.772] I might be. [00:46:33.752] But I do think there are ways of investing in small ways. [00:46:43.812] How can I put this better? [00:46:46.732] I think it was M&M, the company, long ago, which was known for always putting aside a little pot of money just to use for little small experimental trial runs. Not for any particular product or particular goal, but just a little pot kind of thing. And I think using that same idea with teams, with people, because increasingly I see a lot of what's happening in the social environment, the we-ness, not just me- Mm-hmm ... as being so important with engagement and preventing burnout. And being able to do some seed grants and just sort of say, "What would be something that you could do this year? [00:47:32.572] Find a particular thing that you want to work on and give it a try." And it doesn't have to be a success. [00:47:39.752] But you'd learn something from it. [00:47:42.312] But give people the idea that it's worth experimenting, worth reaching out, worth trying to figure out something else that would make a difference in terms of how we're working and what we're doing. [00:47:54.072] I think that gives people more voice. [00:47:55.572] I think that gives them more choice and control. I think it's a way for them to develop other kinds of skills. [00:48:01.252] So there may be a lot of things that come as a result of that. [00:48:05.872] And in some sense, it's saying, "We hired you because we thought you were really pretty good, and we believe in you enough to give you a little running room occasionally to do something." Yeah. [00:48:16.552] So I think that sort of would fit in, in the same- Are you going to say it? [00:48:20.452] ... engagement. [00:48:21.212] Andre? [00:48:22.732] In fact, just Googling. [00:48:23.772] I don't know. [00:48:23.892] M&M's, that's actually owned by Mars. So are you familiar with that? [00:48:28.752] That's true. [00:48:29.112] I'm familiar with it at scale, actually. [00:48:31.152] So Mars, one of the things that we did, they called Make the Difference Awards, and they ran a two-year storytelling process. It was about two things, which I love, which is sort of what you're talking about, is they gave people the freedom to make the company better.And then what they did is, as an associate there, you weren't employees, you were associates. [00:48:51.088] You were expected to catch other people doing these great things and nominate them for this process that ultimately was this great storytelling process, 25,000 nominations every two years that bubbled up all the way to the top 100 stories being told to the Mars family and executives as an engagement process. [00:49:10.648] Right? That was how we practiced engagement, was you're going to get to see people who are living in the manufacturing site in Poland in their spare time, making changes to the way that that site works because they love this company so much. [00:49:26.908] And then they took them all the way up, and the big part of that process was how do you let more people know that these stories are being told, and steal them with pride, and then be the next person to do the next great thing. And it was just a part of the fabric of that culture, which was, again, I think the practical end of engagement. Right? [00:49:44.448] It was how do you build this sense that we're looking for you to make the system better, and we will be there to celebrate you when you do. And that can be both on large scale like they did. [00:49:55.308] It's one of the most fascinating pieces of work I've ever seen. [00:49:57.768] I mean, stories of people that got, literally if your story made it, you were sent with your spouse to DC and spent an entire week sort of in that storytelling. [00:50:08.688] And people left their city for the first time in their life. [00:50:12.428] They came to DC, and this family, it's a privately held company, but they literally believe engagement to their core. [00:50:17.928] Yeah. [00:50:18.368] Which showcases the way that they create moments for their associates. [00:50:22.148] Right. [00:50:22.388] So, point of pride for me. I think it's an amazing thing that they do. [00:50:25.618] And by the way, I think that kind of gets to my little aha moment here over the last hour. And forgive me that I'm not even looking at the audience. [00:50:30.588] I'm really here for me. The panel's here for me. [00:50:33.268] I'm just hoping that you're getting something out of it. [00:50:35.628] But that is just a byproduct of the hour. [00:50:40.348] To me, it's just obvious now, right? [00:50:42.028] This is the dynamic learning dynamic, right? It's empowerment at the edges. [00:50:47.848] That is where the improvements come, right? Support at the core, right? [00:50:52.688] Facebook was saved by the PHP compiler, that was done in a 20% time. [00:50:56.347] Google was saved numerous times by 20% improvement projects. [00:50:58.668] I mean, suddenly these stories sound very familiar. [00:51:01.988] Now, this has been great. But I would be kicking myself if I didn't ask this last question just because, well, I want to. [00:51:12.248] So we talked about the word cloud for engagement versus burnout. [00:51:16.188] But I think the other academic literature that I love is from Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi about flow. [00:51:26.668] Flow. [00:51:26.678] Right? So, how would you overlay the Csikszentmihalyi work with engagement? [00:51:32.088] I mean, is that orthogonal, intersect, contradict? [00:51:35.228] I mean, Ed, can you help me understand how I should think about that? [00:51:40.608] Some of the burnout work that has been done, and the measures they've developed for that, have explicitly used flow in it and incorporated it as an element. [00:51:51.268] So, others have not so explicitly, but it does, all the Utrecht people, they did that. Yeah. [00:52:00.268] And your mental framework and how you think about it. [00:52:02.648] I mean, how do you sort of integrate the flow, focus, joy words. [00:52:12.328] Thank you, Doctor M, Doctor... [00:52:14.028] Yeah. So, I'll take a run at it, of course. [00:52:16.928] And I'll ask the question of the audience just as a reflection exercise, which is, hey, in your career, what was the one moment you can point back to where you were at your most creative and innovative? [00:52:29.948] And then just ask the question of what were you surrounded by then? [00:52:33.308] Because that is your formula for engagement, and I believe that's what flow is all about. Right? It's this idea of there's moments in our lives when we're fully unlocked. When we're turned on, our brains are firing, we're just doing things, and we're like, "I can't believe I'm doing this." Right. [00:52:46.938] "I can't believe this is happening." It's when you write one of your masterpiece books. It's when you create- No, no, no. That's tears and, uh... [00:52:54.828] But you know what? [00:52:55.588] I don't know what you're talking about. [00:52:56.808] But you have those moments. And so, that's the formula for engagement, and it's contextual, and it's very different for each one of us. And a good way to go back to your team is to ask that same question. [00:53:09.668] When was the moment in your career when you felt like you were firing on every single piston? [00:53:14.968] And what was true around you at that time, and how can we replicate more of that now? I mean, that to me is always the practical definition of flow. [00:53:22.468] I got goosebumps. And by the way, in a rare moment of acknowledging you. [00:53:26.588] So the Csikszentmihalyi, it's just poetic. [00:53:29.268] It's the sense of flow, that you're having so much fun or so fulfilling that you lose track of time. [00:53:36.208] You can even lose sense of self, right? [00:53:38.108] It is those transcendent moments- I fear ... that is transcendent. And there's just this incredible depiction, and it sort of contradicts, but also complimented by the work of Anders Ericsson, Dr. [00:53:49.948] Anders, about acquired learning, which is like learning is hard but can also trigger flow and joy, so- Yeah, so- ... it's kind of the spirit of the second ideal. [00:53:58.408] So I will note that there has been some research recently into different conceptualizations of productivity, and how some conceptualizations of productivity are the ability to accomplish complex tasks without interruption, which is kind of orthogonal to this idea of flow, and how that type of flow contributes to, and is predictive of work recovery, which is the ability to disconnect from work. [00:54:33.008] You can leave work at work, and that also helps reduce burnout. So I think it's kind of a similar thing. It's a little different. [00:54:40.768] I also, when you mention that idea of flow, it makes me think of the book, "Designing Your Life," which comes back to what you were talking about- ... design work. Has anyone here seen that or heard of that book, "Designing Your Life"? I'm a professor assigning homework. Check it out. [00:55:00.228] I really- That's awesome ... appreciated that book because it helped me think about... [00:55:05.168] So it's nice. It's based on a couple of professors who do kind of design science thinking, but applied to your own life. [00:55:15.468] And it walks you through a very systematic view of doing things, gives you little worksheets. It's dope. [00:55:22.788] But it helps you think through the things that you enjoy doing, the things that you don't enjoy doing, the things that you're good at, the things that you're not good at, and also the things that you do where you find yourself in this flow, where you just lose track of time. Because there are things that we're very good at, but we hate doing. There are things that we're not particularly good at, or we love doing, but we maybe don't flow through. There are things that we're very good at doing, but that take energy from us, and there are things that we're very good at, but we get energy from. There are things that we lose track of time of. [00:55:58.738] And it helps you go through and think about how we can design our lives. And there might be some things that maybe we don't get money from, because capitalism. [00:56:10.288] Mm. [00:56:10.668] And it helps you think about how to structure your day, and if there are things that we love, but we maybe don't make money from, how to structure those into our lives in hobbies. Or how to, going back to what you said, how to manage our energy so that we can structure our lives that way. And it was such an insightful way to think about structuring the things that I am particularly good at, and that bring me energy, and that bring me joy. And as soon as you brought up flow, so much of those things, it kind of helped me structure my life to avoid burnout, bring me energy, bring me flow, and I love it. So homework. You're welcome. [00:56:49.928] I would be remiss if I didn't mention one thing that anyone that's had that sort of transcendent state, Nicole, it was many years ago when we were doing the clustering, right? [00:56:57.448] Yep. [00:56:57.478] With SPSS, and we knew there was some signal there. [00:57:00.017] Right when we finally found it, that sense of triumph and joy that was so much fun. Statistics, SPSS, highly recommended. [00:57:08.848] So fun. [00:57:10.808] All right. I have achieved all of my objectives. [00:57:12.888] I'm going to turn over the mic, and now you can ask all your questions in the remaining six minutes. [00:57:18.948] Actually, we can go a little bit longer without violating the time mark. [00:57:22.868] So I'm going to hand over the mic to Jeff Gallimore, but a round of applause for our distinguished panelists. [00:57:29.148] Thank you. [00:57:31.048] Thank you.

Q&A

[00:57:38.488] Hello. This is Vivek Gupta. [00:57:41.528] Thank you. That was great talk. That was very thought-provoking. [00:57:45.348] One of the things that kind of resonated was when you were talking about are we measuring the right things in employee engagement. [00:57:51.888] Obviously, I haven't looked at this academically, but sitting through pitches from companies that have been doing engagement surveys for a while, they claim that they've done engagement surveys for 30 years and things like that. Right? And there was one slide that really made me pause, where they defined their engagement as things like commitment, and pride, and advocacy, and job satisfaction, and outcomes as retention and discretionary effort. Like it was employee engagement, nothing to do with the employee. Right? It was all about the job and the company. So there's nothing about wellbeing, nothing about happiness, nothing about the employee itself. Do you see that as a trend? [00:58:38.168] Do you see that as something that's changing? [00:58:43.528] So I'll give an example. The thing I'm most excited about that I've seen in some of the surveying, so I can't remember, I think it was IBM, but one of the big companies had a conjoint survey as part of your hiring process. [00:58:55.888] So imagine you went to this company, and you said, "Hey, I want to apply for a job." Before you could do that, they had a series of sort of questions they asked you that were basically about what kind of company do you want to work for? [00:59:06.388] And it was like, would you rather have this or this? [00:59:08.087] Would you rather have this or this? [00:59:09.148] Would this make you more or less satisfied, more likely to stay? [00:59:12.477] And what I thought was really fascinating is they were doing this survey with prospective people who were looking to join a different company, and so ultimately they were saying, "Hey, we're going to get all the information we need to build the company the best talent would want to come to." And that was kind of the most ingenious way I've seen people sort of measure some of these things, different than just measuring the employees that are already there. Because I think what they were trying to get at is, how do we build a company that people want to come and work in? [00:59:38.708] Right? Which is ultimately sort of the end of the question. [00:59:40.928] You want people to come, and you also then, in the end, want to retain the talent you have. So I thought that was just a real interesting edge I hadn't seen before, that got me intrigued about a different way to think about the construct a little bit. [00:59:55.668] Okay. [00:59:59.748] Hi, I'm John Walsh from the University of Michigan. [01:00:02.168] And first I have to say, three bright stars together in one place is awesome. [01:00:07.468] Aw. [01:00:09.248] So sweet. [01:00:10.728] That's so cool. [01:00:13.488] You made my day. [01:00:14.038] The discussion that was really interesting to me about this was the idea of this landscape of touchpoints. [01:00:19.888] Mm. [01:00:20.188] And I'm not sure if I can really formulate this right, but what's kind of teasing around my brain is how do you view, both from the research side and both the practical just people dev side, how do you view this moving landscape, and how do you actually then take that to bring out and tease out real data that is useful for the rest of the world? [01:00:46.378] That's a good question. [01:00:47.748] Oh. [01:00:49.548] Yeah. Okay. [01:00:53.888] That is always the big question is how you tease out that data. [01:00:58.628] And For me, if I can use the word, the touching point again is always going back to real people, where they're working, observing, talking, et cetera, to match up with any other indices that we're gathering in terms of their output, their productivity, absenteeism, scores on a survey, and all of that kind of thing. [01:01:23.618] Until I can hear the voices behind the numbers- Right ... [01:01:29.498] I worry to rely on the number too exclusively and so forth. [01:01:34.018] So I really do think it takes a multiple focus kind of approach on that. [01:01:40.498] And, it's also being open to the answers might be not one, but several. [01:01:49.858] And so the idea that there is a, which I really hate, a single best practice, a one size fits all. [01:01:58.118] It's kind of like I want to banish those concepts because they usually don't work for everybody and every one. [01:02:04.258] You need to customize, you need to sort of figure out what will work here and what kind of people we're bringing and so forth. [01:02:10.598] So, it's not an easy question to answer although, yeah, that's the goal. [01:02:16.198] I love the answer though, right? Because I think inherently what you're saying is that those touch points, although the similar touch points happen in every single company, organizations are vastly different, right? [01:02:28.978] From the principles and values they were founded in, to the areas and industries they're working in, to the very ways of working they believe in. [01:02:35.448] And the important thing is in those touch points, that you're actually using them to reinforce the things that you stand for, right? [01:02:41.818] Because we all join brands, and we all join the aspiration of the company, right? And the more we can make that true in these touch points, and they're small and big. [01:02:51.718] I always think about when you walk into your company headquarters, what does the physical space actually say about what the company cares about? [01:03:00.098] I walk through many companies, I'm like, "I don't know if your space is communicating what you would want it to." Frankly. [01:03:04.928] So true. [01:03:05.028] Right? And that's a really easy example. [01:03:06.768] So true. [01:03:06.778] But that's a touch point that we sort of, we lose. [01:03:09.318] You look at the spaces. Physical space is the easiest thing to look at and go, "That's a touch point every single day, all the time we're having with our employees. What's it saying about what we care about?" And then this is to your point, which is- Yeah ... it's going to be different depending on- A lot of things ... a lot of things. And therefore, there's not one single answer to that question. [01:03:26.978] Can you give an example of... Oh, sorry. Go. [01:03:30.558] I can answer both those. [01:03:31.838] Okay, good. [01:03:33.838] Amazon is incredibly frugal, and you can see it in their design. [01:03:39.598] Incredibly sparse, incredibly frugal. [01:03:41.438] It communicates a lot about what they say, what they value. [01:03:47.878] You've got to be on board for that. [01:03:49.418] Yeah. [01:03:50.178] Now, I will say from a practical research standpoint, and I think this is a theme that has been at least, if not obvious, it's been obvious to me as a researcher, if not underlying, you have to be absolutely concrete. [01:04:05.018] As you go out and interview people, as it starts to bubble up, you have to be incredibly clear with your definitions about what it is you think you're measuring, right? [01:04:16.838] So as themes start bubbling up, you need to start being incredibly clear with terms, whatever it is you want to name it, whether it's engagement, whether you like that word or not. [01:04:27.598] Yeah. [01:04:27.898] Define it, so that you know what it is that you are measuring or what it is you think you're measuring, whatever you think your proxies are. [01:04:35.478] Because whenever you're measuring something across several touch points that are emerging, you can change those later, but if you want to start communicating, particularly several complex touch points later, you've got to be crisp on that, because otherwise, there'll be dragons later. [01:04:54.488] Great. [01:04:54.498] Hi, my name is Jessica Sant. I work at Comcast. [01:04:57.358] And we are starting to do OKRs, which I know you guys at Google have been doing for a while. [01:05:03.028] And so speaking of figuring out what to measure, we have a every other month eNPS survey, so employee NPS. [01:05:11.758] And so one of the questions is, would you recommend this as a place to work? [01:05:14.778] How motivated are you? And a couple other things like that. [01:05:18.178] So we're trying to figure out what is the thing that we want to measure every quarter regarding employee engagement or eNPS. [01:05:24.698] And so participation rate, I think is an easy one that no one really argues that we shouldn't measure participation rate. [01:05:30.418] We want to have a good participation rate. [01:05:32.298] There's a lot of debate on should we measure ourselves on motivation, right? And that we want to increase motivation by 2% over the quarter. And that to me seems tenuous because if my employees know that I'm getting measured on my motivation score going up, then am I telling them the wrong thing because am I kind of poisoning the well? And I guess I'm curious, what do you guys measure? And do you have OKRs or goals set around these engagement numbers? [01:06:02.378] I'm sort of too new to talk about Google's process. I haven't gone through it yet. [01:06:06.078] So I'd love to come back to that one when I've had a little bit more time in the company. One of the things I will say that from an engagement standpoint, I like measuring much more than the mean on engagement is I like to measure follow-up. [01:06:18.478] Right. [01:06:19.418] So for me, it was always like, "Hey, who cares what the mean is now? [01:06:23.718] I care that you see somebody working on making the place better." And so follow-up, has your team improved its practices since the last time you were asked? [01:06:34.298] And that's just a good way to get momentum, right? [01:06:36.878] When you get everyone's attention on movement as opposed to the mean, you get off the measurement of engagement onto the action of engagement, which is just a much better way to build energy around it. [01:06:46.778] So that's where we were. [01:06:49.038] What I would add to that is sort of what was also implicit in my question about what do we mean by engagement. [01:06:58.118] Are you really ultimately interested in motivation per se? Or is it really because you're assuming that motivation, if it gets higher, will do what? What does the success look like? [01:07:13.090] People are going to whistle while they work? [01:07:15.110] Are they going to, they're dancing in the aisles? [01:07:18.310] Are they going to be fewer mistakes? [01:07:21.530] Are they going to be delivering better? [01:07:23.460] What are the things that you assume if people are engaged, if people are motivated, if people are whatever, what's going to happen? And that's what I'm asking. What are you looking for? [01:07:34.760] And I personally would say identify what you really care about moving the needle on, not the internal processes that might be a part of that. [01:07:44.770] But ultimately, are your assumptions correct that that's the way to go and that's what to measure to get to whatever the thing is or the things, that you think you would like to be able to see in terms of employee behavior, success, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. [01:08:03.290] And be able to measure those, because those are going to be a lot more meaningful to actually feed back to everybody in the company on a regular basis. [01:08:14.650] Well, my gosh, we are- And be actionable. [01:08:18.370] And actionable. [01:08:19.990] What are they going to do with we're 2% higher on engagement? [01:08:23.130] It's like- And motivation. [01:08:25.030] Or motivation. Something deeper. Does that make sense? [01:08:26.620] I don't want to imply judgment- Yeah ... on this, but polling on eNPS every other month is kind of a lot. [01:08:34.010] That feels heavy to me. There could be different motivations behind that, so I don't want to- It could be every month, so we're better. [01:08:40.210] Yeah. [01:08:40.771] Yeah, I was going to say, I don't want to imply judgment on this because this is completely context blind, but that feels heavy. With no context, that feels heavy. [01:08:51.510] Don't be silent. [01:08:52.230] Oh, hey, everyone. Thank you so much for your time. [01:08:54.891] We are out of time, but I'd like to extend... [01:08:58.490] Could everyone give a round of applause for- Thank you. Thank you, guys