026 : Cultivating Culture by Magnifying the People Experience with Deborah Hankin
Designing culture at creative firms is all about putting together a magical group of people working together for the right reasons. These are teammates who would choose to stick with your company over a McKinsey or a Bain, even if it means making a bit less. This is because the idea of a bigger paycheck is never as appealing to the human spirit than the prospect of contributing and making an impact on the world.
Let’s say that you pay less than others in your market, but if the work your company does if impactful, purposeful, and fulfilling, then that is what will draw the attention of great talent. As our guest Deborah Hankin likes to say: “Your compensation can’t be more important than pairs of pants and Chinese food.” You can pay less in favor of more meaningful work, but not that much less.
It doesn’t take employee engagement surveys or most other formalized, resource-sapping methods to get a pulse on your company culture. “You need to think about people experience all over the place,” says Deborah. The key to maximizing the potential of your vision-mission is by harnessing the collective genius of each member of your team. Make sure that every person who works at your company feels that their actions directly impact the culture.
Steve Chaparro and Deborah Hankin discuss how you can become a more effective leader by creating a stronger, symbiotic relationship with your people. Stay tuned.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Building a “magical” group of people that will choose your company over all others
- The meaning behind seikaisha, or seeing the whole person
- Using golden time to unlock the “whole person” in each of your teammates
- Dealing with hostile work environments
- Must-learn soft skills that positively contribute to a creative culture
- Attracting—and keeping—the right people by living your company’s vision-mission
- Addressing the holistic employee experience as a smaller agency with fewer resources
- Why you need to “think about people experience all over the place”
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
About the Guest:
Deborah Hankin is an industry-leading, award-winning Chief People Officer with a demonstrated history of working globally in the innovation consulting, marketing and advertising industries. One could describe Deborah’s work over the years as being an intersection of culture and design. She has held key leadership positions in some of the top creative firms in the world, including W2O Group, SYPartners, and Geometry Global.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies at UCLA and a Master of Science in Marketing at Northwestern University.
Sponsor for this episode:
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures from being controlling to being collaborative. If you want to know more about I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at CultureDesignStudio.com.
This episode is also brought to you by DesignThinkers Group, USA, an innovation support. To learn more about DesignThinkers Group, go to DesignThinkersGroup.us.
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Announcer
Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers who are passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Steve Chaparro
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures, from being controlling to being collaborative. Now, here are some of the things that I’ve learned. Your creative talent demands a co-creative culture in order to produce their best work. But there’s a problem. So let’s see if we can recognize some of these signs.
There’s no framework to move your culture forward. You have high turnover and low morale. There’s increasing toxicity across all levels. There’s team engagement and satisfaction that are on the decline. There’s a misalignment between the employer brand and the employee experience and there’s poor communication about expectations and values. So if you want to learn more about how I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at culturedesignstudio.com.
I’m very excited about today’s conversation. My guest today is a special one for me, Deborah Hankin. When you talk about the intersection of culture and design that will describe her work over many years, she has held key people in culture leadership roles at some of the top creative firms in the world, such as chief people officer at W2O group and as the VP of talent at SYPartners. She also teaches at Parsons School of Design, which is a special thing for me since I did some of my graduate work there. Deborah, welcome to the Culture Design Show.
Deborah Hankin
Thank you so much for having me.
Steve Chaparro
Well, you have been very generous to Deborah with me over the years, I first met you, I while you were at si partners, and you’re very generous with your time, showing me around the SYPartners office there in New York. So I’ve come to highly respect and admire you and just be very grateful for your generosity.
Deborah Hankin
Oh, that’s so kind. Thank you.
Steve Chaparro
Well, one of the things I wanted to explore today and and I love being able to have a conversation with you, because when we talk about just the the theme of the podcast of the Culture Design Show, I kind of think of it in two different ways. One, it’s the culture of design, but also how can you actually use design to shape culture, and you have any work that you know, this intersection of culture and design, I’d love to hear about your professional journey? You know, when you first started out your career, what were your aspirations and how did that ebb and flow and evolve over the years?
Deborah Hankin
Well, when I was a girl, I really wanted to be the first president of the US that was female and it could still happen now.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, it could still happen.
Deborah Hankin
Yeah, could still happen. But I was I realized when I read this book when I was about 12, called Dedia, the Second God, that it’s not what the President said, it’s actually what the media says. And so that had a profound influence on me. And from that point on, I really realized that it was advertising and marketing that could have one of the biggest influences in the world. And I started to subscribe to Ad Age and to Psychology Today when I was in high school. And by the time I was in college, I decided I wanted to study marketing and advertising.
And so I spent a lot of time reading and learning about that area of the world. And I also had a lot of love for Japan. I was there when I was in high school, and to be Japanese when I was in undergrad, by the time I was in graduate school. I really honed in on wanting to work for hopefully a Japanese company in international marketing and out of graduate school. I was hired by a division of Dentsu. Dentsu who is one of the largest advertising holding companies in the world. And I started my career working in advertising as an account person and strategist. And at that time, I was able to go and live in Asia and I worked for a company called Dentsu wonderman, which was a combination of Wonder Man, which was one of the largest direct marketing agencies in the world at that time. And I worked on accounts like IBM and Microsoft, and at&t and several others.
And then I was promoted, promoted into a regional role working all over Asia, from India to China and all the countries in between. And it was amazing to work overseas. I learned a lot from that experience about how to work in really unstructured environments and just seeing how other people do work. And having a team that was disseminated across 13 different countries also really helped me to understand the best ways of working with people who are remote.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, wow/
Deborah Hankin
He had a lot less bandwidth. So meaning for, you know, we couldn’t do video conferences, we couldn’t see the people necessarily. So it was a it was how do you stay in touch with your team even when you’re not there? Yeah. But then something happened that really changed my career. I came back to the US. I worked for Conan belding, and other agency in New York and Deutsche and other great agents to go again, as an account person and I had my son. I met my husband when I was working in Singapore and we moved to New York and when I had my son, I realized that I had to get a nine to five job in advertising.
And people said, Deborah, you’re so funny. And I have an advertising called every recruiter I knew in town in New York and I said, I need this job that can accommodate me being a new mother. And one woman said, You know what, there’s a woman going on maternity leave at J. Walter Thompson. And if you would like you can sit in for her, she does recruiting for them. And it was two thirds less than I was making. And but it allowed me the flexibility to be able to work and come home at a time where my child would still be awake so I could see him and also allowed me to have a little bit of flexibility. So I did that first summer. Then a woman came back from maternity leave, and they said, you know, we don’t have a spot for you. But this other woman Liz Gladstone associates, she’s looking for people who can help her recruit for advertising and marketing professionals. And that launched my career as a headhunter.
So I did that for about five years. And over that time, Sam and Lori took over elisabetta Associates, we placed a ton of people. One of the places that I place a lot of people for was si partners, si partners, was a or is a innovation consultancy, mash up with the design studio. And they have, as you mentioned, a lot of great transformation work during the 2008 2009 financial crisis. No one was hiring. It was a really bad time to be a headhunter. It was, you know, really scary to see so many people laid off in advertising. And I remember at that time, the only people that were really hiring were SYPartners, they bucked the trend. They always looked for what they called magical people. Magical people what does that mean to be magical? Well, it means that you have as much head as heart. They look for people who have as high EQ as IQ. And they wanted people who had been working in consultancies, but also had a real interest and desire to do something that around design around innovation and something that hopefully lead to greater impact in the world.
And so when I, I decided I was going to do more than just be a headhunter because it wasn’t enough for me I really wanted to see the whole I wanted to see the system of talent. The head of hiring at WP WP is one of the largest holding companies in the world for advertising and marketing firms. And I tell To the head of talent there to short tail and I said, Do you think I could ever run HR at an agency? And she said, Yeah, you know what I think you could. And a week later, I got a call from a firm called geometry geometry was a mash up of the Walter Thompson. Oh, we’ll meet and gray and they were starting a new agency with about 1000 people that focused on a lot of direct marketing and promotion work. And they hired me and I became their head of talent. And I did all of it. I did all of HR operations, our operations, learning and development, all of the employee relations, play branding, all of it and coming from a world where I had just done town acquisition world where I was looking at the whole in a very, very large agency was a incredibly challenging And an incredibly good learning experience. I can’t say that it was easy. A little bit about when you don’t know what you’re doing, how do you figure out what you’re doing?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, yeah.
Deborah Hankin
And I got a call a couple years into that role from a partner saying, you know where you are, we are thinking about hiring our own head of talent here. Would you be interested in talking to us about what we need? you’ve hired so many people for us? When you were a headhunter, we think you have a really good bead on what we should do here. So I said, of course, and I went to meet with them. And over that coffee, I kind of outlined what I thought needed to happen as far as finding those magical people. And at the end of that chat, I said, and I really liked the job. And I said, Yeah, really, I really like the job and they say great Because, you know, we think you could be a really good really good person to found our talent group here. Because we, you know us so well and you understand the kind of the kind of place we want to be when we grow up.
And at that point, coincidentally, si partners was being purchased by a Japanese holding company, the marketing holding company. And of course, with my experience working in Asia and then working in talent, it was even an even better fit.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Deborah Hankin
And I loved working with the Japanese again. So that was great for me. And I worked there for several years. We went from about about 60 people to 230 people over the course of a few years. And it was it was a lot It was great. Our sister company Ideo was great to partner with another wonderful design innovation firm and we have a lot of other wonderful companies within q that We would partner with. And then over time, I was headhunted out of sway partners to go and as you mentioned, become the chief people officer at liberty to a group who group focuses on biotech and pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing. And their mission is to make the world a healthier place through marketing communications. And so I worked there for two years and really helped to transform their people experience they had not really had people experience. And they went from 600 people to 1200 people in two years growth mode, and over that time, we also sold the company from one private equity group to another private equity group. And in the in the last four months of 2019. We made five acquisitions and had to integrate them into our firm. One of the issues around How do you make everybody feel part of the whole? fired off? people that were the existing employees? How do you make sure that they feel like the firm that they knew is still the firm that they love?
Steve Chaparro
Oh my gosh, so many questions I could ask from that journey, that arc of your journey thus far, you want to talk about just that, you know, the transition of you know, you’ve been in the account side of the business so you know, you know, the boots on the ground work of what a creative firm does you because you were an account director, you manage the region. Then with the birth of your child, you moved into HR. And you know, it just so many things I love about your story, and I’d love to hear what were some things because I hear so many things culture, scaling culture as you you went from 60 to what was it two Yeah. 200-260 then from doubling the other firm who and then and then not only that, by acquisitions, there’s so many different scales that you have to transition through. What were some of the key learnings that when you think about designing culture at creative firms? Or how do you what is the culture of those creative firms? What are some just key learnings that come to mind for you?
Deborah Hankin
Well, the first thing I’ll say is that the best creative firms are great people attract other great people, crummy people attract other crummy people, you know, so that whole story on birds of a feather and what I find is that when you really want to have an A magically and I keep using that word, magical, but there’s something to it, when you want to have a magical group of people working together, having people that are attracted by the other people that are already there makes a big difference.
And number one, number two is that you want people working there for the right reasons. One of the things that si partners was interesting in their approach was that they didn’t pay very well. And compared to the market, and they could still acquire a wonderful people, because the people knew that they were doing extraordinary work, they were going to be doing work that really made a difference in the world. And they were willing to make a bit less than they might if they were working at McKinsey, or Bain or something like that, because they wanted to contribute and have impact in the world in a way that was outsized from them just working at a place like that. And they were also really interested in doing something that hadn’t been done before.
So one of the lessons I learned was that compensation is important. Everything And one of the things I have this, this kind of expression I use, which is your compensation can’t be more different than pairs of pants and Chinese food. Well, I mean is that people are willing to make less, if it’s going to be less, you know, ordering out, or you know, you maybe you don’t buy another pair of pants a month or something like that. But once you start to get into lifestyle changes, like I have to move, I have to move from where I live, where I can’t do the things I love, you can’t attract talent. So you always have to ask yourself if you’re going to if you’re trying to figure out what kind of things to offer employees, is it pairs of pants and Chinese food? Or am I offering not enough that it’s actually a consequence to their lifestyle and so We were able to attract really amazing talent because we offered extraordinary experience for people. And so my partner’s had people who went on to do unbelievable work and other places as well. And one of the things that I loved about the way they looked at it is when you are ready to leave SYPartners, you they wish to you well.
Steve Chaparro
yeah, yeah, I love that.
Deborah Hankin
They saw it as a gift that they were bringing in it sounds maybe corny, but it really wasn’t they saw it as a gift to the world that you had been working there and then now we’re going to spread the good.
Steve Chaparro
I mean, it’s almost like if if that person is carrying the pollen with them, wherever they go, almost like a bee and you know, to have this idea of Hey, you were you were part you are part of our family. You are once a member of our team. Now you are an alumnus member of our team and you will forever be what’s what’s the term They use for the S y partners, teammates, what’s the eaps? Yeah, you know, just just the idea that you will always be one wherever you are. And you can carry that experience with you. I love that.
Deborah Hankin
Yeah. And I I have to give them credit. I mean, as an example of something that’s quite extraordinary. When I left us, my partners, and I went to work at W two Oh, my first or second day on the job. I received a beautiful handwritten note and flowers from my old boss, which fell in my journey, and how I was going to make a great impact on this next place. No one does that. Yeah. You know, that’s just last act and always and I I really have a lot of heart for them. They also, you know, as my partners also believes in being generous. And one of the things that is incredible is when as my partners was purchased by cue, they gave away 70 percent of the equity to the employees that are employed there at the time. And yeah, and it was even more generous.
One of the things that they did was they said, even if you don’t work here anymore, you keep that equity. So we want you to be here if you want to be here. But if you decide you want to move on for whatever, 9 million reasons, that’s okay, you you made a huge contribution here. And we want you to keep that equity. And I have to tell you, no one does that. Yeah. That’s a lot about the firm. So when I talk about the compensation, not necessarily being you know, quite as high, there were so many extraordinary things they offered to people that had little to do with just, you know, the box in your pocket at that moment. The offices were beautiful, really extraordinarily designed that you were there, you know,
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I love it.
Deborah Hankin
And wait great ways of collaborating We’ll see now with where we are in the world today with how that happens in a really collaborative environment. How do you still do that? And the other thing that they had was ways for people to get together whether they they would have people come over for a glass of wine in the office, to invite people such as I get with you and say, Come with me. Let’s talk. Yeah, let me get to know you. I mean, I may or may not have a space for you at this moment.
Steve Chaparro
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was, that was a wonderful experience of being able to be offered things like that. It was just the spirit of hospitality was running strong.
Deborah Hankin
Yes. And it was you really felt that and I know that I was really proud of that, that I was proud to show where I work and I was proud to people. Were excited to meet people. Just because it didn’t matter if we had a moment job at that moment. But I’ll tell you that then, many people Later on, we did end up hiring or they recommended us to another company or, you know, it turned out that they became clients of ours, you just never know how things are gonna work out. And one of the things that I think also really shows a lot of the generosity and best way partners was when I, they do superpowers, they diagnose cars, which is one of the great little What should I say diagnostic tools they have on their website, you can go and purchase those cards. They’re not very expensive, but they’re great.
And when I told them that I was going to be teaching at Parsons, they donated a ton of those three power packs to the students so that they could diagnose their own superpowers. And we would use those cards to help us to figure out people if they were a good fit for the firm. So one of the things that’s so positive about surprises if they’re superpowers You need all kinds of superpowers to have successful firm. And so understanding what people’s superpowers were and when you interview them, to ask them, you know, okay, your superpower is a provocation. Tell me about when that shows up in your work, or Oh, your superpower is a systems thinker. You can see the whole movie about an example of one that happened to you that you saw the whole. And it was such a great way to get to know people in an unrehearsed manner. People could always talk about their superpowers, but it wasn’t it didn’t sound like something that had come. It was a canned response. Really important when I was, you know, interviewing people to try to make sure we were making great hires.
But to go back to your question about one of the lessons or some of the lessons that I learned, and one of the great lessons from my partner’s to was what they call say Chi, Sha, SCI k i sh s. BS h a, which is seeing the whole person it’s a it’s a term that Q and Haku Hodo, the parent company use seeing the whole person. A lot of times firms, see you as an employee. It’s someone who works there, but they don’t see you as all of you. And so one of the things I really adopted in my way of making sure that the culture is strong, is to make sure that we’re not just about the employee, we’re about the person and their whole life.
What I’d love to talk about are some of the ways that showed up at W2O, yeah. We when I went to work with W2O, they had an extraordinary firm that had been in business for about 18 years, they had grown it from them weiss’s garage, you know, after he left in edtech, and he had started this firm by himself and then now grew up to 600 people and then I come on Seen and they’re looking to figure out how do we make sure we are replicating our culture in a way that really resonate with people. They went from, you know, having just a few offices to 17 offices and including and then over in Europe, when you have so many offices, you need to make sure that you are still holding strong and people feel connected.
But the other thing that was a bit unique was we had 10% of our workforce working remotely. They weren’t we’re not near any office that they couldn’t go to the office every day. And for years, those people needed to feel like they were part of the whole. We had a program that was about site leaders we called them which was about having somebody who was in charge of the culture and identity of that office. Those site leaders in every location was a an ambassador for cultural And then we would have meetings about what kinds of things they needed in their offices, what were they hearing what policies from the company were working and what wasn’t what was missing, and even had an off site leader. With all the remote employees, they had their own person to help them to make sure that they felt like they were a part of the whole, and that they could raise issues that were coming up for them. And so, through that site Leaders Program, we were able to really make a much richer culture because we had feet on the ground, even if HR wasn’t around or the bosses, we’re traveling a lot, which we do. We were able to still have consistency and an approach to the way that we work with our employees. One of the things that was unique about our firm was that we were 70% women.
Steve Chaparro
Wow, that’s…
Deborah Hankin
women. Yes, we have a lot of women who are We’re working mothers and our working mothers. And what we found was that we really needed some programs that could help those people be successful in ways that we hadn’t been able to support before. So, for example, when we have all these parents, new parents, you know, it can be a very tricky time to go from having one child or a few children, and then going back to work. And what we did was we started a program called fourth trimester, in which we provided that employee and their manager with their own coach who helps to navigate that tricky moment in time back to work and the three of them work together to ensure that the way that they were able to work was commentating to the employee. And then the manager could understand ways to work with that employee that encouraged them to be able to do their best work. And that there was a place to be heard and seen for the challenges of that moment.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. Yeah, one of the things is talking We especially about the idea of bringing, fostering this culture, where you appreciate the whole person and you know, there’s this, this Hebrew Psalm that says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, meaning I’m going to give you everything I’ve got meaning the good, the bad, and the ugly, in terms of being my whole self, how can we as creative firms, or just cultures in general, how can we make space for people to in fact, you know, have compassion and for ourselves in terms of, you know, what we realized? There’s gonna be conflict, we realize there’s going to be bad moments really realize there’s going to be good moments. How do we accommodate for that whole person and the the, the spectrum of experiences?
Deborah Hankin
Well, it’s hard. And it requires a lot of empathy. And it requires everybody to bring their A game. Because if you think someone’s slacking and they’re asking for something special, you’re less inclined to be very generous of spirit. If you see someone who’s really working hard, and they need help, I think people are much more likely to be more forgiving.
So one of the things that we experimented with it as we partners which actually worked really well was a thing called golden time. And when golden time was is we, you your teammates, would agree together. You would say for example, I you know, I have a six year old, and I really want to make sure to have dinner with my six year old every night. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to block on my calendar, six to 7pm. It’s all the time, I can’t disturb me during that time. And so golden time meant you you’re off duty, you’re not checking email, you’re not able to take calls, and your colleagues would agree to that. And it allowed people to have the time off they needed to, to do the things I wanted to do. And it was a way to really let people have that experience of being, you know, having the whole person show up.
Or let’s say that you wanted to take an exercise class and that exercise class was between 1130 and 1230. You know, Tuesdays and Thursdays, you mark Bolden time on your calendar, you are off duty at that time. And it meant that group agreed to it ahead of time that that was going to be our golden time but it allowed people to do things that they wanted do that work just work? And so it’s an example of how do we allow people to be their full selves, even if it’s not directly related to the office. And it was great. I think people really appreciated the fact that they could do that. And that they also felt like they were seeing heard for the things that were just work, other things going on in their lives. So that’s an example.
Steve Chaparro
This podcast is brought to you by DesignThinkers Group an innovation support firm. I am joined today by Marc Bolick, who is the managing partner. Welcome, Mark.
Marc Bolick
Thanks, Steve. It’s great to be part of the Culture Design Show.
Steve Chaparro
Mark, a lot of people are curious about what makes design thinking useful for culture change. Can you give us your perspective on that?
Marc Bolick
Yeah, that’s a great question. And Steve, as you know, design thinking is a problem solving methodology that’s based on building empathy. People and it’s I think through that building empathy for the people that you’re serving that gives people a purpose to their work. And I think there could be no better foundation for building a people centered culture than that.
Steve Chaparro
Mark. I think I agree with that. That’s the reason why we do work together. Folks, if you want to learn more about DesignThinkers Group go to designthinkersgroup.us.
Steve Chaparro
One of the experiences that I’ve had working at different creative firms and it’s not just my experiences, talking with other people as well, you know, creative firms, there’s a lot of passion that runs through creative firms and especially marketing and advertising and then and design firms and then management consulting. They’re just it’s it’s very, very intense environments and sometimes they can get a little hostile one of our listeners or watchers IBO, Mike asking the question, how do you deal with the hostile environment in the workplace? Because many times we espouse certain principles in our client facing work such as empathy, such as collaboration, all of these human centeredness in our in our design. But sometimes we can fail to employ some of those things internally to our own work. What are some things that we can do to deal with some of those hostile environments?
Deborah Hankin
Well, I think that, first of all, you need to make sure that you’re educating your population on what’s okay. And we made sure that we always did respect to the word respect in the workplace training, so that everybody understood what was expected of them. But it also aside from making sure that people had expectations about what you know how they were to behave. We also made sure that when people We’re having challenges with each other, that the first thing that happened is we always send people back to the person and go, what else?
Steve Chaparro
Right. Yeah.
Deborah Hankin
Tell someone else that person’s being a jerk. Go and talk to the person and figure out what’s going on with them. And why are you having challenges? It’s amazing how much spins out of control and how much people have how many times you have problems with each other, because they don’t actually talk to each other about the problem, right? So it’s very uncomfortable people like I don’t want to talk with that person, that person’s not treating well, or that’s, you know, a jerk, but actually, sending them directly back to the person as a first move can be very, a very positive thing. And then the other thing that we did was we would have moderated conversations where we would have somebody from HR or a site leader, or a manager sit in on the conversation and give each piece each person a chance. to chat about what was going on, and a lot of times there was misunderstanding. times for example, if you if I was disappointed with you, you said to me, you’re going to have this done for me by noon, and now it’s four o’clock in the afternoon. It’s not done. Well I can I can what you’re late What’s going on? This is unforgivable. I blah, blah, blah, blah, upset, upset, crazy angry.
But instead of assuming something’s wrong, or that the person is out to get you or something, you know, why don’t you ask them? Hey, I’m curious. Why is it delayed? What’s going on? And going into it with with curiosity, as opposed to being accusatory allows you to actually explained Well, actually, it’s delayed because XYZ happened. I need help. Oh, I didn’t realize you didn’t get that information you needed to finish the assignment. Well, I can help you with that. Okay. And so that can really help.
But I also think, you know, as far as tempers flaring or people getting upset with each other, you healthy tension is always good. You always want kind of the, the kind of, should I say, kind of conflicting ideas. The thing that is so critical in that, and we had that a lot of times in the firms I worked with people did not see eye to eye. In fact, they might really dislike each other. The thing that made all the difference was, if you felt that the other person was great, and you respected that person. So I may not agree with my colleagues But, you know, I, Adam saying something that I think doesn’t make sense. I think he’s off. Here. I don’t agree. However, I know Adams really smart. And I know that Adams intentions are really good. And I know that Adam often comes up with things that are pretty amazing. So maybe I need to be quiet for a moment and actually try to understand what he’s saying. Maybe I actually sit back and shut off for a minute and actually take it in.
And so many times we’re trying to come up with the next thing we’re going to say that we don’t actually hear the other person. And I’ll tell you, I’ve heard a lot of arguments where people just going, you know, going at it, but because of the fact that they actually really adored each other actually, the other person was worthwhile, they actually oftentimes came to a better place with whatever it was a disagreement was about, because there I ideas Their idea were actually additive in a better place and in a creative firm, that’s, that’s critical.
Steve Chaparro
Necessary. Yeah. It’s it’s one thing that I really took away from Ed Catmull, his book or creativity, Inc, about his time at Pixar. And there was this one, one section about there is one of his principles is that there needs to be a culture of candor. Because that candor will will surface, that creative tension that is necessary for innovation to happen, for the best ideas to happen. And I agree. Many times, it’s about fleshing out those misunderstandings. And maybe it’s just a way of wanting to understand the other person and in almost like, sifting rocks and pebbles, you’re kind of getting to the heart of the matter by having that, that that conflict, if you will, and I know that for me, you know, as an early in my leadership journey, I’ve definitely made those mistakes of assuming that I understood why so Wasn’t performing. I’ve made some absolutely embarrassing mistakes of just thinking that I knew. And then when I came to find out the real story, there were absolutely great reasons why something didn’t happen. And I just think that that’s one of those soft skills that, you know, we need to learn.
Speaking of soft skills, what are some other soft skills and I know people, there’s a lot of rub around that term soft skills. But what are some of those things? Especially in creative firms, we’ve talked about being able to be kept in a candid, have some of those those conversations to talk things out? What are some other examples of things that are really helpful in creative cultures?
There’s these I think that these apply not just to create a culture but to create cultures in general. But one of the things I’ve noticed that makes a really successful group of employees. One of the things I’ve seen is when people don’t interrupt each other, they don’t talk over each other. It’s a real pet peeve of mine. Where it’s one thing if you’re excited, and you and you interject something, but if you just have had enough of somebody, you go over them dismissive. I think that really shows people that you don’t respect them and that you’re not able to give them a chance to actually come up with something. A lot of times somebody who is not being heard, has the best idea in the room. So willing to really ask if you haven’t heard from somebody in a while or at all to say, Hey, Steve, you know, what do you think? I’m curious to know why you do this cold water with you. People sometimes get so wound up they forget that there’s more than one person in the room or people grandstand. The other thing that I’ll say that can make a big difference from a soft skill is that if you can have a different lead that you put to whatever the idea is.
So for example, one of the programs that we we introduced at the veto group, which was a partnership with Sage consulting, sage offers coaching people in you can do it remotely. And it’s a it’s a, it’s a, it’s coaching that you can do not just for the executive team, but it’s also it’s coaching for anybody who is, let’s say, two years out of school, which is extraordinary to be able to have coaching, career coaching for people that aren’t that far in their careers. And so, one of the things that I found was really amazing and helpful was having coaches. For our people. We have a program called springboard where if you’ve been with us for two years You were able to get your own coach for three months. And it was not. It was not about remedial coaching like you were doing something wrong. It was, how do you get to the next level? How do I ensure that I’m working with my colleague who I’m having trouble with and possible? How do I bring my ideas forward with my client in a way that will make them be heard better, etc. And what we found was not only does that did that encourage retention, because people felt invested in which they were, but it helps employee relations, people work together better bosses, and or managers and their teams were tighter. They had figured out ways to work together and more effectively.
And so it’s an example of investing in people in a way that is again generous. It’s not just about your work, it’s about you as a person. You Be yourself Best, not just at that moment, but as a employee and person. And so part of this, you know, when you’re saying that one of those lessons over those things people can do. I, I believe in being generous, I think it comes back. I think it comes back in 1000 different ways. And even today, I showed you around the office. It wasn’t sure if we had a spot and look at here we are, you know, you’re being moved by, you know, having you here. So, you never know how things are going to come back.
Steve Chaparro
Well, I was definitely fascinated when you were sharing with me because I think you had just the last time we talked you had just, you know, spent maybe six months at W2O and you were talking about how excited you were about that coaching program itself and that it’s so uncommon in a in a design agency or the creative world, especially for that two year to your student, you know, to your person. That that’s fascinating. And I know that I’ve heard, you know, maybe only one other person in the creative industry that has talked about that as Claude silver at VaynerMedia. She, I mean, that’s her heart. She’s the chief heart Officer of of the firm. So it’s it’s great to hear that there’s this growing movement and resonance about just the idea of coaching, even in the creative in the creative culture.
One of the things I want to ask you is, I mean, there’s this thought some some folks that have listened to the podcast, they may have heard me talk about this before and it’s just just the idea when we talk about culture, at at you know, I sit keep saying creative firms, but I think I’ve come to realize it’s not just a nuance for creative firms. It’s all firms in general because we’re all human. But I think as companies begin to grow as we they go through their lifecycle and they can probably go through multiple bell curves right? early on in the bell curve. I kind of feel that the the founder, the CEO of that firm, almost has to be the architect of that culture to design it, to predetermine it to understand what it he or she wants it to look like to embody it, and then to, to kind of shepherd and steward it. But as the firm starts to grow and scale, they’re no longer able to control all of that or predetermined all of that and almost have to become a facilitator of culture and saying, Hey, this is the essence of where you want this to be. But we need you to come as you know, you as an employee to come and help us shape what this looks like. So I think of it as a leader, as an architect leader, as a facilitator. But the third thing that you just mentioned is a leader as a coach, whether you you know, outsource that or take on some of those things. What are your thoughts about that framework of with respect to culture, leaders, you know, must try between, you know, an architect to a facilitator to a coach. Any thoughts about that?
Deborah Hankin
Yeah, I mean, I think that that holds a lot of water. And what you’re looking for, in really strong cultures, the people live that mission vision purpose, it becomes part of who they are. And when you’re really good at attracting the right talent that isn’t strange to people that actually in their core resonates with them the way that they are those people and so it makes sense to them and it feels very comfortable. I think we’re, we’re companies work ran into problems is when they they purport that they are that kind of company, but this company, and then they don’t live to it. They do things that show the opposite. I think that creates so much Controversy and kind of frustration, anger with employees better to if you’re going to propose these things and purport to live by them, you have to do it and you have to allow people to live it out. And so, you know, it’s, it’s interesting. I’ve seen a lot of places that say one thing and do another and that in on Glassdoor really angry about that. And it comes back to bite you we, you know, I wanted to mention that, you know, with your with your framework you’ve just proposed and with the springboard program with the coaching program, I want people to know that although we invested heavily in our people, it paid back in 1000 different ways. We had more people that were being promoted into role because they were better at their jobs. We had our turnover went down by 30 percent.
Steve Chaparro
Wow, yeah.
Deborah Hankin
Wasn’t worked for that program. But as part of the many programs you put together, it has real financial impact when you do these cultural things correctly. So to answer your question, yes, I agree with you. But I think the biggest thing is that you need to make sure that each person who works there needs to feel like they are in charge of culture.
Steve Chaparro
Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s, and that’s the reason why I think of the idea of the leader as a facilitator because when you facilitate a discussion around what should culture be, then it brings invites, not commands, but invites the employees into this process, this co creative process of saying, because I just truly believe that the greatest subject matter experts of any firm’s culture, are not necessarily the executives and are not necessarily a third party management consultant. But really, it’s the employees themself They will tell you whether whether that employer brand promise is accurate or not, if it jives with that employee experience, and so they are your greatest asset in terms of research data, and I actually even believe that they are the greatest asset for ideas and the innovation. So harnessing that collective genius of your employees, your team members, that that will that will be the greatest, you know, way that we can really transform the culture of an organization.
Deborah Hankin
I agree. And I think especially in this time where things are so strange and disaggregated and difficult. It those kinds of things reporting are even more important, because you aren’t together. Yeah. Yeah. So it has to show up in different ways and you have to be able to feel a part of the whole in ways you probably think Never had to before. And a lot of times companies are furloughing their people. They’re not they don’t know whether they’re going to have a job or, you know, but how do you make sure that those people are advocates for you, even if their job goes away? How do you turn people into lifelong employees even when they don’t work there anymore. And part of that, I would argue, is being generous. And so I’ve seen a lot of good things come of that. And it’s, it’s generous with your time. It’s generous, obviously, with physical things, but it’s also making people feel part of the whole, you know, so my partner’s has a very strong group of ex. They call them SYPs But they have a very strong group that still keeps keeps in touch as soon as W20 because Because those people still feel a part of the hole even when they’re not there anymore.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. And I think that’s a powerful kind of bookend to the entire employee experience or, you know, the other term that was used the people experience itself, that it’s it’s on the employer brand on one on the very beginning in terms of this is what it looks like to work at this company. You go through the recruiting, the hiring, the onboarding leaders of all all the different touchpoints all to all the way to the point that a person leaves a firm whether they’re going on to another job, or they’re saying, you know, I retired I retired at this firm and looking at it holistically. I think, some folks that I’ve talked to, they say we do really good at maybe one or two of those seven eight stages, but we don’t do it well and and what what would some advice be that you would have for them in addressing the holistic employee experience because I know that smaller agencies may not have all the resources to focus thoroughly along the whole journey.
Deborah Hankin
But it doesn’t it doesn’t take a lot of resources necessarily to do it. Well. One of the things that became very insightful for us is we would reach out to people who would let us reach out to people. Three months after they’d left the firm and they would ask them, you know, would you talk with us we want to hear what kind of onboarding did you experience what did you think was a smart there? How did they welcome you? What What did you now that you’ve been away for a few months to tell us a look back on and to us? What else could we have done differently? Yeah. How does your experience make sense in your new role? What do you wish we had given you to be better at your next job? And they had those conversations which can be awkward.
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a very courageous and vulnerable place to for leaders to to take on is is to William is being willing to face the good and bad, the ugly of those comments.
It is. And I know, I had many of those conversations with people after they had left. And it was very eye opening, especially because in a lot of times companies asked you to fill out an exit survey right when you leave.
Steve Chaparro
Here, I don’t want to I don’t want to do this. Let me go.
Deborah Hankin
Exactly, you’re done. You don’t here. And also you can’t see this clearly because you’re in it. And so having that perspective of having a few months out of it, and then looking back on it allowed people to see it more clearly, and gave us more insight and how to do better by our people. So does that take resources? No, it takes time. But I would even when someone left I would mark my calendar for three months later and I would reach out to them just take a few minutes and spending 10 or 15 minutes together with somebody by the On the phone or for coffee, if I could, made a huge difference to it to uncover trends and insights that we couldn’t have gotten through a survey.
The other thing that I’ll say that can really help with the people experience that we found over time was that you need to think about people experience all over the place. For example, we had a, we had a board of wisdom, call it a board meeting up on the wall. And we would ask a question that people always have stickies and people could respond on the board with ideas. And some great ideas came out of that about what to call things or whether we should do something or not do something. We were able to take. We had si partners once did a survey where we had music piped into the bathroom, and they kept the bathroom and they asked people do you like Do you not like this? Should we keep it or not? And people had stickies on the wall and the door the bathroom. Now it sounds like crazy to do something like this. Maybe crazy then but we got a snapshot right away, whether people like this or not. And it was, again, talk about lo fi, I mean, how much you know, it’s cost. So my point in all this is, you don’t have to have an employee engagement survey, to figure out what the people need or want. You can do it in small and wonderful ways to get things and get people involved in meaningful ways that can actually show up well in your office or in your work.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I think that’s so much wisdom in those words, because I think many times we we, we think big and then we fail because we try to start big. But I think to your point, there are a lot of small wins that we could, we could have attempting different things and even treating those things as experiments on to their own. said hey, we’re just trying something we’re you know, all in, in the effort to bring about a great people experience. And I even with some of the things that I’ve heard from some firms is when they talk about chief people officer, they’re thinking of the multiple facets of experience. It’s not only employee experience, but in some cases that also includes the customer or client experience, and maybe even you know, partner experience with the people that you know, are part of that the either contractors, or vendors and things like that. So it’s very interesting to see how that can that can be expansive and thought.
Well, Deborah, I wish we had another hour maybe I’ll have to invite you to another episode to talk because there are so many every one of the topics that you share today. I’d love to dive deep into every single one of those but alas, time is is ending today. So thank you so much for being with us. With us on the show today. If people Want to reach out to you or learn more about your work? Where can they find you?
Deborah Hankin
You can look it…you can find me on LinkedIn under Deborah Hankin. And I’ll get back in touch with you.
Steve Chaparro
All right. Thank you, Deborah, appreciate you being on the show.
Deborah Hankin
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
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