John Marshall (00:32)
Welcome back to the Present Professional. Today I’m excited to welcome Dr. Angela Jackson, a Harvard lecturer and researcher, and the founder and CEO of Future Forward Institute. Her work focuses on how we design work in a way that actually works for people while still driving real performance. She’s the author of The Win-Win Workplace, which we will link to, of course.

And her research challenges the idea that performance and well being are intention, rather showing instead how they reinforce each other. Angela, welcome to the present professional.

Dr. Angela Jackson (01:09)
John, thank you so much for having me.

John Marshall (01:10)
Of course, of course. So before we dive into the work, I’d love to hear a little bit more about what initially pulled you into this question of redesign and work. Was there a moment or a pattern you kept seeing that made you realize something fundamental wasn’t working? Or I don’t know, take us through the the origins of getting started in this work.

Dr. Angela Jackson (01:34)
first of all, thank you thank you for that question, you I I tell the story in the book.

I started my career before an being an academic in the in the private sector. So ran new businesses for Viacom and for Nokia. And, you know, there was a time I was, you know, in my twenties. I had this life like the movie Up in the Air, a million miler on a couple of airlines. And I remember I was going to LA for a meeting. I’ve lived in New York. I was going to LA and I was gonna be in LA for less than twenty four hours and I was gonna stop back in New York and I was off to Europe. Very busy. And in the midst of that trip, ⁓ wasn’t very, you know

present. I had been working, you twelve, fifteen hour days, seven days a week, hadn’t seen family and friends. And I was remember that morning I was on my way to the the meeting and I was like remember thinking to myself, I hope they don’t ask me too many questions because I really need to make my noon flight. And in the midst of it I realized that I almost missed my turn. And so I turned really quickly. And when I turned unbeknownst to me there was a car coming up beside me. And so I got into a terrible accident. And literally at an instant my whirlwind career had started

Stopped, you in excruciating pain, months of physical therapy. And it gave me time to just really reflect on work and the meaning of work and and why that was important to someone like me. You know, I had my first job when I was 12 years old. You know, I was raised by my grandfather who worked as a Chrysler factory. I’m from the Midwest. You know, my whole identity was around, you know, having a good job and being a really good worker and always giving 150%. That was my identity, it was tied to that. And what I realized in

those times is that you know I was pushing myself so hard and then subsequently when I had time to reflect, pushing others so hard that I almost broke, right? Not being present, not seeing family. And I begin to think sitting on that couch again, having months to reflect, you know, what I wanted my life to be like on the other side. And also, frankly, just grateful, you know, that you know, I wasn’t harmed or no one else was harmed in the accident, right? But I made a commitment to myself that I wanted to do things differently.

And I just wondered to myself, was there a way to do work differently that was more sustainable? And so like myself, when I looked at this research, fast forward to do my doctoral research, I saw that so many of us get our identities from work.

Right. Most people, they wake up, they are going to give their all. And the current system of work is really extractive. It’ll take as much as you will give them, right? and what I didn’t see was that that lack of care. what I didn’t see was that case of saying if we say that people are our most valuable resource, like how are we actually measuring that? And so I got curious around those questions, around what are the the practices that help for a more sustainable workplace.

John Marshall (03:48)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (04:15)
I end up leaving Nokia and founding my own organization and building a culture myself, and then went on to Harvard to study this with more of an academic lens. And that’s what really birthed the win win workplace framework and really trying to understand what are the practices that lead to people thriving in service of the business, of having a better business, and also those practices that really have tangible impacts on the bottom line. So if we literally say that people are the most

valuable resources, we can back it up with the data, right, to show that.

John Marshall (04:48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because it’s one of those things that are it’s really nice to say, right? And you’ll hear many organizations say that, many leaders say that. That’s our most valuable resource. And then it’s also when it comes to well being, employee benefits, training and development, sometimes are ⁓ not not sometimes, I would say

in my experience, have been the lowest part of the investment, the lowest, the last thing on the budget.

Dr. Angela Jackson (05:17)
It’s that and you know, John, th the one push here I’d say, and you know, I’ve looked at over to date seventeen hundred companies, and so I have a lot of empathy. I’m not one to say everything that companies doing are wrong, but when you start following the dollars and how they’re spent and just the data, right? And so I’ll give you two statistics. You have companies who spend billions of dollars on employee listening. You know, most of people who are listening here, they’ve been through that annual survey, they’ve gotten poll surveys, you know, there’s

Suggestion box, you know, there’s town hall meetings. But if you were to go out and research now and it shows that most people, well, if you ask them, does your boss care about you or does your customer or your company care about you? You have upwards of 64% of people who say no. And so if you take those two things to be true, that you’ve got companies who are spending billions of dollars on listening and CSR programs, but you’ve got this large majority of people who feel like they’re not being cared about and investing in, there’s a huge disconnect. And

And with that disconnect, I see becomes an opportunity. And so, like, how do we close the gap between like that intention and that action? How do we take those billions of dollars and spend them in a way that have people, employees feeling like they are cared for, right? And closing that intention. So I’m I like to say I’m Pollyanna in many ways, but when I go and talk to C-suite leaders, I’m like, you’re spending the money anyway. You know, you’re asking for people’s opinion. What if I could show you through this framework?

John Marshall (06:41)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (06:45)
High-leverage ways that you can actually not only invest your dollars but your times in a way that has a higher perceived value for the employees.

John Marshall (06:54)
Mm-hmm. And return on investment in general. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (06:58)
Well but and that’s what we’re looking

for.

You know, a lot of times when we talk about investing employees, it feels soft. And when we looked at these nine pillars, I want to also put a disclaimer. ⁓ what we saw was that there was a causation and correlation to lift on the financial side. So that we could actually look at pillar one says centering employee voice. The companies who did that, we were able to look at what are their you know earnings per employee? What does their retention look like? Because they have longer retention, how much savings do they have? What is their

John Marshall (07:04)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (07:29)
time to productivity. So these were real tangible impacts on the business on these nine pillars. I my disclaimer is that there’s many ways to invest in in your employees. These nine our team saw that actually had the data that supported that these could have a marked difference on the bottom line of a business.

John Marshall (07:48)
Well, without further ado then, since you already listed the first one, I’d love to just bring listeners into the framework because I was ready to just dive into centering employee voices because that’s kind of the theme of where we’ve been so far. But before we dive into number one, I’d love I’d love you to just list off the nine for the listeners and also

Speak to if there’s any relevance to the order.

Dr. Angela Jackson (08:16)
Absolutely. So, starting with one, we did centering worker voice for a reason. Of all the pillars, that is the one foundational one that we saw with all of the companies. And the reason why was that once you’re listening to employees and what matters most to them, and that’s how we define centering voice. It’s not about what do you want to ask them about for the business. The question’s really around what do we need to know about how you experience this job, this role that could help us remove barriers.

That could help you do a better job in service of us having a more profitable business. If you’re listening through that lens and really centering that person and that individual, their lived experience, you know, all the things it takes for them to come up and show up to work. And so that’s number one. The other pillars two through nine, what we saw were companies, based on what they heard with pillar one, they might implement another strategy that really is connected to the listening. So when you look at pillar two, it’s really around how do we are

Our relationships, and we call them win-win workplace relationships. And so what we saw in companies is that while there might be hierarchies, these companies tried to lessen the felt reality of that, really making sure that people at all levels were getting to know each other, that we’re connected, that you know, innovation wasn’t just in one floor, you know, that everyone could bring their ideas to bear. You know, number three is really thinking about how are we thinking about the whole employee? we talk a lot about intersectional inclusion there, and and intersectional by this book.

Book

and our definition means every employee who’s coming to work every day, they have an outsized life outside life. And we saw that during the pandemic. What is happening in that life impacts their ability to show up for work. And so in the old way of work, we’d separate. We’d be like, whatever’s going on at home, you leave it at home. But what we saw during the pandemic is if someone is critically ill or if they are caregiving for an elderly parent or relative or child, like that impacts their ability to show up fully. So

John Marshall (10:03)
Yep.

Dr. Angela Jackson (10:13)
So it’s better for us to know what’s going on and seeing if we can devise a strategy around it or not, or at least be empathetic. And then that leads us to pillar four, it was really around reimagining employee benefits. ⁓ it says it all like what are the benefits that someone needs in 2026, right? That’s most important for them to be able to engage and work in life. And then our other ones are really around pillar five. How do you take frontline managers and turn them into leaders? we always talk about the perennial burnout with frontline.

Frontline managers. We think about pillar six is like reimagining credentials. Pillar seven is like how do we build a deep talent bench? You know, pillar eight is like, how do we actually share this reporting? again, lots of companies, lots of listening, lots of data. How are we actually tracking the data on our people? Like we track the data on how many couches we sold or how many SaaS subscriptions that we’ve had. Do we have that type of granular data on how our people are doing? We talk about the business.

Performance. And then the last pillar nine that we talked to that we saw, and this was in a smaller group of companies, is what we called more of an ownership mindset and distributed leadership. What we saw were companies when they were implementing one or more of these pillars, what was happening over time is that we saw trust was built. We saw the investment by the employee go up because they were engaged a different way. And so these places where employees were brought in, their voices were centered, their ideas were taken, their

John Marshall (11:22)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (11:41)
Needs

were met, they were exhibiting what we call this ownership mindset and again adding just a higher perceived value to the business and more strategic about how to grow the business. You know, what are the risks, the mitigants? And that’s where we got excited. Because if we think about what’s happening in the world of work today, we’re going through a transformation and no one really has a playbook. And we need everyone’s eyes and ears looking around the corner around what does this new technology mean for us as a business? What does it mean to our customers? What does it mean for

for my individual role. And for someone to do that on top of their day-to-day job, they really have to feel an ownership stake in the company and in their role.

John Marshall (12:21)
Hmm. So the entrepreneurial structures

in nine. So it’s I t I hear a little bit of nine being a result and an entrepreneurial mindset and folks taking that kind of ownership over their work, over their business line, over their team. But then there’s also a structural component to nine as well and kind of the way that work is distributed, accountability structures, autonomy, all of that. So it’s a I’m hearing partly result and partly set up through structure.

Dr. Angela Jackson (12:53)
Yeah, I would and I think the only thing I would add to that and a process, because it’s not a period. And some people think you get that, right? But how is that maintained? And

John Marshall (12:58)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (13:03)
What we’ve gotten curious about lately, John, is we’ve seen where that has existed, and then there’s been a management change and a leadership change. ⁓ there’s one example, I’ll anonymize this company, but they had implemented three or four of the pillars. We’d been in with our research team, you know, high net promoter scores, business, you know, out of the roof. Because of that, they got acquired. It was a really good thing, a real thriving business. new leadership brought them in, acquired the company because they were doing so well. But some of those people things.

They haven’t invested in. And as we’ve been going back, we’re seeing slowly that those things are going away. Some of the trusts are eroding. Some of those people who are culture carriers, you know, the ones that we took from frontline managers and made them leaders, some of those people have transitioned out because they’re disillusioned. And so what I’d say about nine, which is when we’re thinking about this framework and we’re still learning, it becomes this circle, right? This continuous loop that really builds on each other. So even if you get to nine, it’s really about what’s that process that you can.

continue that, right? And you build and you continue to invest in that way.

John Marshall (14:05)
Wow. Yeah, now it’s all I agree, that’s all coming together to be a circular process because you would think after that acquisition, right?

That you would come back to the employee voices. Right. The new leadership would come in and hear what’s already been said in centering employee voices and then maybe restart that process. Send the surveys out again. Go on a listening tour, invite in focus groups, and to start re s restarting what do we need now within the new fabric of our organization. Am I hearing that right?

Dr. Angela Jackson (14:42)
That that’s exactly it. And you know, we we’ve talked about this before, John, but really thinking about companies who are going through a growth stage or an acquisition, it becomes an inflection point. And there’s decisions to be made. And and again, we’ve seen this go a couple different flavors where if there’s a company acquiring maybe a high growth startup or another ⁓ type of company, you’re acquiring them because they’ve got something good that’s going on that you think that you can capitalize, you can exploit, that you can learn from.

And to actually operationalize that, you have to do listening. You, in addition to leading, you know, reading all of the financial reports, you really need to understand that culturally, what is happening that might not be written down that’s causing these outsize returns to happen or that has produced this valuable asset that you’d want to acquire. What we’ve seen in certain companies, in this one, this example, you know, it was acquired, but there was a new CEO. The CHRO, who was partnered shoulder.

John Marshall (15:34)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (15:42)
Shoulder to shoulder, right, with the CEO, that person was replaced with the CHRO of the acquiring company. And so while they had this unit, this high-performing unit, right, it’s not a static thing. It’s really dynamic. It’s like this, it’s organism that was being fed. And if you don’t understand what fed that organism, what really drove those results, the intangible, then you’ve got this asset. And what we’ve been seeing as we’ve watched this company, and we’re trying to stop that now, is seeing.

John Marshall (15:49)
Mm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (16:11)
Some of that being eroded, some of the trust being eroded, some of the culture being eroded. And so for these companies, it really is that decision point. If you’re acquiring a company, really being intentional about understanding why you’re acquiring it, what you want to keep, and having enough humility to say, what are some things about this acquiring company that we might want to adopt, you know, organization wide, or just at least be intentional to say if we’re not going to continue a set of things, really making that a decision point, not one.

Yeah.

John Marshall (16:43)
Mm, mm. You said something there that really resonated with me. The feeding the organism. Right? Because we we we observe the organism. We we observe the behavior, we observe the results, the deliverables, the financials, but

What’s feeding the organism? What’s driving what’s ultimately driving the success of this organism? This is a really interesting point. And I just wanna ask if there’s sorry. I was thinking if there like what kind of what kind of nutrition? What kind of variation of what kind of variations of inputs here are we talking about when we think of

what’s feeding the organism? Like how do we discover that? That sounds like a really important but tricky question.

Dr. Angela Jackson (17:37)
I’m smiling when you say that because I I I love this, and this is the first time I’ve talked about it in this way, but ⁓ I’m really appreciating this this this conversation. Really, what we’ve seen is that that most important nutrient is trust. And and I say that because, and I I hesitate to say it, but I also say it because it’s so it’s so hard. But what we’ve seen is when we’ve looked at these practices on the win-win workplace.

John Marshall (17:50)
Mm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (18:02)
What those processes and practices and when companies are implementing the pillars, what they’re doing in in micro moments and in macro moments is they’re building trust. And so even if you’re starting with pillar one, if you’re asking people for their opinion.

Right. And that you are actually saying what you can do about it and what you can’t do about it. And people are feeling that their words matter. That’s building trust. I trust that you listen to me. I trust that if I tell you something, you’re gonna do something or you’re gonna tell me if you can’t do it. And I trust that you’ll tell me why.

And so you’re repeating that over time. So that’s what we’re feeding in. It’s this trust element. The second is, you know, we’re talking about relationships. I trust that you really want to have a flatter. Yes, we have hierarchies, but I trust that you really want to be in relationship with me. I’ll give you an example of a company I wrote about in a book. it’s a global kind of food and production company. What they did was they had these far flung plants ⁓ that were not easily accessible by transportation. And so what they decided was they were gonna get these coach buses similar to what

what

we’ve heard about in Silicon Valley that would take you know six-figure earners to Palo Alto, they did this for hourly wage work work.

And they said, you know, we want to make sure people can get to these plants. What happened after six months is they saw not only were the hourly wage workers using them, but so were the six-figure people. Because as you know and I know, you know, if you’ve got a two-person household, gas prices are through the roof. Like if we can save a dollar on transportation, we’re gonna do it. What happened from that is you had people who were earning six figures, those you know, w hourly wage, they were coming together in community and getting to know each other.

And it was all through actually this benefit, right? Reimagining what a benefit looks like. And so when companies are telling me about, you know, free food or you know, beer pungs and all of that, I’m like, what do people need today?

John Marshall (19:37)
Mm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (19:50)
when we look at 2026 and 2027. You know, I know most people are looking at gas prices. People are thinking about food prices, right? They’re thinking about the cost of college. And so what we saw in these companies is that through listening, they understood what mattered most to their employees. So they could put people in relationship, they could reimagine benefits so people could actually use them. You know, when I go in the companies and they say to me, I say, you know, what’s your usage on your benefits? And I’ll say, 7% or 8%. So so you’re okay with 92% of people

not using insert benefit. Like that’s the model. As few as people as possible use it, but you like to just say that you have it. Well like the gig is up. People are not using it and they don’t think it’s valuable. So that’s not going to be something that retains someone. You know, you want to get a benefit that people actually use because that’s what we’re seeing is sticky. And you know, I was another case study we wrote about in the book was just, you know, childcare. You know

John Marshall (20:36)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (20:47)
Access to child care is a real barrier for many women. And again, we saw that during the pandemic. And you know, I wrote a case study about a company that started an on-care child care center. You know, those who could pay more paid more. Those who couldn’t, it was a sliding scale, they paid less. but when we went in and talked to the women and they talked about one of the reasons why they stayed, and during the pandemic, they retained about 94% of their female executives and men, right? Because men want to see their children too. it’s these tangible things. And the CEO said this pays for itself.

Yeah.

John Marshall (21:17)
Mm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (21:17)
And when you talk to individual workers, they’d say nothing beats being able to go downstairs and just for five minutes to peek up my child and know that they’re okay. And so I’m sure your listeners are like nodding in this moment because like these are live realities. Like, yes, we’re here to do a job, but gosh, my most important job is I’m a parent. You know, I’m a wife and a partner, which enables me to come and be the best person at work. And so I just think more companies who are being open to these things. And again, when we talk about feeding the organism, it’s saying this is not a one.

time thing that you do. So if we think about reimagining benefits, if anyone is listening on manager, you should check in with your people.

You know, when we’re watching these headlines, they’re impacting people real time. So we might need to adjust our benefits in 2026. And you know, in 2027, there might be something else, and we might need to adjust again. But that’s what I mean about being something dynamic. We don’t do things just because we’ve always done them. ⁓ we’ve you know, we’re contributing a certain amount to 401k because that’s just it. Ask your people: do they need a student loan repayment? Do people need down payments so they can get their first homes? These are the types of things that we saw that again, when

When say they paid for them, people stayed longer, they referred other people, you know, they had more they had the more grow your own talent, so they were paying less for talent over time. And so these were the rich things that came from when you’re feeding the organism, you’re actually learning how to serve your people better in service of the business doing better.

John Marshall (22:34)
Mm.

Wow, it’s one of those moments where I’m I’m really seeing this whole as above so below concept. The macro mirrors the micro because

it comes down to individuals emotional intelligence or the way that they build trust individually in relationship. You would say it’s the same process. You empathize, you understand, you understand the other person’s what they’re feeling, what’s happening with them, but

When you take it a step further and you understand the needs behind that feeling and do something about it, the needs, well that moves from empathy to compassion, right? And what I’m hearing is that the same nutrient to build trust on the micro level, an individual and investing in relationships.

is really the same thing at the organization level. So you’re really feeding the organization with the same feeding the organism with the same type of nutrient at a different scale. So at the organization scale, you’re listening, you’re understanding the needs, and you’re meeting the need, right? And being transparent, purposefully transparent through the process. Because all there are will always be things we can

can’t share with the employee base. And right and there’s where you can purposely and also share when you can’t share. Right? So there’s this kind of level of transparency and building trust. And then this same process that helps us build relationships at the micro level is helping the organism that is the organization

really become the win win workplace over time.

Dr. Angela Jackson (24:29)
And that that

really is the gold. You know, in the book, I I I do take some time talking about the zero-sum workplace, and I’m gonna date myself. So I’m I’m Gen X. You know, when I think about when I went to work and my frame, right, when I got into that car accident was you give 150%. Whatever’s going on at home, you don’t worry about it. If you don’t see your family, that’s fine too, because you know you’re gonna work and you’re gonna retire at 60 and you know magic’s gonna happen. Right. What we’ve got now in this five generation workplace is like we got a new generation of workers who have not bought into that. They’ve

John Marshall (24:44)
Is this?

Dr. Angela Jackson (24:59)
watch

their parents like me burn out, right? They watch their parents get laid off, be let down, right? They watch companies, you know, evaporate and 401ks and pensions go away. And so they have another calculus. And so a lot of people will talk about the generational differences and what’s right with this generation and what’s wrong. I don’t spend my time there because the fact remains that they’re going to be the majority of the workplace. And that’s just full stop. And so

John Marshall (25:12)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (25:26)
It and I had a CEO of Eversource, his name is Joe Nolan, I’ll quote him on this. He said, you know, when people start complaining to him about generations, he was like, I can’t claim to understand them, he said in substance. He’s like, but like, I know they’re my workforce, so it’s my job to get them. And he was like, in full stop. And what we’re seeing is when I talk to leaders like him, they’re moving more productively in this new world of work.

they’re willing to bend on their old frames and say, This might not be as relevant today. ⁓

John Marshall (25:56)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (25:57)
For the context we’re in, for the people that I’m leading, for the business that I want to be. And so as any leader who’s sitting there, you know, whether they’re an individual thinking about their own role, or even if they’re a a team leader, just really surfacing what are those old frames that you might be working for that may have served you. They may have gotten you to where you are, but may not serve you in this next chapter in a time where there’s so much uncertainty and unknown. And so that whole social fabric of work where someone

would say in exchange for working hard, you’d say you can stay here for 30 years. Well, no, that bargain’s not out there anymore, right? That deal is no longer there. No one’s believing in that deal. And even if it was there, I don’t know if people want to stay that long. So if that was the value proposition, what’s our value proposition today?

John Marshall (26:36)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (26:45)
And I think as leaders of you know, individual leaders of teams, we should be asking that. As organizations, we should be asking that. And I think as individual workers, we should be asking what’s the value proposition that this company is giving to me, right? So I can decide where I want to spend my one precious life.

John Marshall (27:48)
Beautiful. so when I think of the organizations that that we work with today, the leaders that that we work with, I I think there are some true culture champions, like some true people that would live into the framework and want to explore all of those things. Yet

I know personally a lot of them that face the headwinds of driving just even one small what’s the word I’m looking for? Not technical change, but adaptive change, right? Where it takes where it takes the the change for the organization to adapt to a new way of work, a new process, right? New questions that we’re gonna ask, new employee benefit systems.

Right, that they just face this headwind of driving adaptive change. So what do you say to the culture champion that is reading this work, that loves this work, that wants to that wants to start

somewhere within an organization that it might not be bought at the highest level of leadership yet, they want to take the first step. Maybe it’s within their own team. Maybe it’s within a suggestion that they make. I don’t know. I’ll I’ll I’ll leave that to you.

Dr. Angela Jackson (28:58)
Well.

Yeah,

there’s two things I think about and I think this is a really important one in this moment. And it’s it’s really one of the questions I get a lot asked a lot. You know, what do you do as an individual? How do you affect change? The one is if you’re a culture carrier, the biggest thing I if you take away one thing from this book beyond the nine pillars, it’s what you measure matters. And so this book, everything that we talk about, it’s really a data approach and data informed. Because the data gives us some of the answers that we want. It illuminates even

John Marshall (29:19)
Mm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (29:29)
Even if you have an old frame of thinking, the data could tell you something different. So for each of the pillars, one thing that we ask people to do is like one is understand what your current state is and what’s the data that you have to prove it. And so when we talk about retention numbers, we have those handy. You know, I was working with a large bottling company, and one thing that we looked at, they knew they had sort of a retention problem, but they didn’t know how painful it was. What we looked at is we disaggregated all the retention except voluntary retention.

reason why we looked at voluntary retention, we’re like, these are people that you’ve hired because otherwise you’d love to keep, you thought that they were great and now they’ve left. They’ve walked out the door. So if we were to isolate that number of all the great people that we’re losing, how much are we losing as a company? Take that number. And I remember the person that we’re working with, she took that to the C-suite and said, this is what’s walking out of the door in terms of voluntary turnover each year for this department. I think that there’s a problem.

That opened the conversation. So if you are a culture carrier, actually try to get really smart on what the problem is and see what data that you can collect that would validate that, either from your your own individual role, from your team, you might have to find a co-conspirator. So start that’s your entry point to go in with the problem of practice. And then what you want to introduce, you know, depending on the pillar that you’d want to track, what we have in each chapter is the stats on how implementing that pillar has tangibly improved.

the business. So if they’re looking through that, you know, with your C-suite or your CFO, is it earnings? Is it retention? Is it cost savings? Pick your flavor of the number and make sure that you’re speaking their language and what’s important to them. And then I’d say the third piece is

Try piloting. You know, a lot of times when we see something that’s a massive problem, it might be a company-wide problem, it might just be a department. Is there something you can do in your circle of influence that could show people what a better way looks like? And I’ll give you an example of this. You know, we had one manager that was in a real toxic environment. but this particular manager, you know, we coached them, they said, we said, what can you do with your team? How can your team be an outlier? And because the team was an outlier, they could take that

data and say, this is what we’ve been able to do with our team and we think our results are X because of this. Frame it with what the outcome could be. And then I think the last thing, and we have to be honest here.

Every company is not gonna be for every person. And I want you to look at the data too, because if you’re the culture carrier, if you’re coming in with your data, if you’re coming in with some answers and people are not receptive to it, that might be your indicator that it’s time to see where you take your genius and talent elsewhere. And again, that is not easy. We all have we all have bills, etc. But I have to tell the culture carriers on the on the on the line who are listening,

You all are a valuable resource. You all, when we look at the transformation that’s happening in workplaces today around AI and what people want, 70% of it will be around people practices. And the people who will be leading that will be the culture carriers of an organization. These are things you do because it’s innately you, not the people ask you to do. And so you’re a valuable resource. And if you have an analysis of how you’re going to do that, that will make you a valuable candidate on the job market today.

John Marshall (32:46)
Extremely well said and filled with a lot of hope. I think there’s there’s always with for folks that are thinking about this that are thinking about, well, what people need, right? For folks that are thinking about, you know, what do we need as as human beings where we are winning at work and winning at home, right? Where we can find balance.

And I’m I always hesitate to say the word balance just ’cause it’s I believe it’s a state that doesn’t really exist. I think we’re always kinda moving around that equilibrium. But I would say less elasticity, if you will, around that to be able to

Dr. Angela Jackson (33:23)
Right.

John Marshall (33:26)
merge who you are at home with work as well. And that’s a lot of the work that we do with humescence as well is we always say at the beginning of every workshop and training that, you know, what you learn today, the the skills that you’ll be practicing today will apply at the conference table and the dining table.

Dr. Angela Jackson (33:47)
‘Cause it’s just one life, right, John? Like, we spend two thirds of our life at work and a lot of people, you know, and and when I we we wrote this chapter on intersexual inclusion, this this thing jumped out at me, I’ll tell your listeners, you know, they talked about men and they talked about white men and a lot of people are saying how, you know, the world is built for or against

John Marshall (33:51)
This is

Dr. Angela Jackson (34:04)
What it said was sixty three percent of white men were covering some aspect of their identity. And so when people try to divide people, I say, No, this is actually the the workplace is not working for a lot of us. And so what we’re asking for

It’s not asking too much, right? You’re saying what do I need so I can actually bring my full self and be productive on behalf. And there was one tech company, there’s this programmer who’s pretty well known and he’s always trying to get poached. But one thing he said he stayed with a company because on third on Fridays he loved to leave early to go play his guitar. That’s just his thing. He’s you know played since he was a kid. And he remembers saying, he goes, you know, they let they allowed me to do that and they trusted me enough to do that. And it’s things like that why I

Stay because I’m allowed to be fully me. They know I’m gonna get the work done, but that didn’t cost the company anything. That was just giving someone space to actually say what was important to them, and it gave the manager of the company an opportunity to honor it. And that and that’s what we’re talking about. It’s it’s it’s maybe it’s not balanced, but maybe it’s this kind of symbiotic relationship, right? Like it’s not so drastic when I leave home. Now I’m work mode versus I’m home mode. Like, how do we how does that like transition

John Marshall (35:12)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (35:16)
a bit easier

John Marshall (35:19)
Exactly. The

the flow into it and out of it. And so I feel like we’ve we’ve talked a lot about listening, a lot about hearing people and meeting those needs and the companies that are doing that and how they’re becoming more autonomous and entrepreneurial and the structures against that. But there’s piece of the book I feel like we haven’t quite hit yet. And that’s the we talked a little bit about activating frontline leaders, but I’m curious how that

That overlaps with hiring stars versus prioritizing credentials.

Dr. Angela Jackson (35:56)
I think one thing I taught talk about in the book is a lot of us have become accidental managers. And in the book I talk about that, you know, I was twenty-three the first time I was promoted into management. And you know, I just thought I knew it all. You know, and I remember I had two women that reported to me who were older than me, and one in particular, you know, I just couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t get with the program. You I’d come in early, I’d stay late, you know, she’d come in maybe on time, she was leaving a little early, and I’m like, we have so much work to do. Why isn’t she getting it? And I remember I had so many learning

Conversations and at the time my learning conversation was just me telling her what I wanted and me listening to like whether she’s gonna do it or not. And finally she got fed up with me and she goes, Angela, I’m going through a divorce, and you know, my daughter Julia is at home and I need to be there at the bus stop to pick her up. Daughter was seven. And I remember in that moment I felt completely like a heel because I didn’t know she was going through anything. You know, of course she needs to be home to pick up her daughter. but but I say that to say I was promoted into management because I was a great individual contributor.

And most people are. No one ever trained me to how to be a people manager

And what is a good people manager? We usually manage how we were managed, for good or for bad. And so what we saw were companies who actually put a bit more emphasis on identifying who are the people who should manage people. We saw with companies also creating pathways where if people wanted to be an individual contributor, that they could do that and still advance in the organization and not necessarily take on those responsibilities. And then three, they would again support these managers ongoing.

A marked difference in how businesses were performing. In the book, I talk about a global financial firm. I had to anonymize, but people can use their imagination. They saw how their managers were seeing, they did a study of bank branches, and they could tell by the number of assets they had under management at each each bank branch, they could map that back to how the employees in the branch felt about their manager.

And as people felt better and were more invested in and the managers were better trained, we saw the assets under management as a percentage go up. So when I talk about a tangible impact on the business, it was was critical. And now they’re training every manager, whether they are promoted or they come in from outside, what does it mean to be a manager and insert firm, right? Because they know that there’s that dotted line to the business. And your listeners are probably saying, that makes sense. But of course, but unless you’re measuring these things.

John Marshall (38:14)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (38:21)
and looking at what are the levers that we can pull, you don’t know.

It might just seem that there’s one branch that’s underperforming. Let’s see why. Maybe go out and do more sales, open more accounts. Could it be as small as, you know, having a manager that’s a better coach for people and a manager where people want to come in and support and work for? And that’s what we saw. And and that goes hand in hand with your question about credentials. When you have a better manager that’s a people manager that understands their job is to to coach, they look for potential.

And a lot of times when we’re hiring for credentials, and you know, I know I’m at Harvard University, we’re looking that at that credential as a proxy for what someone can do. Versus seeing what has that person’s lived experience been? Are they coachable? Could we promote them into a role and grow them into something? And so we saw that managers were more apt to look outside of an Ivy League degree or a four-year degree when they believed as a manager that they are good at coaching employees, because then

They could look for potential in different ways. And for me, that’s exciting because when you looked at the data, again, mapping back to the numbers, if instead of especially high growth companies, instead of trying to compete for the same Stanford grad, what if you could look at the Samantha, you know, Santa Monica Community College grad that can do the job and potential? You’re gonna one pay them less, but two, we’re seeing that they’re more loyal, that they stay longer. They want to live in the community, so they’re not apt to maybe moving across the country and going to New York because.

They actually like being there. And so there’s so many benefits from these strategies that again, if you’re if you’re noting and tracking, you actually see these benefits on the bottom line.

John Marshall (40:01)
Wow. Okay. So I’m seeing how they how they connect yet are still individual pillars, right? Because

Dr. Angela Jackson (40:09)
And they have to be individual because

people enter. When they when they open this book, I said, read, you know, pillar one and then dip in where you think you see an opportunity or a problem of practice around your talent. Are you thinking about hiring differently? Like how do you find people? You know, are you thinking about retention? Let’s look at our benefits, let’s look at our relationships. And so you go into that pillar and look at which one is like most resonant with you with the problem or opportunity your business is facing today.

John Marshall (40:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I agree. And that was that was exactly what I did. And I I focused in on the prioritizing credentials and hiring stars. I focused in on the entrepreneurial structures, what those would be. And just another thing to highlight to listeners that I really appreciated, that you’ve been hearing Dr. Jackson say right now is she always has an example, right?

There’s always a case study that brings the pillar to life for you. So it’s one thing that I really appreciated about the book, and I think you will too. So you can see that this isn’t just theory. It’s not just a presentation of the results from the research, but she brings it to life really well in a lot of these examples that you’re hearing right now that you’ll be able to go a little bit deeper into in the book.

So since we do a lot of leadership training and workshops and I have a lot of folks that come to Humessence and say, Well, we need a we need a management training program, right? We need to train this specific group of managers on communication skills. We need we need our managers to be able to deliver feedback better. Right. And

A lot of the time it’s not the frontline managers, right? The organizations are trying to get the most bang for their buck and usually in mid level managers to sometimes senior senior director level managers will get that kind of training. But

What I’m hearing is that they might actually be missing something in not providing that training actually for the frontline managers. So I guess when it comes to activating frontline managers versus the investment you’re putting into mid level, more senior level managers, what kind of I’m trying to think of how to ask this question. I guess what do

Delta in the results exist from that differentiation. I guess if you’re investing more in mid-level versus investing in the front line, did you see I guess maybe you chose that as the pillar because that was a step change investing in there? But I’ll hand that over to you to clarify the how I’m muddying the waters right now.

Dr. Angela Jackson (42:48)
no, you’re not muddying it

at all. I mean, what we saw in our research is that most companies are spending 80% plus of their professional development dollars on their highest wage earners, period. So that’s you know, at the top. You know, I think about, you know, I was at, you know, Nokia, they, you know, sent me to Nsiad, you know, business school, for example, right? ⁓ what we’re seeing is that most people, you think frontline employees, hourly workers, frontline managers, they’re mostly getting compliance training. And so

John Marshall (42:59)
Certainly.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (43:16)
That’s the missed opportunity that is that they’re not getting invested in at all. It’s almost a checkbox once a year. And so what we saw with these companies is that it wasn’t about

investing more or less, it was the fact that they were actually making investments in training people. If you were to ask most people who are promoted to manager, you know, have you were you trained to do this before you were promoted? Most people were like, no. Were you trying, you know, three months after, did you receive a training? No. You know, I got a little bit of training when it was time performance review, and now I’m supposed to re review this person and give them feedback according to this, you know, document. Okay, great. Didn’t do a great job on that either. People are upset. And so what I’d say is a wholesale is

John Marshall (43:34)
Mm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (43:57)
like there’s not any investments less than twenty percent and it’s mostly compliance. And so for any company or leader just to take a step back and just look at their own numbers.

You know, look at your professional development training dollars, see who’s being trained and where where do the categories fall. And even a incremental change in that and saying, okay, if it’s 80%, what if we were to move that just by 10% and do some intentional management culture training? What would that look like? And then measure the difference because that will tell you, should you double down or try something different? And I love what you said about management training. People always ask me, Well, what’s the right one? what we pull together.

you know, and it’s a new offering that we have. We call it the Win-Win Collective is everyone then you hear these case studies in this book, they’re real people. So if you were to email me John and say connect me with the financial services firm, I could connect you with the global head of talent. And I think what’s beautiful about that is these case studies are CEOs, they’re CHROs, they’re chief learning officers, other business unit leaders, and we’ve grown the community since then. They’re willing to share what they’ve learned. And so I think it’s really important for someone who’s thinking about these things to

to find a peer, right? To think about what’s the main which which program did you choose and why and what did it do for you, right? And what we try to do is aggregate the best people who we think are culture carriers themselves, bring them in community. So not only are we writing about them in this book, but it’s actually a living, breathing community that we can connect people into.

John Marshall (45:11)
Mm.

Hmm. Beautiful. Beautiful. And well I guess out of that community, what’s what’s emerged? What’s the best what’s the best leadership training?

Dr. Angela Jackson (45:37)
So, well, there’s a couple things. So, one

is what really emerged from this book is, and we had our second annual one this year, we have the Win-Win Workplace Summit. ⁓ we do that every May, and that’s bringing a lot of these case studies to life. You know, right now we’re up to, you know, this book was based on 1200 companies. We’re up to 1700 companies. And so what we try to do, if people go to, you know, we’ll share this link, win-win workplace summit dot org. They will see the speakers, they will see the community there. So our one piece is one bringing the people together, sharing this academic.

Research, but then hearing from real practitioners about what worked, what didn’t work, what did you need to change? The other piece that we do is we bring in a select number of technologists, innovators, management, training providers, but anyone that we bring in has to be nominated from the community. And so that means someone in the community has actually used them and has ROI data behind it. Because everyone has a new shiny object, right? And I think we started this conversation about trust. What we are talking about is

John Marshall (46:24)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angela Jackson (46:36)
building trust within the workplace, but also we want to build trust within this community, right? That we can together solve some of these entrenched problems that we’re seeing in the workplace.

John Marshall (46:46)
Beautiful. Well, this has been really, really eye-opening and such a great conversation. I mean, there’s so many different rabbit holes we could go into with each of these pillars. And also, listeners, we will be so what

Dr. Jackson mesh mentioned about the Win Win Collective, the Win Win Summit. We will be placing links for all of those in the show notes as well, as well as the link to purchase the Win-Win workplace. So if this piqued your interest and you feel like there’s something that you can gain from going deeper into these nine pillars, I highly recommend that you grab this book and follow what she said about how to champion this within even your team, your organization.

Organization. So I guess that’s probably the one thing I want to ask you again to leave listeners with. So to the leader listening, maybe they’re the frontline manager that hasn’t received training, but

is interested in learning more from their team, in instilling some of these pillars into the way that they’re running their business, the way that they’re running their department. what do you have to say to that person to give them hope to drive this forward in their organization?

Dr. Angela Jackson (48:04)
The biggest thing is

When you’re thinking about these nine pillars, it’s really not about money, it’s about time. And I love that this podcast is called A Present Professional. ⁓ because that’s what we are have a shortage of of time today. And so if you’re an individual, if you have a team, if you have a direct report, use that time that you check in. And when you check in with that person, say, How are you doing? And they’re gonna be like, I’m fine. Say, How are you really? And they’re gonna beyond work, just ask them and they’re definitely gonna give you a couple things, and maybe the first time you ask, it might

and be like, I I’m I really am fine, but keep asking. By that third or fourth week, I promise you they’ll start giving you information. And what I want you to do is just think about one to three data points that you could track for your direct reports to know if they’re doing okay and they’re fine. And start tracking that over time. What you will see are the benefits of one is learning more about them.

Two, instead of trying to read people’s minds, you’ll have more data so that you can make decisions. You can better serve them, you can better advocate for them. ⁓ you’ll just have better data to be a better manager. And I think it’s just really important to just think about again, what are those two to three data points that you could say, I have my finger on the pulse of what’s happening with my direct report, with my team and my organization, and track that over time to see what patterns are emerging for you. we have the data now, you know, you’ve got, you know, I look at mine, I track mine on notes.

There’s other platforms that you can use. You’ve got Generative AI that you can take the insights on your list over 10 weeks and you can see what patterns are emerging. But really use these things and this time now to commit to yourself to say, I’m gonna be more present with my team, you know, with this company, with this boss. And again, track the data to see what outcomes that you have and where there might be an intervention point for you that might align with one of these win win workplace pillars because that listening will allume.

Illuminate for you either an opportunity or a challenge that you can actually try one of these pillars on to see if it could have a marked difference in your business.

John Marshall (50:03)
I I just wan I wanna acknowledge you for one very specific thing. you make data so human.

The fact that we can take every concept that we just talked about and always come back to the data points that are going to unearth patterns where people can actually make change, make recommendations, sell their programs, sell change up line. I think this is a just a real, unique differentiator in you and

probably in your organization and the work that you’re doing. And when we think about the realities of the a capitalistic culture, you have to go there. You have to go there. So I just want to thank you for making the data human.

Dr. Angela Jackson (50:47)
Well, thank you for giving me this platform. You know, one thing I I told you when we first met, you know, as an academic, you you write this book. And for me, I wanted to take this book out of the library and into the street. And by that is being in community with practitioners, people who are doing the work to tell me what I got right, what they had to edit. And so I think the invitation to anyone’s listening, I’d love to link in with you if you want more information. If you wanted to meet someone from one of these case studies, I’m always happy to make a recommendation from there. And if anyone puts in, if they

link in with me and they say present professional podcast, the first five people to do that, I want to send them a book. because we want to get this in the hands of more people who can actually use it. You know, no one’s getting rich from writing a book, at least not me. Maybe it’s Mel Robbins or someone else. But like for me, you know, my goal is to actually have people use this to impact change. So again, thank you for this conversation.

John Marshall (51:23)
Yes.

Yeah.

What it’s all about. Thank you so much for being here. And listeners, thank you so much again for tuning in to another episode of The Present Professional. You can find all of the links to everything that we talked about in the show notes. And again, any suggestions you have for the show, we’ll hear you out. And

Please rate us and review us wherever you’re listening. It really makes a difference in helping people find the words that were spoken today and those that’ll be spoken in the future. So thank you so much. Until next time.