Pete: I’m really excited today, because an old high school friend of mine, Kevin Tipton, has agreed to be part of my podcast. Kevin doesn’t live in the United States. He is a professor at the University of Sterling in Scotland. So, first and foremost Kevin, thank you for taking the time. I greatly appreciate you spending some time with me today on my podcast. And you know, it’s been 30 years since we’ve talked or seen each other, but man it’s great to reconnect. So, thank you.

Kevin: Oh it’s my pleasure, Pete. And let me just say that I think we go back farther than high school. I reckon we were 8 or 9 years old at Manathorpe Elementary, so it’s been dang near 50 years we’ve known each other—if we can admit that.

Pete: I believe you’re right. And if you remember, I posted this one picture of us at graduation. It’s still one of my favorite pictures from high school.

Kevin: I agree, that is a fantastic photo.

Pete: Kevin had this uniqueness about him. Back in the day, he had a full set of hair. Actually he had this long hair, and as I’m looking at him on Skype, I would say it’s kind of left.

Kevin: Left is kind. So, back in the day, I used to be known for my long hair. And now I’m known for my non-hair.

Pete: It’s great talking with you. And the reason why I asked Kevin, and I’m really happy that he would be part of this, is that when he saw that my book was out, one, he was surprised that I could write a book—which most of my friends felt the same way—and two, that it didn’t have any crayons in it. So, it really perked his interest. He asked if I had it in audiobook form, and at the time I didn’t, so I sent him a copy of my book. And being a professor, I’ll have him tell you more about what he does, he probably read it within an hour or two. But he had some really nice things to say about it, and so I invited him to be part of his podcast so he can share with you some of the things that he’s been able to glean from my book and put in his day-to-day life. So Kevin, give everybody a little bit of your background.

Kevin: We were not only in high school together but at the University of Kentucky. And I studied zoology there and went on to do a master’s degree and a PhD. And the interesting thing, I think, is the idea that the master’s was in Marine biology, down in Florida. And while I was working as a marine biologist, despite the fact that I had all that hair, and I worked on a boat and scuba diving, but I knew something was missing. And so, I started realizing I wanted to understand the human physiology in response to exercise and training. I decided to get a PhD in human nutrition and physiology and excise physiology. And then, you know, I got lucky with a really good postdoc position in Galveston, Texas with one of the leading researchers in the world in protein nutrition and protein metabolism. And so, I was involved in some of the seminal studies in studying human muscle protein metabolism in response to exercise and nutrition. And as we were talking earlier, it’s better to be lucky than good. And I think that my career is a perfect example of that, and that I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and got into this laboratory that has given me the platform to be able to go on and be, you know, what I would consider successful. And at least I’m happy with what I’ve done and what’s happened. So, that’s my focus. My research is mostly on muscle metabolism with exercise and nutrition in a particular protein. Nutrition is what I’m probably most known for, but we also do studies related to diabetes and other health-related aspects. My title is officially—in the UK they love to give these fancy titles—and so my title is Professor of Sport Health and Exercise Sciences.

Pete: You were an athlete growing up, from what I remember. I do remember that you played soccer at the University of Kentucky and at Lafayette as well if my memory is correct. But I remember you being always in great shape and playing soccer, and I believe you did a stint in rugby as well.

Kevin: I played rugby for 25 years and with all the beatings that that took, I think you’re generous to call me an athlete. I was someone who did sports, but you know, I always had to work harder than everybody else. And that actually is the origin of my desire to study physiology and nutrition, because I was trying to find out for myself how I could train better and eat better, to try to compete with people who were better athletes than I was.

Pete: As you say that, I’m sitting here thinking, wouldn’t that be great if that mentality was even adopted in the business world? As an athlete will spend the time to understand nutrition and take better care of themselves, that same philosophy really should hold true with business, with corporate America. Because spending as many years as I did in corporate America, we don’t eat well. We don’t take care of ourselves very well. And this thought just popped into my head as I was listening to you. Your thoughts on that?

Kevin: I couldn’t agree more. The better you eat—and if you stay fit—you’re gonna have more energy. You’re gonna feel better about yourself. You’re gonna be able to do your job better. So, if it were me, if I were a CEO, I would make all my employees, or not make them but provide the opportunity for them to exercise and be physically active and give them time. I would even say, “OK. Here, you got an hour a day that you’re getting paid that I want you to go be physically active. Whether that’s lifting weights or walking or running or on a bike, whatever you want to do.” I think that would increase productivity. And I think there are some models that have tried that and it works. And also I would make sure that there was proper nutrition available, but also education available to say, “Here’s what we would provide for you.” And I think that would increase productivity in any corporation, if they would be farsighted enough to try that. It would cost money, of course, but I think it would come back.

Pete: I think that there are some companies that have done that, some of the newer companies, the disruptive type of companies, like Amazon, Google, Airbnb. Those type of have taken a real focus on wellness.

Kevin: The successful ones, right?

Peter: Go figure. The successful new ones versus, maybe some of the older bluebloods that have been around for many years, but I think it’s something that, you know, that we tend to forget. Whether we’re teaching, whether we’re flying around the country consulting, whether we’re going to work in a skyscraper, I think that with fast food and getting lazy, that by just making some changes, and the way we exercise does have an effect on productivity, does have an effect on our overall health. And I just know how I’ve been able to deal with it. It goes back to my book. Two words: “yes, and.” Managing my health and stuff, I could not do it, I could just forget about it. But there’s so much more out there, that me adopting this approach organically over the last 25 years, I’ve just found myself more driven to do more. Nothing’s an obstacle anymore. Everything, every challenge becomes an opportunity versus something that’s bad.

Kevin: Yeah, I agree. And speaking of travel, as we were saying you travel a lot, and I travel a fair bit. And yeah, it gets in the way of your exercise routine. But that’s only limited if you let it. For example, most airports, you don’t have to take the escalator. You can actually walk up the stairs. And the only interesting thing is, when I walk up the stairs next to all the people on the escalator, I actually go faster. So, if you’re talking about, “I’m in a hurry,” then the stairs are actually better anyway. And you don’t have to get on those moving sidewalks, or if you do, you can walk on them. So, there are all sorts of ways. And I haven’t seen them in Europe so much, but I understand that in the USA, airports are starting to put gyms in there. So, if you have a long enough lay over, you can go. So, that being said, there’s a lot of evidence now that you can do a very effective workout in 10 to 15 minutes, if you do it properly. And you know, I can bore you with the details, but you don’t need to have a huge layover. You can just go to the gym and do a quick, what people call HIIT, High-Intensity Interval Training session and be very effective. There are ways to do it if you really want to. And you say, “Yes, I’m traveling, and I’m gonna do these workouts, because I can.”

Peter: When you talk about airports, I fly Delta, I fly through Atlanta a lot. And usually, I have a decent layover—like an hour—so if I can land in terminal F and take off in A, I’ve got my work out because I’ll walk it. I don’t take the moving side walk unless I’m running late.

Kevin: The problem with Atlanta is, a lot of those terminals, they’ve only got escalators. They don’t have stairs coming up from there.

Peter: Yeah they don’t have the stairs but they do, I don’t take the tram I’ll just walk. And at times, it can be a 30, 35-minute walk.

Kevin: Well, there you go. That’s something and even on the escalator, you can walk up the escalators instead of standing there. Anything you do physically active is gonna be better than not doing it. So, even when you’re traveling again, like you say in your book, it’s “Yes, and.” Yes, I’m traveling. It’s gonna be a pain in the butt, but yes I can take the stairs.

Peter: Have you been able to apply that concept in your teaching?

Kevin: Well it’s funny, because I don’t want to take away from what you’re saying, but I found when I was reading your book that I do some of these things that I didn’t really know I was doing it.

Peter: Perfect.

Kevin: In teaching, no question. And I think I mentioned to you that I blame all those sessions we used to do sitting around listening to Cheech and Chong records. So, maybe that’s how both of us came around to this kind of thing. I used to get in trouble because when I was teaching early on, and I would tell jokes, and I would stop a lecture to tell a story about whatever. And in this case, it was older women who were teaching in nutrition, and they’d say that you shouldn’t be doing that. You should be serious in front of your students. But the students loved it. And consequently, I’ve learned some sort psychological, physiological even reasons why that works. But I found myself reading your book and going, “Hey, this is fantastic, you know? This is the kind of thing that I kind of stumbled across. And now Pete is explaining why it was working.” And I didn’t really know that. I just thought I was gonna do what I do because I don’t care what the old ladies say. But what happens is, students tend to have a 10 to 15-minute attention span. And what I found was, if I stopped to tell a story or tell a joke, that brought them back to me. And then they enjoyed the lecture more than if you just go, “Da da da da da da.” And so, it was exactly the types of things you’re saying, bringing things that mix it up. And that doesn’t have to be always so focused on whatever topic, whether its business or accounting or nutrition. And yeah, I really enjoyed reading your book because it did that, and I’ve already passed it along to some of my colleagues. So, sorry for not getting you more sales by making them buy it, but I’m hoping they’ll get something out of it as well.

Peter: I greatly appreciate you passing it along. If you need some more copies, I’d be happy to send you more copies out there. When people read my book, and I talk to audiences and stuff, we hear the word improve and we’re thinking Drew Carey, every thing’s made up and the points don’t count. And it’s not serious. But once I’m able to get past that and really show everybody that they improvise every single day, and by improvising every single day we were unconsciously doing it, but if we can consciously think about what we’re doing, I think we can have a greater impact on the students or whoever were coming in contact with.

Kevin: Yeah, and that’s what reading your book has done for me, for sure. And especially, my role now, as I’m the leader of the Health and Exercise Sciences research group here, and once I took that on almost 6 years ago, now the job that I do, the things I have to do, has changed quite a bit. I spent a lot of time with junior colleagues trying to help them and guide them, and so much of it is trying to have that “yes, and” attitude that you described. And now that I’ve read your book, I think I’m better at it because now, instead of just stumbling across it every now and then, I’m consciously thinking about how I am gonna deal with this in the way that Pete has as described for me. I didn’t mean to imply earlier that, yes I thought of this too, and you’re just lucky you wrote the book first. I was trying to say that I identified with it a lot, but it’s also really, as you say, reading the book has allowed me to recognize what I was doing and then doing it more consistently and reinforcing it better. So, I think that was that huge thing that it’s helped me with.

Peter: I appreciate the kind words. It’s always nice to get kind words, but sometimes when you get them from old friends it even means that much more.

Kevin: Well, that chapter on your sister helped a lot.

Peter: I guess the other question is, I know that you have a dog. What kind of dog do you have?

Kevin: He’s a border terrier.

Peter: And how old is he?

Kevin: He’s nine, nine and a half.

Peter: And have you found that the “yes, and” approach works with him as well?

Kevin: I hadn’t really thought about that. Yeah, I guess he’s a buddy. He’s not really a subordinate or anything. He’s my roommate, and we go hiking together every day, you know? So, he’s kind of bored right now though.

Peter: When I think of dogs, and this is just, I’m really improve-ing right here, when I think of dogs, that’s the ultimate “yes, and” because, “Hey, I want to go do something. What are we doing?” And, “Let’s do this now,” or “Let’s go do this,” or “It’s time for a walk.”

Kevin: Yeah, he’s always ready for whatever. What I think is funny is, I’ll grab my car keys, and he just starts getting all excited, you know? I’m, “OK. We’re gonna go to the vet, and I’m gonna have your balls cut off. I’m gonna have you put down.” And he’s like, “OK, let’s get going. I don’t know where we’re going, but we’re going in the car so it must be good.”

Peter: Oh, that’s funny. That’s great. And that’s very much a dog’s attitude. You do that every time you get in the car? Tell your dog that you’re gonna go get him neutered?

Kevin: It is funny, cause when we do get somewhere, like the vet, he likes the front office of the vet. He doesn’t like the back part, but the front office, they give him a little treat so he’s happy. But the pack part of course, they poke him or prod him or give him shots. So, he’s never happy. But when you’re getting in the car, going to the vet is a good thing because probably 75-80% of his car trips mean we’re going walking or something. But yeah, I agree. Now that you’ve described it, I can see how that is a “yes, and.” He’s a “yes, and” creature for sure.

Peter: I know. My two dogs, I have a chocolate lab and a black lab, and they are very much “yes, and.” “Yes, and it’s time to eat. Yes, and it’s time to walk, and where have you been all day.” They’re always very happy. Kevin, any last words before we wrap this up

Kevin: Nothing substantial. I mean, I appreciate the opportunity to be on the podcast, and you know I enjoyed reading the book. And despite my biases and the bottle of bourbon that I hope to get in the mail for saying good things…

Peter: You only want one? That’s perfect. That’s easy enough. I thought you were gonna hit me up for more.

Kevin: It really was. I enjoyed it, and I was proud of you because, like you said, we’ve know each other a long time. And it’s great to see your old friends doing well, and also doing well in an unexpected way. Like you say, who would have expected you to write a book, you know? That’s awesome. It’s fantastic, and I was happy to see, and even happier to read it. And go, “Hey, this isn’t just a bunch of crap. This is good stuff.”

Peter: Now you’re up to two bottles. Keep going my friend. Keep going. So, I have to believe that some part of my audience is gonna listen to this, especially the conversation on nutrition, and maybe will want to reach out to you. Can you give us how somebody could reach you? The email address or something?

Kevin: Probably the easiest way to get a hold of me is, I’m active on Twitter. So, if you want to follow nutrition and exercise kind of stuff on Twitter, it’s @Stirproftip. And also, you can get my email and all my publications and everything else from the university website. So, if you just Google Kevin Tipton, Sterling or University of Sterling, you should come right to my website and it should be no problem finding me. If you want to see what kind of research we’re doing, and you know, it’s got my email address and everything else on there.

Peter: Outstanding. So, if you want to know more about nutrition, he’s the man. I do remember growing up, and when I found out that you were a doctoral student and a PhD, I went, “I kind of always thought that.” I always did. I believed that’s right. Your dad taught at the University of Kentucky, so it didn’t shock me at all that this would be your profession. Because my friend, you were always one of the brightest in the room. I look back at our times growing up, and I do miss those times. I do miss the Richard Pryor, Cheech and Chong, listening to the stuff. But you always had this thing about you, that I knew you were going to be extremely successful. And thank you for proving me right. So, we’re even now on the bottles, right?

Kevin: Exactly. Well you know, it’s funny you should say my dad, because I’ve got to mention that I won some excellence in teaching awards this year. And I’m very proud of that, of course. It was an honor and a thrill to get those awards, but I dedicated and blame my father for it, because of the way I saw him teaching—from when we first moved to Lexington, and he was at University of Kentucky. And I modeled myself as a teacher on the way that I saw him treating both his undergraduate and graduate students. And I can’t say enough good things about Leonard, as far as a mentor and a teacher. And so, I don’t think I would ever feel comfortable not working at the University. It just has always been part of my life. And so, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do what I think is a rewarding job. And it’s challenging of course but rewarding, and it’s due to my father as to, you know, how I was able to make that happen.

Peter: Yeah, just listening to your voice and tone, and tying it back to everything you just said, you’re very lucky that you were able to find your passion early on and be able to leverage that passion into what you are today. Congratulations on the teaching awards. I have seen a picture of your mom and dad, and they look great. And I know that you will send this to them. Are they still in Lexington?

Kevin: No, they’re in Gainesville, Florida.

Peter: I’ll have to stop next time I’m near Fort Myers and say hello. Well, once again, thank you very much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you doing this and being on here and having some really nice things to say about my book. And I look forward to our next conversation because I would like to follow up in about a year with this podcast to see the difference a year’s made. But on the other hand, I want to follow up a lot sooner and stay closer in touch with you, on an unofficial friendship basis versus the podcast basis.

Kevin: Why don’t we do both? Why don’t we do the next interview on top of the mountain behind my house here so you can visit Scotland? We’ll take that bottle of bourbon up to the top of the mountain and podcast from up there.

Peter: That is a definite. So, if we put a date out there, let’s see if we can make that date. Perfect my friend. Thank you, so very much and great talking with you.

Kevin: My pleasure.

Improv Is No Joke 9: John Barlow

Peter: John, welcome to my podcast. It’s great to see you. First and foremost thank you for taking the time to spend with me having a great conversation, so into the conversation we had on that Delta flight coming back from Atlanta. I greatly appreciate you taking the time and welcome to the show.

John: Well you’re welcome and thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to it.

Peter: Thanks, John. Let’s start off by telling the audience a little bit about who you are, about your background, a little about yourself.

John: Okay so I grew up in Pennsylvania, southeastern Pennsylvania. I like to say distant suburbs of Philadelphia to try to distance myself from Philadelphia. I grew up there. I spent a lot of time going to the beach for vacations, weekend trips. I absolutely love the beach, love sitting there, listening to the ocean. It’s peaceful calming. Hopefully, my retirement location someday is a beach. Went to Penn State for four years. Got an engineering degree. Honestly, at the time when I was coming out of school, the job market was pretty bad so I had actually enrolled to go to grad school to get a masters in acoustic engineering, but low and behold, during finals week, I got a phone interview from Honda. Then they invited me out for a second interview and gave me an offer, and I’ve been there for almost twenty-two years.

So now I live here in central Ohio, got married, have two boys, now divorced. My boys are nine and thirteen, both very active in sports, and I like to volunteer to work with them. I like teaching kids. I like teaching people in general. I find it rewarding and – especially with the kids – you get to teach them about sports, and then also about life and being good people. Some of those kids don’t have role models. They don’t have somebody. With a lot of divorces today, they don’t have a father figure sometimes that to teach them the right way to do things and how to be men. So you get to help mold them into young men.

So then, of course, I work as an engineer at Honda. I know you and I talked about this, but of course, there’s the stereotype of the engineer. I don’t exactly fit that mold to a tee. Most engineers think with one side of their brain. They’re very analytical, all about numbers, but I actually use the other side of my brain for a lot of things. I play drums in a band. I also do graphic design. I design t-shirts and logos. I like to do a lot of different creative things. The creative side of me makes me a little bit of a different type of engineer at Honda. I usually see things from a much different perspective than other people and when we get engaged in conversation, arguments, disagreements, whatever; oftentimes I bring a different perspective to things. You know the interesting thing is one of my primary jobs is to actually understand how people use the interiors of vehicles and then try to make requirements such that we can accommodate the way people want to be able to use the vehicle. Sometimes they don’t even know they can’t answer you how they want to use the car, but if you observe their tendencies and study the way that people use cars, you can learn a lot of things. So I’m trying to understand the different ways that people use cars. They’re vastly different so, in that kind of a position, you have to have a really wide viewpoint to be able to understand how all people used cars, not just your specific way. So that’s one of the things that I try to impart into a lot of people that I work with, whether they be direct reports that are in my department or people that I come across some meetings. I try to impart with them that you have to have a wider viewpoint, basically, be empathetic to other people and how they do things and use things and want to use things. I think my creative mind is what allows me to have a much wider perspective than most people. I’m considered, within our company, as one of the very out-of-the-box thinkers, very creative minded and open minded.

Peter: If I remember correctly, on the plane, when you were telling me about your background – and I forgot what’s your title at Honda?

John: My title is a principal engineer, but I’m actually an interior technical strap veggie leader, among many other titles. So I work on creating strategies for future interiors for our vehicles.

Peter: Remember we were having this conversation, and you’re talking about your being a drummer, and this creative side where I called you the accidental engineer, and I’m the kind of the accidental accountant. I branded myself because I like to use both sides of my brain. Probably my right side stronger than my left side. Sometimes I feel like a right-brain person in a left-brain world, but there was one of you said something about you almost became an acoustic engineer?

John: When I was signed up, I was accepted into Penn State for grad school to be going to the acoustical program for engineering. At that time, the reason why I wanted to do it is I played drums so I wanted to learn the acoustics, and basically be able to design recording studios and things like that. So if you ever go and look at recording studios or even think about movie theaters or anything like that, there’s a lot that goes into the design of them. Everything from the angles of the all the walls, the shapes that are inside as well, as the acoustic treatments that go into it. Generally, those spaces are very well designed so that they fit the perfect acoustic needs of whatever the space is designed for. For example, if you’re in a hall where maybe somebody’s speaking and you want everybody to hear the speaking at the same volume level, you can design the ceiling to reflect the sound so that it goes and has dispersed to everybody equally. In a recording studio, general, you want to isolate the sounds so you make it such that the sound gets bounced around. It can be evenly dispersed, but you also want to absorb certain frequencies as well. I wanted to go and learn about all that stuff. At the time, my dream was that I was going to go start designing recording studios or something like that. I thought that would be fun…or something in the in the music industry in general. That was my big passion at the time, still is, but you know I also like cars.

Peter: You drive a Honda?

John: Yeah, I do.

Peter: So I listened to what you do at work and the people that you’re interacting with at work, and you having such a really strong creative side, what’s the biggest challenge that you have in dealing with the people that report to you, your peers or whatever, in a creative type and very much a left-brain world?

John: The hardest part is getting people to open their minds and to imagine things that don’t exist yet because my focus is on things that are in the future that don’t exist yet in a world that doesn’t exist yet. I go to go to shows like CES for the consumer electronics, and I see the trends and I see what things are happening, and I essentially futurecast those things and almost, in my mind, predict what I expect the future is going to be like. I take that information and I tried to build it into something that I think our future customers will want, but getting somebody who doesn’t think that way to understand the need and why we need to do things differently, so that we can be prepared for that in the future, is really hard because most people really look at today and at most, maybe they’re looking one year into the future which is fairly predictive, right? You can guess in one year where things are going to be. Fifteen years from now? Nobody can really predict. I mean, fifteen years ago if you would have guessed that tablets and cell phones would be the way they are today. Nobody would have predicted that so somebody fifteen years ago probably did. They knew something, but getting those people to think that far into the future is really hard.

Peter: So what type of techniques do you use when you’re trying to get someone to go into your mind and see what you’re seeing when you know that they’re having a hard time getting out of year one?

John: I carry a big club. It’s a good question. Sometimes you have to use different tactics depending on who the person is that you’re talking to, but a lot of it is really trying to build a logical storyboard. Part of it is trying to show a trend. Exactly the situation that I explained is one of the things that we do to people is, okay think fifteen years ago and what you knew then; and you tell them what the year is, and think about what technologies, and you show this to them on a PowerPoint slide. These are the technologies that existed fifteen years ago. Now look at today. Would you have guessed then that this would be what today is like? Now imagine fifteen years from now I’m telling you that these things are what is going to be happening. Can you imagine that based on what happened from fifteen years ago to today? When you start to paint things in that kind of a light, people understand how quickly things are changing, and then they start to open up their minds a little bit more and realize that you know some of the things that sound unrealistic, actually probably are pretty realistic and probably will happen.

Peter: We have a lot more than in common than I realize because I have the same conversation in my profession. There’s a book – I don’t know if you read this – it’s by Geoff Colvin, senior editor, managing editor at Fortune, came out with last year called Humans Are Underrated. He talks about the technology and technology changing, and he makes references to cognitive computing AKA Watson. I do a presentation called Leveraging in Your Leadership Through Improvisation so I take them back to 1995. In 1995, were using a 10-key. We use Excel now. In 1995, we have one computer on our desk with a back end about twelve inches to a foot deep. Most people these days have three or four screens, and I go, so where do you think we’re going to be in 2025? I tried to make the argument that I truly believe. The way technology is going, that Excel will be extinct by maybe 2020, if not sooner.

John: It could be that very well could be. It’s interesting because most people don’t think about these things, but you think about today’s cell phone and you have more computing power in a cell phone then the computers I had when I was coming out of college. So you’re talking about twenty-two years, and all the sudden the computing power of something that small is greater than something probably the computers that actually filled an entire room. That’s pretty impressive.

Peter: It is and part of my argument is if you’re gonna have machines, the Watsons of the world that can do the computing for us, what roles do we need to start playing it was in the workforce? Then if I don’t have to be the number cruncher, I have to be more of a relationship builder, much more so. You’re doing that already with the way you approach your job and approach your day in and day out. You’re building relationships because you gotta build some trust and support and respect with your team that they don’t think that you’re off your reservation so they’ve got buy-in. I’m sure that always takes time, but you also have to think about what could be next. The other thing that goes through my mind is I look at the universities full of engineering students, accounting students. Really what are we teaching them today? By the time they graduate, will they even be using any of that? What should we teach them?

John: For the engineers, I think there will always be something. I don’t know what that next future challenge is, but you know it’s interesting because when we talk about this future technology, you know part of it is actually trying to establish a relationship between human and machine because the more of a relationship you can build there, there’s more trust in the technology. It seems like a lot of people strive for that, you know, especially as technology is starting to provide services for people. You don’t want to come across as it’s a machine right? Like you want it to be more personal than that so it’s kind of interesting. I mean, yeah I don’t know. There’ll always be something there for those engineers, all the students that go to school, but they’ll have different challenges I think.

Peter: In Colvin’s book, he says, “Where we differ from machines is that we can communicate with creative and we can collaborate. There’re our strengths. No matter what profession, what trade, whatever, that’s where we excel. Where a machine is programmed and they can only do with what’s within that programming”, but then I look at – we’re talking about changing technology – last July, Phoenix, Arizona McDonald’s opened its first robotic McDonald’s. Now there are three people in the store to make sure that they’re well-oiled, they’re not breaking down, they’re not taking a lot of smoke breaks or something like that, but these highly repetitive jobs, he argues, that will be replaced by the machine so what can we do differently. You also mentioned something about using your right side of the brain. You said you’re more sympathetic. He argues that that is going to be one of the key skill sets moving forward and he says that, in general, this is where men lack from women because they empathize better than men do, and they will become the future overall leaders of organizations and stuff as technology changes. The ability to empathize – maybe he should write it in a different way. Those who have the ability to empathize will become better leaders in the future then maybe in the past.

John: Yeah, you know it’s interesting. I’m gonna have to grab a pen and write that book down because I want to read that. Sounds interesting. As much as I hate stereotyping, I would generally agree with him. I think, in most cases, women are better at empathizing than men are, but it’s not a standard of course, right? I don’t know if that will mean that women will be the leaders in the future because they can be more empathetic. I don’t know. That’s an interesting question.

Peter: It is an interesting question. It’s an interesting concept that he brought up and knowing – John, if you pick up his book Humans Are Underrated – you fly a lot from Columbus to Los Angeles. I figure within one trip of flying out, flying back, you’ll have that book pretty much knocked out.

John: Well it sounds like an interesting read so yeah, absolutely, I’m gonna have to pick that one out.

Peter: It really is a really good read. I picked it up immediately. It was on the front page of Fortune Magazine because it was a book that came out before that a few years ago called The Second Machine Age, which was written by a couple of MIT computer science PhDs. I read the book and this was pretty much over my head that I had to read it on the ladder and still was a little bit over my head, but I was able to get the gist of it. Basically, the gist of that book is along the lines of Colvin’s book, but he brings it into perspective as of 2014-2015. These guys are probably back in 2010-2011.

I know there’s another good book that you’ve read because I sent it to you. I gave you a copy of the book and you said that you read it, and you became almost an instant fan because you started sending me emails and stuff, after the fact, saying you loved it and you’re able to apply it. Can you share some of those experiences?

John: Yeah, the first time I read the book, I connected with a lot. You know it really impacted me because the first thing I’ll say is I don’t generally read books. I’m not a book reader. I actually hate reading, but the books that I do read are generally books that are self-help or self-improvement or books that are of that nature. When I read your book, I was able to really relate to a lot of the stories that you gave when you talked about the principle of “Yes, And”. It really resonated with me, and you know I love to people watch, especially at work, especially on trips. Just yesterday I had a perfect situation where I got to observe a conversation between two coworkers in my department. It literally was one person trying to force their agenda on the other person and they weren’t listening. It’s exactly what you talked about in your book.

The two things that stood out for me from your book; one was using the “Yes, And” instead of the “Yes, But” principal. The other one was listening to actually understand what somebody is saying instead of just listening to respond. That was a perfect situation where he was listening just to wait until she stopped talking and then respond, and literally almost like an animal pouncing on its prey. Today I actually talked with him about it and I told him that his approach was wrong, and I have actually given him a copy of your book to read. He hasn’t read it yet and I keep asking them to read it, but he’s a good friend of mine and I also mentor this guy from a personal and a business relationship. The striking thing for me is, I’ve read other books and they say similar things to what your book says. What I love about your book is it’s very concise. The book’s not very long, and it gets to the point quickly, and it gave great examples from your own personal life that I could relate to that emphasized the point.

It home with me, and it made me rethink the way that I deal with people, especially the “Yes, But” versus “Yes, And” really really stuck to me. It was because of the pushing your own agenda. I’ve done it in the past and I’ve seen it happen in the past. I was thinking about this actually before this conversation started, and I was thinking about today versus, say, twenty years ago, and how busy people are. I think because people are so busy with their lives these days, I think part of that forces the “Yes, But” culture because people are so time sensitive. They just want to get to the point and they don’t want to listen to what the other person has to say so they pretty much shut their ears off and wait until the person stops talking, and then they just want to force their agenda and get to the end quickly. In a lot of cases, it doesn’t work because in a lot of cases it just ends up with an argument that goes longer than it probably would have if you would have just listened to what the other person was trying to say, understood, empathized a little bit with them, and then came to some final conclusion. Instead of being argumentative with them, basically acknowledging that you understand what they’re saying and adding on to it. That’s a lot of what I got out of the book.

I find myself at times getting back into the rut of falling back into the “Yes, But”. When I see myself doing that, I pick the book up and I will reread it. Something in my brain, it’ll readjust my brain and then I’ll get back into the “Yes, And” mode of things. You know things are great so…

Peter: It’s tough to say that you followed on a daily basis, on an hourly basis at work because you’re surrounded by a lot of “Yes, but no because”. As I tell people, this is a very easy concept, but it’s hard to implement. It’s hard to be consistent in that implementation. I greatly appreciate the comment that when you find yourself getting “Yes, But ” you pick up my book, or you or gave my book to your colleague because that just blows me away. When I wrote this book I never realize things like that would be happening, but it’s a real simple message that’s hard to implement because once we get back into that rut, how do we how do we maintain that focus because as Aristotle quoted, “excellence is not an act, it’s a habit”. Then I ask people, so how long it takes to have a habit. Everyone goes twenty-one days from what you hear out. I know. Well, that part correct. It’s twenty-one days to start a habit, it’s a lifetime to maintain it because we’ve all started diets, and how many of us have given up on diets and give it up on a lot of stuff? We have those new year’s resolutions that fall flat about maybe February 1st. It’s the same thing with the concept “Yes, And” and the principles of improv. It’s just working that muscle on a daily basis and trying to continue to strengthen, as well as fighting off the “Yes, But’s” in the noble causes.

John: Well it’s interesting you talk about habits. I’m sure it’s not exclusive to where I work. I think it’s probably common for a lot of engineers, but a lot of our focus is actually finding problems and finding the fault in things, right? What happens is, at least what I’ve witnessed in myself, is I get so caught up in that in work. I let that become a habit in my brain. So then what I found in the past is I’ve looked for the fault or the weakness in everything, and I became super critical about things, whether it be personal life or work life. It’s easy to fall into that trap. It’s easy to allow that kind of mindset to impact every aspect of your life, and if you can take a step back and then look at things from a different perspective – that’s what your book did for me. It allowed me to look at things from a different perspective and take that step back, and understand it, the way that you approach other people, how it impacts them. So if you say “Yes, But ” all the time, it has an impact on the other person, versus if you say “Yes, And”.

Peter: The “Yes, And” approach is not always about saying yes. There are times when no is appropriate, but as someone recently taught me, it’s about allowing yourself to step into somebody else’s reality, albeit for a moment, just to get a better understanding of where they’re coming from so you can have that constructive conversation and move forward in a positive direction. It makes it may come back to a no, which is fine, but at least you explored it instead of shutting it down.

John: It’s interesting that you say that because I basically say, when I explain it to people, I say the “Yes, And” Approach because I don’t often say “Yes, And”, but it’s the mindset that’s more important. It’s not actually the two words of “Yes, And”. I know I told you this in the response to the questions, but I actually had myself a bracelet made, and the bracelet says “Yes, And” on it. So every day when I find myself falling into the trap of the “Yes, But” mindset, I have the bracelet in front of me every day so it gives me a daily reminder that I need to change my mindset. I need the need to have a different viewpoint, and I need to be empathetic to other people and understand their point of view and make sure that I’m supportive and not combative, I guess, you could say about things.

Peter: How have you seen, with this change, how people are responding to you?

John: In general, and I don’t observe it just in myself, but I know other people that have a similar approach to things… People generally react more positively to it because they see that you’re you’re you’re listening to their thoughts and your feet you really care about what they think about, but at the same time, you’re trying to offer more information or a different option or a different solution. Generally, they’re more receptive to it. The conversation becomes more productive that way as opposed to shut down. A lot of people as soon as you give them the “Yes, But” approach, they’re done. They’re like okay he’s not listening to me I’m just going to go talk to somebody else. Yeah, that tends to make things a lot more productive, I think.

Peter: And you can see the body language, and you can see it in people’s eyes when you “Yes, But” them. The shoulders slump. It’s just as negative negativity, but you know when to start, like you said, it’s not actually using the two words. Sometimes they’ll even give that Scooby Doo *impersonation*. Well when you work in a Japanese company you get a lot of those. The culture of the organization itself of a Japanese company and your role as being as creative as you are, I mean that’s a lot of selling that you have to do on ideas.

John: Yeah it is. The two cultures are very different for sure so there’s a different learning curve that’s associated there, but just the same even with the Japanese Culture. If you sit in meetings with them, the more senior members tend to sit back and listen. They don’t chime in until the very end. They let everybody else talk. They want to absorb all the information, and then they make a decision. That’s from years of wisdom having gone through meetings and having gone through problems, and understanding, knowing that a lot of the solution can come out of multiple people talking. So if you observe the senior members, that’s actually what they do. It’s kind of a joke because you know we go through cross-cultural training to learn about the opposite culture when we have to work together. One of the things you’ll notice – and this isn’t so true from what I’ve seen with the younger generation of the Japanese, but with the older generation – you’re sitting in a meeting, they look like they’re taking a nap. They look like they’re asleep. They sit back in the chair, they have their arms cross, and they have their eyes closed and their head down, but they’re actually not sleeping. They’re actually absorbing everything that’s being communicated, and they’re deeply thinking about the stuff that’s being communicated and trying to rationalize it all and come to a decision. That’s a different form of “Yes, And”. They’re not communicating anything, but they’re absolutely listening to what everybody has to say. Then they’re adding to it later. It’s a different form. That’s why I say you don’t have to use those two words, but it’s the whole mindset that’s really what’s important.

Peter: Well they are using two of the principles of improvisation. They’re using that one, the listening to understand, but you’re completely focused on the conversation. They’re not sidetracked by I’ve got to be somewhere, next meeting. As they say in improv, they’re completely present, in the moment, and they’re totally focused and listening to the conversation and figuring out ways to take that information and adapt to the situation. All of that is part of that whole “Yes, And” approach.

John: Yeah and it’s interesting that you say that because you know going back to the how busy people are these days, you know you go into meetings and you see a lot of people sitting there with laptops open, and they’re sitting and typing away on her laptop while they’re in the meeting. More often than not, it’s those people that are the ones that use the “Yes, But” approach because they’re sitting there listening and waiting for the thing they disagree with and then they jump on it and a chime in. They haven’t heard any of the rest of the conversation. They just heard the one thing that they didn’t actually agree with, and then all of a sudden they just want to pounce on it, almost like they’re in there to just judge and evaluate, not to contribute. I think a lot of it is related to how busy people get. They’re trying to multitask and do multiple things at the same time. It’s really hard to pay attention to what’s being communicated, and communicating again in another form. It’s funny because I just had this conversation with somebody last week about multitasking. You know my general view is, I think it’s really hard to multitask when it’s two forms of communication – but if it’s multitasking like a drummer has to use all four limbs…I’m able to play drums and have a communication with somebody at the same time, but it’s two different parts of your brain. I think that’s what makes the difference is you can use the left and right side of the brain at the same time if you train it, but if you’re trying to use the same side of the brain for two different tasks it becomes difficult. I think when people try doing that, I think it causes some of the “Yes, But” approach for people. I’m no doctor, no scientist, but it’s just my own personal belief.

Peter: Well I think you may have actually hit the nail on the head because I’ve never thought about it that way. I’m not a believer that we can multitask, but I never thought about from from musician’s standpoint. I think about I’m trying to teach myself how to play the guitar. It’s like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. It’s using both sides of your brain. Wow!

John: But think about a guitar player who sings. It’s basically playing guitar with one side of your brain and essentially having communication with the other side of your brain right? Singing is like talking, like talking to somebody. So I think you can train your brain to use both sides of the brain simultaneously, but if you try to do two tasks with one side at the same time, I don’t know that it works so well. I could be wrong, but –

Peter: I believe you’re dead on and prior to our conversation starting the podcast, I mentioned that I’m gonna let the conversation go organically. We’ll start off, your background and see where it goes, and all I can say is wow! I mean that in itself, that’s a piece of gold!

John: I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s just my own thought you know.

Peter: I believe there’s a lot of truth behind that. For the first time – I will give you credit when I used your analogy when I’m speaking to people, but I think you’re right because when we’re multitasking… I’ve got oh sure you need five minutes of my time come on, and I’m sitting here doing this on my computer or not paying attention and the person’s giving me some information that I’m completely tuned out. I’m not listening to it. That’s why you don’t text and drive. People still do. It’s wow!

John: I used to try to type emails or do other forms of communication while sitting in meetings and I completely try to stop it now because I’ve come to the realization that I can’t do it. I’ve tried. I can multi-task with two sides of my brain, but I can’t do two things on the same side of the brain. I can’t listen to one conversation and have another conversation at the same time. I just can’t do it.

Peter: I think that’s why webinars and some of that stuff don’t work because we’re always multitasking. We’re not completely focused on the task at hand. That is…John, that is worth the price of admission. That’s pure business gold there, and like I said I am going to use that, and I would definitely give you all the props on that. Well you know I don’t want to take up too much more time. We’ve been having this conversation going on almost forty minutes. I just want to thank you for one, taking the time to be part of this podcast, two, imparting your wisdom. I know that the stuff that you have provided the audience here, that they’ll be able to take some of the stuff and actually apply it in their everyday lives to start seeing the change. If it’s just the smallest thing, which is the biggest piece here is: you can only multitask when you use them both sides of the brain. I deeply, greatly thank you, appreciate you taking time, and it’s great to have you as a guest.

John: No, thank you. I enjoyed it. You know one of the things I love doing in my job is I love teaching people. It’s a very rewarding experience for me to be able to try to teach younger minds and even older minds. Actually, anybody that I can impart some bit of wisdom to or different way of thinking, I enjoy it so now thank you for the opportunity to share in this experience, and I look forward to seeing what comes from this. If there’s anything else I can do to help let me know.

Peter: Oh there is because I will be contacting you again. Cause I know the attention span of audiences and stuff, but I would love to have you back on a future podcast and pick up another conversation and see which way we can move that needle.

John: Oh absolutely anytime. Just let me know.

Peter: Great. Thanks, John. I greatly appreciate it and have a great evening.

John: Aw thanks, you too.

Peter: Welcome everybody. I have as my guest today a very good friend of mine and partnership through the Business Learning Institute and really who makes the Business Learning Institute to move forward. I am very thankful to have been able to get on Pam Devine’s calendar for one. So I am very appreciative of the fact that I have been able to grab you, hold you down here for a few moments and have a conversation from a conversation that we had just the other day. So thank you.

Pam Devine: Thank you Peter. I am really happy to be here with you today.

Peter: I am looking forward to this conversation because we briefly touched on it the other day when I said I would love to get this content out there to my audience and I’ll let you do the talking but you were to tell me that you recently attended the Bersin conference and if you could inform the audience what is the Bersin conference, the background behind it and then what were the big takeaways you walked away with this year.

Pam Devine: Sure. Thank you. So let’s back up a little bit and, and do an introduction to I guess me and the Business Learning Institute and what we focus on. As lot of people know the Business Learning Institute is an affiliate of the Maryland Association of CPAs, and we were formed 17 years ago as a result of,I know long time ago it seems like wow!

Peter: Wow!

Pam Devine: As a result of what we were hearing in the marketplace. We were out talking to CFOs and managing partners about onsite training and learning, and they said to us, “You know MACPA has really great technical training but what we really need and what the skills that are missing for our workforce are leadership, strategy, communication, the skills that make a better business professional. So over the last few years, leadership, strategy, communication has actually taken a forefront in the training areas in public companies, in accounting firms and organizations of all shapes and sizes. And I and my team have had the privilege of attending some learning conferences, specifically the Bersin conference. Bersin is a division of Deloitte but does not focus just on accounting and finance learning. It focus on learning and HR in the greater market and there has been a lot of talk about the gap in the leadership pipeline. So we have 50 somethings in the marketplace, we have 20 somethings in the marketplace and the missing generation of talent are in their 30s and 40s. And there is a whole missing generation where we need from millennials to get up to speed in training and leadership learning is the most coveted job benefit there is. In this conference we heard that 83% of employees want to learn something every day. So the culture within an organization in order to really encourage millennials to stay, really should focus on learning. And there is a saying that “the learning curve is truly the earning curve”.

Peter: Oh! Say that again.

Pam Devine: So learn, the learning curve is the earning curve. Learning is what gives an organization a competitive advantage. So traditional learning and development is not just about skillsets but about really creating a culture within your organization to grow your business.

Peter: So, I love that learning is the earning curve but it maybe think about what Tom Hoods says about learning and you could repeat his famous saying.

Pam Devine: Yeah. So one of our friends here at the Business Learning Institute tells is that L must be greater than for people to see or in other words, your learning must be greater than or equal to the rate of change or change squared in your environment in order for an organization to compete in this rapidly changing environment.

Peter: And you guys have been using that example of L must be greater than, the learn has to be greater than the man has to change the marketplace for how many years now?

Pam Devine: Oh gosh! I can’t even remember how long. We were early adopters in that space but right now as the shift in the marketplace is trending towards learning, we are seeing that it makes more sense than ever. In fact one of the statistics from Bersin was that leadership development spending grew by 14% last year.

Peter: Wow!

Pam Devine: Which is really great obviously for the accounting profession and for what we are trying to do at the Business Learning Institute.

Peter: I mean you have been with the Business Learning Institute since its inception. Correct?

Pam Devine: Yeah. That’s correct.

Peter: That’s correct. And if I remember correctly you have used, you started off part time.

Pam Devine: Mm-hmm.

Peter: And you developed the team and over those years you have really grown this business so much so that-by the way are, are you a CPA?

Pam Devine: No, I am not a CPA.

Peter: But you know that you have made a good person drive your, driving your business, who can sit across room from CPAs and basically talk their language to the point that they actually think that you are a CPA.

Pam Devine: Yes. So I know enough to be dangerous Peter. So my role here is to listen to our customers, listen to what they are talking about, listen to what’s going on in the environment and bring resources that are a good fit for them and so I hear things about revenue recognition and lease and some of those technical topics. So I have been able to pull a few people a lot of the way into thinking that I am a CPA you know. Obviously I don’t try to do that because I do not know, I really don’t know what I am up to. I am just know enough to be dangerous, let’s just put it that way. Okay?

Peter: But I think that is such a wonderful skillset that you are able to do that because basically you are speaking the language. You are talking to them in a way that connects with them even though you may not have the three letters behind your name or did all the, take the CPA exam but you know enough about your customer, you know enough about your, your clients, you know enough about the profession that you can have that conversation with them that you are not deemed or perceived to be an outsider.

Pam Devine: Oh thank you. I take that as a compliment.

Peter: Oh good. That’s how it was meant.

Pam Devine: And, and I know enough to surround myself with really smart CPAs or really, really smart experts in their field that help me look good on occasion.

Peter: Oh, you make us all look good Pam. Trust me. So at this Bersin conference where you talking about this leadership and learning and earning. What were some of the, I mean you were sitting there listening to this and I have already heard you tell them for an earlier podcast and I mean you guys are visionaries. You guys have been talking for this for long time. How does it feel when you are now hearing it as part of the mainstream that the we are gaining the understanding that the power of leadership, the power of communication skills are needed in today’s workforce? But you guys have been talking about that for a long time.

Pam Devine: Yes. So, for me it’s very, very exciting in terms of our ability at the Business Learning Institute to be truly customer focused and provide what the market is asking for. One of the big takeaways, and you and I talked about it last week was that, was the way Bersin talked about a learning architecture and how learning has changed from more than just education. Education is a instructor led training, on demand training, e-learning, is just a component of a learning environment, and they talked about four Es, and four Es that had to be in place in order for an organization to be, to have a truly competitive learning environment. And those four Es are education, exposure, environment and experience. And what hit me as an employee of an association, of a non-profit CPA association was that, that’s exactly what the Maryland Association of CPAs is all about, in addition to what the Business Learning Institute is offering. So when I think of the association model, we are really set to be able to provide or help organizations create this learning architecture because we are all about exposure, environment, experience as well as the education piece, if that makes sense.

Peter: It, it does. Can, can you expand on the environment piece?

Pam Devine: Sure. So when I think of environment, I think of our environment here actually at MACPA. We have gone from a real traditional office space where we all had offices, where you could close the door and shut the door behind you when you are having a meeting to a totally open environment. We are working today in an open collaborative environment where our CEO is sitting across from our CFO is sitting across from my sales team. So we are hearing each other talk, talk and, and respond to the market all day long, we are learning from each other and it’s a collaborative, open learning environment that we are actually working in here at MACPA and BLI.

Peter: Just for the record, for the audience, they do have a private like phone booth type of room where you can have some privacy. So that’s for Pam is right now versus out in the bullpen area. But as you are, we were talking about the environment and you were describing that which takes me now and thinking about firms. I know here in Columbus, I haven’t seen it personally but I have heard others who have, where the EY office has been totally re-designed, somewhere in a very similar manner, much more open, much more collaborative, not the hard woods and the dark woods and all of that I grew up in accounting firm and what I was just presented at the client the other day, the EY office in Chicago hadn’t had changed yet but PWC and I believe they say KPMG offices have moved into this more open type of environment. But how is Bersin tying that, that into the whole learning architecture? What, what does that the office openness do with learning?

Pam Devine: Well I think, I think they are talking about how people are learning from each other in teams, they are working in open teams, collaborative teams and so they are, they are exposed to people at different levels. So you may have a young millennial sitting next to a director and they are working together and teams and collaborating. So I think that’s, that one thing they were talking about. So the learning environment itself has changed. They also were talking about not just sitting in a standard classroom. So your learning environment can be a team base or in an environment it can be e-learning, it can be learning from a Twitter stream, that type of thing as well.

Peter: Well there is a difference between learning and CPA? Correct?

Pam Devine: Of course.

Peter: Because, I don’t know maybe someday that whatever that person is working with partner and they put some kind of documentation and let the person that would qualify as CPA but this goes way beyond the 40 hours or whatever from the compliance perspective. We’re talking about true learning on the job, in a collaborative manner and just an environment that from colors and structures and stuff just much more brighter, brings- I guess the words I’m looking for-brings a lot more energy into the room.

Pam Devine: Absolutely. That’s definitely true. These four Es don’t operate in a vacuum. They feed off each other. In a true learning environment is going to give your employees exposure to employees at a higher level, at a younger level, at all different levels. That also feeds into this.

Peter: When you’re talking about exposure, my mind’s going to how I start most of my CPA programs. What the topic is don’t keep this to yourself. This is not proprietary learning when the best things about CPA is to give the gifts I’m giving. Can you take what you’ve learned there three – four takeaways. Take it back to the office and share with people in the office.

Pam Devine: Exactly. Exactly. You can also think about conferences. Firms that send their professionals to a conference or organizations that send their professionals out to a conference, they do that in order for their professionals to be exposed to different professionals in the field. Also expose them to people that might bring them business. The exposure component is huge as well.

Peter: What you described as the ability to go to a conference, a CPA event no matter what the topic is, it actually network with your peers.

Pam Devine: Yes.

Peter: It’s amazing because at in any CPA event whether it’s in house or outhouse conference whatever. I make that comment at the very beginning of the class to say, “Does everybody know everybody else” and obviously most will say, “No”. Then did you bring any business cards, go introduce yourself and go network and the blank looks that I get. I look at CPAs as great places where people come together that we may all be CPAs but they all have different backgrounds. Have different people in our network and how we can help each other out. Those are really long way. Then the lightbulb goes on. I’ve heard many people in the profession go, “I never thought about networking in a CPA event.”

Pam Devine: It’s just about learning the tax code. But really, the four Es are at play. I was thinking the other day about something we do in Maryland that’s really the perfect example of the four Es we do in January every year, CPA day and in Annapolis. So when you think about all of the Maryland CPA’s descending upon Annapolis, you clearly can see that there is an educational component-

Peter: Mh-mmm.

Pam Devine: In terms of learning how to work with legislators and understanding what’s going on in the legislative environment. There’s the experience of for our members that may never have gone to a state capital. May have never experienced working with senators and congressmen. Then there’s the environment in itself! How cool is that? To get out of your office, to get out of your work environment and descend upon your state capital and then of course there is the exposure. I love that example within Maryland is truly a warming event that encompasses all four Es.

Peter: Well, Very well said, which takes me back to, we use to do that years ago, at Ohio with ASAP. We go to Washington and send in congress we had the board and the jury’s will go but they open it up for others who wanted to attend and pay all their way and I was one of a handful that would take them up on that offer and go. I never put it into the four Es. But yeah, I used it now ahead, it was an experience, it was exposure, it was learning 101.

Pam Devine: So I think what we’re seeing that’s different in the market place Peter is maybe we’d always been doing this, or so the association has always been doing this but now the corporate learning profesionals are thinking about learning as an architecture. So there’s a way to think about a systematic approach to learning in composing all of this. The other thing they talked about is the mindset. The millennial generation mindset and what needs to be in place in order to make this effective and they talked about the curious employee, the network employee, the holistic, the agile, and innovative employee and if those things are on place, they really make – this mindset is really important to making the architecture work.

Peter: So let’s say, a non compliance mindset basically.

Pam Devine: There is.

Peter: It’s is not the way we learned in 70s, 80s or 90s. I would agree with that because the client that I just came from, very millennial or and younger X-generation group in there and they weren’t there to check the box and you could feel almost immediately. They were very engaging, they were very communicating and sharing ideas. Running some stuff the that we are talking about. We went down some past that I didn’t think we would go down. So I can see that, in the learner but thinking about those. I’m going back to something you said earlier. You said something about Twitter?

Pam Devine: Yeah, I did say something about twitter.

Peter: What? Tell me about Twitter and learning.

Pam Devine: I assume you’re on Twitter but when we go to conferences, we take actually notes in Twitter. So that if someone wants to pull off that that conference’s hashtag you’ll see series of tweets from the conference that really are probably are insights into the learning, if you will. Their bits and pieces. Obviously I think it’s a 120 – 140 characters bite size bits of learning that are relevant to us and our insights into what we’re learning at the conference. So it’s not regurgitated slides. It’s why is this important to me? Why is this important to us? And so, at the Business Learning Institute anytime one of us is attending a conference like the Bersin conference, we will be tweeting from there and anyone is welcome to follow on. Just follow us on Twitter.

Peter: What was the hashtag that you used in this Bersin conference? Do you remember it?

Pam Devine: I should know, yes. Yes. Impact HR.

Peter: That was hashtag-

Pam Devine: Hashtag, yes. That was #impactHR Peter: #impactHR. I’ll visit that Twitter stream and I know you guys have been doing this for a long time and it is a great way of taking notes. I made a comment recently that at any group I’m speaking, I don’t care what size. Take out your phones and you want to tweet, use this hashtag, let’s get a stream going, and I suggest. It’s not going to offend me at all. Now I may have not said that five years ago, but now I’m wanting them to go out and tweet. It’s also, to some degree, it’s almost instant feedback. Pam Devine:Oh, I would agree it’s really funny, I was at a conference last week and at the break I went up to the instructor or the thought leader, and I said, I’m not texting back here, I’m actually tweeting, and he had a hashtag, so we were obviously including him in our tweets, but I’m from the old school, and so I always like to let the instructor know that I’m not back there texting and doing work, I’m actually doing something that the millennials do.

Peter: Exactly and that’s great. When you went up to the thought leader and told him that, did he laugh, was he thankful for it, was he-?

Pam Devine: Well it was really funny because the presentation was on generation of differences. He said, “No Millennial would ever tell me that.” I was concerned about he might consider me rude.

Peter: That’s funny. Wow. I know that you guys to attend every year, you walk away with some great information as related to learning in 2016 and beyond, any last take away that you have that you want to share with those who are listening? The millions and millions and millions of people that are listening to this right now?

Pam Devine: I think one of the statistics that stood out for me and still stands out for me, is a quote that says, “Train your people and they are 92% more likely to stay and be loyal.”

Peter: Wow. Train your people and 92% of them will stick around.

Pam Devine: So you’re investing in their future.

Peter: You said a very important word. You said, you’re investing into somebody’s future. It’s not a cost of doing business, it’s an investing end. And we all know that it takes so much more to replace an individual, train someone new, get them up to speed versus, investing in their career, investing in themselves. Which I always-You’re now getting emotional equity into the business. Now they’re becoming more and more part of the business because you are bringing them into the business and you’re helping them grow.

Pam Devine: Correct.

Peter: Such a simple concept, why is it so hard sometimes?

Pam Devine: I know. Just remember, learning is the earning.

Peter: Learning is the earning.

Pam Devine: The earning curve.

Peter: Okay. I’m going to pause here for just a second. I need to write something down, a couple things. So, or I might just do this completely off the cuff. So what I’m doing, I forgot to write this down. At the end of every podcast, I go through my rapid 10 questions, so we can get to know you just a little bit better and I forget to write them down. And I know you so well. Okay, got it. Okay. So, I can’t thank you enough Pam, for taking the time to share this information from the Bersin Conference, but I’m not going to quite let you go yet, because what I like to do at the end of my podcast, is do a quick 10 questions, rapid fire, whatever we want to call it, just so we get to know you just a little bit better.

Pam Devine: Uh-oh.

Peter: Are you up for this?

Pam Devine: Sure.

Peter: Okay, first question. Crab cakes or steak?

Pam Devine: Crab cakes.

Peter: From Baltimore of course. What’s your favorite movie?

Pam Devine: Oh boy, that’s a tough one. An oldie but goodie. The Sound of Music.

Peter: An oldie and a goodie, exactly. What’s your favorite restaurant in the Baltimore area?

Pam Devine: Oh, Waskala, down in Little Italy.

Peter: So I take it’s an Italian restaurant.

Pam Devine: It is, yep.

Peter: And do you get crab cakes there?

Pam Devine: No.

Peter: What do you get there?

Pam Devine: How about a nice veal chop.

Peter: Sounds good. The Ravens, or the Orioles?

Pam Devine: Oh boy, I’m from New England, but I’ll have to go with the Ravens anyway, pretending like I really am from Baltimore.

Peter: Okay, so let’s try this again. Ravens or the Patriots?

Pam Devine: No, I’ll still go with the Ravens.

Peter: Chardonnay or Merlot?

Pam Devine: Oh, Chardonnay.

Peter: Didn’t have to think about that one?

Pam Devine: Nope.

Peter: That’s like asking me Bourbon or Scotch, right? Okay. Do you prefer biking or running?

Pam Devine: Oh that’s not fair. I love them both.

Peter: I think you have, from what I have known of you over the years, I think you have a passion for running more.

Pam Devine: Running. Although with my latest injury, I may have to switch to biking.

Peter: Go biking? Yeah, it happens to the best of us. It happened to me many years ago.

Pam Devine: If it’s winter though, you’ll find me on skis.

Peter: On skis, of course, because you are from New England. What’s your favorite city to visit?

Pam Devine: I actually love Portland Maine. Small city.

Peter: Small city. I’ve never been but I’ve always wanted to go.

Pam Devine: You like lobster?

Peter: I love lobster. My wife’s from Boston where you talk to [inaudible30:53] So yes, I do love, I do love New England food. Steamers too.

Pam Devine: Yeah.

Peter: And Grinders. I get the lingo. Who’s your favorite actor? Or actress.

Pam Devine: I don’t really have one. Seriously.

Peter: Not one? Okay. Okay, we’ll just keep moving forward. You may have already given us this, but what is your favorite quote?

Pam Devine: Oh, I guess it would come from Tom Hood and it’s, “L is greater than or equal to C.” We live it and breathe it and eat it here.

Peter:Exactly. I didn’t know if you were going to do that one or the quote that you got from the Bersin conference. And last but not least, on your bucket list of things to do, you can now check off being on my podcast as one of those on your bucket list. Right. What’s one of the items that are on your bucket list?

Pam Devine: I would actually love to climb Kilimanjaro.

Peter: Really?

Pam Devine: I would. I don’t know if I’ll get there, but I would like to do that and maybe try a triathlon at some point.

Peter: Okay, you blew me away with Kilimanjaro, that was not even in the realm of-So do you climb at all?

Pam Devine: I used to.

Peter: You used to.

Pam Devine: I use to and I feel like I could get up, to get up to speed I’d have to obviously become part of a team, a training team in order to do something like that, but I would love to do it.

Peter: So Everest is out of the question?

Pam Devine: Right.

Peter: I do love it when, I started putting this rapid fire 10 questions in because I’ve learned new things about the people who I’ve been interviewing that some of them I’ve known for many years, and it’s like wow, learn something new every single day. So, first and foremost, thank you again. I always enjoy the conversations we have. I’m greatly appreciative that you could carve out some time in your busy schedule today to share this information from the Bersin Conference and really talk about the architecture of education that have the four E components. So thank you very much Pam.

Pam Devine: Thank you Peter, it’s been my pleasure. Talk to you soon.

Peter: Alright, bye.

Pam Devine: Bye.

Peter: Hey. Welcome back to Improv Is No Joke. This his Pete Margaritis, and I’m happy today to have as my guest Karen Young. She is an author of a best-selling book Stop Knocking on my Door: Drama Free HR to Help Grow Your Business. I’m sorry, every time I hear that “drama free” piece, I always kind of laugh because drama free HR, in my mind to some degree, could be like an oxymoron within the workplace. But I absolutely love her book. The review that I gave it is, “A must read for all entrepreneurs because Karen states, ‘no resource is more important than the people who work for you.’ She explores all areas of human resource management and gives you helpful hints and where to look for the landmines.” One of my favorites is, “Hire slow, fire fast, step carefully, and act decisively.” Great advice. Thanks for sharing such an insightful book to help create a drama free workplace. Please welcome Karen Young. Karen: Hi Pete. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And yes there is such a thing as drama free HR. Peter: Karen, first thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule. I greatly appreciate you being a guest on my show. And I’m so looking forward to hearing the insightful words that you have to give to my audience on how they can create a drama free workplace. But first, Karen tell us a little bit about yourself. Karen: Sure. I am not an accidental HR person. I am an intentional HR person. But I do work with the accidental HR person who oftentimes is the account or the finance person who has ended up within HR because they handle all the other confidential stuff, so they might as well handle HR as well. Discovered in college that this is what I wanted to do and, much like you, I was a headhunter for a period of time and then got into payroll. So I get the numbers part of it. Probably the most difficult transition for me professionally was going from payroll to HR because payroll is very black and white. HR is anything but black and white. It’s all the gray areas. And you know, I really enjoyed your book.

Peter: Thank you. Karen: I did not realize how much of what we do really is improv. And when I first read Improv is No Joke, I’m thinking to myself, it doesn’t sound good for an HR person to be publicly telling people that everything we do is improv. But when it comes right down to it, it is because our job in HR is to say yes, and. But most HR people say, “No. We can’t do that.” And that’s where you get the drama—when you have people saying no. So, you and I need to work together on getting this message out. The answer is yes, and.

Peter: Thank you for the reference to the book, and you’re right. Yes, and is the way to go. It’s motivating. It’s inspiring. It keeps conversations going. But the one thing that people think of when I talk about yes, and, I have to steer them down a different path. We’re not saying yes to everything.

Karen: Correct.

Peter: It’s OK to say no. And sometimes we do say no, but the yes, and—it’s about really exploring someone else’s ideas. It’s stepping into their reality to try to get an understanding of where they’re coming from in order for us to steer the conversation in a way and to explore the conversation that, “Maybe this is something we could do. Or maybe it’s something right now that is a no, but it’s a wonderful idea. Now you own this idea, and you’re gonna keep this idea alive and bring it back to us maybe three months, six months, a year from now to see if maybe it’s in.”

Karen: Absolutely. And that ties in so well to creating a drama free HR environment because I have found in my experience that most people, including employees, want to do the right thing. But where we fail is when we don’t listen to them. We don’t take their ideas into consideration. We say yes, but instead of yes, and, or having what I call a courageous conversation and saying we really can’t do that right now because. We have to take it a little further and explain to them the why. And generally they may not like it, but they’ll have a better understanding of why it might have to be no right now.

Peter: Courageous conversations. I think it’s hard for a lot of people.

Karen: It is.

Peter: And it’s hard for some in the accounting profession. What would be one tip that you could give my audience on how to approach those courageous conversations?

Karen: Practice, in all honesty, as weird as that sounds. Write your talking points down, practice with someone, become comfortable in what you have to say. Don’t beat around the bush. The sooner you have the conversation, the easier it will be. And that even ties back into what you said about hire slow and fire fast. If you’ve made the decision to fire, you are not doing anyone any favors by dragging that out or by coming up with a million reasons why, “I’m so sorry Pete. We’re eliminating your position and it really has got nothing to do with you. And I know we’ve had a few performance conversations along the way but really this has nothing to do with you. It’s all about the business and we’re restructuring.” We talk around it. And we say we’re going to lay somebody off knowing that we’re going to be hiring to fill the position next week. Be honest and just be short and sweet. Be honest. And quite frankly, do practice because it makes that courageous conversation a little bit easier when you know ahead of time about what you’re going to say.

Peter: Wow. I just had a number of flashbacks. I had a flashback to the time that I was a laid off at Victoria’s Secret Catalogue—not as a model. Karen. Darn it. Oops. HR inappropriate.

Peter: When they eliminated my department, I just sort of relived that.

Karen: Sorry.

Peter: That’s OK. And back to your book, you’ve laid out a wonderful roadmap for any entrepreneur to pick up your book and put the systems and processes and procedures in place in order to—from an accounting perspective—to be compliant. Because you talk about a ton of the compliance issues that we all must be aware of even when we hire one employee. Karen: I know. That still boggles my mind—even when we look at one employee. The most entertaining one to me is that as soon as you hire one employee, you’re responsible for the Equal Pay Act. So, be sure that you pay that one person the same thing that you would pay that one person. Be sure you pay them equally to themselves. However, with only one employee you are responsible for the Equal Pay Act. There is actually almost a dozen employment regulations that you’re responsible for with only one employee and depending upon the state that you’re in, it may be even more. For example, in Arizona you cannot discriminate as soon as you hire one employee. You have to have nondiscrimination policies in place for just one employee. Peter: Wow.

Karen: So, each state is different. But from a federal standpoint, you’re looking at a dozen employment regulations. Who knows that stuff? I didn’t even know that stuff until I started my own business. And that’s how I found out. I had been in big business and in big business, once you’re over fifty employees, you are responsible for all the regulations. You’re playing with the big boys over fifty. But still, that group, from the one to fifty employees, there are employment regulations that are out there that you’re probably not going to be aware of. And one part of drama free HR is being aware of your risk and making an informed business decision. You make a risky decision, but that’s OK if it’s informed. And you know what your risk is. That reduces your drama. If you say, “I’m going to fire this person today,” without the documentation in place. OK. It’s a business decision. But just be ready for what the implications of that might be. Be ready for the yes, and if I do this.

Peter: And some of those implications could be?

Karen: They could be, generally, if you’re terminating, you’re most likely going to have an unemployment insurance exposure. So, you’re probably not paying that directly. But that’s coming out of your piece of the pie that you’ve paid into unemployment. If they are over the age of forty, you could be looking at an Age Discrimination in Employment Act. If they had some illness that you may or may not have known about, they could say, “Well Pete, you fired me because I have depression.” And you didn’t even know that they had depression. So, they can bring a disability complaint forward. And the same as business owners, we need to be aware, and not only in employment but anywhere. We can be sued for anything at any time. Is it a lawsuit that is going to go anywhere? Possibly not. But we still have to defend it, and we have risk and cost involved in that. But we can’t make our business decisions because we are afraid of those. We just need to be aware of them. Unemployment, you know what? In the long run it’s probably less expensive to the health and the well-being of the organization to end the employment of someone that is not a fit. You might have that short-term pain of the unemployment exposure, but the long-term gain is a cost-benefit. The same with hiring. When do you make the decision to offer benefits? There’s a cost involved in that so explore what your options are and make an informed decision. You don’t, as a business owner, have to know everything. But know when to ask for help and know when to find out. Don’t be accidental with your accounting. Don’t be accidental with your HR. Know when to say, “Hey. I need to look a little further into this to make an informed decision.”

Peter: And when you’re talking about employment and letting someone go because they’re not a right fit, I think a question that the business owner should ask, “Are they not a right fit in my organization or are they not a right fit in the specific job?

Karen: Excellent. And there are two distinct competencies or fit areas that you need to look at. And the overriding one is, “Do they fit in my overall culture?”

Peter: Right.

Karen: The question I’m finding with many of my small employers is, “Do we even know what our own culture is?” So, that adds some drama; that adds some challenge. We don’t even know what our own culture is. The best thing I did for my organization, a couple years ago, was develop a solid vision, mission, and values statement so that everybody—we’re all working toward the same goal. Everyone here knows what the vision is. They know what the mission is. We all work around our core values. I actually changed our recruiting last year. Instead of a traditional job application, applicants need to reply to us with their understanding of our core values and what our core values mean to them. Peter: Wow. That’s wonderful.

Karen: What a difference that made. And I’ll tell you what, from a traditional HR person, the hair on the back of my neck went up. And I’m like, “I’m stepping outside of the box. Oh, no. You’re supposed to have an applicant fill out an application. Oh, no.” We do still get the application completed but only by those that are moving forward in the interview process. The first application with us is, “Tell me about what our core values mean to you.” Because I can teach somebody how to do a handbook review. I can say, “These are the things you look for. Here’s the checklist.” I can’t teach someone that HR is fun. They get it or they don’t get it. It is fun for them or it isn’t. If it’s not fun for them they will lose their mind working in this organization.

Peter: Because you’re dealing with people every single day. But I even ask my audiences what business are they in, and they’ll go, “I’m in accounting services. I’m a consultant.” And I go, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re in the people business first and foremost.” And you address this really well in your book because without people you have no employees. Without people you have no clients, customers, whatever. So, I always remind audiences that we are in the people business. We need to go into that area that we might not be as comfortable with but need to get very comfortable with. And I absolutely love your new interviewing process that you put in place by having them basically tell you how they fit into the mission, the vision, the core values of the organization before you move on to the next step. Because just in that instance, you know that one, they’ve done their homework. They’re coming prepared. And you can get a sense right off the bat if they’re either gonna be a great fit, or they’re not gonna fit at all. And then you’ve got the gray area.

Karen: Right. Peter: What result have you seen from that?

Karen: It has dramatically—we click now as an organization. It’s gray and misty but we click. Everybody here gets it. Going the extra mile for a client is second nature to us. And it is. You don’t even talk about going the extra mile for a client, you just do it. My employees know that they—and this is a buzzword that just gets my goat, but it fits—they are empowered to do what they need to do for our clients, without having to run to me and say, “Can I do this extra little work for them and not bill them for it? Can I just take care of this for them?” Absolutely. They don’t even need to ask me. It’s, “What does our client need? Take care of it. Wow them.”

Peter: How large is your organization?

Karen: I love to say this: we have exactly four and half employees. We started an internship program and I am thrilled by that. That’s our half employee. But that’s a very valuable employee. We use the same process with our interns as well. And they’re not going to have the practical HR experience. So, I’m not going to be able to evaluate their hard skills because they only have textbook skills. So, it is critical that they understand the values. If they have the values, I am more than glad to mentor and teach and train them and give them that practical experience that they need, so that they can go out into the work world and say, “Look. I do have experience in HR.”

Peter: Wow. That’s great. And I’m still wowed by the whole concept of first in the interview process of getting them to talk but the mission, vision, and core values. And I would think that it doesn’t matter the size of the organization.

Karen: Not at all. Not at all.

Peter: Those of you listening to this in my audience, think about your hiring practices and take in this wonderful advice. I knew there were gonna be a lot of great nuggets but this is a little boulder.

Karen: Thank you. The critical thing is, they need to know what their core values are.

Peter: Right.

Karen: And we started this with our core values for the organization. Now within each job there are also going to be values and competencies that the individual must possess. For example, our HR Coordinator must be very detail oriented. Our HR Manager not so much. Our HR Manager’s working more in the gray area, so there are those individual fit pieces within the job as well. And we need to pay attention to those to because you may have an individual that isn’t a fit in their job, but they are in the overall organization. And if you can find a way, get them in. And I never remember authors so I shouldn’t be giving citations…Scott Collins. Another cliché, but get the right people in the right seats on the right bus. So, if they’re not a fit in one job that doesn’t mean that you throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Peter: Right.

Karen: All these clichés. Its HR. We have acronyms for everything and we use clichés to demonstrate our point. But you may be able to find a way in which they can really click within the organization but just not in that job.

Peter: Great point. And I think that a lot of times, maybe we are thinking too much inside the box to say to this individual, who’s not fitting into that job, that maybe they possess some quality or skillset. Maybe we create a new job for this person if we see that they fit within our organization. They can bring value. They’re just not in the right role.

Karen: Absolutely. And the other side of that Pete, one of the most difficult is when the position outgrows the person, and when the person has been a key contributor for the growth of the organization but the organization and the position has grown beyond them. That’s one of the most difficult scenarios. Peter: What do you do?

Karen: You need to make an adjustment.

Peter: Make that adjustment.

Karen: Yes. That’s my nice way of saying you need to help them exit from the organization. That’s one of the most painful ones too.

Peter: I believe so because they’ve been a good performer. But they have outgrown the role and there’s no place for them. But that also turns into an opportunity because if the exit is handled in such a way, you have a viable resource out there that could be a wonderful referral service to your organization. I’m a big believer we all will be moving in and out of jobs. And if we can have the exit process in a very professional way, that we take emotion and all the other pieces out, that person who’s moving on can be a wonderful resource to the organization—as long as everybody’s left on good terms and you create a referral system from that.

Karen: Correct. And not only referral for future employees but a referral for future business. A referral for future introductions that might lead to future business. The same with your candidates that aren’t a fit for the exact position that you have right now. And I do mention this in the book. You want to reject your candidates in a very positive way because who knows down the road. And recruiting is challenging enough as it is. If you find a person that’s not a fit for job position A today, but three or four months down the road you have job position B, what better resource do you have then to go back to, “My gosh you weren’t a fit for this HR Manager position, but we have an HR Coordinator position open now. I think you could be ideal for that. Are you still in the market?” I’ve saved all my recruiting costs. I’m not re-recruiting. Because I kept a positive relationship with that individual, they might say, “You know, no. I’m not looking anymore. But my friend Susie is. I understand she is pretty much like me. May I make an introduction?” Again, I’ve saved on my recruiting cost because I maintained a positive relationship with that individual. I left them with a positive feeling about my organization.

Peter: So, to put it in terms of Improv, you’ve had an exit process or you did not bring them on board. But during the whole piece you yes, and-ed them to the point that when the decision was made that they weren’t right for the role, there was no animosity.

Karen: Yes. And they might bring me business in the future too. Then I’m pumped. BREAK

Peter: Thank you for that, that helps wonderfully. In respect of your time, I don’t want to take up too much because I know how busy you are. What’s the one thing that you would like to tell my audience that you haven’t already spoken about already that they would find to be very beneficial in the work environment?

Karen: Great question. And I’m going to go back to what you had mentioned earlier about the book. When I’m speaking with HR professionals, go back to the basics. Set up the basics of an HR department no matter the size of your company. Stick with the basics. They are solid. They’re tried, they’re true. Stick with the basics and that is going to reduce your drama with your HR.

Peter: Wow. Thank you so very much Karen. I’m so blown away by this conversation that I’m looking forward to when it is aired. And the response my audience will have too because you provided so much value in such a short bit of time. So, once again, thank you for taking time. I greatly appreciate it and I know that you will be back on this podcast, maybe a year later and we will explore other areas of drama free HR. So, thank you Karen.

Karen: Pete, thank you.