The Future of Work

Podcast Transcript:

Announcer: 

Welcome to the Sound of Automation, brought to you by Clayton & McKervey, CPAs for growth driven businesses. 

Denise Asker, Director of Marketing & Growth: 

Hi, Brian. 

Bryan Powrozek, Sr. Manager Industrial Automation: 

Denise, welcome back. 

Denise Asker: 

I’m excited about today’s conversation. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yes. No, today’s going to be a fun one. 

Denise Asker: 

Yeah. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

We’ve got Stephanie Murphy from ADVISA. ADVISA’s a partner of Clayton & McKervey’s that we work with on all of those touchy, feely issues that accountants don’t really like getting into- 

Denise Asker: 

That marketers love. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Exactly, exactly. So no, so ADVISA helps us out a lot with developing our staff and developing strategy and things like that, and so Stephanie’s got some really keen insights on the future of work and how business owners can adapt to the challenges going forward. 

Denise Asker: 

Sure, and in your conversations you must be hearing about how businesses are trying to figure out the hybrid workspace all the time? 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yep, exactly. And figuring this out when there’s no governmental mandates telling you what you can and can’t do, and so I know that it’s a big challenge that everyone’s trying to get their arms around. And I think, because we’ve lived through it for a couple years, a lot of business owners probably think they’ve got it figured out, but once the rules come off and you can do whatever you want to do, I think we’ll see the guardrails are gone and people will start veering off in different directions. 

Denise Asker: 

Yeah, I can’t wait to learn more. I know that Stephanie’s going to be joining us for a couple of industrial automation events here locally in Detroit, and then also nationally at the CSIA conference. So, I’ll look forward to learning more. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Excellent, thanks Denise. 

Denise Asker: 

Thank you. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yep. Hello, and welcome to the Sound of Automation podcast. Joining me today is Stephanie Murphy of ADVISA. Stephanie, how are you? 

Stephanie Murphy, Leadership Strategy Consultant: 

I’m doing great. Thanks, Brian. So glad to be here. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yes, and good to see you again. Clayton & McKervey and ADVISA have worked together for a number of years, so great to have you on. And, I guess, for folks in the audience who might not know the name ADVISA, can you just give me a little background on what the company does? 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah, I’d love to Brian. At ADVISA, we know that organizations really want to be employers of choice, that we want to be a magnetic organization, and to do that we really need effective teams, leaders, and cultures. And we do that to attract and retain the very best talent. But the problem is right now with so many people leaving jobs and the demanding new ways of working, teams are feeling overwhelmed and leaders are really feeling depleted. So we believe that your companies and your people should be your greatest asset and not your biggest challenge. So what we do is partner with companies to build places where people love to work using a three part framework. We diagnose what’s going on with people and define goals, we design a plan for change to help organizations that works with our culture, and we deploy our team of experts to train, develop, and advise and support leaders at all levels. So it’s a lot of fun work. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yes. And I can speak to personally, it’s a great team to work with having been through a lot of different trainings with Stephanie and her team. So let’s jump right in, kind of the focus here is future of work, what’s it look like? I know a lot of companies, my clients included, had a lot of conversations over the last year of, first, how do we go remote? And now that things are hopefully opening back up and getting more to normal, what does the future look like in terms of is it, fully remote, hybrid, et cetera. So from your position in what you’ve seen, what are some of the things that have been gained with the remote working environment and some of the things that companies have lost? 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah. It’s interesting, I’ve been given this a lot of thought lately, Brian, because as I’m working with clients, we’re having so many people who are really grieving what they lost in their previous cultures. And actually I just wrote about this and about the stages of grief, we don’t often talk about this in the workplace, but how people are feeling about what they’ve lost in this culture, they feel like they’ve lost connection, they feel like they’ve lost status and position and I think a lot of leaders and company owners are also talking about the lost productivity in some of the softer areas. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

I think what we have seen is a real gain in productivity when it comes to remote work and the ability to be efficient, but there is something different between being efficient and being effective. And we lost, really, over the last couple of years that, one to one I see and I do and I follow that interaction kind of leadership and growth from people. So I think that has definitely been a loss throughout this. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

And I think that we’ve also lost that sense that we can do things the same way that we always have and it’s going to work. And so we’re finding that people are definitely transitioning into a new mindset right now and really trying to determine how do we create a space where people can feel really good. But as a result of that, I think that we have gained resilience, and what we have seen is that we’ve built a lot of muscle, but what I think we need to move into in the next future here looking at that, is how do we build finesse with that, right? Because we’ve been muscling through doing a lot of these things, and I think that’s definitely something that we’re going to see gain if people do it intentionally. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yeah. And that’s kind of one of my underlying concerns, right? Having come up in a culture back when I worked in engineering where if you weren’t in the office, you weren’t working. And we had one senior leader who would walk around at four o’clock the day before a holiday to see who was still there, and if you were there you got a gold star and if you weren’t, it was kind of remembered. And so that’s… One of my concerns is, and we’ve even started hearing this in some articles of other companies saying, “Nope, we want our people back in the office. The only way we’re going to address this issue,” the issues you brought up, “is to get everyone back in.” Which to me is a little bit of lazy management, but I guess, what’s your impression on that? 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah, I totally agree with you that I do think that it is a little sense of, I mean, we could call it lazy management, but I think what we’re seeing is that, in the past, productivity was measured by being in that office, right? And so now we have to think really strategically about, how do we measure productivity anymore and how do those leaders actually figure that out? One of the things… I actually was just listening to a podcast, Craig Groeschel, and he was talking about the fact that leaders aren’t tired, when we’re tired we take a nap, but leaders are depleted, and when we’re depleted we have to find ways to fill ourselves back up. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

And I think that while we can call it lazy management, it’s also the thing that people don’t know what else to do. So in the absence of knowing what to do or having the creative mindset, people are trying to bring everybody back, our leaders are trying to bring everybody back because that’s how we know to measure productivity. And I think that that is a big mistake that leaders are looking at right now. There’s so many opportunities to really redefine how we look at productivity, redefine how we look at how people interact with their work and do these things, but it does take a little bit of work. And we’re all in the nature to consume calories, and that’s even brain calories too. And I think that that’s really the big challenge, is that people are depleted and they need new pathways and they need new support to really be thinking about, what does productivity look like for us? And what does success look like for us going forward? 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yeah, it’s interesting. And I don’t use lazy in a derogatory manner, because I know it does get hard. And there’s actually, and I think you’ve probably read this book, but Switch, where they talk about the elephant and the rider, and that the rider can only control the elephant for so long. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

The rider can only control the elephant for so long and as you said, as you’re getting depleted, it’s just easy to go back and say, “You know what? We don’t have the bandwidth to address this issue right now, so we’re just going to bring everybody back in.” Because we know that worked at one point, and so when companies look at that and I think probably the majority of the companies I’ve spoken with aren’t staying full remote and they’re not staying in or they’re not coming back into the office. They’re trying to find some hybrid solution that’s in the middle. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

So what kind of advice do you have for companies who are trying to figure out that hybrid model, now that they’re not … The rules aren’t being dictated by the state or the health department or something else? Like how can companies sit back and say, “Okay, we got through that. Now what do we want to do going forward that makes the most sense for our company?” 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah. I think first and foremost, we have to give ourselves the space to think about what we want our cultures to look like and really rethink how cultures are built. Neil Miller from The Digital Workplace, he does one of the best analogies that I think I’ve seen, where he talks about pre-pandemic, when everybody was in the office, when we had the natural face to face interactions, cultures were built the way that forests are built. If you give them water, if you give them sunlight, they just naturally pollinate and grow usually if you just leave them alone. And certainly you’ll have some patches where things aren’t thriving and things aren’t growing but usually something else will come up in the midst that can thrive in that environment. And now what we’re seeing post-pandemic as we’re trying to create these hybrid cultures is it’s much more like being landscape architects and building gardens, and in a garden, we have to think about how people are going to interact with the space. What kind of plants need to be planted where? Do we need to do things and have a lot more plan and structure around the work that we do and be a lot more intentional. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

So I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge for most organizations, if they aren’t thinking about that ahead of time because if we aren’t setting out a plan and really defining what we’re trying to do, diagnosing what’s really going on in the organization and then designing the plan that fits that organization, it will be impossible to deploy anything that they’re working on. So that would be step one that I would say, take a step back and really take the time to reimagine what culture looks like, what interactions look like, and what success looks like in organizations, and then that will help to filter back into your hybrid strategy. Otherwise, you’re just going to be following suit with everyone else and you’re going to be finding a place where it doesn’t serve us, people are abandoning the plan, and you’ve got even more lost productivity than we’ve already had over the last couple years. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yeah, you know, and I think that that’s the interesting part about it too, as you talked about the forest analogy for how the culture develops is there’s a lot of things … Within Clayton & McKervey we’ve got our four principles that we try to work by and all that stuff but there’s other elements that were just never documented or never put down on a piece of paper because we didn’t have to because we were all there, and so that kind of re-imagining and thinking through and even … It’s nice now you’ve got that A to B comparison of what did we have before, what don’t we have now, and so now we’ve got to intentionally incorporate that in. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah. It’s really true because it was all that tacit knowledge that would get passed all the time and we have to be a lot more explicit about it. So it’s like coding and programming, right? So when we want the organization to do something when we’re not interacting with it and we’re not manipulating it in real person, we have to have all of that background code built out for them, and I think that that’s really important for cultures too is we have to really think about that. But knowing what our end goal is going to be first and then building back into that. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Something interesting that I know I had learned from ADVISA and sitting in on some of your trainings a while back, this was pre-pandemic, but even something as simple as meetings, having ground rules for meetings that everyone’s going to follow, everyone’s going to understand. Because I think, and you’ve seen this somewhat in the pandemic is that people at the shareholder, using for Clayton & McKervey’s case, the shareholder manager level, they’ve already developed those habits and they know how to do these things and so it’s just second nature to us, right? But the staff who would look to us in the office and learn those habits and learn those skills now can’t pick that same thing up over Zoom or Teams or whatever we’re doing and so really going in and laying that out gives them something they can look to and point to and really develop the skills that we’re looking for. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah, I love that Brian, and one of the things that … Just because you talked about the meetings that I do think is really critical and important is that during … When everybody had to go remote and we were just responding to what was happening in the environment, we over-meetinged ourself because we didn’t know what else to do, right? We didn’t have a way to connect, we didn’t know what we were doing, so everybody would just be on these Zoom meetings and I think we’re all out-Zoomed at this time, but one of the things that I think we can be thinking about more effectively is when we are having these meetings, what are the goals of the meetings and what are the roles of the participants? Because I think when you start asking that question of what are the roles, like am I facilitating, am I a decision maker, is this just for information, you’ll start to figure out that we don’t have to just keep showing up to these meetings, and we can start to teach our employees and our up and coming leaders on how to be really effective with both time, energy, and information so that they are meeting those needs a little bit better. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

It’s funny because I’ve even found myself, when we were kind of working through this saying, “Okay, how many days a week do you intend to be in the office?” And so I kind of had my idea of what it was going to look like. And then I started coming back into the office and I’m like, “I’m not going to schedule anything for the two days I’m in the office,” because that’s where you have those social interactions or just people pop in and you catch up on things and you’re doing those things you used to do organically and now I know, “Okay, keep those two days open. Load myself up the days I’m working from home and get work done on those days,” and so it’s … That I think for me is easy because I’ve been with the firm long enough. But a new staff coming in to think about that and say, “Okay, I’m going to push all my billable work to these three days,” and so having these conversations, it comes back to … A lot of these things, right? Come back to communication and communicating it back to them, letting them know what’s acceptable, what’s not, and then letting them figure out what’s going to work best for them. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah. I love what you said Brian about the fact that you have … You kind of knew the unspoken rules of how things work because you’ve been here for a long time, but new people who are coming in don’t necessarily have that same guideline and so one of the questions that I often will ask is what do we want it to feel like when we’re in the office, right? What do we want people to be doing, what do we want those interactions to feel like, what do we want them to gain when they’re in the office can be a great starting point for that. And the other part of that though is being able to share with those and get insight and … not really share actually, but gain insight from those individuals on what they want. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

So I think in the past when we talked about strategy and culture and all of those things, it was a very top-down approach where this is much more holistic because those who, and research shows that those who are in leadership reported more connectivity and better feelings of engagement throughout the pandemic than those who are in your traditional rank-and-file or in your frontline staff because they don’t have those same connections. Typically too, if you were housed in an office building in the past, most of your leaders either lived close by or commuted in on a regular. Leaders either lived close by or commuted in on a regular basis, so there’s a lot more connectivity. Now that, really, the world is our oyster for employees, we have to think about how those interactions look. And sometimes our leaders just don’t have that experience to know the answer, so we have to engage our other employees to really bring that in and to create a really incredible hybrid work culture. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yeah. Maybe you can talk a little bit, I mean, you don’t have to go down into the details, but kind of the process that you’ve gone through with us. Because it really did, it kind of started top-down and then we got the input, now it’s coming back up to kind of digest that. So, I guess anything you can share on that front? 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah. I mean, so with Clayton & McKervey specifically because I think you guys were really on the forefront and really leaders in thinking about hybrid work culture. So it’s always an incredible thing when you have leaders who are reaching out and saying, we know that this is something that we can do really well and how can we do it as best we can. And so we started with the process of surveying entire staff and really starting to think about how do people see and how do they interact in this hybrid work environment right now? What are they feeling? What are they thinking about? What are the things that have worked well and what are the things that haven’t? And once we were able to identify some of that, we put it into a framework that also came from Neil Miller, we talk about that, where we talk about the five different elements that are really critical: culture, leadership, productivity, technology, and collaboration. And we were asking questions to better understand that. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

So once we got that data back then we brought it back to our management team, and so shareholders, managers, to really talk about what does this mean for our firm and what can we do? So I go back to the analogy of building gardens. And I said, if we think about our organizations as being the garden center, we can determine which kind of products we have, what kind of technology we’re using. We can set some of those tones. So if you are in, here we are rainy Michigan today and you say, you know what, I want to build this garden and I want a palm tree. We can look to the garden center and say, you know what, that’s just not going to thrive in this environment so we’re not going to carry that, but we could give you this evergreen that you could replace here, or this particular tree that’s going to give you nice coverage and going to have great aesthetics, but we can as organizations. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

I think that is something that a lot of organizations are afraid of in the hybrid culture. That flexibility means freedom for employees to do anything and everything that they want. We can set those ground rules and those standards, and I think employees are looking to us for that as well. We don’t want them out there feeling like they’re in an anti-gravity chamber, don’t know which way is up or down, do I show up, is this the start of my day or the end of my day? I think the more that we can give them some clarity and structure around how we’re working, the more effective they’re going to be and the more productive the organization is going to be as a whole. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Definitely. You touched on something just briefly there that I think we’d be remiss in having this conversation without getting a little more into is technology. Technology can be a huge enabler of your hybrid work environment, but it can also be a hindrance too, depending on how you look at it. So what are some ways that the businesses you are working with are leveraging technology to really make these hybrid moves successful? 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah. So research shows that leaders who embrace technology are actually much more effective and they win more often than leaders who don’t, especially in this environment. And in fact, they tend to create a two times greater sense of belonging for the people that they’re working with. And I know so many organizations are working on what they’re now calling DEIB initiatives. So diversity equity, inclusion, and belonging. So leaders who embrace technology well can create two times sense of belonging. They are also five times more able to manage stress and anxiety for themselves and for their employees when we use technology well. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

I think what we need to think about more is how does this technology help me feel more connected to my teams and how might help my teams feel more productive in the work they need to do. So I think there are a lot of really great things. At ADVISA we leverage and partner with several technology companies that we love. So 15Five is one that is a fantastic tool that helps us with engagement, and you have an app where you are checking in and your leader can see how you’re feeling. And it is looking at some of those soft things that are really important. How do people feel and help to create more connectedness between the leader and the employee. There are lots of great like engagement and pulse surveys in order to do that as well. Another group that we work with also a client of our Structural. Structural is incredible for organizations who are large organizations, who maybe don’t have as much visibility into the experiences and the wants and the needs of people in their organization, or who also need to start creating new cross-functional teams that they haven’t in the past. So those are great ways and great tools to keep connected. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

But I think there’s also things that leaders can do just to foster those relationships. So, one thing that we started at ADVISA is our TLC pods. So we have a cross-functional group that gets together and we are really looking at things like what are things that we have in common, what’s one thing that we want to do together and so we will likely rotate out of these pods. But it helps us to meet other people in our organizations and connect with them in different ways and it doesn’t put all that heavy burden onto the leader all the time. So, I think if we can look at technology that way. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

The other thing that technology does is incredible in the onboarding space, because we can now have multiple individuals feeding into the new experiences and the learning for our new employees that were onboarding. So Kate Shuck who leads our client success team, she hired three new facilitators during COVID, which was really challenging because we didn’t have this space where they could see all of us facilitate, we were doing everything via Zoom. The whole experience for our trainings and our development had changed. And what she did is she actually tapped into our whole entire organization to teach the key things, the things that were important, to these individuals. Whether it be books that we like foundationally led our organization, or whether it be philosophies or different things that we just served. So we all got to have interactions with that, and that’s something that would’ve been a very heavy lift for her on her own, but she can leverage technology to create these spaces. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

So I think first and foremost, look at the technology you have and ask how you can use it to create more human interaction, and then move on from there. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Well, and not that it’s a technology per se, but probably one of the things I’ve benefited most from ADVISA is the predictive index tool that we’ve learned through yourselves. And I mean, you’ve add a lot tools in there and technology so, I mean, I think it falls into that category, but really it’s a great tool to help you leverage and kind of talk through and say, okay, as you’re going to those TLC pods, how do I need to work with this person or communicate with this person that I don’t work with on a regular basis. So I haven’t had that time to learn and realize, oh the best way to get ahold of this person through email or text or whatever it might be. So for companies who aren’t using, something like that, I mean, I would almost see as a requirement. I mean I would almost seem it as a requirement in a hybrid environment just to get to know everybody. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah, I love that you talk about that. So, Predictive Index is a system that helps us understand how people respond to their work and the other people in it. There’s multiple different things that are part of it. There’s a behavioral assessment, a cognitive assessment, as well as an engagement assessment. So, you’re talking about the behavioral assessment is understanding how do people communicate? How do they make decisions? How do they approach risk? How do they learn new things? 

Stephanie Murphy: 

And we can really fast track that and I think that’s an amazing point to bring up because when we are now expanding the onboarding, when we’re not face to face all the time, leaders are now leading remote groups and remote teams. Their ability to make those connections as quickly as possible and to know this is something that energizes this person on my team, and this is something that de-energize this person on my team, or knowing with I’m trying to communicate new information or go through change, here’s different ways to use that. So, definitely of course, for our clients, virtually every client does utilize The Predictive Index in some capacity because it gives us such incredible insight into those workplace dynamics, those engagement pieces, and really gives the lever to these leaders and managers into these teams, who don’t have the luxury of that face to face interaction, to create connectivity as quickly as possible. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yeah, and it’s funny because I think we’ve probably had a lot of conversations around like PI from a hiring perspective and how you can use that, not necessarily to say, okay, well this person’s going to be a good fit because they check all the boxes. But if they don’t check this box, how are we going to manage them if we really like them and everything else? We’re excited to have them on the team, but we know there’s this one area we’re going to have to manage. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

And I’ve heard from some of my clients that they’ve lost some employees and the feedback on the exit interview as well, going remote, the culture was gone, and they just didn’t feel as connected. And so, now that’s going to be something that people have to look at and having a tool like that will let you know, we think this person’s a great fit for the organization and good from the skills’ standpoint, but they really need this face to face connection. So, if we bring them on board, we know we’re going to have to try and find a way to get them that or work with them to get something that’s going to satisfy that need and keep them happy. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah, I mean there’s four things, four leverages that any organization can pull to drive engagement. One is job fit. So, we have a job fit, manager relationship, team dynamics, and the culture of the organization. But if we can get that job fit piece down and we are bringing people in who are naturally motivated by the work that they’re doing, they become easier to manage, their better teammates, they can go above and beyond the call of duty, and they tend to bring more creativity and inspiration to the work that they’re doing as well. So, certainly as we have seen a lot of our clients lose people during this pandemic and lose people through the Great Resignation here, as people are redefining what they want from work. It’s also giving us this great opportunity to redefine what do we want in this role? And what do we want in this job? And finding people who are naturally hardwired to do those kind of things and creating practices to support them or if we are creating pathways for them for growth, knowing that this is going to be something that’s a little bit of a challenge. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Because I think one caveat I want to make sure that we say is that a tool like that if we’re using a behavioral assessments and we’re doing all these things, it’s not meant to pigeonhole people into a certain space. There’s no perfect profile, but there are perfect practices for profiles and there are really great job fits for profiles that can help people thrive and be their best in as quickly as possible. So, we see higher levels of productivity when people have better job fit, but also when managers know how to leverage and as you mentioned before, you know what this person needs an attaboy over an email or this person needs some public recognition, knowing those things and how to create that level of connectivity is a huge benefit in a fast track for organizations, especially as we are building new cultures. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yeah. Excellent. Well, I usually wrap up every episode with giving out people’s contact information. But before I do that, I’m going to do a little shameless plug for my friends over at CSIA, who their Executive Conference’s coming up in a couple months in June. And Heather, your colleague is going to be one of the keynote speakers and then I believe you’re actually probably going to be attending, so. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

I will be there too. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

So, for any of the CSIA listeners who plan on attending the conference, be sure to stop by and check in with either Heather or Stephanie if you’ve generated some more questions as a result of this podcast. But for the listeners who might not be CSIA members or won’t be attending, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you? 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Yeah. So, I always say there’s one of three things. One, best way, you can reach me by a phone (313) 506-1130. By email and it’s Smurphy, looks like Smurphy, at advisausa.com, A-D-V-I-S-A, usa.com. Or you can reach me by a hazard on any given golf course. So, that’s where you’ll find me and this has been incredible. I’m so glad that I could be here with you guys and look forward to seeing those of you who will be at the CSIA event in June. 

Bryan Powrozek: 

Yes, thanks Stephanie. 

Stephanie Murphy: 

Thank you so much. 

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