You’ve spent your career at BCG. What has kept the work meaningful for you over that time?
Constant ability to change it up, reinvent myself. I literally have had six to eight completely different careers at BCG. I love the ability to innovate, create, build, and scale in each of those. Whether it was pharmaceutical sales effectiveness, BCG’s internal working smart and sustainably PTO program (now called teaming), leadership enablement (and our coaching offer), the future of work, or employee centricity, I always felt support in pursuing interesting and high-impact and, most importantly, fun ideas and offerings.
Leadership is 1,000% about enabling, inspiring, mentoring, motivating, developing, energizing the people around you. Making them into rock stars and basking in their glory."
Looking back, how has your understanding of leadership evolved since your early consulting years?
Leadership is 1,000% about enabling, inspiring, mentoring, motivating, developing, energizing the people around you. Making them into rock stars and basking in their glory. In fact, I am writing a book coming out in late October that’s all about the little things leaders must do—every day—to get the most out of their people. It will be called Make Work Work: The Five Daily Practices of the Employee-Centric Leader. Stay tuned!!
Where do you feel your external experience as CEO of The Better Work Institute has had the biggest impact since returning?
Honestly, that venture didn’t work out. But in that failure, I learned a ton about myself and what is important to me in a work environment. I also grew a deeper appreciation for what true “teamers” all BCGers are. The venture also helped me develop my passion for driving changes to how people work, which is what I have been doing at BCG since – so out of failure came tremendous growth.
The future of work is of course about technology, but MORE importantly, it is about how organizations need to stop thinking of employees as a cost to be managed, input, cog in the machine, foe to negotiate with, etc. and start thinking of employees as stakeholders with equal importance as shareholders and customers."
Before “future of work” became a buzzword, you were already deep in this space. What do you think leaders missed back then?
The importance of employee centricity. Or what I have been calling Radical Employee Centricity. And leaders are still missing it. The future of work is of course about technology, but MORE importantly, it is about how organizations need to stop thinking of employees as a cost to be managed, input, cog in the machine, foe to negotiate with, etc. and start thinking of employees as stakeholders with equal importance as shareholders and customers. That means a complete change of perspective, investments, resources, and ways of doing the work itself. Just like the tech companies skyrocketed in value by embracing customer obsession in the 2000s, so too the organizations who embrace employee-centricity will skyrocket in value creation today.
Turn all your customer discovery, analytics, ideation, and innovation capacity onto employees. Employees are the customer and work is the product."
What advice would you give to leaders who genuinely want to redesign work but don’t know where to start?
Call me! . . . Just kidding. Start by deeply understanding what your employees truly need—not what they say they need with primitive, infrequent surveys, but rather turn all your customer discovery, analytics, ideation, and innovation capacity onto employees. Employees are the customer and work is the product.
And finally, what leadership belief have you personally had to rethink over time?
It is the work product that matters the most.
