5 Mistakes Every Company Needs to Fix Before Adding Another AI Tool
What if the biggest barrier to better work is not a lack of technology, but unclear priorities, inconsistent ways of working and disconnected teams?
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, I sit down with Sandra Ma, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Richard H., Jr., Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer at Jovial, to explore why better workplaces start with clarity, consistency and connection.
From meetings after the meeting to information scattered across Slack channels, Sandra and Richard explain why leaders need to understand what is making work difficult before introducing another solution. I also share what went wrong when we adopted an AI-native CRM before getting our data in order.
5 things you’ll learn from this episode:
Why introducing another tool or process can leave the real workplace problem untouched
How clarity, consistency and connection help leaders identify where work is breaking down
Why unreliable data and unclear sources of truth can undermine AI adoption
What meetings after the meeting can reveal about understanding, trust and participation
Why more communication channels do not necessarily create better collaboration
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So I'm Joe Rick. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?
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I'm feeling pretty stupendous today. Chris, like you for asking stupendous. I haven't heard that one in a while. Exactly. Right. No one uses that word anymore. And I'm trying to bring it back. You're trying to bring it back. Yeah. Can we start using and I think it's I mean, we're going to upend this podcast from the start, just talking about how are you doing like that question is funny. Rick and I talk about this all the time. Yeah, it does happen a lot. Like we'll go to like the grocery store and we'll go buy something. And the very first question they always ask you is what, Chris, when you go up there, go buy something. How are you? You have a good day. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so they do the same here. And honestly, I just got so bored of that question. So I just started saying horrible.
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Like, do you have 20 minutes? And all of a sudden the shock on their face, the shock on their face is like, oh, wait, I got to come off autopilot because no, you're not supposed to say that. You're supposed to say good things. But ask me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, yeah. So I like throwing the curveballs in there because I think it gets people out of their rhythm. It gets them out of like their day to day. And the saunter run behind in embarrassment off in another direction. No, I mean, I just kind of. You lean in. How do you lean into it? I'm like, let's yeah, let's do this. Let's just make people feel very uncomfortable and see where it goes. Stare at them waiting for. Well, it's funny because they might they'll say they'll say something like, oh, good. But they they kind of just register late what Rick said or, you know, it's because again, everyone's on autopilot. And then, you know, what's the best reply you've had? What's the best response you've had to you saying terrible? Yeah, I go on break in 15 minutes. You want to go grab a coffee? No, I'm just messing with you. No way. That's amazing. That's like that's unreal. That's not what that happened one time, though. One time everybody else usually goes, oh, OK. Or they go, OK, good. Oh, wait. No, that's not good. And then again, they're trying to kick themselves out of the old autopilot.
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Before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit about yourselves and sort of the journey that we're on that we're still on till today. We're still doing it. We're still doing today. Yeah. So hi, everyone. I'm Sandra. Oh, where to begin.
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I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I always say and joke that I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don't still try to figure it out.
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So I did I went to school in Pittsburgh as well. And I studied finance because that's what I was told was the thing to do. Yeah. That will make you gainfully employed and help you pay bills and fall in the footsteps of my my older brother. And then after school landed in investment banking of all places
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when the economy was about the tank. And so the thing about that, well, one, I didn't really enjoy it much, but I got yelled at pretty much every single day in that job. Fun times. And yeah, I mean, the funny thing about that is, though, I thought that was normal. I thought I thought that's what working as an adult was. And so I'm like, oh, yeah, they're supposed to curse at me. And I didn't even think to talk to HR or my boss or anyone. I was like, OK, welcome to the rest of my life.
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But anyways, after that, I was there for a couple of years. I got let go and then total 180 ended up at MTV Networks of all places still in New York City. And I always talk about this where it was in the age of Jersey Shore. And people that's a good that's a good error. That was a good error. Was it? Yeah, I guess it was. I mean, they were doing well. They were doing well. Yeah, they were. And so I was there and it was such a different like collegial environment. A lot of fun. We got to wear jeans.
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And I was doing like analytical roles there. Yeah, going from suits to jeans.
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And and I really enjoyed it. And then after that, I ended up moving to Google for many years, doing a mix of things. I was on a TV ads team, funny enough, essentially trading ads. So going from Wall Street and then kind of buying and selling TV ads. And then yeah, after that, I was doing kind of internal product management work. Did some go-to market work as well. Until finally, I felt the whole I this behemoth of a company. I feel so small and I need to have some kind of impact. And here in Boston, there's all these startups popping up, which I didn't really know much about, but then ended up stumbling into startup world leading a few different product management teams across a slew of startups in fintech e-commerce AI before AI was is what it was today. So more traditional machine learning models we were building. And then after all of that, that led me to work with Rick to build Jovial, which we'll tell you more about in a minute. But Rick and I came together and he has a really complimentary background to me, I would say. Yeah, I would say so, too. It's very different yet. It does compliment though. It all started back in 1987 once my mother met my father in South Baltimore. I came here a couple years later. Are you born in 87? No, no, no, my parents met in 87. I was I was created in 89. I was birthed. You know, I was hatched. I was born in 1987. That's why I was asking. Oh, fair enough. That's only a couple years difference. Only two, you know, but yeah, so I grew up in South Baltimore. And as a kid, I always wanted to be some sort of teacher, but I really liked art. And but around that time though, computers started becoming all the crazed. We had a Comp USA right down the street. And it was crazy because I wanted to be some sort of webmaster, right? It like back in high school. I used to work with a couple of my friends and we built the website. I was like, I really like doing this. I really want to do this for a job. So I graduated and then I went to junior college, right? Just trying to get my feet wet, figure it out. And then I started computer science and I realized after a couple years, I don't like this at all. What is that the story for everyone?
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Is it not like yeah, yeah, I love it. Yeah, I think it is. But then what I really did like was like, okay, all the back end stuff. I know that's needed, but I like the front end stuff. I like the graphics. I like the way things interact. I like the photography. So what I did was I went to University. I studied graphic communications graphic design there and then further after that I went to go grab a couple Masters and then I was studying how adults learn how adults teach how adults retain information now in parallel. While I'm going to school all this time. I'm actually working full-time. It took me 10 years to get all my schooling done. Well, that's because you've done so many Masters. That's why.
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Well, because you can't just say I want to grab a couple of Masters like that. You know, like how he just slipped that in. Yeah, that's not normal.
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Just grab a couple of Masters, you know, while we're here. Well in parallel Chris, I say it like that because in parallel, I was working in telecom for about 10 years and they had this amazing program. So I worked at AT&T Sprint and Samsung and they had this magical thing called tuition reimbursement. So if you work there full-time, they will invest in your education in your betterment as long as you work there. So I gave them a decade of my time and I graduated and zero debt. Yeah, so I was very proud about that.
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Anyway, after Sprint was acquired by T-Mobile, I was like, I got to move. I got to travel to some bigger city because I was living in Virginia Beach. So I picked Boston and I've been here for about seven years where I've been primarily working in the learning and development space education, big data phase space and then that's when I met Sandra about seven, eight years ago. Nice. Yeah, and I think for those listening, if you haven't figured out, Rick and I are married, we've got kids and then we also started a business together, which is a whole other thing and that's where Jovial came about. And so I think like when Rick and I, we caught up at the end of our work days as people do and trying to see what's going on, we kept finding that even though we had such different experiences, right? Like I come from that more like structured product operations finance background, whereas Rick is this like very creative mind storyteller, but facilitator as well. And yet our stories that we were telling about our days were the same, right? You're like, in all these different meetings and the goals and priorities keep changing and you're stuck in slack all the time and people are just miscommunicating, right? Lines are getting cross, people are frustrated and we're like, there's got to be a better way. You know, we were spending a lot of our time at work untangling a lot of the chaos and the miscommunication and just observing how our colleagues and when we talk to our friends and family too, people are just like living for the weekend, right? Like we just got to get through the week so we can get to the weekend to do the things that we want to do. Then we have Sunday scaries and then Monday comes around and we feel mildly depressed and we got to do it again. And I think Rick and I were always like, come on, like it's got to be better than this. We
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just
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this is. And when you do the math and think about just how long you spend of your life in your adult working years, it's a lot of hours to feel that way, right? And so that's where the idea of Jovial came because we were like, we want people to feel joy and to be Jovial about work and have a sense of purpose.
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And so, you know, even though Rick and I have totally different experiences, we have different backgrounds, different industries, we worked at all different sizes, companies, it's always the same, right? Everything comes down to people and can we get along, right? And we talk about with our 10 year old all the time about this of like, listen, you're going to have to figure out how to work with lots of different people. And this is a challenge that we all have as adults and you're going to have for the rest of your life.
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And that's what it's all about. And I think one of the big things I think about in terms of like high level, what we're trying to do, right, is almost like a feeling you get. And I think about like, what's your favorite place to go to? Like if you have a favorite coffee shop, like Chris, do you have like a favorite place that you always like to go to?
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What means to eat? Eat coffee? Where are you? Like Gaucho's restaurants, the steakhouse. Yeah. And what do you like about going there? I love the service. Like they like literally I walk in, they remember my name, they like the way they interact with my daughter and make her feel welcome. And they like I don't even know how to do it, but they know my order every single time. If I phone them, they're like, hey, Chris. So whatever system they got in the back end is going on, they're like, you know, it's like how are you doing? Do you want that same table? Like I feel like like no me. I like that, you know, and I feel I feel seen, you know, as opposed to just a transaction, if that makes sense. Absolutely. And I think that's that kind of feeling and want people to think about this too, of like, what's that place for people of like and what's that feeling of that warmth, that feeling that you're seeing, that you're welcome and you just feel good, right? I think, you know, you were talking about earlier paying it forward and the Starbucks of like kind of just you get smiles, right? You spark joy around you and that's the kind of feeling that we're trying to get at work. And I think, you know, it's like, OK, great. That's all touchy feeling. It sounds really idealistic. But what does that actually mean? Like, how do we actually do that practically? And I think when Rick and I are often talking, it's thinking about what's what are the key ingredients? What's in this recipe to make that joyful workplace? And what's the lowest common denominator that connects us as people and as humans?
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And, you know, we love talking about history and human evolution, especially with our son, that's 10 as well. And Rick always has such good stories to share. Yeah. Chris, have you ever realized or even listeners that there's been other types of humans?
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Like when I realized this years ago, it just blew my mind. What do you mean? You ever thought about that? Well, like there's been ages of humans, right? Because we haven't just been, here we are. Oh, of course. I'm obsessed with look like if you look at my podcast, it's always about ancient civilizations. Yeah, I'll go down a rabbit hole.
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And every year we discover that we're actually 10, 20,000 years older than we thought. Like every year and there's like lost generations, right? That we just didn't even know. Yeah. Like, you know, yeah. So yes, it's so interesting. And there's like so many good people out there like Graham Hancock. I'm not sure if you listen to him. Yeah. Randall Carlson. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, don't worry. I got to I got to link to that stuff. That's me too. That's I never said that. That's my go to content right there. Free hour podcast around the Carson. Yes. Yeah. I'm there. I'm there. So but the point is I think it's so thought provoking, right? We're always looking at our hands, but we're not always looking up, right? Unless there's something like a big bird that flies by them. We're like, oh, look at that. That's nice. And we just kind of go right back down to it.
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But yeah, we often talk about like the different types of humans and things like that. But then also like, you know, homo sapiens like modern day humans, like how long we've been around. I was trying to explain it right to our son that we've been around 300,000 years. You know, like that's like the estimate. Yeah, sure. Like other people say longer shorter, whatever. But for him, it's like, well with his 300,000 years. So I was like, Josh, go pick up a pen. And just imagine that the length of that pen is at 300,000 years. All of our common ancestors have been those hunter-gatherers, right?
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97% of that pen are our hunter-gatherer ancestors. That little baby tip at the tip top, that's the last 9 or 10,000 years, right? Which seems like a long time. But when you compare it to the majority of those hunter-gatherers, it's like a drop in the bucket. So anyway, he was asking about like the evolution of these people. And like Sandra is saying, we like to look back in time and be like, well in the very beginning, people are just trying to survive. They're just trying to get to tomorrow. They're trying to have their kids, right? But then poof, magical thing happens, time passes. And now it's the introduction, the creation of language, tooling, and the discovery of fire.
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And humans, it's so funny around this time period, they love, they loved to do two things. Create and improve. Create and improve. And we're still doing it to this day.
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A little bit more time passes. You get up to, hey, now we have more communication. Now we have better tools. Now we can inspire things. But now we have agriculture, right? Now all of a sudden people have jobs, people have roles, people have functions. Right now there's civilization. You can build communities now because you have agriculture. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Now we can just eat food all winter. If we can sustain ourselves, we can grow, right? And then of course, magical thing happens, poof, time passes. And now you have like the industrial age, right? I'm making it really basic for the listeners because there's so much stuff that happens in between. But that's kind of what happens. We create machines, we work together, we can now fabricate things at a more rapid pace than we were doing individually before, right? Fast forward a little bit more. Now we have modern day. Everything from last like 9, 10,000 years, Beanie Babies, Ancient Egyptians, Med State Navigator, Harry Potter, everything you could imagine is in that timeframe. And that's primarily what they teach in school. And of course, AI, internet. Can't forget about that. However, no matter which time period that you look back in, if you just look out, humans have always created. We've always improved. We've always made progress. But we thought about this long and hard. There's three things. There's three of those ingredients that no matter what time period you look at, those humans always had three things that they needed to move on to that next level. Sandra, what were those three things? Those three things are clarity, like what are we even doing and why are we doing it? Consistency, how are we doing those things together? And then connection, you know, and it speaks for itself. How do we feel connected to the people and what we're doing and our sense of purpose? And you describe those as the human foundations of work, right?
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I would say yes, the human foundations of work because can you have one without the other? Absolutely. Companies nowadays, they do. But then you ask the employees like, "Hey, how's it going? What's going on?" And of course, they start telling you things and everyone has different perceptions of what clarity is, what consistency is, what connection are. But then you create that, almost like that disconnect between, right? I'm closer to the ground. It's hotter down here than what it is above. It's cool up here, but it's pretty hot down here, right? There's that big disconnect. So we thought long and hard about that and we came up with those three pillars. Yeah, I'm not surprised that you guys come up with the three C's. Everyone has the three C's. It was a happy accident. You see someone else's three C's. It's all good fun.
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We just want people just to see them. But you can... Oh God, how many times have you made that joke? That can go in your... First time actually, Chris. Is that actually on the fly? All right. I'll let you off. You can put that in a dad joke bundle.
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That box is getting big. Yeah. No, I love that. And I think clarity, like consistency and connection. There's just... I mean, oh my God, we could do a whole episode on just each of those.
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If you don't have clarity, you definitely can't be consistent. You can't build connection. And I always say, one of the things I say internally, which I heard at a conference when I was like 16 years old and somehow to this day, it was a billionaire on stage and they were like, you know, "What's this? There's one thing that made you successful." And he said, "We do the basics to a higher standard consistently."
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Yeah. And I remember just like, if I just apply that to anything I do, if I do the basics to a higher standard very consistently, and that has been one of the... Like, I can't believe... That's the one thing I took away from that event, that everything I've done, like whether it's sports, whether it's business, whether it's personal life, it's something I kind of always dig into as well. Yeah, absolutely. What was that? It was like a Bruce Lee quote that's like, "I don't fear the person that does 10,000 kicks one time. I fear the person that does like one kick 10,000 times." Like to the point of that consistency. Yeah. You just put the reps in. Do you keep up with it? Yeah. Like people would be like, "Oh, you're really good at this." I'm like, "No, I just put a load more reps in."
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That's as simple as that, right? I mean, yeah. What I do want to get into, because yesterday, I mentioned before we hit record, I was at a theater or dinner with 20 theater shows, global brands. And one of the things that will come up, which was talking about, when organizations know something isn't working, they tend to kind of go straight to new processes, new tools, in this case, a new shiny AI tool as well, without actually addressing the root cause. So I'd love to hear your thoughts and perspectives on that, because that seems to be the go-to. All right, we'll just create a new tool. Let's have a new process, you know?
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Yeah. Yeah. I just, it's like, so many times we've encountered this, and so many organizations with so many different clients. And that's the thing, like, what are we actually trying to solve and what's the issue? And we always talk about like, you go to the doctor, and they just look at your surface level symptoms, and they just, you know, give you some antibiotics or something, right? Without understanding the underlying cause. We just had this happen to our daughter that's seven months old. Just having the doctor as well, which is like, okay, yeah, just slap this cream on, it should be better. And like months later, come to find it's a totally different problem. And that's the same thing at workplaces, right? Where oftentimes, again, everyone's like, hey, there's this trendy new tool, there's this AI thing, and that's going to be our hero, and solve all of our problems. But oh, we actually forgot to figure out and kind of dig deeper into what is the actual problem behind the symptoms that are appearing. And so that's what we help out with too, of like, let's figure out the underlying causes, and we actually have this jovial health score where people can just see where do they stand with clarity, consistency, and connection, and those break into actual specific components we can chat about too. So it's really clear as to what do we need to do, where are there gaps, and what do we need to address, and what should we do next?
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Yeah, I love that. Let's jump into like a specific, what does that look like in practice? Like, where do you start?
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So yeah, I mean, I think like with the health scores, the easiest thing. So it's a five-minute thing, and we can share it, it's on our website, but it's a five-minute assessment that focuses on those specific components of within clarity, consistency, and connection, and then we end up actually just sending out a custom report for folks that highlights for them where do they stand now, and then what are the areas of opportunity and the priorities where we need to actually dig deeper, right? Because a little simple assessment isn't going to give you all the answers, it's just going to point you in the right direction of, okay, where do we need to start asking more questions, and better understanding what's going on current state. So that we can then diagnose and provide kind of the right solution as to let's just throw AI at it, let's just throw a tool, or you know, do a reorg, whatever it might be. Yeah, and it also gives leadership, C-suite, a really good pulse on not just, hey, everything's amazing, everything's good, but like, let's do some real talk here.
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You guys say that these three things, for example, are like the biggest areas of opportunity in the business, and let's just say that you have 15, 20 people at the bottom that say something completely different. It's not really about who's right, but it's about what's right, and there seems to be a big disconnect. So the foundation of it is just, let's just talk about these things. Why are these five or 10 things, wherever they are?
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Why are they pop up? And why is there, why are they dispersed between like the hierarchy, right? Like we've seen an example before where it's like, well, we need to move faster. We need to use more of the AI solutions. We need to just rapidly prototype. We need to get it out. But then at the bottom, people are like, yeah, but the data doesn't seem like it's great. And we're fueling the stuff with the bad fuel, but then you're just going to keep on, it's just a big circle. That's that one. I've made that mistake recently.
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Yeah, we all have.
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Well, that's the thing. Yeah, with the data, I think that like, that's one of the components of consistency for us, right? Of like source of truth. Where's the clean data? And you've heard this in every organization, like we can't get clean data. Where is it? Like where do we find the right document or the database that we're looking for? And then we don't get that answer, but instead we tack on the AI solution because we got to optimize everything. We've got to be really efficient and then come to find like, congrats, you're super efficient at making your problem exponentially worse because you've actually, you know, trained the AI on data that's not clean or, you know, up to date. I'll give you an example because I literally have just gone through it. So we, we, we embedded a new AI native CRM, right? And I was like, oh my God, this is a game changer. Moved a thousand miles an hour, the team and everyone in the team connected it and ingested. Every email has ever been sent from any, every single person in our team's inboxes into the CRM. So it went from nothing to 40,000 contacts, but 30, 40% of those left those organizations four or five years ago, right? It doesn't discriminate. It just pulled all of that in and there was thousands of duplicates and nothing was tagged correctly. And half of the day it was missing job titles and we spent about three months undoing all of that work because we didn't do it the right way around.
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so yeah, like we spent many, many months on this new tool and I think this is something that you've said before, like AI is a tool, not a strategy.
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And I think we went into this focusing on the tool first, then rather than focus on what is the problem we're trying to solve. If that makes sense.
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Yeah, absolutely. And I think in like me coming from product management, right? That's like the signature question that you're supposed to learn as a good product manager of what is the problem that you're trying to solve. But I think in general, when people are trying to adopt and, you know, put in these new processes or tools in place, whether it's AI or any other tool, it's what's the problem and let's figure out the best tool or solution or process. And it might just be something pretty rudimentary and pretty basic. You don't always have to use an AI tool. And I think Ricky always have good examples about this too with your actual tools in our garage. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like there's so many examples of this, but it's so funny. So obviously I like I like building things, right? I like being the craftsman. I like doing more working and you can buy the most expensive soles out there, right? You go buy a nice festivals or you go buy like the job quality to walk and you can definitely make crooked cuts if your saw blades not straight. So you could spend thousand two thousand dollars on getting the best tools. But if you don't understand how to calibrate them, if you don't understand how to take care of them, if you don't even know like if they're out of alignment, then how do you know how to fix it at that point?
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And sure, like buying the most expensive tool out there doesn't mean that that that you're going to be getting the best result. But I think it's like that that hands-on experience of going, okay, maybe we should slow up here. Let's try to diagnose this problem. Let's figure out exactly why the cuts not making sense for us, right? Measure twice cut once kind of stuff. But from what we've seen, it's like these these these solutions get put in place like Sandra is mentioning and they're not they're not as thought of as a strategy as they should be, at least in our opinion, because some of this stuff does take time. Some of this stuff does take effort and some of it like you said, it's just a simple, hey, we should just start doing this instead. But sometimes it takes outside counsel for people to realize it's not like a friend that's you know, like tells you something once and then you're like, oh, yeah, but then like your wife can tell you 50 times. Then you're like, so many times. That's the analogy. Yeah.
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One of the things is, you know, coming up more and more recently in my conversations and this is not new stuff. Everyone knows it. But I suppose like every year we forget it. Like there's a saying when we went through the Internet, you know, digital transformation, AI now is very rarely the technology that's the issue. You know, it's a mindset shift. It's a culture shift. And I feel like that's the bit and I see with AI now that people just completely missing out that like the tools going to solve the problem. But unless you really understand how this is like in the HR space, like you have to fundamentally redesign the work itself.
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Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because I mean any any company, I mean, they've been doing it for years now. I mean, they've been building workplaces like that's not rocket science, right? It happens all the time. I think when you kind of back up and you think about what is the design of a workspace that is jovial or how do you design your jovial workspace? I think that needs to have more thought in consideration because I think the idea is we got to reach the moon. We got to go. We got to go fast. We got to make mistakes. We got to clean up. We got to do all these things. But it's like sometimes it's okay to just slow down and take a look at all the pieces on the field and go, what are we going to do with these? How are we going to make them all connect? How are they all going to work together? And I think sometimes I think that gets put aside because it might not be as flashy as some of the other things that you know, the business might be considering. And I think like you said, it's it's more or less just a mindset shift. And I think that there is definitely a lot of change management that goes into it. And I'm not talking just about what's in the front of your pocket either with his little coins, but it's like literal change management that is that is I took me a second to process that. Oh, yeah. That one was like, you got to be there. I was like, what? I've all the time. I spoke about no one's ever got that one on me yet. See, but these are the conversations. See, I'm getting you to laugh. You're buying into it. You feel good. Like that's exactly how these things should go. We should feel happy. We should have a sense of being jovial. And I think sometimes we're just so focused on the results in the process. It's like let's kind of back up and let's look at who's working for us. It's the people. Yeah, it's the people and we need that connection. Yeah, it's the human condition, right? And I think it's our society of we got to be productive. We have to optimize everything, right? We got to move faster and hey that company over there is doing that thing. We probably should do that too. And so it's all like let's do all these hackathons and try to figure out how do we get all these things to bolt on to what we have now but come to find we never actually did the basics to your point in the foundational things. And so you can't build a house on a just fragile foundation. You have to have those core things in place and then bring in, you know, the tools and processes and make sure they're well defined and everybody is going in the same direction on the same boat. Yeah. What does that look like then with your, you know, if we talk about, for example, clarity, right? Say if you work with a client, you see that that's a gap, right? The area like what's the process look like? What's some practical things that you're doing with clients to help them? Few different things. I'll give you an example. So for those listeners out there, imagine a big team meeting that you might have had. Maybe it could have been like a sales kick-off or maybe it was a big conference or maybe it was some kind of like raw rock kind of meeting, right? Like end of quarter stuff, sales, whatever it is. And it's funny because you might say to me, let's just say 60 minutes, 120 minutes. I've seen meetings go three hours long towards the end. People go, okay, so any questions or comments, keep in mind, you've been sitting there for almost three hours. What do you think happens?
[01:32:12:00 - 01:32:16:08]
I got to get out of here. Exactly. They're already out. Yeah, okay.
[01:32:17:09 - 01:32:41:24]
Silence, which means compliance, which means everyone's good to go, right? That's the assumption that okay, you're kind of mosey and out of the back of the room. If you're in like an in-person meeting and then you might overhear someone say, hey, that was that was pretty good. It was long, but I had some questions about what XYZ said and somebody else over here is and they go, oh, actually, I had the same question as you. Well, why didn't you ask it? It's like, I just want to get out of here at this point. Okay. Hey, do you know what? I got an idea.
[01:32:43:01 - 01:32:47:18]
This is going to tap on the shoulder of five or six other people. We should go bring them into this meeting.
[01:32:47:18 - 01:33:33:22]
So we just had a three hour long meeting. People said they had no questions. Come to find out they did have questions, but they didn't want to ask questions. Either the trust wasn't there or they just didn't feel like they want to sit there longer or maybe they didn't think it was going to be answered, whatever it is. Now they go have a meeting about the meeting and now we're spending twice the amount of time trying to figure out what is the messaging. So I think that there's two different issues there. It's we're having the meeting about the meeting, but then from the person that is facilitating that meeting, that's speaking, that's being the mouthpiece of the content. There seem to have been things that weren't clearly explained. Maybe they weren't thought about. Maybe they weren't digested. Maybe they sit in the seat of the of like the audience member from their perspective. These things were considered.
[01:33:35:01 - 01:34:10:09]
So because of that, you have a lot of waste. You have a lot of extra time. People might be confused. Now there's slack groups and there's all these different things and it becomes a really big challenge. So what we find and we would discuss with companies is when these kind of things occur. Well, why do they occur? We got to work backwards because if you think about clarity is what are we doing? We're trying to convey information. We're trying to give everybody on the same bus. We don't want to leave any stragglers. Well, what was the miss here? And then from an issue like that, we work backwards with them to figure out what is the root cause of that problem? Why are people doing this? Why are there so many extra meetings?
[01:34:11:22 - 01:36:43:11]
Yeah, and I think like to Rick's point, right? All of the say of like, how did we even get to clarity being the problem? I think it's like those initial discussions, the assessment and then doing more discovery. And I think oftentimes leaders realize there's something that doesn't feel quite right. Like things aren't getting done and we can tell that employees feel a bit more disengaged. Then it's like, all right, let's try to peel the onion and figure out what's the root cause back to the root cause of that. And then something like meetings about meetings or meetings after the meeting comes up all the time. When we talk to clients where they're like, we have too many meetings. And again, it's like, why are why do we have too many meetings? And that just kind of taps into all of the foundations of clarity, consistency, connection of like, hey, we weren't very clear on what we're trying to do. So we have to keep having meetings about the meetings. So people aren't understanding what we're doing. We don't have clear ownership and roles to find. And so we have to now uncover and untangle that. But then we don't even have the communication standards either where we're having all these meetings. There's no agenda. We have that document that's buried in Slack in the 50 private Slack group channels and you're expected to find it right. So the list goes on and I think you start to uncover all the different issues and then figure out what's the glaring thing that we should work on first. And that's where we help develop different programs and processes. What's the most common thing that you find? Because I've been over the years, I've like changed how I do my Monday morning meeting with the whole team. I've changed to format the structure, how I do it about 50 times probably. And I like constantly trying to figure out a way to not do what you're describing. I literally yesterday I had a meeting after the meeting. So like you just gave me like literally had a meeting the second the meeting end, one of my team members called me and brought another person into the meeting because of something on the meeting. And I was like, oh, this is such a waste of time. They were doing this. So I literally lived that yesterday. I like what can we do better to improve that? Like is it like let's give me an example of a structure that you've seen that works. Well, I think first is it's reflecting on is it's just so fresh for you, Chris. It's like why why did you have to have the meeting after the meeting? Like what wasn't I think that in this case, I think that someone didn't I think that one of the members of the team didn't want to say something about a issue we were having in front of the whole group.
[01:36:44:18 - 01:41:15:01]
So it was like I didn't want to put someone on the spot basically, you know, so I thought I'd have a call with you to after to raise my concerns rather than putting that particular individual, you know in a fiery line as it were in front of that. That was the reason which happens which makes sense. I think is like sometimes there are certain conversations that are meant for a smaller group. And then there are the conversations that are appropriate from the bigger group. And I think there's so many different parts, but but the first one everyone knows is like you got to keep your goals crisp, not just the overarching organizational goals, but if you're going to have a meeting like what are we trying to do? Like what should we have achieved by the end of this meeting? And who are the people that are the right owners that have to be in this meeting to make that happen? Right. I think so many times we've talked to companies. That's those simple things that sounds like a no brainer, right? In practice, they're like, well, we got to include this person because they're not going to feel included as part of the team if they're not in this meeting, even though they don't speak and maybe aren't actually participating, right? And so you get into this mix of politics as opposed to the practical. What are we trying to do? Why are we trying to do it? And and how do we get this done? And so I think crisp on the goals crisp on the outcomes. And then I think going on to like the connection piece of people feeling comfortable to speak up in the appropriate spaces, right? When it is the right places. And I think that's a common challenge that comes up with us, too, where people are like, yeah, we don't have any conflict in any of our meetings. You know, people always agree on everything. That's the biggest one. Yeah, exactly. Red flag. I say that me and Shane had the most progress in our company when we have those really difficult meetings. Like that's where the real movement happens, like creating that, you know, psychological safety, but also with radical candor combined. Exactly. People feel comfortable sharing their opinion. Yeah, exactly. And again, as long as they're not shut down or, you know, or or punished for sharing their opinions, etc., to be able to do that. But yeah, their body language, as I understand and I agree, if their eyes say, help me, I'm so lost. Please shoot the flare. Get me out of here. But also not everyone's conducive to thriving in that format. Like if you talk about virtual, like Zoom, right? Like one thing I've learned over the years, you have the extroverts who don't stop talking, right? Throughout the whole call and can't wait to jump in. But unless you actually make space to, you know, either during the meeting or after, it doesn't always have to be during the meeting, either. That's something I've learned. Unless you do that intentionally, you just miss a huge part of it. And I think that's the key to the intentionality of, and it's what I like to do too, is like, you have to know your team and the personalities and the comfort levels. And then give them the opportunity of different ways to participate to your point as well, where, hey, ahead of time, these are the things and the questions that we want answered. Do this before the meeting so we can actually discuss it and make a decision and get the thing out of the room. Because otherwise you spend in the meeting talking about why you're meeting. Yes. Right. Yes. Yeah. So common. Do all the pre-work, read the thing, do the thing, watch the thing. I think Jess Faizos has a famous thing about it, doesn't he? Like where he makes everyone write out, like, specific or read something. I can't remember, like, specifically before the meeting. So when it gets to the meeting, it's like... The six-page document, I think. Yeah, something... Yeah, and it was intense when I first saw him talk about it. But when I reflected on it, I was like, well, now you're just... At the end of a meeting, you have a radical step forward in what you're trying to achieve, like, specifically, as opposed to, let's talk about in the meeting about what we should talk about. What are the problems rather than... Yeah, let's just do your homework. That's it. Just do your homework so that we can be productive. I think it's not just the content of what the meetings is, because from what we've seen too, it's also the person also owning and running the meetings as well. Because... So coming right from a background of teaching and facilitation, right? Like, teaching and facilitation are two very different things, and for any listeners out there that know what I'm talking about, thank you. But for those who don't, what I'm trying to explain here is when you're trying to teach something, you're trying to explain, and you're trying to give some kind of light to some kind of new thing or process, right? But when you're facilitating, you're kind of... Like, think about walking down, like, a path in a park. And there's clearly a sidewalk, and you folks are walking along that sidewalk. But once in a while, people will wander off into the grassy area. And there's no fence.
[01:41:16:04 - 01:41:26:11]
So if you're not facilitating, they just wander. And now you have to go grab them back and say, "Nah, look, just stay about maybe five, ten feet off the path and let's all move together at once."
[01:41:27:11 - 01:42:13:15]
And I think that's the difference, where sometimes some of these meetings, they just get way off deep, deep into... Who knows where. Where man's land. Yeah, basically. And it's so funny, like, I often joke around with Sandra, where, you know, people often say, like, "Hey, let's go take this offline." And I was in the mall a few months ago, and there's a store by Aeropostale called Offline. And I'm like, "This is where everybody goes." They go to the store and they have the meetings here. And she's like, "Please don't share that with anybody." My apologies, Sandra. No, I think the better one is when you pull the Ethernet cable out of the wall and you're like, "Okay, now what do I do?" Yeah, rip the Internet out of the wall. I'm offline now. What do I do? Yeah, it is crazy. It's like, well, why are you doing that? We should have... That's the whole point we're hearing in the meeting.
[01:42:14:16 - 01:42:37:20]
Yeah, I don't know. Like, if you have to go offline to go and talk about it, like... I'll mail you a letter. Yeah. Yeah. We'll figure it out through post. Exactly. We got a parking lot at it, right? I think that's one of your favorite business... Oh, yeah. Now, I think a lot of it, though, too, is just kind of breaking down some of those social expectations, right? Like, we were talking about, in the very beginning, "Hey, how are you? Good. How are you? Good."
[01:42:38:21 - 01:43:12:02]
Conversation dies, right? And it's, "Let's park a lot. Let's take this off." It's these terms and things that people say, and sometimes they can be construed as ambiguous, or they could be construed as negative in some cases. So helping organizations figure out, "How do we just communicate?" Because normally it's a moment of frustration, right? Like, you'll be having a meeting. So, we do sort of hitting a wall with a bit of frustration, a bit of tension, and it's like, "All right, let's take this offline." Yeah. So basically, you just avoid... You just push it. You're kicking it down the road. Basically, you just like... Total deflection. Let's just kick this can down the road, because we don't know what we're doing right now.
[01:43:13:21 - 01:43:33:13]
That's basically the answer to that. And it's a very corporate way of saying it without it being, you know... Basically, you might as well be saying, "I don't know what to do. We are not making any progress." But no one wants to say that. Like, they're like, "Let's..." We need to have a meeting where you, like, narrate what it really means. Like, translate a meeting. Oh, there's a guy I follow called...
[01:43:35:21 - 01:45:09:15]
Oh, my God. I can't remember his name right now. He's a former, like, global VP of HR at HelloFresh, like the food company. And he's got an Instagram now. He's got, like, a million followers. And he translates... His every reel was translating corporate speak into... Oh, I've seen this before. Yeah. I've seen this. So, and he says about, "Let's take this offline." He's one of his ones that's got, like, hundreds of thousands of you. And he goes, "Meaning." And then he translates it. And he basically has every one that you could think of. You'd love it. And he's grown so big from it. Because people are, "Oh, that's what that means." When my... You know, if you're new in a business and you hear a leader say something like that, you're like, "What does that mean?" Like, "What does that even mean?" And he's like, "He does that." So, yeah. Yeah. And I think, too, though, right from, like, an HR standpoint, because you also have new employees who are entering into the workforce from college. You also have experienced, tenured people that have been there for a very long time. And they both have very different opinions, very different thoughts, very different emotions. To not just words, but also, you know, the operations, the processes, and things like that in the business. And they come from two completely different worlds, right? When you've been sailing on the sea for 25 years, you're not going to be as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as that new sailor who's just starting out on day one. Super different. So then it's like, well, how do you manage and how do you support both of these different persona types with any kind of organizational changes that you really want to invoke in the company without stepping on toes? You know, like, it takes a lot of thought and it takes a lot of effort from everybody involved. How are we going to work together?
[01:45:10:19 - 01:45:30:06]
What-- Back to being human. And I think that's what it's all about. Yeah. Yeah. When you work with clients, like, what's typically the thing that comes up that maybe, when you first started doing it, you didn't expect that now it's coming up quite a lot. Like, you know, something that surprised you, perhaps, that you didn't see going into this.
[01:45:32:17 - 01:45:46:12]
I don't think anything surprises us. Well, I would say one thing, though. I think collaboration. I think that's one thing that actually has popped up because everybody, of course, collaborates and on the surface, we collaborate. But what does that mean to really collaborate?
[01:45:47:12 - 01:46:11:08]
Right? It's true, yeah. It's-- And I don't know, I've seen the one where we're talking and they have all these different Slack channels. There's all these different channels and there's hundreds of channels. And for anyone listening, you might know what I'm talking about. There is a channel for literally everything. The problem is, when you have the Max Cable package on TV and you have 10,000 channels, you're going to miss programming at some point in time.
[01:46:12:09 - 01:46:27:08]
People miss programming at some point in time. I just never realized how we have all this vast communication. But then somehow, some way, we just cannot get the right letter to the right person, despite having always-on technology. And it's not like it surprised me like,
[01:46:29:05 - 01:46:45:18]
"Oh, yeah, that's a thing." But it surprised me in the sense of, "This happens everywhere." I didn't see it happening everywhere until it was everywhere, like with all the clients and customers that we worked with. You've got to keep a handle on that stuff. Because every single function and department then creates their own set of sub-channels.
[01:46:46:18 - 01:46:53:12]
And then it's like, even in our business, a team will be like, "Hey, Chris, I sent you the podcast script today."
[01:46:54:13 - 01:47:09:12]
One person sent it to me in Slack. The other sent it to me in a Google Doc. The other sent it to me as a link in my calendar, just above. The other person's text me a message. The other person's emailed it to me. Where is it?
[01:47:10:21 - 01:47:59:02]
Oh, no, it's a notion. It's actually a notion. I'm like, "Guys, we need to agree." And that's exactly what you talk about. And the entire organization shouldn't have to ask where it is. Everyone should know where it is. If you need something, it's over here. It's not hidden away somewhere over there. And that is so hard because you've got to constantly keep looking at it because it can just slowly spiral out of control. That's where you end up wasting time, right? Because you have all these layered different places for things. No one knows the place to go back to the source of truth or what is better way of communicating. And then you end up spending the bulk of your days finding the thing to do your job. And that's when you get disengaged, that you get burned out. That's when you just feel a lot of frustration. Yeah.
[01:48:00:20 - 01:48:09:00]
As you look ahead at some of the work you're doing with clients, like what you're both most excited about. Yeah, what you excited about, but also what sucks your energy?
[01:48:10:15 - 01:48:18:01]
Like what gives you energy? But like honestly, I think that's a good question. We don't talk about enough. Like what gives you the most energy? And then what are you like? Oh, it's just life.
[01:48:19:09 - 01:48:32:02]
I think for me, what gets me excited is the prospect of people recognizing that kind of these foundational things are an issue and that they're important and that actually taking action to make a change.
[01:48:33:07 - 01:49:26:15]
I think there's so much that can be done if, back to that feeling, right? You mentioned, you know, your favorite restaurant gal show and the warmth that you get. If we can get these organizations to make that change, imagine how much better people would feel about their work and kind of like the feeling of joy that would have. And so that I'm very excited about. I think what drains my energy is kind of the chasing all of the AI things. Like I'm all about AI. I think there's so much potential. There's so many things that can be done. But again, for the right problem, we got to have the right solution. Yeah. And I want people to, like Rick was saying earlier, slow down. Yeah, let's think about what we're actually trying to do. And yeah, you go have at it with the AI thing, but make sure it's solving the problem that you actually set out to do and that you have your basics in place first.
[01:49:27:23 - 01:51:08:23]
Yeah, it's definitely fair. I definitely agree with everything you just said. Oh, for me, what gets me excited is when people see like they have that little light bulb above their head and they just get it. They're like, oh, I get it. It's almost like this moment of relief, this moment of realization. This moment of clarity and all of a sudden it's like they just ate the red pill for like the Matrix and now they're like awakened. You know, now they're woke now. They're able to explore and do but then they can apply those things to other parts of their life, right? Those three things we talked about Chris, the clarity, consistency and and connection. You can apply that to virtually any part of any part of your life. 100% and they fit so well. I think the thing that I think you asked with drains is I think not just getting people. It's not about them like you said Sandra about getting off the AI tools, but it's not a tool that you need. I think sometimes it's just a reflection in the mirror. They go slow down. It's realize what we're doing. I don't need 50 screwdrivers in the garage. You know what? I just need one and that's okay. I can keep the others, but I use just this one and I think it's just having people realize that sometimes I think less is more. It's salt in some cases. Yeah, in this case, it's just like we've just gifted everyone entire toolbox and said go for it. Yeah, it's so funny. I often tell Sandra I call it white canvas syndrome Chris and imagine you're an artist and you have a white canvas. Yeah, you have some people that will go man. I can paint anything like I'm ready to rock and roll. I got so many ideas. Let's paint. Then you have the other side that goes I don't know what to paint.
[01:51:10:11 - 01:51:14:15]
Couldn't tell you what to paint same canvas different people different outcomes.
[01:51:15:16 - 01:51:19:12]
Yeah, no, I love that canvas is anything we haven't discussed that we should
[01:51:19:12 - 01:52:51:21]
know, the one thing I would say is yeah, I always think back to I was chatting with a friend a few years ago and I think this is when Rick and I first started jovial and this person has been in corporate for decades and risen up in the ranks and we're talking about work as we do and you know, the struggles and the frustrations and she said Sandra that's just the way it is like that's how corporate is like you just kind of accept it and that's pretty impressive. As always I know right. So that's what I'm going to interrupt me. Yeah, and and so I always think about like no we cannot accept that do not accept the status quo and I think for people listening. It's like you don't have to live this way. I almost feel like it's an intervention like you don't have to live this way like things can be better and if you understand that these foundational things and you really stop and think about like these are the things that are most the time holding back an organization that you can actually make change. You don't have to just sit back and coast. I think a lot of people are like I'm just going to pay the bills. I'm just going to do bare minimum, but it's like no you can make change and you can make things better and then I think for leaders and organizations. It's like if you recognize and are aware that there's something not quite right. Well good first for being aware of it and right like recognizing the first step is what like recognizing the problem but to like let's do something about it right and I think you know for us it's like figure out which foundations are missing and we have that health score assessment and it'll tell you what you can do. Can you take that for free?
[01:52:52:21 - 01:52:55:10]
Exactly. It's five minutes. Five minutes. Right.
[01:52:56:17 - 01:52:59:19]
How many things are free these days? Yeah. What's the catch? Not many.
[01:53:02:01 - 01:53:04:21]
What's the role of HR in all this?
[01:53:07:10 - 01:53:10:05]
What's the role of HR in all of this? People.
[01:53:11:21 - 01:53:12:15]
You need people.
[01:53:13:18 - 01:53:21:14]
It was so human is in the title of what the resource is right. Let's just cut the resource bit off and then stick to that.
[01:53:23:06 - 01:53:24:07]
We just call it H right.
[01:53:25:18 - 01:56:19:02]
It's the human resource. It's not just placing people in jobs. It's not just placing them in roles telling them what to do. We spend a lot of time and you know this Chris we spend a lot of time at work and because of that well we want to work in a place that makes us feel a certain way right. It keeps coming right back to the emotion. It's kind of like when you watch a film in the first two minutes you're like it's been two minutes that second hand has gone around my watch face twice already. I don't know how I'm going to sit through immediately. You just know people just become disengaged. How do you get them to stop looking at the watch? How do you get them to stop looking at the phone? How do you get them to turn the video on? How do you get them to participate? How do you get them to smile? How do you get them to feel pumped about working at this job? Pump working at this company. They're proud of what they do. You know like that's the kind of emotion that we're trying to aim for with these organizations and we're trying to start it from the top so it cascades down. It's about the people and we need people. We always will. Yeah. And I think HR is meant to be in tune to all I mean it's a tough job right. It is. Because I think they have to be in tune to all the things that are going on in the organization understanding the business and the operations and like what what do our teams need to do their jobs and to succeed and to reach whatever the ultimate goal or outcome is that we're trying to get down here. Listen I could talk to you guys forever but I know you got some point before I let you go where can people connect with you guys like and also take the would you call it assessment what do you call it again. Yeah it's a health school assessment so it's on our website yeah so it's on our website joe vial dot today find us on the interwebs on LinkedIn reach out we'll respond we chat we like to chat with humans we are human you know we're here to help you heard it everyone they promised that they're gonna reply well you know as long as you're not you know try and give me one of those like canned like biz dead sales emails you have to message him at that joke that's the rule right hey I've heard a lot I'm always looking for new ones I'm not saying no but I'm not saying yes either. So new material in there honestly I'm so happy for you guys honestly like I'm really glad that we connected and I love the work that you're doing the impact you're having you know leading with your purpose and your why you know you're like you know then and obviously the ripple effect of the work that you're gonna be doing right as well so if everyone watching wherever you're watching listening wherever you are right now the link and there'll be a link in the description below so make sure you click on that there'll be a link to LinkedIn profile the website everything so make sure you do that and apart from that enjoy today guys and I'll see you soon I appreciate you joining me thank you thank you so much for having us thanks appreciate the time
Sandra Ma, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Richard Harrell, Jr., Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer at Jovial.