MarketingRecon

Marketing Recon partners with executive teams to create stronger strategic linkages
between a company, its clients, and partners – laying the groundwork for new market growth
and designing custom programs to support the growth initiatives.

Context is King in pursuit of influencing a positive AI future!

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The Kendall Project is educating and inspiring Boston businesses and professionals with its thought-provoking workshops

I think I speak for most professionals who are trying to navigate AI opportunities and challenges. Where do I begin? What’s working? How do I get started? Am I already too late? Thanks to the generous effort of the team at the Kendall Project, some of us can breathe a momentary sigh of relief after attending their AI workshop for marketers at the Cambridge Innovation Center earlier this week.

The Host:

The Kendall Project has a clear mission “to empower companies to rapidly identify opportunities where AI can solve real business problems and create a positive impact, without compromising jobs.” But the important first step is to form a community and common language. By attending the workshop, each of us began the journey. In this case- most of us were independent marketing advisors or agencies – coincidentally one the very top areas where AI is being applied and enjoying the highest growth rate.

The Content:


After a brief introduction to AI basics – level setting terms like Large Language Models, Context, Persona, Vector Databases, Nearest Neighbors, and Hallucinations – the Kendall team (Brendan McSheffrey and Kevin Gulley) introduced the fundamental rules of AI engagement and excellence – including these top three:

• PROBLEMS ARE AI’S FUEL
• AI IS A TEAM SPORT
• AI PLAYS BEST WHEN IT KNOWS THE RULES – WHAT’S IMPORTANT AND WHAT’S NOT

Context:
A key message of the day is that AI relies on context – defined as “what we know.” It can be mundane or strategic. In any case it helps inform the agent about the focal point or “what to pay attention to.” Prompting is a type of context as are personas. These translate into instructions that tell the LLM how to act and become an expert.


Hands-On


The workshops, organized into various peer groups lay the groundwork for introducing AI into different types of businesses. The hands-on portion of the workshop offers a step-by-step approach to problem identification AI-style – using logical components – role, capabilities, problem, and processes worksheets voting to flush out priorities of each sub-group. Yes, we had to actually do work and articulate problems to be solved in our individual businesses. Voting helped distill priorities for each group. Though many concerns were common among marketers – challenges like reconciling all the data coming from different marketing applications came out on top. The purpose of doing the workshop was not only to populate an AI marketing utility to solve today’s problems but also to lay the ground work to understand AI’s future problem solving capabilities. Technically speaking, the goal was to create “controlled structured data.” All the data is collected and the group will receive the output of the data collection as part of the process. Seeing the output from previous workshops helped us visualize how the data starts to form an AI utility. I am looking forward to seeing how our discussions came together!


The Eco-System:


Being co-located in the CIC with AI startups and investors is purposeful. The Kendall Project is dedicated to its investment in the local tech economy and Governor Healy’s stated opportunity for Massachusetts to be a global leader in AI. The leader of C-10- Labs, Beth Porter (a venture studio and eco-system of founders for applied AI companies) finished off the day sharing some of the work being done with her cohorts at the CIC – building solutions from scratch or customizing existing ones. Per Beth, agents are like the millions of semi-conductors in our phones – each has a unique relationship with the other. Therefore, the potential for custom AI solutions is limitless.


Call to Action:


This project is important, ambitious, and a somewhat altruistic effort. Similar to the early days of Open Source and Cloud Computing, AI will have to iron out the misunderstandings, concern, and/or barriers to entry for the industry or specific sectors. It’s a clear case of a community coming together to raise awareness and education, putting aside individual motives, so that the entire industry can benefit and move forward. I fully recommend to my clients and colleagues to sign up for one of the future workshops. Better yet, invest in a company-specific one as a very practical and useful “off-site” for their team. The time to jump on this bullet train is now while you can still catch it! Find upcoming workshops here and become part of this exciting new community.

Takeaways from the 8th Annual Authors and Innovators Business Ideas Festival

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It’s always a welcome adventure to participate in Gennari-Aronson’s Authors and Innovators event.  Just the venue alone was a great discovery – the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown was a pleasant surprise.  I love being greeted by great art on the walls!

As per Larry Gennari, the voracious reader who thinks up the festival each year, the theme was “The Persuasive Entrepreneur: leveraging the power of storytelling to explore your own journey, grow a brand, raise money, motivate a team, sell a business, and inspire change.  Stories matter and the most successful leaders are the ones who know how to develop and share an effective narrative to inspire willing change in others.”  This helped cast a wide net to encompass many interesting and timely reads that kicked off on Thursday evening.   My blog, however, will cover Friday as I was in the audience live on that day.

Time, Talent, and Treasure: The opening conversation between authors Archie Jones and Jennifer Tosti-Khara focused shared many common findings from both personal experience and research.  If only 1/3 of people are happy at work, what’s happening with the other 2/3?  Many are disengaged or trying to follow a path of what they think they “should” be doing.  The goal of this conversation is to understand and help close the gap of engagement at work – whether it means changing your line of work or finding a way to leverage superpowers in your current role.   A lot here for leaders to absorb and take under advisement.

Changing the Story:  The sole panelist here was Christopher Marquis, author of the Profiteers speaking directly to leaders about moving beyond shareholder primacy to finding a purpose in what they are leading.  In a world where climate change is REAL, what is our level of accountability toward this and other externalities?   He used many examples from companies that have built their brand based on their social responsibility – but then found out they weren’t entirely true to solving the problem.  Patagonia was used as an example – identifying its externality as impact on agriculture and then creating its “provisions” division to give back in this arena.  A second example is a Dutch chocolate company,  that fought the child labor abuses by creating a healthy supply chain

Spin in Business, Politics, and Beyond: This one was a bit unsettling.  One can only describe Phil Elwood as quite a character, a self-names PR Operative.  Doug Banks of the Boston Business Journal appropriately conducted the interview to add the journalistic “spin” to the interrogation. Elwood kicked off by reminding us that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, but his legacy will be the Nobel Prize for Peace.  This is what he defines as spin.  If you even wondered how the US lost out on hosting the World Cup to Qatar where many workers ultimately died of heatstroke – this book reveals the story.   If you ever wondered about the impact of “sportswashing” and “greenwashing” – this is the playbook.  Candidly, Elwood uses these stories of his colorful PR work to force each of us to answer the question – “should I do this?”

All the Feels: Throw way traditional brand marketing and research, Leslie Zane a leading behavioral research and advertising executive has explored the power of instinct and how to tap into it. She shared her guidelines for the five promises a brand needs to keep – Empower people to do things; know your people/audience in a non-creepy way; reach the audience, show me something that I can see (literally), delight me and make me better.  She eschews all the “scores” out there for brands and suggests a brand must BE LARGE; more positive than negative; and distinctive in order to reach the instinctual level of the brain via brand connectomes.  A lot has changed since the early days of consumer behavior and Leslie gives us serious food for thought.

Alongside Leslie, David Edelman introduced Personalized.  David provided a detailed example of how he was persuaded through personalization.  He and Leslie riffed on the subtleties of reaching the consumer in a world of constant messaging and believes that AI will create unlimited opportunity.  An internet pioneer, he believes we need to look at AI’s disruption in the same way

Presidential Stories:  Just in time for election season, this curious wealth manager, Megan Gormon, explores an uncanny topic – how former Presidents made and managed their personal finances.  Professionally, she has studied the “psychology” of wealth accumulation, so it’s a fascinating way to complement her professional portfolio. As part of her talk, she discusses how slavery played into wealth accumulation – citing 12 presidents who were slave owners.   Fascinating details emerge and pique one’s interest. One in particular was how Gerry Ford used the Franklin Mint to create presidential medals – something we now take for granted.   Her hope is that by humanizing presidents we will come to know them and relate better to who they are as people.   This book and talk are both timely and relevant and a perfect match to the storytelling theme.  We can all stand to learn more of our country’s history and what a fun way to do it.  Megan was delightful.

On the whole, this event provided a congenial and comfortable way to meet authors, learn from them, and enjoy the exhibit of innovators who are an integral part of its format.  What’s truly outstanding is how the curator, Larry Gennari is able to distill the vast array of current business topics into those that are truly top of mind regardless of industry or size of company.  Many thanks to Larry and his team for their hard work.

 

 

 

 

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EmpowHER builds on an exciting trend| Women leading in tech

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This is the third event with which I have been involved as an attendee or a moderator focused on women leaders in tech and beyond.  I recently moderated a private event for Emory University as part of a TrailblazHER program.  I definitely see a trend!  Women really getting out there to share their stories and support their peers and emerging talent with their very real experiences.  This event, Wednesday, October 16th was hosted by Databricks, moderated by Allyson Wilner of Databricks at the AWS offices in the Seaport District in Boston.   The buzz began long before the event with a line going out the door to enter the office building.  Pretty impressive security.  Those who depend on AWS for their IT lifeblood should feel good about that.

The introductions were fun and revealing with speakers doing a 3-minute summation of their roles and one personal factoid.   Those are always the most fun and give us a chance to find common ground.  From gardening to beating one’s husband in golf, each speaker went beyond thew walls of work in a fun, engaging way – many also raising young families.   With only 45 minutes to spare to attend this event, I picked up some tidbits from the speakers that are worth amplifying.  Several speakers answered each question, so highlights are below:

Today’s Key Skillsets

  • Technically speaking, handling and understanding all aspects of massive data – especially governance.
  • Learn to use Excel – a key to everything and still relevant after all these years – thank you MS!
  • Constant Curiosity about tech trends – For example, what was known as a “large language model” we now know as ChatGBT – so what’s next? Machine Learning?

Soft “hard” skills

  • Communication, maintaining relationships especially with coworkers – how to do on remote world?
  • Having thick skin!  And don’t take it all personally. As a manager or peer, learn to give direct and caring feedback.

Self-advocacy

  • This is always tricky – finding the balance between being egocentric and showcasing your skills and personal brand.
  • A key to accessing leadership and sponsors is to follow the company strategy to see where leaders are going – understanding their priorities. That will be generate a healthy conversation.
  • Never be afraid to ask when you need help
  • Remember it’s better to be well respected vs. well liked!
  • Everyone has challenging moments – so keep a folder of “attagirls” for reference so you can give yourself a boost or use them in a review.

Advocating for your team

  • Amplify their voices & help and encourage them to build personal brands!
  • Find opportunities outside of normal channels and encourage your team to grab them.
  • Don’t worry about having every qualification for a post or a job – go for it. Research shows that men are more likely to do this than women, so reverse the metrics.

Advice to younger self 

You cannot predict the non-linearity of your career.   There will be times you will make changes, times to hold and times to accelerate – so be prepared to step back and review.  Certainly, having a child will force you to evaluate things.

The long-term goal of women should be to look at the bigger social picture of education, child-bearing, and careers.   There is a much bigger challenge that goes beyond an individual.  It’s very clear in the medical profession and several use cases were discussed demonstrating that it’s there are many factors working against one to go to medical school, have a family, and make a living    

And finally, not so surprising, #Work-Life integration is the new way of managing competing priorities.  Work-life balance is a myth!  Many thanks to the dedicated group of women that took time to tell their stories and share their experiences!

Moderator: Allyson Wilner at Databricks

Panelists:

Kate Shamsuddin Jensen from Definitive Healthcare
Shailja Dedakia from Capsule
Vida Ha from Databricks
Amy Winter from Tripadvisor
Sarah Cooper from DraftKings Inc.

A Window Into the New Generation of Women in Tech

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There’s nothing like jumping into the middle of a college campus and getting a read on what’s top of mind for young women carving out their careers.  I popped into the Women in Technology conference at Tufts over the weekend and did just that.   Here’s what I found.

Attendees| Technology savvy and much more

Sitting down to lunch with a group of students, I found a diverse group from many surrounding schools – Brandeis, Smith, BU, and more.  They were gracious in welcoming me and curious to find out why I was there.  Full disclosure, I was there to learn about them as I am involved in talent marketing and employer branding – so I wanted to see who all these companies will find!

I was impressed.  They were all committed to go beyond the classroom and several were in the midst of a special MIT extra-curricular program that focused on machine learning, robotics, and more.  Each had a unique focus on how they would apply their computer science background from Computational Linguistics to Product Management to consulting and had dug deep into all their options.   But what was more interesting is when I asked them about what they did outside of school – their interests and avocations.  Three were also musicians – the clarinet and guitar.  Two were fluent in at least one second language and all were well traveled.  We talked about art, museums, cooking, and family.   I was so pleased to see they were not at home watching video games, but truly turning into well-rounded global citizens.

Panel Discussions| Product Management, Open-Source Impact, Cybersecurity and beyond

The orientation of each panel was primarily to guide the attendees on how to successfully kick start their careers in software and related fields.  I was touched by the panelists’ honest and thoughtful advice as well as their commitment to being part of this event on their personal time – a precious Boston September Sunday.  

Based on statistics provided by the Open-Source session leader, Paula Paul, women in tech have had a huge resurgence in the workplace since being squeezed out during the height of Silicon Valley explosion in the 90’s. 

As Open Source revolves around so much collaboration and volunteer community work, the speaker encouraged the audience to find a way to contribute actively one of the many projects available for input across Open-Source communities.

 Cybersecurity presents many opportunities for tech careers whether it’s part of a company in nearly any “vertical” market or it’s a Cybersecurity entity itself.   The panelists represented the full range including a quasi-government entity, an industry non-profit, and an advertising platform.  The panel was vibrant and presented many examples of ways to “attack” this field and not be intimidated by not knowing everything as the field is constantly changing as new threats emerge.  It’s critical to be flexible and understand the risk tolerance of the organizations with which you are involved.  Being a problem solver and knowing how to assess a situation is as important at the technical skills.

It’s not about just getting the job, it’s about leadership

Despite the stronger presence of Women in Technology, the real message was to move women up the technology chain to occupy more leadership roles.  Each session offered different buckets of advice to this end.  Here’s a sampling of what I heard:

  • As young women, be sure to have your voices and opinions heard in the workplace as you will likely still be outnumbered. When you speak up, you may be seen as “aggressive” but don’t let that get in the way of your progress. 
  • Technology is omni-present and impacts every aspect of our lives, therefore, technology has to take into consideration a very wide and diverse set of users. Therefore, it’s up to each and every one of the creators of this technology to consider the diverse audiences they serve.  Try to stay away from assumptions and truly do your research.
  • Learning your tech stuff is just a ticket to get started. To advance, one needs to hyper-focus on the “soft skills” such as strong communications, problem solving, writing, etc.   These will be the keys to success.
  • Building a robust set of relationships (a/k/a – network) is a critical success factor, often overlooked and not easy to achieve. It requires getting out of your comfort zone and often outside of your company.  The time to start is now (or if you already started, that’s even better!).  Be creative about how you approach people and consider both the give and the get.  The women on the panel, the speakers, and the volunteers were all doing just that – and they should be congratulated.

Who’s Hiring?

The career fair was packed with curious students and energetic recruiters.  I spotted these companies in the mix: Cognex, Intersystems, UKG, Athena Health, Mathworks, Mitre, and Zagaran.

Among the panelists I met and heard, many thanks to:

 

 

 

 

Revisiting a Fundamental New Market Development Building Block| Looking Back to Move Forward

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Twenty plus years ago I left a robust corporate career behind and launched a consulting practice.  Certainly, when I left the telecommunications industry and corporate environment, I felt I had achieved a great ROI on the first 17 years of my career.  However, as a professional in the marketing world, I did feel something was missing.  In fact, it was the direct connection to the MARKET and the customers.  I could see that slipping away then and today, with so much marketing technology in place – it’s further away than ever.

Moving up often means getting too far away | FTF Time Wins

As a marketing leader in a large company, my duties were focused on motivating and leading my team, setting goals and objectives, and reporting into the top of the company with results from various programs.  I had to fight for fact-to-face time with the sales team, field managers, and customers.   My favorite programs always included actual customers and/or partners namely – Customer Advisory Boards, programs in the field in competitive markets, and identifying and qualifying partners when that opportunity presented itself.  I often felt bogged down with administrative duties that didn’t leave me time to do the outreach with the field.  Yet I felt, marketing needed to be balanced with both traditional quantitative and select qualitative research to be effective.

The best opportunity for me to have direct customer interaction came when I was sent to Asia to build our markets there.   We virtually had no product, brand, or customer track record in this part of the world.  It was a clean late – a tabula rasa!  Every outreach to a potential customer large, state-run telecommunications enterprises required a consultative sell.  It was also a very raw type of market research using a lot of creativity and grit to identify challenges and potential solutions in this wide open “market.”    Here I learned out to “test” a value proposition real time.  I also learned that in many cases, the best way to enter a market is through forming partnerships.  Long before today’s formal partner programs, partnering was a matter of identifying key complementary roles that each could play and sharing a vision for a market – a simple, but critical principle.  It was equally important to engage with partners to understand their needs and priorities in order to set the right expectations.

It’s Powerful to Listen to the Market | Observing Forward

Fast forward to my years as a consultant, I have many examples of the impact of value proposition testing – an opportunity to work with a third party to ask the right strategic questions and engage the client in a conversation that demonstrates you are listening and willing to pivot if needed.   This is very high-level market research and a type that should be done by someone with a wide range of experiences upon which to draw.  The conversation is mostly held with a top tier decision maker and the person initiating the conversation should be their peer in terms of years and/or experience.

One cannot argue that digitation and now generative AI have made customer targeting and filling the sales pipeline more efficient.   At the same time, however, it also takes the face-to-face strategic conversations with customers and partners more inaccessible.   Such conversations assure that both the timing and efficacy of a product or new market entry makes sense.  Based on my experience and consulting engagements – I believe this part of the short-term market research process is more important than ever.   I would advocate strongly to invest in this marketing step in collaboration with the sales and partner team but engage an outsider to actually do the work.  You may be surprised at what you hear and in the long run, it will pay to take a step back to move much further forward in launching new markets and products.

 

Emory women demonstrate shared values on their path to leadership| Insights from Boston TrailblazHer panel

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Leading Ladies| Left to right – Jacqueline Ganim-DeFalco, Elizabeth Halkos, Nabiha Saklayen, Sophia Hall, Jodi Rosenbaum

Emory’s mission “to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity” was on full display in the lives and professional accomplishments of panelists of the TrailblazHER event on the eve of the Presidential debate.  Even the venue, More than Words, is an entity born out of alumna Jodi Rosenbaum’s passion to change the system she observed over twenty years ago while she worked at the Atlanta area courts reviewing cases.  “I spent more time in the courts than in the classroom and even had a key to the courthouse,” said Jodi, whose organization empowers at risk youth through entrepreneurship and leadership.

The Journey and the aha moment!

More Than Words Bookstore

The evening began with each panelist sharing their journey and reflecting on when they realized they were in a leadership position.   The panelists included Elizabeth Halkos 01MBA, Sophia Hall 09C, Jodi Rosenbaum 97C, and Nabiha Saklayen 12C and were led by moderator, Jacqueline Ganim-DeFalco 81C.    Jacqueline kicked off the evening by setting the tone for leadership in the broadest sense.  At various points in our lives, we are called upon to lead professionally, in our community, in our family – but once a leader, always a leader in some capacity.

Nabiha, a Ph.D. in physics, admits that she didn’t set out to be a CEO, but nearly everyone around her, all leaders in their field, believed in her and she simply stepped up to the challenge, jumping into many roles as the CEO of a biotech startup, Cellino.  Her diverse background growing up all over the world and speaking multiple languages gave her a unique perspective that only she could bring to her role.  Sophia heard “no” too many times and just pushed through various roles until she found a firm that said YES to her ideas and passion.   Jodi was motivated by anger about the way things were done and was driven to make an impact.  Elizabeth was given a series of roles she thought were better suited to other experts, but quickly realized, she was the leader they needed in her organization, and she would learn what she needed to fill in the gaps. 

Challenges, Derailment, & Resilience

Michele Davis opening the evening

The simple answer to this is “yes,” we have all had them.  All panelists agreed that the main point is to constantly remind each other that we will all have bumps and bruises along the way, and you just have to know this is often the most memorable part of the journey.  For Nabiha, fundraising to the tune of $120M has been her most recent challenge which began in 2017 – facing head on the fact that only 2% of women-owned companies receive venture money.   Elizabeth remembers many closed doors when presenting the concept and raising money for an all-female venture fund.  “No,” was often based simply on gender (you don’t look like us) – a reflection of the tech industry as a whole.   She added somewhat humorously that one of her memorable experiences is being “deposed” for 9 hours when she was 8 months pregnant – a degree of discomfort unique to our gender.    Sophia emphasized that “success usually happens after going through the stuff that really hurts,” and vulnerability helps build the character we need as leaders.  Jacqueline reflected on her experience being asked to open up the Asia-Pacific markets for her employer NYNEX in the late 80’s.   “At the age of 26, I became a ‘Managing Director’ representing a major corporation overseas. Knowing the markets, building credibility quickly, and avoiding any social faux pas was essential to my success and the company’s reputation.  My reputation and the company’s were one in the same being halfway around the world.”

Leadership essentials – Innovation, Vision, and Relationships

Jodi reflected on how important it’s been for her to hire people “smarter that she is” in various parts of the More than Words team.   Innovation is part of their everyday mantra – and essential to growth of the individuals and the business.   Innovation in a different form allowed Nabiha to launch her cell tissue business which focuses on cells that are specific to ethnic groups – something truly new in the bio-tech world.  Elizabeth is breaking barriers in the Health Tech records management space – a thorn in the side of medical administrators.  Sophia reflected on one of her most interesting cases during the “me too” movement – exploring and representing issues unique to the Latino restaurant workers.  

The panel collectively agreed that relationship building, particularly outside your organization is a call to action for everyone in the room throughout their career and in their communities.   Jacqueline had the privilege of a co-consulting relationship with James Masciarelli, noted author of PowersSkills – a formula for building and leveraging top tier relationships for success.  Elizabeth shared a story about graduating from Emory’s Goizueta MBA program in ‘01, being ready to move to NYC to take on a new consulting role exactly 23 years ago when 9-11 changed the NYC hiring landscape.  Having found herself jobless, her strategic networking yielded an entirely new position in a different city.  Nabiha unlike many scientists, makes every effort to find new connections every day.   She focuses in on the “conversation” and works hard to get to know potential investors and partners and emphasizes the importance of the human connection.  No doubt, she has earned her 9000 following on LinkedIn!  

As each has advanced in their careers, the panel emphasized that “advocacy” becomes another dimension of their leadership.   For Sophia, it’s look at the systemic changed needed in her work for Civil Rights.   For Jodi, it’s becoming a lobbyist to advocate for a better eco-system for at risk youth.

Advice to a younger self

Nabiha reflected on the fact that she rarely slept during college and her lack of personal care could have had severe long-term consequences.  She advocates for better self-care and “health above everything,” “we don’t get to choose how our bodies respond to stress.”   Elizabeth and Sophia focused on risk-taking and keeping an open mind to paths you may not even consider.   Elizabeth recommends trusting our gut – remembering a time when she simply felt like the environment she was in was to big for her to make a difference.  Sophia reminds us that “we are presented with many molds, but it’s important to embrace your authenticity.”  Furthermore, take risks BEFORE you have children as that truly changes the landscape.  Jodi summed up the question and the session by her revelation that she wishes she paid less attention to what others thought.  In other words, set your own standards, get clear on your values and stick to them.  On that note, truly each of these panelists embraced a higher set of values very much in the spirit that Emory has built its culture.  It was remarkable to see that given the diverse range of backgrounds, experiences, and graduation timeframes that the group was united in their commitment to do good in their work and community. 

Summation:

As per the moderator, “when I began my career, I was grateful to the women that came before me to pave the way for a more balanced set of opportunities and career choices, but that was just the beginning.  Now, more than ever, we need to support each other and celebrate our collective success by paying it forward.”  Leadership comes in many forms.   It can happen in your family, community, profession, and the workplace.  Sometimes it evolves over time as you gradually build credibility and others start to look up to you for your expertise– other times it happens quickly.  Regardless, it’s important to understand your responsibilities once you are in a leadership position.  Help those around you become their best selves, listen and observe before making changes, reward your peers and team for their leadership, build healthy long-term relationships, inspire people through your actions, and be self-aware – taking time to learn, grow, and attend to your mental and physical health.

Special thanks to all the Emory family working hard behind the scenes to support Emory’s many initiatives – especially the Women of Emory Impact Circle.  A special shout out to Nicole Holubar and Michele Davis for having the vision to make this come to life.

Favorite Leadership Books, Tools, Workshops

Board Development: For non profit and private co boards

Event: Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Company events

Books – Daring Greatly by Brenee Brown, Good to Great – Jim Collins and zero to one – Peter Thiel.

Teamwork: The  Music Paradigm and  Meyers-Briggs (MBTI)

Leadership: Strengthsfinder from Gallup and PowerSkills   VIP Relationship Management

General Learning/Inspiration: HBS/WSA Dynamic Women in Business Annual Conference at Harvard Business School annually in February.

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Culture Defines Talent| A perspective on Employee Engagement from a divisional HR team

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Employee Engagement Expert Series:

The following blog was the result of an interview with two HR professionals in the financial services technology space.   Together they drive a divisional global HR function that includes Employee Engagement.  They use annual employee feedback mechanisms combined with their unique backgrounds to evolve HR practices in this unique global and highly diverse environment.  

A comprehensive HR approach

The director describes his role in this way, “I am responsible for leading people-related strategy and execution across multiple enterprise software businesses to solve complex organizational challenges.   I truly enjoy leveraging all of my experiences to help organizations to create and fulfill their business and people related strategies.  Doing this well, generally, drives employee engagement and creates a high-performance culture.”   He works together with a colleague whose background includes social work prior to human resources.   Together they cover a lot of territory – helping leaders with reorganizations, compensation, talent reviews, promotions, merit programs, and everything related to employee performance.

Spotlight on Employee Engagement

In this organization, the Employee Engagement function is fully integrated with other key human resource functions that support it. The main goal is to improve employee communications and career growth opportunities for the talent pool.

But it’s not a siloed function, it’s also a backdrop to Talent Acquisition, Leadership Development, Coaching, and Sponsorship across a global firm of over 20,000 employees.  It’s a hub and spoke environment with business units across four distinct vertical markets and has experienced growth through acquisition.  In the spokes, there are HR people that have local market expertise.  All eventually report to the CHRO in a matrixed environment with the corporate HR team focusing on companywide needs such as Employee Relations. 

In terms of a strategic approach, the first priority is the development of front-line managers.  It’s often said that people leave managers, not companies so this a top priority that is addressed early – in fact, with onboarding.   The key element is the 1:1 between the team and the manager – generally, the key person driving the employee experience.  However, in this organization, this is emphasized as a shared responsibility.   Both manager and team members have to bring their authentic selves to the table, earn their respect, and own their path at the company.  It’s critical that the manager embrace the culture and bring the team along with them. Focusing on career development and growth is a high priority to keeping people engaged.

Essential EE Tools

In this environment, Employee Engagement is a backdrop to everything but becomes more relevant in a cyclical way.  Annually, beginning in the fall, the organization runs a survey.  Each year the baseline and changes are reviewed to see how to move the needle on key dimensions.  It’s a robust third-party tool with predetermined benchmarking questions as well as open-ended for comments.   It focuses on helping the organization assess its top strengths, opportunities for improvement, and guidelines for priorities for the following year.  It goes out to 20K employees with participation varying by business units and is the key insight into the voice of the employee.   Given the diversity of the company and its global nature, the questions have to be generic, but themes are derived by business unit and can get quite granular.

Beside the survey, there are other tools that focus on employee retention, attrition, and internal mobility. These examine how many employees take on new opportunities internally each year and the primary reason for an employee to seek opportunity elsewhere – furthering the understanding of what keeps the employees engaged.  

Top priorities for Employees:

Here the top of the list from employees is communication and transparency.  In parallel, people want to know their job is connected to the greater universe and they are making an impact.  Employees want to feel connected to their work and the company’s overall mission. They value recognition and appreciate it for their own work, as well as having the ability to recognize their fellow employees.  Interestingly, this is now a very strong theme across many organizations regardless of industry or size.

The organization addresses these priorities both company-wide and by department.  One opportunity is via quarterly town halls.   There are also a series of smaller gatherings with senior leadership – with an “ask me anything” session.   Leadership is there to listen.  Many come to learn something new and sometimes we get good recommendations on ways to be more innovative.  The topic of innovation is taken seriously in this tech environment with additional specific sessions over a two-day period to bring tech folks together to put forth their best ideas and tech solutions.  These are run as a contest with awards and recognition.

It’s important to note that the employee recognition programs are run on a quarterly basis. Anyone can nominate an individual or team based on demonstrating alignment with company values. The reward can be monetary award or “in kind.”

Navigating a global footprint and acquisitions

This organization has faced many unique challenges as it has grown organically and via acquisition and enjoys a diverse global footprint.  This requires additional emphasis on bringing people together effectively re-energizing the team in face-to-face gatherings and upping the game on internal communications.   Town Halls, newsletters; and purposeful recognition of special occasions such as work anniversaries and other milestones go a long way to building bridges.

In terms of growing via acquisition, the goal is to harmonize all aspects of employee life and break down barriers.  It starts with the essentials such as benefits and remuneration.  It also means familiarizing everyone with the technology and systems, like Workday or Salesfoce.com.   At the same time, while blending is important, it’s also important to honor each acquired company’s specialization.  A large benefit is company-wide access to the use of LinkedIn Learning for personal and professional growth.

Considering an HR/EE Career

Culture Defines Talent

Advice from this team. Remain open, be curious, be an active learner, seek mentors in the areas that you see yourself being most attracted to, and bring your authentic self to all situations.  Each person has unique talent and perspectives.  As one gains experience by doing, listening, learning, they can then start to see patterns and make practical and useful recommendations.  All of this helps build skills and credibility, which your “customers”, internal or external, will value. 

 

Gallagher releases Worforce Trends Report Highlights

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This past Tuesday, Gallagher hosted a first-class event at their new offices on Devonshire to reveal the highlights of its Workforce Trends Report emanating from the Annual Benefits Strategy & Benchmarking Survey.   I was delighted to be able to attend.  Certainly, they are demonstrating a commitment to their own employee base by moving into such a welcoming space – one that would win over anyone that was hesitant to come back to a formal office.  Beside the impressive venue, the trends are revealing with HEALTH AND WELL-BEING STRATEGY showing up as number one in workforce strategy priorities for employees.  Number three closely related – “increase access to and improve the culture around mental health programs.”   Most of the benefits align with the challenges facing individuals and families in their daily life.  Weight loss, financial coaching, lifestyle spending accounts, support for reproductive care – among others that reflect societal trends.   No doubt the deep data behind these highlights are a must for HR executives.  I enjoyed the vibrant and intelligent discussion with the Gallagher team and thank them for their generous hospitality!









Meaningful Work Drives Culture and Engagement| Employee Engagement Expert Series: Amy Parker, Acquia

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A Conversation with Amy Parker, Vice President of Global Talent Development and Employee Engagement at Acquia

The road to Employee Engagement is not a straight path – especially for a leading-edge technology company that has a following akin to that of a famous rock band. For Amy Parker, that means her work is never done. She has continuously evaluated and innovated around the changes in the workforce and work environment during her 10 years at Acquia.

Amy Parker leads Acquia’s Global Talent Development and Employee Engagement strategy. She joined the Acquia team in 2014 as the Director of Acquia University, a technical talent incubator program for Acquia and the Drupal community and went on to build Acquia’s first global Learning and Development function. The global team now offers programs that span the entire employee life cycle – from new hires, early-in-career employees, management/leadership development, all the way through collaborating with senior leaders on customized employee learning and engagement programs.

Jacqueline: Amy, you’ve had a robust career in the Learning & Development field and other key areas of Talent, and recently added the responsibilities of Employee Engagement to your portfolio. Reflecting on your experience in the broader Talent field, what has changed the most?

Amy: When I look back at one of the first “virtual” leadership programs I ran for EMC with a team in Bangalore, the changes are immense. The technology of the time (2000-2001) was limited.  We used synchronous satellite video supplemented by email. There wasn’t a way to engage in meaningful

New Tech Tools

conversations since the technology was new and the connection wasn’t very strong. To share content, we designed courseware using PowerPoint and Macromedia Flash, and then sent along a voice recording. Fast forward, I can now create all my eLearning materials in Articulate Rise, upload them to our Learning Management System, and publish them to the entire company in a little less than a few hours. Using Slack, Zoom, and other online collaboration tools, I can deliver fully interactive courseware for new hire onboarding, leadership development and connect people across the globe who otherwise would not come into contact with each other.

Jacqueline: What about other non-technical training? How has technology impacted that aspect of your work?

Amy: The need for leadership, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills is stronger than ever. Many traditional courses were full-day, in-person workshops. With the pandemic and people working remotely, not only does the technology need to change, but we also can’t expect people to sit through five-hour classes in a virtual environment. There are too many distractions, and people don’t want to be lectured to.  They want short-form, just-in-time learning opportunities. We’ve devised many new ways to create microlearning pre-work, leaving the in-session time for group discussion and small group exercises using breakout rooms.

Leadership Matters

When I started at Acquia in 2014, and our workforce was much smaller, we had a mentoring program. I was able to match mentors and mentees to each other based on needs, strengths, etc. because I personally knew the people who would work well together. As we grew to the current size of +1,100 global employees, this process became unmanageable. Using the latest technology offered by Trova.io and Slack, we created a peer-to-peer learning program that enables people to match themselves on any topic, for any duration at any time. Through Trova, we also created a Customer Experience Job Shadow Program that connects people to shadow calls and meetings with customers, which helps our team develop deeper insight into the products they are building and supporting.  I am always looking at new technology to help enhance the employee experience. With AI becoming more and more acceptable, I am excited to be able to accelerate the pace of learning AND provide more personalized learning journeys.

Jacqueline:  What were the operating principles that guided you in building the Employee Engagement function?

Amy: We’ve always been an organization with a strong culture which makes it critically important that we put the employee at the center of every decision we make. What I saw was an opportunity to capitalize on Employee Engagement through learning. In the traditional model, companies would train people and then go away and hope it would all sink in. But today’s tools give us the opportunity to create continuous learning environments. The DiSC Workstyle Preference framework, for example, has been at the core of our learning programs.  The focus on discovering work style preferences for yourself and your team has given us a platform for stronger communication and EQ across the spectrum. I’ve facilitated over 700 DISC assessments and workshops with our teams, and I’m convinced that it’s a key factor in our ability to maintain high levels of collaboration and build trust, which in turn contributes to a positive work environment.

Jacqueline:   Acquia is known for its strong culture and has grown considerably since its early Drupal days.   How has the leadership kept the people side – especially employee engagement and learning – at the top of the priority list through the various phases of growth?

Amy: Open-source technology has profoundly helped shape our culture by fostering collaboration, transparency, and innovation. Embracing open-source encourages a culture of inclusivity, where employees feel empowered to contribute ideas and solutions regardless of their hierarchical position. This culture of sharing cultivates trust among team members and promotes continuous learning and improvement. We’ve continued to rank high on Best Places to Work in the US, EMEA, and India, and recently ranked 6th in the nation on Built-In for the 2024 awards!

Jacqueline:  Keeping this super-charged work force energized is quite the challenge and opportunity.  What other programs, tools, and priorities have come to the forefront in recent years to help you meet your objectives?

Amy:  Like many companies we embrace a remote-first culture, allowing more flexibility in how and where we work.  Professional development opportunities not only stimulate growth but also instill a sense of value and investment in employees’ career paths. Our peer-to-peer recognition programs democratize the way everyone can be recognized and recognize others, and we have a very robust collection of special interest Slack channels, paired with Trova help people bring their whole selves to work and ‘find their people’

Jacqueline:  Amy, you’ve been at Acquia nearly ten years.  Can you share what has inspired you to stay.

Innovation & Collaboration

Amy: This one’s easy.  The people.  I get to work with some of the most creative, collaborative innovative and kind people.  We also have a really great technology portfolio that helps make the dreamers and doers make the impossible happen. 

Jacqueline:  Are there any other programs that you believe have worked well to further boost Acquia’s success at Employee Engagement and fulfilment?

Amy:  Finding ways to make your culture evolve and change with time is really important. We really lean into our employees to help us crowdsource changes to our core programs.  Our DEI Statement and the definitions of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion were crafted by a group of Acquians who are passionate about linking our culture to what DEI means to us.  We also really try to get everybody involved in an Aquians Teaching Aquians program. There’s nothing better than to be recognized as a subject matter expert, be able to teach other people, knowing that in turn, someone will lend a hand when you need it.  I’m really proud of the programs that we’ve built.

Jacqueline:  Given all you have observed during your time in talent, and specifically Employee Engagement, what is your advice to people entering this field today?

Amy:   For someone staring out today, I’d have two thoughts.  First, being able to make data driven decisions by leveraging people analytics is crucial. By leaning into data-driven insights, we can optimize talent management strategies, enhance employee experiences, mitigate risks, and align our Talent initiatives with overarching company goals

Second, I’d say: Don’t be afraid to break the mold.  With the pace and change of the world today, we have to constantly innovate and find new ways to drive engagement. Be bold and consider building something that will be unique to your culture. Be empathetic and open to what you see and hear.

 

Creating Moments that Matter| Employee Engagement Expert – Lisa Penn

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Employee Engagement Expert Series:   This is the first in a series of interview with highly experienced and respected leaders in the field.

Lisa Cummings Penn, recently retired from the Estée Lauder Companies.   She most recently led the efforts of Employee Engagement inside a critical part of the company.  Lisa’s experience and perspective is invaluable to fellow professionals seeking to understand tried and true best practices in this ever-changing field.

When one thinks of Estée Lauder, what comes to mind?  Make-up, skin care, consumer goods, and retail.  But Lisa Cummings Penn actually worked in the IT department of Lauder – an impressive group of 1000 technology professionals.  Her role focused on Employee Engagement which uniquely happened completely inside the IT department.  Her insights reflect 24 years of experience in this important and growing field.  

Jacqueline:   Lisa, please share your work experience and education prior to Estée Lauder and your roles within the company that led to your role in Employee Engagement.

Lisa:  My formal education was in business and creative writing.   After college, I worked in retail and was in the Management Training Program at the Gap.  At the time, formal training and development was in its early years and most companies did not yet have training departments. So people were just doing training ad hoc to their employees. When I was hired at Clinique, a Brand owned by Estée Lauder in 2000, it was the first time I was exposed to a true Education department within a company. It was there that I worked as a Director of Education, developing sales, service and event curriculum for over 20,000 Clinique Consultants worldwide.

A few years later I went over to our Global Retail Channel where I led the Education team for the 500 brick and mortar stores owned by Estée Lauder, e.g., Origins, MAC, Jo Malone, Aveda, etc. This education was focused on store operations, as in making sure the stores were following policy and procedure which enabled them to focus on driving sales and customer service

From there, I was asked to join the IT department as a Business Relationship Manager, or BRM. In this role, I acted as a connector between IT and the Brands, understanding their business needs, and ensuring that IT solutions were aligned with the Brand’s strategic goals and objectives.   

One of our projects started out developing a learning platform for a single brand. With a global brand you have thousands of employees you need to educate. This quickly spread into multiple brands being interested in the platform, which ultimately led to a large-scale project to roll out to multiple brands, eventually building a learning platform for thousands of people across multiple brands worldwide. 

After working as a BRM for 10 years, an official role was created inside of IT in Employee Engagement.  Our CIO really believed in EE and we were the only business unit in the company to have our own Employee Engagement team.  

Jacqueline: Reflecting on your experience in Employee Engagement and looking out at the greater field of HR, what is the biggest change you’ve seen?  

Lisa: As I alluded to earlier, in 2000, there were not a lot of companies who had Education departments.   And when training was being done, it was usually an additional responsibility for someone in another department, like Marketing. Someone who wasn’t skilled in content development or facilitation.

 The world has changed so much so you have to constantly be reevaluating what’s happening and how it’s affecting your employees. We really should be referring to this role as Employee Fulfillment.   Many different things are important to employees than 24 years ago.  DE & I, for example has become a main focal point – far more than ever before. 

Finally, the demographic of an employee has shifted and with that, behavior.  We work differently today. 20+ years ago, no one would ever think about taking out a phone in a meeting (Or a Blackberry as the case might have been!)  But now we understand how different demographics work and influence and we have to take that into account. Technology in general has changed the way we operate.

Jacqueline:  What is the Mission of the Employee Engagement organization

Lisa:  The Mission should be to create moments that matter throughout the employee journey. It’s about creating employee fulfillment, not just employee satisfaction.  And that journey actually begins before an employee even starts working; it starts during recruitment to onboarding and continues all the way through their departure.  On the back end, when an employee moves on internally or externally, we need to learn from their feedback and use that feedback to improve.

Jacqueline:   Do you recall an example at Estée Lauder of how you used the feedback you received from a departing employee?

Lisa:  Yes, actually.   For our Summer University Internship program, we brought in a group of interns, rising seniors, to which we included them in our onboarding program for other full time new hires just starting with the company. At the end of the internship program, many interns are offered full time employment after graduation. And when they begin, they go through the full Onboarding program. One of the interns who was hired and then left a year later shared feedback of frustration of having to repeat some of the same material in the Onboarding Program that she had gone through before. It felt repetitive and after interning for a Summer she already knew some of which was being reshared. 

This was great feedback for us because it helped us look at the program with a different set of eyes and make updates to the way in which we onboarded new hires who had interned with us, removing the redundancy. 

Jacqueline:  Let’s turn to the world of Employee Engagement – what areas did this encompass in your role at Estée Lauder

Lisa: Employee Engagement at ELC IT was focused on four strategic pillars: 

  1. Talent recruitment – Attracting and converting top talent to support the vision of being an IT Employer of Choice. Think internship programs, recruiting
  2. Education – Creating a L&D roadmap to support the upskilling and career growth of our people. For example, education through curated learning paths, robust Oboarding programs, etc.
  3. Culture – Creating a deep sense of community, purpose and belonging. IT Day of Service, Tech Day of Pink to raise money for breast cancer research and awareness, and employee recognition.
  4. Connecting – Connecting employee contribution and business outcomes to create a sense of purpose – help employees connect to the strategy and see how their work is impacting the business and contributing to the success of the organization.

Jacqueline:   Do you have a perspective on how your role differed as compared to your peers in other companies?

Lisa:  The fact that I operated inside of IT was totally unique. Most companies have one Employee Engagement department that works across the enterprise. And those roles are focused mainly on employee culture. 

Jacqueline:  Can you call out some Cultural Touchstones that were well-received?

Lisa:   The ones that really stand out were the IT Day of Service, The Tech Day of Pink -for breast cancer research, and the Hackathon.    These events really bring people together while doing good for others.

Jacqueline:   Did the emphasis on each of these areas change over the last five or so years and if so, how did you spend/divide your time?

Lisa:  Certain programs were predictable at different times of the year.  For example, as soon as the Summer Interns walked out the door in August, we were already accepting applications for the next year’s program.    In the bigger picture, we had placed significant focus on the IT Learning programs which took considerable time and effort to get up and running.  The Pandemic also forced us to re-prioritize and figure out how to accomplish our goals remotely.  Generally speaking, we had to stay nimble and be able to change with the environment while keeping our goals in mind.

Jacqueline: What where some of your favorite tools to accomplish your objectives?

Lisa: What we are always striving for is fulfilment and some of that takes place informally – the “water cooler moments.”   Any time you can talk to people becomes important.  Sometimes it can be in surveys, but survey fatigue does set in.  Our special events, as mentioned earlier really fill an important role in creating these moments.   We also had great success doing speed networking, coffee chats, and “ask me anything” sessions with senior leaders and small groups vs. large town halls. Large town hall meetings were also successful, but the smaller formats allowed for more personalized interactions and being able to dig a bit deeper below the surface.

Jacqueline: What were your operating principles in approaching your role?

Lisa:  It was evident to me that one size does not fit all.  You have to meet people where they are.  People learn differently. People experience things differently.  So, you have to have multiple approaches to make an impact on large groups of people. For example, when cascading new information to teams, some people will read a newsletter – others will join a town hall. Some want small format team meetings. So you need an multi-faceted approach to meet people where they are. This became even more evident during Covid when we were working remotely for two years and all of a sudden completely missed out on those in person moments where we used to check in with one another.   You’ll never be able to make everyone happy all of the time, but you can do your best to bring people along on the journey by meeting them where they are.

Jacqueline: In terms of feedback, how did you get it and what learning really stands out?

Lisa:   There are so many messages being thrown at people, it’s critical to help people relate the messaging that applies to the work they are doing.  To better understand the big picture, we would meet weekly as leadership team from across the department to talk about anything – supply chain issues for example, and how to use our own resources to get things done.   We’d find out how people from other groups are feeling and what they are hearing and get feedback from HR’s regular conversations with the business units.   Not all leaders cascade the message the same way, so we used this time to try to align our messaging so that the teams could hear more consistently from us.  What worked best was continuous check throughout the employee life cycle to be able to manage things as they came up.

Jacqueline: What is your advice to people entering this field today?

Lisa:  Be curious.  Learn, ask questions, meet people where they’re at, and open your eyes to the way people show up and evolve on the journey. Your goal is to be with people along the journey. So first and foremost, understand the journey, what it means for you and for them.  In the end, it’s about creating moments that matter.  In terms of skillsets – communication, relationship building and cultivating relationships for the long term. The way you speak to people and engage with them is so critical.   In this role, you have to create and become the safe space.

 

Jacqueline: What is your advice to people entering this field today?

Lisa:  Be curious.  Learn, ask questions, meet people where they’re at, and open your eyes to the way people show up and evolve on the journey. Your goal is to be with people along the journey. So first and foremost, understand the journey, what it means for you and for them.  In the end, it’s about creating moments that matter.  In terms of skillsets – communication, relationship building and cultivating relationships for the long term. The way you speak to people and engage with them is so critical.   In this role, you have to create and become the safe space.