September 19, 2023 • 47 mins
70% of people in the world deeply care about inequality and would like to see a more equal, fair and just world, but simply don't know how to get there.
Our latest guest, Anna Dewar Gully, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer at Tidal Equality, is fierce in the pursuit of passion, and admittedly obsessed with innovation. Together we explore the profound connection between justice, equality, customer experience, and employee experience. Anna shares a powerful and relatable example of how this theme surfaces in day-to-day experiences, and how inequality ultimately serves as a barrier to positive outcomes and impacts customer interactions.
Join us as we discuss:
More information about Anna Dewar Gully and today’s topics:
Our latest guest, Anna Dewar Gully, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer at Tidal Equality, is fierce in the pursuit of passion, and admittedly obsessed with innovation. Together we explore the profound connection between justice, equality, customer experience, and employee experience. Anna shares a powerful and relatable example of how this theme surfaces in day-to-day experiences, and how inequality ultimately serves as a barrier to positive outcomes and impacts customer interactions.
Join us as we discuss:
- Why inequality is a mammoth problem that exists in our society
- How equity and equality intersect
- Where the focus should be: plurality vs. singularity
- How effective consultation methods prevent costly mistakes in large corporations
- Why two CEOs are better than one, and the power of partnership in creating change
More information about Anna Dewar Gully and today’s topics:
- LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annadewargully/
- Company Website: https://www.tidalequality.com/
- Additional Links: Elaine Dewar on LinkedIn; Flywheel Digital; Dr. Kristen Liesch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
The single most important thing you cando today is to create and deliver a
better experience for your customers. Learnhow sales, marketing and customer success experts
create internal alignment, achieve desired outcomes, and exceed customer expectations in a personal
and human way. This is theCustomer Experience Podcast. Here's your host,
(00:24):
Ethan Butte. Injustice and inequality.These are fundamentally human issues and challenges and
opportunities. They're social and cultural.Of course, this makes them business,
industry and market issues, challenges andopportunities. Today you'll get a conversation about
innovation and equality, evolving and improvingboth customer experience and employee experience. Through
(00:49):
this, lens our guest built acareer leading strategy, planning and policy within
organizations like the City of Toronto,Royal College of Physicians and YMCA of Greater
Toronto. Today, she serves asthe co founder and co CEO of Tidal
Equality, a team focused on equitableinnovation and design to solve the problem of
inequality at scale. She's also theco creator of a proprietary methodology called equity
(01:15):
sequence that I'll try to get intoas far as the propriety is it allows
me Anna do or Gully. Welcometo the Customer Experience Podcast. Thank you
so much. EA. Then I'mreally excited to be here. Awesome.
I really appreciate what you're doing.I look forward to getting into it in
more detail, not just how you'redoing it, but why and how other
(01:36):
folks might be thinking about it too. But before we get into some of
the core themes that have motivated youfrom what I think is throughout your entire
life, I'd love to have youdefine customer experience. When I say customer
experience, what does that mean toyou? Yeah? I think for me
it means a whole bunch of differentthings. But what immediately comes to mind
when I think of the customer experienceis how does it touch with a business,
(01:56):
make you feel? And do youget what you need in a way
that you need to get it?And so you know, in my work,
we touch the customer experience all thetime, many different kinds of customer
experiences, sometimes their product experience,sometimes their services experiences. But at the
end of the day, people walkaway from those experiences feeling something and it's
either a positive something or it's not. And the reason why it might not
(02:21):
be positive is I think the objectof my curiosity really good, and it
is that fundamental to some of thework that you're doing today is kind of
getting into the why behind that.Yeah, one hundred percent. So I
think of inequality as this mammoth problemthat exists in our world, and for
many people listening, you might bethinking about what the heck does inequality have
(02:42):
to do with the customer experience?But when I think about inequality, I
think of it as a barrier andimpediment to a positive outcome. And so
it is often the case that wewill work on challenges that relate to a
customer experience, whether it's like theability of a person with a particular disability
to use a product or service orenjoy it, whether that whether a person
(03:02):
walks into a space and feels welcomedor not by that space or that experience.
Inequality is often at the root ofproblems and that customer experience. That
problem can be shaped by bias,it can be shaped by identity about all
kinds of different things. But tome, there's this like really palpable connection
between the customer experience and that perniciousproblem and equality that seems to exist in
(03:27):
all things and all around. Yeah, yeah, it really does, and
I think you are going to openpeople's minds and eyes to things that we
have been blind to. I knowthat I've certainly operated from a position of
blindness in general, and it's thesekind of acute moments where you realize that
you're like, oh, I totallymiss that, or oh, you know,
I didn't even think to connect thesetwo things. So I'm really looking
(03:49):
forward to getting into that. Beforewe do, I'd love for you to
talk about the connection between employee experienceand customer experience. What do you think
about the relationship between those two dynamics. I feel like it's like their reflections
of each other. You know,at the end of the day, your
employees, especially employees that sit atthe front line and that touch your customer,
they have to be able to connectwith that customer. And if an
(04:10):
organization has an employee experience that's negative, Let's say you have a toxicity in
your culture or you have inequity that'sreally driving dynamics in your culture that are
quite negative, and then that employeegoes to connect with your customer, they
might bring that toxicity with them,They might bring those perspectives and those inequalities
with them into that customer experience.So for me, you know, we
(04:32):
often think about these two worlds astwo very separate worlds. I think I
live at the intersection in between themall the time, and I try to
help people see how deeply connected thoseexperiences really are. And in my world
of work, it's often that weoverfocus on the employee experience and forget entirely
about why that employee experience matters toa customer. But it really does.
(04:55):
You know, people these days wantto know what does their brand really stand
for and how does it really treatit's people, And if the answer is
not good, then that is animplication for the customer experience too, you
know, yeah, absolutely, Andit reminds me of a conversation we release
last week episode two sixty five.We talked a lot about Joey Coleman used
the language of two sides of thesame coin. It's essentially your mirror dynamic
(05:19):
and they are. I agree withyou both on that. I don't want
to get too clinical, but Iwould love for you before we get too
deep and move too far, Iwould love for you to define two words
for me, or at least justspeak to them as a concept so that
I'm on the same page as you, and folks listening are on the same
(05:39):
page as you. Two and thosetwo words are justice inequality, And you
can take those separately or you cantake them together. But you know,
what is justice from your perspective?What is equality from your perspective? Yeah,
I'm going to start with equality becauseit's in the name of my company,
and I'm going to explain why.And it's actually quite a tentious word
(06:00):
in the space that I work in. So sometimes the word equality is treated
as meaning sameness, and so inthe context of society in which not all
of us have the same experience,the objective of sameness rubs some people the
wrong way. But that's not howI understand equality as a word. I
actually think about the very material definitionof the world, which is equality of
(06:26):
status, especially in terms of rightsand opportunities. So I think of that
the kind of definition of equality beingquite a literal one, as in Ethan,
are you born with equal opportunities,equal rights, and the opportunity for
equal status or not right? Andwhile you may be someone that lives around
the corner from you might not haveaccess to those opportunities. That doesn't mean
(06:48):
their life is of less equal value. That doesn't mean they should not have
opportunities to equal access, right.And that's where justice comes in. You
know, we live in a worldthat is conditioned by inequalities. So the
lack or the absence of those equalopportunities, equal rights, equal statuses,
and justice is about closing that veryvery wide gap. And in some communities,
(07:11):
in some neighborhoods and some parts ofour country, that gap is enormous,
right, And so to me,justice is about acknowledging the context in
which we live and trying to findways to reconcile that context and build fairness
back in where it does not existor where it has not existed in the
past. And of course you couldtake another you can take another meaning with
the word justice from you. Youcan take a legalistic, you know,
(07:33):
meaning to that word. That's nothow I think of the word, and
the context of my work I thinkabout it is how do you make it
fair in a way that truly acknowledgescontext, you know, and not all
of us come from the same context. Yeah, really, well done.
I heard, and I'm probably gross, I mean, and I'm missing a
lot of nuance in it, andI'm grossly oversimplifying, but what I heard
a little bit was equality or inequalityis the condition. I'm sure it's you
(07:57):
know, a scale, and it'snever fully equal and it's never fully inequal.
Well, I guess anything short ofequality is inequality. And then justice
is the recognition in the work toclose the gap on it. Yeah,
and I'll add a third definition foryou because I'm probably going to drop the
word a lot, and you mightwonder what's the difference between equity and equality?
And so you have noticed that equalityis in my title of my business,
(08:20):
of title equality, but my solutionis actually called equity sequence, which
confuses absolutely everybody. But the reasonfor that is we talk about equality being
the goal, like a world inwhich people actually have access to those equal
rights and those equal opportunities. That'sthe objective. So that's the vision of
my business. But we're nowhere nearthere, and so equity is a way
(08:41):
of acknowledging that we're not there andthinking about how what levers do we have
that could make those opportunities more fairand more plentiful. What opportunities could we
take to open up opportunities and rightsto people that don't currently have them.
For me, that's what equity is. It's a lever for change. It's
a way to get to that ultimategoal. And so I talk about equity
(09:03):
being the way and equality being theobjective. Yeah, very good. It
makes sense now that you name themethodology around equity. So, without any
further delay on this, because we'vementioned or you have mentioned a couple of
times I mentioned in the intro.For folks who aren't familiar, tell us
a little bit about title equality,like who is your ideal customer and what
(09:26):
are some of the problems that you'resolving for them? Yeah, so title
qualit. It's interesting because we've justgone through a bit of a repositioning exercise
ourselves as a business, thinking aboutwho we are and who we serve,
which is something that we do withour clients all the time. And the
way we're describing ourselves today is Ithink really authentic to who we really are,
and that's as the world's leading equitableinnovation company. And I'm going to
tell you why I think we're leadingin that regard at some point in this
(09:48):
conversation, I'm sure, but weare not a typical di consultancy because of
the way we do our work andwhat we actually offer to our clients.
What we're really focused on is helpingour clients, who are typically large scale
or influential organization that have a directconnection with their customer or their stakeholder,
for example and healthcare that might bea patient, not a customer, to
(10:11):
really think about who they serve,how they serve them, what gaps that
may be conditioned by bias or inequalitymight be getting in the way of those
incredibly positive experiences, and what couldwe change to enhance those experience for the
broadest, most diverse possible audience.So, in a nutshell, our company
is all about spotting in a reallyconstructive, uplifting way, the problems of
(10:35):
inequality that might be showing up inthe shape of your product, in the
shape of your service, in theshape of your employee experiences, and finding
both the challenge and the opportunity tounlock opportunity in that challenge by changing it,
by making it better. And soour methodology is all about that.
But our business is really about findingthose moments of change in the system of
(10:56):
the organization, in the system thatis development, product design, all of
that so that many, many peoplecan be beneficiaries of that change. Yeah,
so I don't want to get toofar ahead on how you're engaging with
companies, but to bring people intothis, like really directly, if you
can share a couple of examples ofthings that you have seen. You've been
(11:20):
doing this for several years. I'msure you've been thinking about doing it for
several years prior to that, soyou've probably been attuned to some of these
problems and opportunities throughout your life andcareer. What are some examples, like
things that you run into and youcan feel free to generalize, but like,
what are some of the common thingsthat you're observing and helping people with
(11:41):
that you think you know someone mightbe able to identify with. So one
of the most I mean, thisis a really simple reflection, but as
something that I think if you reallythink about your everyday work and decision making,
regardless of what you do, regardlessof whether you work in the airline
industry and the pharmaceutical industry and anywhere, really there are versions of this problem
(12:03):
everywhere, and I want you tojust to think about how often you have
the opportunity when you're making decisions tothink really deeply about who you serve.
You know, and how often whenyou think about who you serve, you're
thinking about the radically diverse plurality ofpeople that you serve versus a kind of
homogeneous archetype of who you think youserve, right, more of a singularity
(12:24):
than a pure than a plurality.So an example would be, and I'll
give you like a really tangible example. It's not from a client. Actually,
it's from like a lived experience.A few weeks ago. But I
was traveling for work. We weregoing down south to see some clients,
and we encountered some terrible weather.Okay, and I won't tell you what
airline I was flying, but Iwas flying an airline, and as a
(12:46):
result of this terrible weather, weended up getting diverted and sent to another
airport about five and a half hoursdriving time from where we needed to go.
Okay, found ourselves picking up ourluggage, not being rerouted, trying
to figure out how do we getto point eight to point bight from point
A two. And I'm an ablebodied person, I'm a young person.
I have a driver's license, right, I had enough money in my bank
(13:11):
account to book a car and toget myself to my destination through floodwaters.
Okay, But I was looking aroundme in this zone, in this landing
place, and I was watching howthis airline was responding, or you could
say, not responding to this circumstancevery well by simply saying, best of
luck, get yourself home, right. And I observed an elderly woman and
(13:33):
a woman who clearly did not havea lot of money, who were traveling
and who found themselves, you know, virtually hysterical trying to figure out how
do I get from here to there? One of them was quiet in her
upset, the other one was veryvocal, and nobody was helping. Okay.
And while you might be thinking like, it's obviously not a great customer
(13:54):
experience, but I want you tothink about what about that customer experience was
predesigned because a lot of it actuallywas what do we do in this sort
of situation? Who runs the thing? How do we accommodate for people of
different needs? And how much ofit was not thought of because probably the
person that designed that process was alot more like me than the two women
(14:16):
that were having challenges, right,someone who was like, well, I'd
just rent a car and I'd geta credit and I'd do the thing,
and I speak English as a firstlanguage, an et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. So here was thismajor international airline with clearly it's been
in the airline business a long time, it's been keeping planes in the air
a long time and dealing with I'msure whether turmoil all over the place,
(14:39):
having designed a process for like whatwas, you know, a minor crisis
situation like this, having not inany way contemplated how does the person that's
flying by themselves in a wheelchair getfrom point A to point B? How
does that elderly person who doesn't speakEnglish, get from point A to point
B? How does that person whohad just enough money to get on the
flight to go and see their familyget from point A to point B?
(15:01):
Right? And the answer is theydidn't answer any of those questions because they
did not contemplate any of those needsin the design of their process. Right.
And so in just about every businessyou can possibly imagine, maybe in
every business, there are millions ofmoments just like that, altering for the
worse the customer experience and that outcomefor that customer and potentially causing real harm.
(15:24):
You know, in some circumstances,that could be a life or death
situation in certain industries and certain settings. So you know, we don't often
think about those opportunities, but Isee those opportunities as like wildly exciting.
I'm like, what if you werethe only airline in the world to anticipate
some of those problems because I watchedfive other airlines in the same terminal having
(15:46):
the same crappy version of a process. Right, But I'm like, what
if you were the one airline thatwas like, I'm actually going to really
think about who's standing around that luggagehall and what some of those unique needs
might be, and I'm going topre solve some of those problems in an
innovative way, right, or I'mat least going to be opening to open
to doing it in the moment andhave some kind of ability to respond to
(16:10):
what the scenario presents, right,But nobody did. So for me,
that's that that for me is likeit's a terrible thing, but it's a
powerful opportunity for absolutely delighting and anticipatingthe needs of your customer because you've really
considered their voices in the design ofa process, of a service, of
a product. And for me,that's what equitable innovation actually is. It's
(16:32):
spotting those problems, those would beproblems, those actual problems, and thinking
about could we design that differently,and whose voices do we need around the
table so that we can right?So well done, and you make me
feel better about my struggle in writingthe intro to this one about positioning as
a problem and an issue as wellas an opportunity. I saw it the
same way, and you know youlive in this. I'm just, you
(16:56):
know, trying to to learn fromyou in it, and so I appreciate
you seeing it as an opportunity aswell. When that example that you provided
in the challenge of plurality versus singularity. I think a lot of people are
thinking about efficiency. I think whenI think about the Industrial Revolution and then
ultimately Henry Ford's assembly line where youcould get the model T and every color
(17:18):
as long as it was the onecolor they made. Of course that color
was black, I think about homogeneitytied do efficiency. I think about a
bias toward efficiency, and I thinksome people listening to this, even though
it's a show that is very opento these ideas and too innovation and to
serving people both in a customer andan employee capacity in a better way.
(17:45):
Humanity is a constant theme in theseconversations. Dehumanization is a theme that surfaces
often so indirectly. We've been talkingabout a lot of the themes that you're
devoting your career to and your life. But I'm sure there's someone thinking,
well, that sounds like a luxury, That sounds hard plurality. How far
do we go? And with that, I'll turn that into a question and
(18:10):
you feel free to respond anything Ishared that. Here's the thing. So
one of the things that my clientmost of my clients are in large scale
corporations, and if they were topay attention to my CV, what they
would have noticed about my CV?And as you mentioned at the very beginning
of this interview, is I startedmy career and spent a good fifteen years
in big, clunky, public sectororganizations, places where you might not have
a natural feeling of like, oh, innovation lives there, right, And
(18:34):
that's probably why I'm so obsessed withinnovation, Okay, because those systems desperately
needed it. Mostly because the organizationsthat I work for serve very vulnerable people,
and they didn't always serve very vulnerablepeople. Well, some of them
did, some of them did thatbetter than others, and some of them
did not. Right, And insome circumstances in my work, I served
you know, the most vulnerable populations, right, So that got me curious
(18:57):
about what the opportunity costs are inthinking about singularities. And it showed me
that in a really really tangible way, in a way that like you know,
once you kind of see a problem, it's really difficult to unsee a
problem. And the way that Isought in those big public sector, clunky
systems was all of those systems allthe time are trying to initiate big system
(19:18):
like change of one kind or anotherfor one reason or another. Whether it's
like a political shift then they haveto swing this big machine in another direction,
or it's like an operational shift thatrequires us to serve differently, a
different funding model, whatever it is, right, But what's the biggest barrier
to those changes that affect people isusually buy in, right, Like it's
(19:41):
usually have we understood the environment thatwe're trying to make change in well enough?
Have we anticipated the needs well enough? Have we talked to enough people
to know what might not work whenit hits the ground. And the thing
that I noticed from the earliest stagesof my career is that pretty much always,
no one ever invested enough time andconsultation to prevent totally preventable problems,
(20:04):
and that those totally preventable problems costabsolutely enormous sums of money. Right,
and corporations, I've learned in thefive years that I've now been consulting in
large scale complex organizations are just asbad at it. We might like to
think that we're not, but let'sbe real, Like, we're going to
(20:26):
be introducing a new tech experience forour employees or for our customers. We've
talked to seven people. We're goingto be serving seventy five million with this
thing. It's going to be amazing. They all happen to be white,
able bodied men living in a municipalitywith multiple millions of people, but we
definitely understand the needs of that wholepopulation. Let's go and then what happens,
(20:48):
right, the catastrophic failure on launchor the totally not good enough launch,
or the launch which leads to youspending more time on crisis communications than
you spent on consultation in the firstplace. So sure consultation takes time,
(21:12):
but not consulting takes way more timeand it's way, way way messier to
clean up. And so what Itry to teach in my work every day
is that consultation usually is as simpleas a few good questions, and that
in a technological post industrial age,there are very efficient, effective ways to
(21:32):
ask good questions to lots and lotsof people, and that there are will
be some populations that are harder tohear from, and that it's worth it
to do the work because that willchange the experiential outcome. And that's like
being in the one percent. Youknow, It's like you think, like
the companies that really win are theones that just go that extra mile.
Like I think about that experientially,and I think about that in terms of
(21:55):
I'm like, what do you gainfrom that? Like if you figure out
that there is a massive bare youdidn't understand because you never asked in your
customer base that you could solve quicklyand easily, but you never asked the
question, that's a missed opportunity.You know, you can think of it
as in time. You can thinkof it as an investment. I think
of it almost always, almost invariablyas time. And I actually like to
think of it as what could youask quickly and learn about fast, and
(22:18):
what could you spend more time onbecause you learned about it fast, and
you're like, whoa, there's somelights going off in my mind and I
need to learn more, you know. So I try to inspire my clients
to for sure, like have themoment of catharsis that consultation is hard and
expensive, and then we tire totalk about let's talk about the time that
you didn't consult enough and what wasthe consult what was the consequence or it
(22:41):
was there a project that you've beeninvolved in that didn't go quite as you
anticipated. And this, especially whenyou're talking to a room full of executives,
you suddenly start to be like,oh god, there was this project,
then this project, then that project. Right, and suddenly they're like,
and I don't need to make thecase. The case makes itself.
Yeah, really good. That's thereare like three directions to go right now.
So the one I'll choose is justto pick up a variety of things
(23:03):
you shared in that passage. Theone I'll go choose, like, so,
how are people engaging you? Like, do they know that they're engaging
on themes of equity in the contextof equality? Are they looking to improve
customer experience? Like? Well,like, at what stage in this kind
(23:25):
of process are people typically engaging you? Like, how do you find them?
How do they find you? Andwhat do they think they're looking for?
Yeah, so, I mean thishas been evolving over time. This
hasn't been statics. So I'll tellyou what it kind of looks like now,
and I can tell you a littlebit about the way it's evolving at
the moment. So when we firststarted our methodology, equity sequence, which
(23:45):
is a system of five questions thatanyone can learn and apply to any decision,
design, product, service experience,anything. These five questions we built
them as a different way to thinkabout bias and a different way to spot
and correct for bias. Because basically, in the US, it's a ten
(24:06):
billion dollar a year industry training individualsabout individual bias, and that industry doesn't
work very well. So the ideathat you could go into a ninety minute
training, learn about all of yourbiases, and then magically, spontaneously be
able to intercept them every time yougo to make a decision is beyond magical
(24:26):
thinking. It's just not rooted inany fact of any kind. Right,
and yet it's a ten billion dollarsa year approach that corporations take mostly to
tick a box or to cover atush, but not necessarily to solve a
problem. Right, So we werelike, what could be an alternative to
that that we could teach an employeepopulation that focused on reducing bias and inequality
(24:51):
and decision making or in the systemversus in the individual, which doesn't work
very well because we're always going tobe biased where we need to stay vigilant.
We are biased, that's the wayour brains work, right. So
when we first introduced equity sequence tothe market, we introduced it as an
alternative to unconscious bias training, andwe built it as a training. So
a typical corporation buys licenses to ourlearning experience, and sometimes that starts with
(25:15):
a very small pilot with a crossfunctional group of people. And my job
is always to say, don't justmake that on the employee side. If
you can find people to be partof that pilot who also touch the customer
experience, deeply who touch strategy andinnovation, because what they will see is
that this is not an HR functionor a people function. This is a
function that's a radical relevance to everypart of the business. It touches another
(25:38):
human being, whether that's a customeror an employee. Right, So my
job is usually like, can Iget you to think about a pilot and
can I get interesting different perspectives intothat pilot experience to try that learning and
see if those five questions might helpyou think about your work better differently produce
some equitable innovation. And yes,it's totally in the context of an alternative
(26:00):
to unconscious bias training. So it'skind of in that DEI bucket. Then
a typical client that loves it scalesit and that learning starts to go out
to broader teams. In two anda half hours, you can learn how
to practice a sequence and then youcan practice it for the rest of your
career. So it started as atraining methodology and our entry point was training.
But as we've started to scale itand we've seen that it has this
(26:21):
like sticky dynamic and organizations there aremany organizations now that have taken it on
to be part of their governance structure, like how do we make key decisions
here to kind of be like theagile and lean but for equitable decision making,
but also to be able to talkand show real change when it comes
to these social issues of inequality,because in most of these other initiatives that
(26:44):
we do, it's almost impossible tobe like, we did a thing and
it resulted in this outcome equity sequenceis completely different. I could show you
you made an income if you learnedit right now and you applied it to
your work. I could show youan outcome by the end of our training,
right, because you will have appliedto your work and you'll have change
something right, and you can measurethat before and after. But you can
(27:04):
also look at that at scale.So if you get thirty percent of a
population practicing these five questions, likeyou just kind of your mind goes kind
of wild, thinking about, well, what are all the things we could
innovate and change that could benefit people'sexperiences. Right, So that's where our
business is heading. We're now gettingpulled back into clients where we've done that
foundational learning experience, and instead ofit just being a learning experience, people
(27:27):
are saying, can you come helpus with a big commercial challenge and can
you help us go deeper with thesefive questions to yield as much innovation as
you possibly can. And we alsohave people saying can we build this into
our leadership training, can we buildthis into our ideology as a business.
And so our work is starting totake on. You know, it's all
about equity sequence, but the wayit's kind of cropping up is a little
(27:48):
bit like whack a mole and organizationsbecause it takes on a life of its
own. You know. Yeah,I'm really excited for you, and I
would love to know what the processof arriving at the equity s quince was.
My guess is that it was aniterative process and then at a certain
point you kind of like hardened itand brought it together into a methodology.
What was that process like and separatebut related? You know, you mentioned
(28:12):
like lean and agile all. Iwas also thinking quite a bit about human
centered design as a concept into practicetoo, So I'd love to know kind
of like the origin here, likewhat was how did you arrive at this?
And what are some of your inspirations? Yeah, so inspirations were things
like agile and lean also human centereddesign, but not in the way that
(28:33):
you might imagine. So obviously,human center design is full of methodologies and
approaches and frameworks and ideas so looselyfrom our from work that my co founder
Christen and I have done in variousguises in our life, we were inspired
by the prospect of human centered design. But one of the things that we
noticed was you can't just like dropa framework into an organization and habit stick.
(28:57):
Right. The idea that you couldgo through, for example, a
human centered design process and then keepgoing through those processes without the aids of
complex consulting supports was unlikely, right, and especially when it comes to solving
the problem of inequality. The budgetsare typically quite small by contrast to other
major change initiatives in an organization,so we were working with a lot of
(29:19):
constraints in our thinking. We werelike, okay, well, we would
love to have the budgets that youknow commercial team gets for human centered design
for rolling out equitable change across anorganization. In twenty twenty three, twenty
twenty two, or twenty twenty weweren't getting those budgets right, So we
were like, well, what isthe easiest way to get a repeatable framework
(29:40):
into people's minds and what are peoplealready buying? So that you know,
the reason that we are an alternativeto unconscious biased training is because people were
already buying a training experience on biasand we could come into that envelope,
right. And then when it comesto agile and lean, I was like
I was trying to rack my brainbecause I was a strategist and it kind
of led transformations in my career.I was like, what are the things
(30:02):
that we've done in organizations that I'vebeen in that kind of stuck around after
a training experience that like lived onAnd so for me that was lean and
agile, it was like it wasnot a singular experience where you brought a
human centric perspective. It was somethingthat was about continuous improvement both of those
kind of approaches and about kind ofsome principles that guided thinking across lots of
(30:25):
domains. So we were like,we need a version of that for continuous
equitable improvement because you know, inDI we were thinking like too often the
conversation was like are you right oryou're wrong? Do you know the right
words or the wrong words? Doyou say it in the right way or
the wrong way? And it wasin this like really dichotomous thinking that I
felt like was actually like truncating genuineconversation. So I was like, is
(30:47):
there a way for us to showthat equity is about a myriad of changes
that we can make to make thingsbetter. It's not like a writer or
wrong, Like there are elements ofinequity that are wrong, but there are
so many possible right And just whenyou think you've come up with many,
you might come up with one hundredmore right. So it was all of
those things put together, and honestly, the five questions they came out of
(31:11):
a number of places. My cofounders a researcher there were ten pieces of
evidence on effective equity interventions and inspiredthe actual design of the questions. So
she did the research for that,and for me my background and strategy.
We developed a strategy methodology that wasabout equity, and there was a process
that we had designed for that strategicchange, and we decided to ask ourselves,
(31:33):
could we turn that process into aset of questions anyone could ask themselves.
And that's really where the questions themselvescame from really well done, and
you introduced the zone that I wantto go too, So I guess I'll
go there now. You mentioned Kristen, you mentioned your distinct backgrounds and strengths.
I've talked with many co founders onthis podcast. I don't know that
I've seen this instance before, butI don't know that I've had anyone on
(31:56):
the show who was a co CEOtalk about that dynamic. What does it
mean? How did you make thatchoice in? How do you operate in
that context? You know? AndI love I love that we made that
choice, and I love that choiceon a regular basis, which is which
is weird because of how many peoplesaid, don't make that choice, there's
an obvious CEO, and maybe there'san obvious CEO or whatever. But Kristen
(32:22):
and I could not be more differentand more similar. We're kind of equally
different and equally similar. Kristen is, you know, a critical thinker,
a researcher. She can spot agap like nobody's business. And she's also
an incredible executor, right, soshe is the kind of person that's like,
Okay, we're done with ideation,let's get to movement. You know,
(32:43):
and so maybe in a typical organizationalstructure that might look more like a
CEO. Right. However, shealso has a wildly wonderful strategic brain,
so that means that she sees thingsthrough that lens of how are we going
to execute? That I would onehundred percent miss if she were not in
the room, right, And Ithink for me, I have like a
(33:04):
constant tap of id like my brainis always ideating, to the point that
Kristen has set limits not from timeto time to see you like you're at
your idea threshold for the day,and I'm like, a right, fine,
I'm at the threshold and where amI going to put them? You
know? But you know, Ifeel like my experience of being on the
ground and organizations and of leading transformationand of learning really very much the hard
way, like oh shit, thatfailed terribly? Why did it fail?
(33:28):
And like how do I fix itthe next time? And oh god,
I've embarrassed myself? How did Ido that? How do I not do
that the next time? That reallypractical experience, which is very not academic.
It was very much like learning byfire has been incredibly useful to us
too. So I think what youhave in us are like, collectively is
one unbelievably well rounded CEO, right, which you know, mostly organizations get
(33:51):
pendulum swings, They get the operator, they get the strategists, and they
go flinging in different directions. Right, We were like, why why why
can't those two dynamics plus two differentkinds of strategic thinking drive us forward and
the reality of our relationship. Wedescribe ourselves to all of our clients as
an old married couple because we fightlike cats and dogs, absolutely constantly with
great sense of humor. But wefight all the time, but with love
(34:15):
because there's nobody that I respect morefrom the perspective of someone who's willing to
challenge me, tell me I'm wrong, tell me I do not understand the
scenario, and vice versa. Wechallenge each other overtly, and I do
not think we would have weathered anyof the challenges we faced, which have
been many as a business, inthe same way or as well, if
we hadn't been at the helm togetherwith equal skin in the game, you
(34:37):
know. And I just think that'ssomething that we kind of honor all the
time in our working relationship. Yeah, yeah, it reminds me a little
bit of the theme of plurality versussingularity, this idea of like, we
don't have to do it one wayand in fact, let's come And what
triggered that for me was a ideaof like, together, we're a better
(34:57):
CEO than either one of us wouldpeace one hundred percent, where we always
say that we're bigger than the someof our parts. And you know,
what we've learned over time is like, you know, especially as our business
has grown, like there are someclients for whom I'm a more natural leader
fit, and there are some clientsfor whom she's a more natural leader fit.
So we divide and conquer sometimes andsometimes we're like this takes both heads.
(35:19):
We need to go into this onetogether, and we come in together,
you know, And over time we'velearned how to figure out what that
balance is. And it's not perfect, Like it's not easy. It's like
a it's like a great marriage.It takes a hell of a lot of
work to stay aligned and connected.And there are, of course weeks and
months where you're like, oh,we're on completely separate pages, but like
I kind of feel like every oneof those moments has led us to break
(35:43):
through moments as well, because wekeep coming back together and trying to get
each other to see the other perspective. And so I always have felt that
that's enriched our journey and it's it'sthe best professional relationship I've ever had.
It's you know, So I'm reallyhappy to hear that. And I one
of the things that's implied in whatyou're doing is that business is a legitimate,
(36:06):
powerful force for change, and soI appreciate like I've been attuned that
way for some period of time,Like we're not looking to anybody else,
it's us. And in a businessor a large organization certainly has the capability
to close a gap on something thatlooks from the outside like a lot of
other problems. And as simple minded, myopic, self interested creatures, we
(36:32):
go that looks really big, thatlooks like someone else's problem, that looks
like tomorrow's problem. And with that, I'd love to ask you a did
anything. I just share their resonatewith you and be like, what is
your hope or expectation, what isyour imagined future in your own lifetime relative
to the idea of closing the gapon inequality? Yeah, that is a
(36:55):
question that I feel like I contendwith in my own self and in my
work every single day, that senseof this is such an unbelievably big problem,
Like, am I like working onit with a little you know,
a little a little hammer, Andam I emver going to get anywhere?
Right? So there's definitely that feeling. And then on better days, I
(37:15):
realize that there are millions and millionsof people with little hammers, right,
and that if we were just betterorganized, you know, if we could
better organize the seventy percent plus ofpeople in the world who deeply care about
inequality, not just care, butdeeply care. That's like seventy percent in
most of our societies at least,and I think that's a conservative estimate.
(37:38):
Who would like to see a moreequal and more fair and more just world
but just don't know how to getthere. If we could give them tools,
really useful tools, if we couldsay to them, go fix the
thing you're working on from an equityperspective, whether that's a tiny, little
micro decision that you're making today ora super macro decision. And in the
(37:58):
context of business, like our businessesshape our world whether we like it or
not. You know, I thinkpeople really struggled in my public sector trajectory.
People were like, you're going tobusiness. You're not a public servant
anymore. Now. I'm like,no, I'm a public servant forever.
And by the way, the publicmoved through all of the spaces, they
moved through the private spaces, thepublic space, all of these spaces humans
(38:20):
touch, right and it is reallyunfortunately and unfortunately or unfortunately it is our
corporations that touch people's lives for thebetter, but also sometimes very much for
the worst. You know, itcould be a financial system that excludes it
could be a private healthcare system thatdoes not treat you know, it could
be whomever. But in that world, there are just so many opportunities to
(38:42):
influence change. And I really believeso many well meaning people who just want
a tool and a thing to doand don't know what that thing is.
And so it's like, you know, that idea of if you could just
apply the desire to expand equity toyour little patch, and if millions of
other people could do it too.I think the chances that we have an
(39:06):
opportunity to really revise those negative experienceand turn them into positive opportunities and status
and rights is much better. Andso I have no idea, to be
honest with you, what I thinkI can accomplish in my career. I
don't even I almost don't even dareto think about that, because sometimes that
cows me a little bit, youknow, I think instead, I feel
(39:30):
like my job is every time Ihave the privilege of going into an organization,
I feel like it's my job tolight up as many people to that
possibility as possible and to hand thema very useful tool. That's my job.
You can never anticipate the impact ofthat. I really hope it's fucking
massive. I really do, andI hope I'm allowed to swear on your
(39:52):
thing because I really want it tomake the world better. But I know
it's going to take a gazillion peopleout there deciding to up that mantle to
make that change, and I justhope, I hope people want to and
that they will. You know,yeah, spoken like an absolute chief evangelist,
if I may say so, it'sthis I want. There's a problem
(40:14):
in the world, a lot ofpeople are blind to it. I need
to erase problem awareness. And thisextra step that you're adding here is and
I don't just want to turn thelight bulbs on or create that aha moment
and remove some of the blindness.I also want to equip people to move
forward and to create some solutions intheir own way where they are. That's
(40:35):
all we can ask for anyone.But I hope folks listening except that as
a responsibility. And I really appreciateAn what you're doing with Kristen and team
and the folks who are engaging youon it. And I'm really excited again
to hear about this kind of scalingwithin organizations where you have some relationship and
we've created a little bit of impactfor folks listening. If you've enjoyed this
(40:57):
conversation so far, on appoint youto two other ones. One of them
is episode one hundred, which Icrafted myself from highlights of episodes one through
ninety nine. I called it theEpic Takes Mixtape. I approached it like
a good old fashioned mixtaper in thesedays, I guess it's a playlist,
and it's a highlight of human first, human centered moments where we're really getting
(41:20):
beyond the mechanics of what we're doingfrom a customer experience and employee experience.
Perspective and get to where I thinkyou've been operating probably your whole career.
Anna is like, how does thisaffect people as people in their whole lives
and not just in the context ofthis commercial relationship or this immediate experience.
So ten different people speak into thatone and I'll carry you through those through
(41:43):
those epic takes on episode one hundredand then a little bit more recently,
episode one ninety three with Lee Jelinek, who's the chief Innovation Officer at UWM
United Wholesale Mortgage, and he talksabout he shares with us insights into the
culture of innovation and the work ofinnovation and brates those two things and talks
about them distinctly, And that's infact what we titled episode one ninety three
(42:05):
with Lee. So before I letyou go, Anna, first, thank
you. I've really enjoyed this andI would love for you to do a
couple things for us all. Thefirst is the thanker mentioned someone who's had
a positive impact on your life orcareer, and the second is to give
an honor a shout out to accompanyyour brand that you appreciate for the experience
they deliver for you as a customer. So I'm gonna ask the first question,
(42:27):
who who is really influencer shape mycareer. I'm going to have to
give a shout out to my mom, whose name is a Lane Doer.
My mom is a wonderful journalist andinvestigative journalists, a fierce journalist, and
I think my mother seated something inme that was about one pursuing my passion
and being fierce in the pursuit ofmy passion. And I think I don't
(42:50):
think it would have been possible forme to be doing what I do today
without her having laid that foundation andeven that expectation for me. So I
got to give a shout out tothe mom. And then I think number
two, for you know, thebrand that's doing something that really is creating
a positive experience. I want togive a shout out to our SEO company
or partners at Flywheel Digital. Weare a team that has been We've been
(43:13):
boots strapped the whole way. We'venever taken on investment where chief female founders
getting investment is not straightforward for acompany like ours and has not been so
investments in our growth have been fewand far between. We've had to grow
with revenue and through word of mouth. So finally this year we started to
invest and we're working with this teamcalled Flywheel in Canada. And what I've
loved about them, and I willjust say, is the way that they
(43:35):
have adapted to our needs and ourconstraints, how carefully they've listened to what
we're trying to accomplish, and howthey've become immediately adjacent to our team,
not just kind of functionally, butalso culturally. And you know that it
doesn't go it doesn't go unnoticed,and it inspired me because I feel like
they're also a service business in theway that we are partly a service business,
(43:59):
and you know, I'm just takingsome of that ethos with me into
my work. So I'm grateful tothem. Yeah, awesome, really well
done on both counts. And whatyou reminded me in describing a wonderful person
in your mother and the investigative journalist, and you mentioned asking questions, like
I didn't even get into that withyou, so we'll have to have another
(44:19):
conversation. I want to. Iwanted your insights into asking better questions,
active listening, and some of theother things that help us get to where
we all need to go not justas operators and practitioners inside the context of
our businesses and organizations, but aspeople working to support and move forward other
people and opportunities. But with that, Anna, this has been a pleasure.
(44:44):
If someone has reached this point inthe conversation, they might want to
learn more about you or title TitleEquality almost a title equity and I'm sure
do it. Where would you sendfolks to follow up on this conversation?
Yeah, so I would suggest youcome to our website to title equality dot
com, where you can find manydifferent ways to connect with us via the
(45:05):
first page of our website with thecontact us bar. We're also Kristen and
I are on LinkedIn and are veryactive voices on LinkedIn, and we encourage
you to be part of that conversationand engage with us. But yeah,
start with our website and we'll gofrom there. Awesome. She is Anna
Dower Gully. You can see thespelling in the title of this episode.
What is Kristen's name and how dowe spell it so we can find her
on LinkedIn doctor Kristen Leish And that'sl I E S c H Kristen with
(45:29):
an E k R I S te n Leash. Yeah, doctor Kristen
Leish Austin got all things equity onLinkedIn. Yeah cool, I link all
this stuff up. I tried toput a lot of it right there in
your post podcast player. I definitelyput all of it in the post at
bombomb dot com slash podcast. Thisis episode two sixty six, so lots
of links there. I appreciate youAnna continued success to you, and I
(45:52):
look forward to our next conversation.Amazing. Thank you so much, Ethan.
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The single most important thing you cando today is to create and deliver a
better experience for your customers. Learnhow sales, marketing and customer success experts
create internal alignment, achieve desired outcomes, and exceed customer expectations in a personal
and human way. This is theCustomer Experience Podcast. Here's your host,
(00:24):
Ethan Butte. Injustice and inequality.These are fundamentally human issues and challenges and
opportunities. They're social and cultural.Of course, this makes them business,
industry and market issues, challenges andopportunities. Today you'll get a conversation about
innovation and equality, evolving and improvingboth customer experience and employee experience. Through
(00:49):
this, lens our guest built acareer leading strategy, planning and policy within
organizations like the City of Toronto,Royal College of Physicians and YMCA of Greater
Toronto. Today, she serves asthe co founder and co CEO of Tidal
Equality, a team focused on equitableinnovation and design to solve the problem of
inequality at scale. She's also theco creator of a proprietary methodology called equity
(01:15):
sequence that I'll try to get intoas far as the propriety is it allows
me Anna do or Gully. Welcometo the Customer Experience Podcast. Thank you
so much. EA. Then I'mreally excited to be here. Awesome.
I really appreciate what you're doing.I look forward to getting into it in
more detail, not just how you'redoing it, but why and how other
(01:36):
folks might be thinking about it too. But before we get into some of
the core themes that have motivated youfrom what I think is throughout your entire
life, I'd love to have youdefine customer experience. When I say customer
experience, what does that mean toyou? Yeah? I think for me
it means a whole bunch of differentthings. But what immediately comes to mind
when I think of the customer experienceis how does it touch with a business,
(01:56):
make you feel? And do youget what you need in a way
that you need to get it?And so you know, in my work,
we touch the customer experience all thetime, many different kinds of customer
experiences, sometimes their product experience,sometimes their services experiences. But at the
end of the day, people walkaway from those experiences feeling something and it's
either a positive something or it's not. And the reason why it might not
(02:21):
be positive is I think the objectof my curiosity really good, and it
is that fundamental to some of thework that you're doing today is kind of
getting into the why behind that.Yeah, one hundred percent. So I
think of inequality as this mammoth problemthat exists in our world, and for
many people listening, you might bethinking about what the heck does inequality have
(02:42):
to do with the customer experience?But when I think about inequality, I
think of it as a barrier andimpediment to a positive outcome. And so
it is often the case that wewill work on challenges that relate to a
customer experience, whether it's like theability of a person with a particular disability
to use a product or service orenjoy it, whether that whether a person
(03:02):
walks into a space and feels welcomedor not by that space or that experience.
Inequality is often at the root ofproblems and that customer experience. That
problem can be shaped by bias,it can be shaped by identity about all
kinds of different things. But tome, there's this like really palpable connection
between the customer experience and that perniciousproblem and equality that seems to exist in
(03:27):
all things and all around. Yeah, yeah, it really does, and
I think you are going to openpeople's minds and eyes to things that we
have been blind to. I knowthat I've certainly operated from a position of
blindness in general, and it's thesekind of acute moments where you realize that
you're like, oh, I totallymiss that, or oh, you know,
I didn't even think to connect thesetwo things. So I'm really looking
(03:49):
forward to getting into that. Beforewe do, I'd love for you to
talk about the connection between employee experienceand customer experience. What do you think
about the relationship between those two dynamics. I feel like it's like their reflections
of each other. You know,at the end of the day, your
employees, especially employees that sit atthe front line and that touch your customer,
they have to be able to connectwith that customer. And if an
(04:10):
organization has an employee experience that's negative, Let's say you have a toxicity in
your culture or you have inequity that'sreally driving dynamics in your culture that are
quite negative, and then that employeegoes to connect with your customer, they
might bring that toxicity with them,They might bring those perspectives and those inequalities
with them into that customer experience.So for me, you know, we
(04:32):
often think about these two worlds astwo very separate worlds. I think I
live at the intersection in between themall the time, and I try to
help people see how deeply connected thoseexperiences really are. And in my world
of work, it's often that weoverfocus on the employee experience and forget entirely
about why that employee experience matters toa customer. But it really does.
(04:55):
You know, people these days wantto know what does their brand really stand
for and how does it really treatit's people, And if the answer is
not good, then that is animplication for the customer experience too, you
know, yeah, absolutely, Andit reminds me of a conversation we release
last week episode two sixty five.We talked a lot about Joey Coleman used
the language of two sides of thesame coin. It's essentially your mirror dynamic
(05:19):
and they are. I agree withyou both on that. I don't want
to get too clinical, but Iwould love for you before we get too
deep and move too far, Iwould love for you to define two words
for me, or at least justspeak to them as a concept so that
I'm on the same page as you, and folks listening are on the same
(05:39):
page as you. Two and thosetwo words are justice inequality, And you
can take those separately or you cantake them together. But you know,
what is justice from your perspective?What is equality from your perspective? Yeah,
I'm going to start with equality becauseit's in the name of my company,
and I'm going to explain why.And it's actually quite a tentious word
(06:00):
in the space that I work in. So sometimes the word equality is treated
as meaning sameness, and so inthe context of society in which not all
of us have the same experience,the objective of sameness rubs some people the
wrong way. But that's not howI understand equality as a word. I
actually think about the very material definitionof the world, which is equality of
(06:26):
status, especially in terms of rightsand opportunities. So I think of that
the kind of definition of equality beingquite a literal one, as in Ethan,
are you born with equal opportunities,equal rights, and the opportunity for
equal status or not right? Andwhile you may be someone that lives around
the corner from you might not haveaccess to those opportunities. That doesn't mean
(06:48):
their life is of less equal value. That doesn't mean they should not have
opportunities to equal access, right.And that's where justice comes in. You
know, we live in a worldthat is conditioned by inequalities. So the
lack or the absence of those equalopportunities, equal rights, equal statuses,
and justice is about closing that veryvery wide gap. And in some communities,
(07:11):
in some neighborhoods and some parts ofour country, that gap is enormous,
right, And so to me,justice is about acknowledging the context in
which we live and trying to findways to reconcile that context and build fairness
back in where it does not existor where it has not existed in the
past. And of course you couldtake another you can take another meaning with
the word justice from you. Youcan take a legalistic, you know,
(07:33):
meaning to that word. That's nothow I think of the word, and
the context of my work I thinkabout it is how do you make it
fair in a way that truly acknowledgescontext, you know, and not all
of us come from the same context. Yeah, really, well done.
I heard, and I'm probably gross, I mean, and I'm missing a
lot of nuance in it, andI'm grossly oversimplifying, but what I heard
a little bit was equality or inequalityis the condition. I'm sure it's you
(07:57):
know, a scale, and it'snever fully equal and it's never fully inequal.
Well, I guess anything short ofequality is inequality. And then justice
is the recognition in the work toclose the gap on it. Yeah,
and I'll add a third definition foryou because I'm probably going to drop the
word a lot, and you mightwonder what's the difference between equity and equality?
And so you have noticed that equalityis in my title of my business,
(08:20):
of title equality, but my solutionis actually called equity sequence, which
confuses absolutely everybody. But the reasonfor that is we talk about equality being
the goal, like a world inwhich people actually have access to those equal
rights and those equal opportunities. That'sthe objective. So that's the vision of
my business. But we're nowhere nearthere, and so equity is a way
(08:41):
of acknowledging that we're not there andthinking about how what levers do we have
that could make those opportunities more fairand more plentiful. What opportunities could we
take to open up opportunities and rightsto people that don't currently have them.
For me, that's what equity is. It's a lever for change. It's
a way to get to that ultimategoal. And so I talk about equity
(09:03):
being the way and equality being theobjective. Yeah, very good. It
makes sense now that you name themethodology around equity. So, without any
further delay on this, because we'vementioned or you have mentioned a couple of
times I mentioned in the intro.For folks who aren't familiar, tell us
a little bit about title equality,like who is your ideal customer and what
(09:26):
are some of the problems that you'resolving for them? Yeah, so title
qualit. It's interesting because we've justgone through a bit of a repositioning exercise
ourselves as a business, thinking aboutwho we are and who we serve,
which is something that we do withour clients all the time. And the
way we're describing ourselves today is Ithink really authentic to who we really are,
and that's as the world's leading equitableinnovation company. And I'm going to
tell you why I think we're leadingin that regard at some point in this
(09:48):
conversation, I'm sure, but weare not a typical di consultancy because of
the way we do our work andwhat we actually offer to our clients.
What we're really focused on is helpingour clients, who are typically large scale
or influential organization that have a directconnection with their customer or their stakeholder,
for example and healthcare that might bea patient, not a customer, to
(10:11):
really think about who they serve,how they serve them, what gaps that
may be conditioned by bias or inequalitymight be getting in the way of those
incredibly positive experiences, and what couldwe change to enhance those experience for the
broadest, most diverse possible audience.So, in a nutshell, our company
is all about spotting in a reallyconstructive, uplifting way, the problems of
(10:35):
inequality that might be showing up inthe shape of your product, in the
shape of your service, in theshape of your employee experiences, and finding
both the challenge and the opportunity tounlock opportunity in that challenge by changing it,
by making it better. And soour methodology is all about that.
But our business is really about findingthose moments of change in the system of
(10:56):
the organization, in the system thatis development, product design, all of
that so that many, many peoplecan be beneficiaries of that change. Yeah,
so I don't want to get toofar ahead on how you're engaging with
companies, but to bring people intothis, like really directly, if you
can share a couple of examples ofthings that you have seen. You've been
(11:20):
doing this for several years. I'msure you've been thinking about doing it for
several years prior to that, soyou've probably been attuned to some of these
problems and opportunities throughout your life andcareer. What are some examples, like
things that you run into and youcan feel free to generalize, but like,
what are some of the common thingsthat you're observing and helping people with
(11:41):
that you think you know someone mightbe able to identify with. So one
of the most I mean, thisis a really simple reflection, but as
something that I think if you reallythink about your everyday work and decision making,
regardless of what you do, regardlessof whether you work in the airline
industry and the pharmaceutical industry and anywhere, really there are versions of this problem
(12:03):
everywhere, and I want you tojust to think about how often you have
the opportunity when you're making decisions tothink really deeply about who you serve.
You know, and how often whenyou think about who you serve, you're
thinking about the radically diverse plurality ofpeople that you serve versus a kind of
homogeneous archetype of who you think youserve, right, more of a singularity
(12:24):
than a pure than a plurality.So an example would be, and I'll
give you like a really tangible example. It's not from a client. Actually,
it's from like a lived experience.A few weeks ago. But I
was traveling for work. We weregoing down south to see some clients,
and we encountered some terrible weather.Okay, and I won't tell you what
airline I was flying, but Iwas flying an airline, and as a
(12:46):
result of this terrible weather, weended up getting diverted and sent to another
airport about five and a half hoursdriving time from where we needed to go.
Okay, found ourselves picking up ourluggage, not being rerouted, trying
to figure out how do we getto point eight to point bight from point
A two. And I'm an ablebodied person, I'm a young person.
I have a driver's license, right, I had enough money in my bank
(13:11):
account to book a car and toget myself to my destination through floodwaters.
Okay, But I was looking aroundme in this zone, in this landing
place, and I was watching howthis airline was responding, or you could
say, not responding to this circumstancevery well by simply saying, best of
luck, get yourself home, right. And I observed an elderly woman and
(13:33):
a woman who clearly did not havea lot of money, who were traveling
and who found themselves, you know, virtually hysterical trying to figure out how
do I get from here to there? One of them was quiet in her
upset, the other one was veryvocal, and nobody was helping. Okay.
And while you might be thinking like, it's obviously not a great customer
(13:54):
experience, but I want you tothink about what about that customer experience was
predesigned because a lot of it actuallywas what do we do in this sort
of situation? Who runs the thing? How do we accommodate for people of
different needs? And how much ofit was not thought of because probably the
person that designed that process was alot more like me than the two women
(14:16):
that were having challenges, right,someone who was like, well, I'd
just rent a car and I'd geta credit and I'd do the thing,
and I speak English as a firstlanguage, an et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. So here was thismajor international airline with clearly it's been
in the airline business a long time, it's been keeping planes in the air
a long time and dealing with I'msure whether turmoil all over the place,
(14:39):
having designed a process for like whatwas, you know, a minor crisis
situation like this, having not inany way contemplated how does the person that's
flying by themselves in a wheelchair getfrom point A to point B? How
does that elderly person who doesn't speakEnglish, get from point A to point
B? How does that person whohad just enough money to get on the
flight to go and see their familyget from point A to point B?
(15:01):
Right? And the answer is theydidn't answer any of those questions because they
did not contemplate any of those needsin the design of their process. Right.
And so in just about every businessyou can possibly imagine, maybe in
every business, there are millions ofmoments just like that, altering for the
worse the customer experience and that outcomefor that customer and potentially causing real harm.
(15:24):
You know, in some circumstances,that could be a life or death
situation in certain industries and certain settings. So you know, we don't often
think about those opportunities, but Isee those opportunities as like wildly exciting.
I'm like, what if you werethe only airline in the world to anticipate
some of those problems because I watchedfive other airlines in the same terminal having
(15:46):
the same crappy version of a process. Right, But I'm like, what
if you were the one airline thatwas like, I'm actually going to really
think about who's standing around that luggagehall and what some of those unique needs
might be, and I'm going topre solve some of those problems in an
innovative way, right, or I'mat least going to be opening to open
to doing it in the moment andhave some kind of ability to respond to
(16:10):
what the scenario presents, right,But nobody did. So for me,
that's that that for me is likeit's a terrible thing, but it's a
powerful opportunity for absolutely delighting and anticipatingthe needs of your customer because you've really
considered their voices in the design ofa process, of a service, of
a product. And for me,that's what equitable innovation actually is. It's
(16:32):
spotting those problems, those would beproblems, those actual problems, and thinking
about could we design that differently,and whose voices do we need around the
table so that we can right?So well done, and you make me
feel better about my struggle in writingthe intro to this one about positioning as
a problem and an issue as wellas an opportunity. I saw it the
same way, and you know youlive in this. I'm just, you
(16:56):
know, trying to to learn fromyou in it, and so I appreciate
you seeing it as an opportunity aswell. When that example that you provided
in the challenge of plurality versus singularity. I think a lot of people are
thinking about efficiency. I think whenI think about the Industrial Revolution and then
ultimately Henry Ford's assembly line where youcould get the model T and every color
(17:18):
as long as it was the onecolor they made. Of course that color
was black, I think about homogeneitytied do efficiency. I think about a
bias toward efficiency, and I thinksome people listening to this, even though
it's a show that is very opento these ideas and too innovation and to
serving people both in a customer andan employee capacity in a better way.
(17:45):
Humanity is a constant theme in theseconversations. Dehumanization is a theme that surfaces
often so indirectly. We've been talkingabout a lot of the themes that you're
devoting your career to and your life. But I'm sure there's someone thinking,
well, that sounds like a luxury, That sounds hard plurality. How far
do we go? And with that, I'll turn that into a question and
(18:10):
you feel free to respond anything Ishared that. Here's the thing. So
one of the things that my clientmost of my clients are in large scale
corporations, and if they were topay attention to my CV, what they
would have noticed about my CV?And as you mentioned at the very beginning
of this interview, is I startedmy career and spent a good fifteen years
in big, clunky, public sectororganizations, places where you might not have
a natural feeling of like, oh, innovation lives there, right, And
(18:34):
that's probably why I'm so obsessed withinnovation, Okay, because those systems desperately
needed it. Mostly because the organizationsthat I work for serve very vulnerable people,
and they didn't always serve very vulnerablepeople. Well, some of them
did, some of them did thatbetter than others, and some of them
did not. Right, And insome circumstances in my work, I served
you know, the most vulnerable populations, right, So that got me curious
(18:57):
about what the opportunity costs are inthinking about singularities. And it showed me
that in a really really tangible way, in a way that like you know,
once you kind of see a problem, it's really difficult to unsee a
problem. And the way that Isought in those big public sector, clunky
systems was all of those systems allthe time are trying to initiate big system
(19:18):
like change of one kind or anotherfor one reason or another. Whether it's
like a political shift then they haveto swing this big machine in another direction,
or it's like an operational shift thatrequires us to serve differently, a
different funding model, whatever it is, right, But what's the biggest barrier
to those changes that affect people isusually buy in, right, Like it's
(19:41):
usually have we understood the environment thatwe're trying to make change in well enough?
Have we anticipated the needs well enough? Have we talked to enough people
to know what might not work whenit hits the ground. And the thing
that I noticed from the earliest stagesof my career is that pretty much always,
no one ever invested enough time andconsultation to prevent totally preventable problems,
(20:04):
and that those totally preventable problems costabsolutely enormous sums of money. Right,
and corporations, I've learned in thefive years that I've now been consulting in
large scale complex organizations are just asbad at it. We might like to
think that we're not, but let'sbe real, Like, we're going to
(20:26):
be introducing a new tech experience forour employees or for our customers. We've
talked to seven people. We're goingto be serving seventy five million with this
thing. It's going to be amazing. They all happen to be white,
able bodied men living in a municipalitywith multiple millions of people, but we
definitely understand the needs of that wholepopulation. Let's go and then what happens,
(20:48):
right, the catastrophic failure on launchor the totally not good enough launch,
or the launch which leads to youspending more time on crisis communications than
you spent on consultation in the firstplace. So sure consultation takes time,
(21:12):
but not consulting takes way more timeand it's way, way way messier to
clean up. And so what Itry to teach in my work every day
is that consultation usually is as simpleas a few good questions, and that
in a technological post industrial age,there are very efficient, effective ways to
(21:32):
ask good questions to lots and lotsof people, and that there are will
be some populations that are harder tohear from, and that it's worth it
to do the work because that willchange the experiential outcome. And that's like
being in the one percent. Youknow, It's like you think, like
the companies that really win are theones that just go that extra mile.
Like I think about that experientially,and I think about that in terms of
(21:55):
I'm like, what do you gainfrom that? Like if you figure out
that there is a massive bare youdidn't understand because you never asked in your
customer base that you could solve quicklyand easily, but you never asked the
question, that's a missed opportunity.You know, you can think of it
as in time. You can thinkof it as an investment. I think
of it almost always, almost invariablyas time. And I actually like to
think of it as what could youask quickly and learn about fast, and
(22:18):
what could you spend more time onbecause you learned about it fast, and
you're like, whoa, there's somelights going off in my mind and I
need to learn more, you know. So I try to inspire my clients
to for sure, like have themoment of catharsis that consultation is hard and
expensive, and then we tire totalk about let's talk about the time that
you didn't consult enough and what wasthe consult what was the consequence or it
(22:41):
was there a project that you've beeninvolved in that didn't go quite as you
anticipated. And this, especially whenyou're talking to a room full of executives,
you suddenly start to be like,oh god, there was this project,
then this project, then that project. Right, and suddenly they're like,
and I don't need to make thecase. The case makes itself.
Yeah, really good. That's thereare like three directions to go right now.
So the one I'll choose is justto pick up a variety of things
(23:03):
you shared in that passage. Theone I'll go choose, like, so,
how are people engaging you? Like, do they know that they're engaging
on themes of equity in the contextof equality? Are they looking to improve
customer experience? Like? Well,like, at what stage in this kind
(23:25):
of process are people typically engaging you? Like, how do you find them?
How do they find you? Andwhat do they think they're looking for?
Yeah, so, I mean thishas been evolving over time. This
hasn't been statics. So I'll tellyou what it kind of looks like now,
and I can tell you a littlebit about the way it's evolving at
the moment. So when we firststarted our methodology, equity sequence, which
(23:45):
is a system of five questions thatanyone can learn and apply to any decision,
design, product, service experience,anything. These five questions we built
them as a different way to thinkabout bias and a different way to spot
and correct for bias. Because basically, in the US, it's a ten
(24:06):
billion dollar a year industry training individualsabout individual bias, and that industry doesn't
work very well. So the ideathat you could go into a ninety minute
training, learn about all of yourbiases, and then magically, spontaneously be
able to intercept them every time yougo to make a decision is beyond magical
(24:26):
thinking. It's just not rooted inany fact of any kind. Right,
and yet it's a ten billion dollarsa year approach that corporations take mostly to
tick a box or to cover atush, but not necessarily to solve a
problem. Right, So we werelike, what could be an alternative to
that that we could teach an employeepopulation that focused on reducing bias and inequality
(24:51):
and decision making or in the systemversus in the individual, which doesn't work
very well because we're always going tobe biased where we need to stay vigilant.
We are biased, that's the wayour brains work, right. So
when we first introduced equity sequence tothe market, we introduced it as an
alternative to unconscious bias training, andwe built it as a training. So
a typical corporation buys licenses to ourlearning experience, and sometimes that starts with
(25:15):
a very small pilot with a crossfunctional group of people. And my job
is always to say, don't justmake that on the employee side. If
you can find people to be partof that pilot who also touch the customer
experience, deeply who touch strategy andinnovation, because what they will see is
that this is not an HR functionor a people function. This is a
function that's a radical relevance to everypart of the business. It touches another
(25:38):
human being, whether that's a customeror an employee. Right, So my
job is usually like, can Iget you to think about a pilot and
can I get interesting different perspectives intothat pilot experience to try that learning and
see if those five questions might helpyou think about your work better differently produce
some equitable innovation. And yes,it's totally in the context of an alternative
(26:00):
to unconscious bias training. So it'skind of in that DEI bucket. Then
a typical client that loves it scalesit and that learning starts to go out
to broader teams. In two anda half hours, you can learn how
to practice a sequence and then youcan practice it for the rest of your
career. So it started as atraining methodology and our entry point was training.
But as we've started to scale itand we've seen that it has this
(26:21):
like sticky dynamic and organizations there aremany organizations now that have taken it on
to be part of their governance structure, like how do we make key decisions
here to kind of be like theagile and lean but for equitable decision making,
but also to be able to talkand show real change when it comes
to these social issues of inequality,because in most of these other initiatives that
(26:44):
we do, it's almost impossible tobe like, we did a thing and
it resulted in this outcome equity sequenceis completely different. I could show you
you made an income if you learnedit right now and you applied it to
your work. I could show youan outcome by the end of our training,
right, because you will have appliedto your work and you'll have change
something right, and you can measurethat before and after. But you can
(27:04):
also look at that at scale.So if you get thirty percent of a
population practicing these five questions, likeyou just kind of your mind goes kind
of wild, thinking about, well, what are all the things we could
innovate and change that could benefit people'sexperiences. Right, So that's where our
business is heading. We're now gettingpulled back into clients where we've done that
foundational learning experience, and instead ofit just being a learning experience, people
(27:27):
are saying, can you come helpus with a big commercial challenge and can
you help us go deeper with thesefive questions to yield as much innovation as
you possibly can. And we alsohave people saying can we build this into
our leadership training, can we buildthis into our ideology as a business.
And so our work is starting totake on. You know, it's all
about equity sequence, but the wayit's kind of cropping up is a little
(27:48):
bit like whack a mole and organizationsbecause it takes on a life of its
own. You know. Yeah,I'm really excited for you, and I
would love to know what the processof arriving at the equity s quince was.
My guess is that it was aniterative process and then at a certain
point you kind of like hardened itand brought it together into a methodology.
What was that process like and separatebut related? You know, you mentioned
(28:12):
like lean and agile all. Iwas also thinking quite a bit about human
centered design as a concept into practicetoo, So I'd love to know kind
of like the origin here, likewhat was how did you arrive at this?
And what are some of your inspirations? Yeah, so inspirations were things
like agile and lean also human centereddesign, but not in the way that
(28:33):
you might imagine. So obviously,human center design is full of methodologies and
approaches and frameworks and ideas so looselyfrom our from work that my co founder
Christen and I have done in variousguises in our life, we were inspired
by the prospect of human centered design. But one of the things that we
noticed was you can't just like dropa framework into an organization and habit stick.
(28:57):
Right. The idea that you couldgo through, for example, a
human centered design process and then keepgoing through those processes without the aids of
complex consulting supports was unlikely, right, and especially when it comes to solving
the problem of inequality. The budgetsare typically quite small by contrast to other
major change initiatives in an organization,so we were working with a lot of
(29:19):
constraints in our thinking. We werelike, okay, well, we would
love to have the budgets that youknow commercial team gets for human centered design
for rolling out equitable change across anorganization. In twenty twenty three, twenty
twenty two, or twenty twenty weweren't getting those budgets right, So we
were like, well, what isthe easiest way to get a repeatable framework
(29:40):
into people's minds and what are peoplealready buying? So that you know,
the reason that we are an alternativeto unconscious biased training is because people were
already buying a training experience on biasand we could come into that envelope,
right. And then when it comesto agile and lean, I was like
I was trying to rack my brainbecause I was a strategist and it kind
of led transformations in my career.I was like, what are the things
(30:02):
that we've done in organizations that I'vebeen in that kind of stuck around after
a training experience that like lived onAnd so for me that was lean and
agile, it was like it wasnot a singular experience where you brought a
human centric perspective. It was somethingthat was about continuous improvement both of those
kind of approaches and about kind ofsome principles that guided thinking across lots of
(30:25):
domains. So we were like,we need a version of that for continuous
equitable improvement because you know, inDI we were thinking like too often the
conversation was like are you right oryou're wrong? Do you know the right
words or the wrong words? Doyou say it in the right way or
the wrong way? And it wasin this like really dichotomous thinking that I
felt like was actually like truncating genuineconversation. So I was like, is
(30:47):
there a way for us to showthat equity is about a myriad of changes
that we can make to make thingsbetter. It's not like a writer or
wrong, Like there are elements ofinequity that are wrong, but there are
so many possible right And just whenyou think you've come up with many,
you might come up with one hundredmore right. So it was all of
those things put together, and honestly, the five questions they came out of
(31:11):
a number of places. My cofounders a researcher there were ten pieces of
evidence on effective equity interventions and inspiredthe actual design of the questions. So
she did the research for that,and for me my background and strategy.
We developed a strategy methodology that wasabout equity, and there was a process
that we had designed for that strategicchange, and we decided to ask ourselves,
(31:33):
could we turn that process into aset of questions anyone could ask themselves.
And that's really where the questions themselvescame from really well done, and
you introduced the zone that I wantto go too, So I guess I'll
go there now. You mentioned Kristen, you mentioned your distinct backgrounds and strengths.
I've talked with many co founders onthis podcast. I don't know that
I've seen this instance before, butI don't know that I've had anyone on
(31:56):
the show who was a co CEOtalk about that dynamic. What does it
mean? How did you make thatchoice in? How do you operate in
that context? You know? AndI love I love that we made that
choice, and I love that choiceon a regular basis, which is which
is weird because of how many peoplesaid, don't make that choice, there's
an obvious CEO, and maybe there'san obvious CEO or whatever. But Kristen
(32:22):
and I could not be more differentand more similar. We're kind of equally
different and equally similar. Kristen is, you know, a critical thinker,
a researcher. She can spot agap like nobody's business. And she's also
an incredible executor, right, soshe is the kind of person that's like,
Okay, we're done with ideation,let's get to movement. You know,
(32:43):
and so maybe in a typical organizationalstructure that might look more like a
CEO. Right. However, shealso has a wildly wonderful strategic brain,
so that means that she sees thingsthrough that lens of how are we going
to execute? That I would onehundred percent miss if she were not in
the room, right, And Ithink for me, I have like a
(33:04):
constant tap of id like my brainis always ideating, to the point that
Kristen has set limits not from timeto time to see you like you're at
your idea threshold for the day,and I'm like, a right, fine,
I'm at the threshold and where amI going to put them? You
know? But you know, Ifeel like my experience of being on the
ground and organizations and of leading transformationand of learning really very much the hard
way, like oh shit, thatfailed terribly? Why did it fail?
(33:28):
And like how do I fix itthe next time? And oh god,
I've embarrassed myself? How did Ido that? How do I not do
that the next time? That reallypractical experience, which is very not academic.
It was very much like learning byfire has been incredibly useful to us
too. So I think what youhave in us are like, collectively is
one unbelievably well rounded CEO, right, which you know, mostly organizations get
(33:51):
pendulum swings, They get the operator, they get the strategists, and they
go flinging in different directions. Right, We were like, why why why
can't those two dynamics plus two differentkinds of strategic thinking drive us forward and
the reality of our relationship. Wedescribe ourselves to all of our clients as
an old married couple because we fightlike cats and dogs, absolutely constantly with
great sense of humor. But wefight all the time, but with love
(34:15):
because there's nobody that I respect morefrom the perspective of someone who's willing to
challenge me, tell me I'm wrong, tell me I do not understand the
scenario, and vice versa. Wechallenge each other overtly, and I do
not think we would have weathered anyof the challenges we faced, which have
been many as a business, inthe same way or as well, if
we hadn't been at the helm togetherwith equal skin in the game, you
(34:37):
know. And I just think that'ssomething that we kind of honor all the
time in our working relationship. Yeah, yeah, it reminds me a little
bit of the theme of plurality versussingularity, this idea of like, we
don't have to do it one wayand in fact, let's come And what
triggered that for me was a ideaof like, together, we're a better
(34:57):
CEO than either one of us wouldpeace one hundred percent, where we always
say that we're bigger than the someof our parts. And you know,
what we've learned over time is like, you know, especially as our business
has grown, like there are someclients for whom I'm a more natural leader
fit, and there are some clientsfor whom she's a more natural leader fit.
So we divide and conquer sometimes andsometimes we're like this takes both heads.
(35:19):
We need to go into this onetogether, and we come in together,
you know, And over time we'velearned how to figure out what that
balance is. And it's not perfect, Like it's not easy. It's like
a it's like a great marriage.It takes a hell of a lot of
work to stay aligned and connected.And there are, of course weeks and
months where you're like, oh,we're on completely separate pages, but like
I kind of feel like every oneof those moments has led us to break
(35:43):
through moments as well, because wekeep coming back together and trying to get
each other to see the other perspective. And so I always have felt that
that's enriched our journey and it's it'sthe best professional relationship I've ever had.
It's you know, So I'm reallyhappy to hear that. And I one
of the things that's implied in whatyou're doing is that business is a legitimate,
(36:06):
powerful force for change, and soI appreciate like I've been attuned that
way for some period of time,Like we're not looking to anybody else,
it's us. And in a businessor a large organization certainly has the capability
to close a gap on something thatlooks from the outside like a lot of
other problems. And as simple minded, myopic, self interested creatures, we
(36:32):
go that looks really big, thatlooks like someone else's problem, that looks
like tomorrow's problem. And with that, I'd love to ask you a did
anything. I just share their resonatewith you and be like, what is
your hope or expectation, what isyour imagined future in your own lifetime relative
to the idea of closing the gapon inequality? Yeah, that is a
(36:55):
question that I feel like I contendwith in my own self and in my
work every single day, that senseof this is such an unbelievably big problem,
Like, am I like working onit with a little you know,
a little a little hammer, Andam I emver going to get anywhere?
Right? So there's definitely that feeling. And then on better days, I
(37:15):
realize that there are millions and millionsof people with little hammers, right,
and that if we were just betterorganized, you know, if we could
better organize the seventy percent plus ofpeople in the world who deeply care about
inequality, not just care, butdeeply care. That's like seventy percent in
most of our societies at least,and I think that's a conservative estimate.
(37:38):
Who would like to see a moreequal and more fair and more just world
but just don't know how to getthere. If we could give them tools,
really useful tools, if we couldsay to them, go fix the
thing you're working on from an equityperspective, whether that's a tiny, little
micro decision that you're making today ora super macro decision. And in the
(37:58):
context of business, like our businessesshape our world whether we like it or
not. You know, I thinkpeople really struggled in my public sector trajectory.
People were like, you're going tobusiness. You're not a public servant
anymore. Now. I'm like,no, I'm a public servant forever.
And by the way, the publicmoved through all of the spaces, they
moved through the private spaces, thepublic space, all of these spaces humans
(38:20):
touch, right and it is reallyunfortunately and unfortunately or unfortunately it is our
corporations that touch people's lives for thebetter, but also sometimes very much for
the worst. You know, itcould be a financial system that excludes it
could be a private healthcare system thatdoes not treat you know, it could
be whomever. But in that world, there are just so many opportunities to
(38:42):
influence change. And I really believeso many well meaning people who just want
a tool and a thing to doand don't know what that thing is.
And so it's like, you know, that idea of if you could just
apply the desire to expand equity toyour little patch, and if millions of
other people could do it too.I think the chances that we have an
(39:06):
opportunity to really revise those negative experienceand turn them into positive opportunities and status
and rights is much better. Andso I have no idea, to be
honest with you, what I thinkI can accomplish in my career. I
don't even I almost don't even dareto think about that, because sometimes that
cows me a little bit, youknow, I think instead, I feel
(39:30):
like my job is every time Ihave the privilege of going into an organization,
I feel like it's my job tolight up as many people to that
possibility as possible and to hand thema very useful tool. That's my job.
You can never anticipate the impact ofthat. I really hope it's fucking
massive. I really do, andI hope I'm allowed to swear on your
(39:52):
thing because I really want it tomake the world better. But I know
it's going to take a gazillion peopleout there deciding to up that mantle to
make that change, and I justhope, I hope people want to and
that they will. You know,yeah, spoken like an absolute chief evangelist,
if I may say so, it'sthis I want. There's a problem
(40:14):
in the world, a lot ofpeople are blind to it. I need
to erase problem awareness. And thisextra step that you're adding here is and
I don't just want to turn thelight bulbs on or create that aha moment
and remove some of the blindness.I also want to equip people to move
forward and to create some solutions intheir own way where they are. That's
(40:35):
all we can ask for anyone.But I hope folks listening except that as
a responsibility. And I really appreciateAn what you're doing with Kristen and team
and the folks who are engaging youon it. And I'm really excited again
to hear about this kind of scalingwithin organizations where you have some relationship and
we've created a little bit of impactfor folks listening. If you've enjoyed this
(40:57):
conversation so far, on appoint youto two other ones. One of them
is episode one hundred, which Icrafted myself from highlights of episodes one through
ninety nine. I called it theEpic Takes Mixtape. I approached it like
a good old fashioned mixtaper in thesedays, I guess it's a playlist,
and it's a highlight of human first, human centered moments where we're really getting
(41:20):
beyond the mechanics of what we're doingfrom a customer experience and employee experience.
Perspective and get to where I thinkyou've been operating probably your whole career.
Anna is like, how does thisaffect people as people in their whole lives
and not just in the context ofthis commercial relationship or this immediate experience.
So ten different people speak into thatone and I'll carry you through those through
(41:43):
those epic takes on episode one hundredand then a little bit more recently,
episode one ninety three with Lee Jelinek, who's the chief Innovation Officer at UWM
United Wholesale Mortgage, and he talksabout he shares with us insights into the
culture of innovation and the work ofinnovation and brates those two things and talks
about them distinctly, And that's infact what we titled episode one ninety three
(42:05):
with Lee. So before I letyou go, Anna, first, thank
you. I've really enjoyed this andI would love for you to do a
couple things for us all. Thefirst is the thanker mentioned someone who's had
a positive impact on your life orcareer, and the second is to give
an honor a shout out to accompanyyour brand that you appreciate for the experience
they deliver for you as a customer. So I'm gonna ask the first question,
(42:27):
who who is really influencer shape mycareer. I'm going to have to
give a shout out to my mom, whose name is a Lane Doer.
My mom is a wonderful journalist andinvestigative journalists, a fierce journalist, and
I think my mother seated something inme that was about one pursuing my passion
and being fierce in the pursuit ofmy passion. And I think I don't
(42:50):
think it would have been possible forme to be doing what I do today
without her having laid that foundation andeven that expectation for me. So I
got to give a shout out tothe mom. And then I think number
two, for you know, thebrand that's doing something that really is creating
a positive experience. I want togive a shout out to our SEO company
or partners at Flywheel Digital. Weare a team that has been We've been
(43:13):
boots strapped the whole way. We'venever taken on investment where chief female founders
getting investment is not straightforward for acompany like ours and has not been so
investments in our growth have been fewand far between. We've had to grow
with revenue and through word of mouth. So finally this year we started to
invest and we're working with this teamcalled Flywheel in Canada. And what I've
loved about them, and I willjust say, is the way that they
(43:35):
have adapted to our needs and ourconstraints, how carefully they've listened to what
we're trying to accomplish, and howthey've become immediately adjacent to our team,
not just kind of functionally, butalso culturally. And you know that it
doesn't go it doesn't go unnoticed,and it inspired me because I feel like
they're also a service business in theway that we are partly a service business,
(43:59):
and you know, I'm just takingsome of that ethos with me into
my work. So I'm grateful tothem. Yeah, awesome, really well
done on both counts. And whatyou reminded me in describing a wonderful person
in your mother and the investigative journalist, and you mentioned asking questions, like
I didn't even get into that withyou, so we'll have to have another
(44:19):
conversation. I want to. Iwanted your insights into asking better questions,
active listening, and some of theother things that help us get to where
we all need to go not justas operators and practitioners inside the context of
our businesses and organizations, but aspeople working to support and move forward other
people and opportunities. But with that, Anna, this has been a pleasure.
(44:44):
If someone has reached this point inthe conversation, they might want to
learn more about you or title TitleEquality almost a title equity and I'm sure
do it. Where would you sendfolks to follow up on this conversation?
Yeah, so I would suggest youcome to our website to title equality dot
com, where you can find manydifferent ways to connect with us via the
(45:05):
first page of our website with thecontact us bar. We're also Kristen and
I are on LinkedIn and are veryactive voices on LinkedIn, and we encourage
you to be part of that conversationand engage with us. But yeah,
start with our website and we'll gofrom there. Awesome. She is Anna
Dower Gully. You can see thespelling in the title of this episode.
What is Kristen's name and how dowe spell it so we can find her
on LinkedIn doctor Kristen Leish And that'sl I E S c H Kristen with
(45:29):
an E k R I S te n Leash. Yeah, doctor Kristen
Leish Austin got all things equity onLinkedIn. Yeah cool, I link all
this stuff up. I tried toput a lot of it right there in
your post podcast player. I definitelyput all of it in the post at
bombomb dot com slash podcast. Thisis episode two sixty six, so lots
of links there. I appreciate youAnna continued success to you, and I
(45:52):
look forward to our next conversation.Amazing. Thank you so much, Ethan.
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