Matt Wallaert: Behavioral Science isn’t just for customers — it’s for redesigning culture too. A smarter way to build talent and inspire people's growth.

Why do we invest millions changing customer behavior but ignore how people behave inside companies?

In this thought-provoking conversation, behavioral scientist and author Matt Wallaert returns to Change Wired to explore the next evolution of behavioral science: internal change.

We discuss why most organizations treat employee behavior as fixed or random — and what it takes to build systems where people grow continuously, without relying on luck, politics, or the next big program.

🔍 In this episode:

• The economic bias behind why companies fund customer change but not employee change.
• How to make behavioral science practical inside organizations — linking people systems to business outcomes.
• 3 pillars of employee motivation.
• The problem with measuring value of employees through opportunity instead of capability.
• The Boy Scouts model of development: advancing by demonstrated skills, not politics.
• The trap of “participation-trophy culture” — and how to make growth easier without lowering standards.
• How leaders can start — by documenting their own growth goals first.
• The future of meaningful work: designing systems where people stay not because they have to, but because they can grow.

💡 Key Takeaways:

• Growth is not a perk — it’s a human need and business driver.
• People don’t resist growth and change — they resist misaligned systems that make it hard.
• Making it easier ≠ lowering the bar; it means adding clarity and support.
• The simplest place to start culture change? Write down where you’re going and how you’ll get there.
• Companies that measure capability, not just output, unlock deeper innovation and resilience.

🎯 Why you should listen:

If you’re leading transformation, culture change, or talent growth strategy — this episode gives you a blueprint for building systems that make growth inevitable.
Matt offers practical, evidence-based steps any leader can apply, starting tomorrow.  

👉 Listen to the full episode to learn how to turn growth into your company’s competitive advantage — one behavior at a time.  

👤 Matt Wallaert – Short Bio

Matt Wallaert is an applied behavioral scientist, author, and public speaker known among other things for pioneering how behavioral science can drive organizational change.
He currently serves as a Chief Experience Officer at Oceans, leading initiatives that combine behavioral insights with systems design to help companies improve performance, motivation, and growth.

Previously, Matt was Microsoft’s Director of Behavioral Science, the Chief Behavioral Officer at Clover Health, and the author of Start at the End: How to Build Products That Create Change.
He has advised Fortune 500 companies, governments, and startups on building behaviorally informed systems that make doing the right thing the easy thing.

📚 Learn more and connect:

• 🌐 mattwallaert.com
•  💼 LinkedIn: Matt Wallaert
•  📚  Book: Start at the End  

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Changewired Podcast. Guys, imagine your company spends millions designing customer journeys, products, services, testing, nudging, optimizing. Yet inside your own walls, on your team, your people systems run mostly on autopilot or chance. Why do we obsess over shaping customer behavior so much, but leave employee behavior almost to chance? The very behavior that shapes everything else, including customer behavior and how successful the products and services get. Welcome to Changewired Podcast. I'm your host, Angela Sharina, your coach 360, your partner in change, transformation, and behavioral change that uh sticks at lust and creates positive difference. Today is a special episode. We are having again Matt Wallard, one of the world's leading voices in applied behavioral science, and I would argue one of the most active and passionate voices. Matt is a head of customer experience at oceans. Oceans is on a mission to streamline your company's operations by connecting you with experienced executive assistants worldwide worldwide and beyond. Start at the end, how to build products that create change. Matt is also a TED speaker and advisor to global organizations who want to use science to design better human assistance. This is, as I mentioned, Matt's second time, second round on change wired. In our first conversation, we explored what it really takes to apply behavioral science in the real world. The myth, the models, and the mindsets required to make evidence-based change stick and last. In this episode, we go deeper on the cultural side of things. Matt and I talk about the forgotten frontier of behavioral science, internal change, how and why organizations can design systems where people don't just perform but grow, and because of that deliver the best possible results for the company. You'll hear Matt's surprisingly simple yet profound framework, which talks about why growth, meaning, and money form three pillars of motivation at work, and why most companies only focus on one and where it gets them. How to decouple growth from unevenly distributed opportunities. So advancements at work no longer depend on politics or lack. The single easiest tool to start changing your company's culture tomorrow, and it's not software or AI. And why making it easier to grow does not mean lowering standards. It means redesigning the systems to support people's potential. My challenge is how we think about development fairness and leadership accountability at work. And he does it with clarity and humility of someone who's actually building the system the systems he talks about. So if you are a leader, a founder, or a culture builder, or some sort of change agent who wants your people to grow or people to grow period faster than AI and other technological tools, this episode will change how you see things, how you think about things, and yeah, hopefully what you do with this knowledge. So let's dive in. Out of the darkness, so to speak. And it's funny, you know, you're flying from Siberia to South Africa and you're dressing up, not the other way around.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

You know, I think people's stereotypical notion of places is often wrong. I'm from Oregon in the US, which everyone's stereotypical uh association is rain, and they're right, it's raining. So I do have that, you know, I am fulfilling all the stereotypes.

Community Over Conferences

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah, that's well for today, you know, you know, we know. Maybe. Yeah, let's just jump in into our conversation. Maybe let's start like what's new, exciting in the world of behavioral science since we last spoke a few weeks ago.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

In the last week, what is new exciting in the world of behavioral science since a week ago? I don't know that anything is new and exciting in the world of behavioral science. I did, I was giving a talk in Chicago on behavioral science at a conference. And so there are a couple of big cities in the United States where you see a lot of behavioral scientists for a variety of New York, because of business, Chicago, because of the University of Chicago, where a lot of you know behavioral economics was sort of born and fermented. San Francisco, obviously, because of startup culture, and then San Diego, primarily because of health-related stuff. Okay. There's a lot of health and pharma companies down here. So those are the sort of four biggest hubs where you see a ton, a ton of behavioral science in the United States. So I was in Chicago, and so we did a little get together of applied behavioral scientists. And, you know, there were eight or ten of us, and it was fun. Over the course of a couple hours, we had lots of tacos and margaritas and things. And, you know, I think what you find is the importance of community. Behavioral scientists, by and large, face many of the same challenges in organizations, right? Building a team, helping people understand how they bring value, when to bring them in, when not to bring them in, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think that there is like a generalized need for community in in behavioral science. It's interesting. One of the things that's happened for many years is people sort of complain that in the US, at least, we don't really have a conference or anything for behavioral scientists. There's some gatherings in the UK, but but in the US, we don't really have a conference or anything. And what I've always insisted is I don't know that we actually need a conference. Meaning, I don't think the problem is Angela needs Matt to like stand on stage and give a talk about behavioral science stuff, in that the majority of experienced behavioral scientists kind of know the problems, know the things, like having somebody stand on stage at lecture in though is not helpful. What they do need is community. So we've talked about like, you know, what we really need to do is like have everybody come to San Diego for vacation and all hang out together and have the release of being able to like have margaritas and tacos and talk about how you're feeling about work in between sort of swimming in the ocean and surfing and doing the other things that San Diego avails you. So it's more about relaxing as a community than it is about communicating information. And so I think that's an interesting maybe my my thought for the last week or so since I've, you know, as a senior recently, is how much of what behavioral science needs is not more discussion, it just needs more community.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Okay. Yeah, interesting. Well, I uh if you don't mind, I might share my take on it. I feel that conferences are needed for sort of people from outside of the field. So they get to learn about uh behavioral science as a field, the tools, the practices, you know, case studies and all of that stuff. So they get more comfortable and familiar and understand like where to apply it and what to do with that. So that's what I feel I don't know, missing because yeah, go ahead.

Bringing Behavioral Science to Other Fields

SPEAKER_01 8:29

I think that's an important outcome for sure. The question remains whether that is more easily accomplished via a behavioral science conference where we get other people to come to us or us going out to other conferences and giving the behavioral science talk. So, for example, in Chicago, I'm speaking at a Medicare Advantage experience, you know, sort of more of a CXE type of conference. Okay. Where I was doing the behavioral science talk. I think both are valuable. The thing that I will say about having a behavioral science conference where we bring in outsiders is sometimes that could reinforce behavioral science as sort of a novelty rather than an integrated thing, right? And often the people that you would get to come to that are the B Sci enthusiasts, right? Who also have trouble selling it into their organizations, right? As opposed to, you know, when you go to a CX conference and talk about behavioral science, you are converting CX people to be excited about behavioral science. So there's a difference between the step that is, how do I get people who are not excited about behavioral science to be excited about behavioral science, and then how do I take people who are excited about behavioral science and convin and help them advance? And what I was arguing is mostly for these people who are interested in behavioral science but need to advance, what they actually need is passive exposure to behavioral scientists more than they need a lecture from someone on stage. But you could be right, maybe they need more of this. It's interesting, you know, if you look at the European conferences, nudge stock is much more internal, right? Meaning the majority of the people who go are behavioral scientists and we're sort of behavioral scientists talking to other behavioral scientists. Whereas if you look at something like oh, what's the French one that's put on by I've spoken at it twice and I can't even remember the name. If I don't think about it for a second, I'll audience members, this is because I don't sleep. Leave me alone. If I don't think about it, I'll remember. That is much more like French CEOs coming to learn about behavioral science than it is about behavioral scientists speaking to other behavioral scientists. So there is an element of both, I think. Yeah, you know, sort of internal to the community discussions and you know, bringing people to the thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

But yeah, I feel also like you have the the mix is very important. So people in the field also meet up to just sharing knowledge and case studies, best practices, what they learned, etc. This is also what I'm trying right now to do in South Africa. I already like got in touch with I don't know, 10 or 15 people and we're putting something together in October. But mostly because I believe more people, the more people in the field share what they do, the faster the field grows itself. It's like I remember reading about or listening about COVID and when all the scientists, all the scientific community decided to share the knowledge openly so they could develop the solutions much faster, and the things did move much faster because of that. So I'm thinking like in any field, that is actually true. The more you communicate in the field and the more you allow the flow of ideas, information, and again, yeah, case studies, etc., like the faster just the field develops and brings more value to the outside world.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Yes, but that's I think the part where maybe we have a lot of things to learn from each other within behavioral science, but it's that's not as clear to me. It's not as clear to me. If I think about look, we need both, but if we're forced to compete between if we're forced to compete between behavioral scientists talking to the behavioral scientists and behavioral scientists talking to the outside world, it feels to me like the dominant problem for the outside world is informational and the dominant problem in internally is motivational. It's hard to be behavioral scientists, and I think a lot of people are pretty beat down. I did remember I looked it up while we're over here. BVA. BVA is the Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

So that's what you talked about with Scott Yonk, who is also going to be on our podcast, so listeners. Well, there you go.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

See? Making it happen.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Right after you.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Scott's great.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Yeah, I mean, yeah. I think you're I think you're broadly right. Look, and and I think there's room for the biggest problem to running an applied behavioral science conference is conferences. This is a misapprehension that most people have. Conferences are not funded by your ticket sales, they are mostly funded by your sponsorship. Right. And there's a not a hell of a lot of people that are trying to sell into the behavioral science community, and that in and of itself remains a bit of a problem, right? The very fact that like we're not an attractive audience to market to, like, who's gonna sell to us? Right? SaaS or like some sort of statistics package, right? Like, you know, I don't know who would sponsor a behavioral science conference other than one of the behavioral science agencies who is just trying to drum up more client sort of client work. Good, good, good question. I haven't thought about that fact of organizing conferences, but yeah, just saying this is why we need this is why we like the idea of a San Diego hangout, because then everybody bears their, you know, there's no collective costs. Somebody can come to my house for dinner and drinks, I'll happily bear the cost of that. And then everybody else bears their own cost because it's basically a vacation. You know, there's no conference room that needs booking, there's no whatever, right? That requires, you know, sponsorship to offset ticket prices and paid paid speakers and flying speakers in and all that kind of stuff, right?

The Business Bias Toward Revenue

SPEAKER_00 14:21

So yeah. Well, we'll see, you know, uh maybe we'll run some experiments and figure out what's testing, testing. We're gonna find out what happens. Yes, exactly. So before we jump into the rest of our conversation, just wanted to again remind our listeners to check back our first episode that's gonna be linked in the show notes and to learn more about your work in behavioral science world in general. And the purpose of today's conversation is something that you told me you were passionate about, excited about, or wanting to work more in, which is internal change in the organization's culture, experience, I guess, employee experience, right? And figuring out how to apply all the good stuff that behavioral science has, all the toolkits and strategies to change how our employees or how we all experience our work. So we deliver better work, have better lives, and I don't know, create a lot more positive impact. And I'm also very passionate about that, and that's why I wanted to invite you back in and to talk more about it. And so let's jump in to this conversation. And if you don't mind, I have a Chat GPT question that I loved. Okay. What does the AI want to know from me today? Yes, it's just like such a fun framing of uh the question. Company that I wanted to ask, companies obsess over shaping customer behavior, but neglect their own employees. Why is internal behavior design still the red-hated stepchild of applied behavioral science?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

So it's a reasonable question. I mean, look, there's a dollar and cents version of this, which is, you know, customers are revenue. And so it's very easy to attach behavior change directly to revenue things, right? Hey, if I sell more of this or I subscribe more of this or I prevent this turn, it's all money coming in the door, right? Employees are just a cost, right? And so most of the metrics that you would think about be changing from a behavioral perspective are not valued in the same way that revenue is valued in a company, right? As a great example, when a company reports their Wall Street earnings, they don't typically talk about employee attrition, right? What is our employee attrition rate? Is not something that comes up on an earnings call. Even though it's tremendously important, it's not something we view as a key business metric. And so when we don't look at things like that as key business metrics, they remain underfunded, underlooked at, etc. I also think people view consumers as more easily swayed than employees. Meaning, if Matt is, I just accept that I have a 10% attrition rate, people will always leave. It doesn't really matter what I do. And so there's no point in investing in behavior change. We can take a different example. People are about as inclusive as they're ever gonna be. You know, Angela is much more inclusive than Matt is, and it's tremendously hard to get Matt to be more inclusive than he natively is, right? Whereas you would never say that on the consumer side. You would never say, oh, I give up on Matt as a consumer because it's too hard to change his behavior. Like, I'm gonna change everybody's behavior all the time. I'm gonna get every consumer that I can get, I'm gonna fight for every dollar. And so this notion that like people in their workplace mindsets are a lot more fixed and therefore their behavior cannot change, and therefore it's not worth investing in, causes people to be not as focused on internal behavior change. I also think it depends on the market. So when you in markets where you look at something like COVID, where talent was scarce and you were really competing for talent, you know, then a then internal behavior change became a lot more important because it was all about getting people to accept offers and stay and not a treat and you know work from home in a productive way and whatever. In a market like today, where you know there's a ton of there's not a lot of jobs out there, there's a lot of people looking, right? There's been layoffs, there's been other things, there's a lot of financial uncertainty in the face of AI and and Trump's economic policies. Suddenly the balance shifts, and all of those internal behaviors just aren't as important as they once were. And so I I would say it's about differential promoting pressure. Hey, this is not revenue revenue generating, and then it's differential inhibiting pressure, employees are hard to change, other people are not.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yes, it's you said that it's not revenue generating, which for me is kind of weird to hear, because employees are the ones who do all the work. Like without that work, you don't generate any revenue ever, right?

Modeling Behavior–Money Link

SPEAKER_01 19:29

So it's true, but but often it depends on the style of business how closely you can attribute revenue generation and employees. And what I will say is when you look at internal behavioral science, it's more often applied in the places where those connections are stronger, meaning sales teams. The number one behavioral science, internal behavioral science request I get is how do I make my sellers better sellers? Right? Because I can track the revenue. I can say Matt went from$500 a month to a thousand dollars a month in MRR generated, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can I can sort of attribute those things. How much revenue do we make by making a customer service person not a treat? Who knows? Right? We can sort of hand wave at like, well, it costs this much to hire and retrain somebody to replace them. But it's a little harder. But that's not the same as like, here's the revenue that comes from this customer service person being experienced knowing what they're doing, etc.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah. Don't you think it's a little bit superficial? Like, in a sense, when I deal with any company and their customer service sucks, I'll probably gonna leave that company very soon, especially if I need to deal with that on some regular basis. And so, yeah, maybe the the connection is not that direct, but it will cause like a lot of companies to lose customers.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

I don't what I'll say is you can label it superficial, that doesn't make it less true. Right. Rather than being judgy about whether it's superficial or not, what I would say is the connection between behavior and money is either closer or farther away. And so if you look at the industries, even if we talk about external behavioral science, if you look at the industries where it's most likely most often used, health and finance, they are the places where we have the easiest time directly saying this behavior results in this money. If people get this flu shot, they like save us this money, right? Or like we get bonus payments from the government. You know, if people take loans at these rates, I can very precisely model how much money I make on top of it. And the farther, and the industries where it's least adopted are the ones where it's the farthest away, right? Where it isn't clear how behavior directly leads to revenue, right? You know, in the in the in the most direct way. You can look at things like, and these are these are examples where there are behavioral science in play. If you look at Spotify and Netflix, how much does the Inker movemental movie watching keep me subscribed is a little bit of a tenuous connection. Now, both those two companies have done a very good job of modeling what that connection is. Hey, how often does man have to engage with the service in order for him to stay, right? But it's always back to customer churn. It's always back to me staying on the platform or keeping the thing. And so being able to precisely model behavior money connections pretty much mediates how much people are willing to invest in applied behavioral science. And unfortunately, internally, that's harder math. I'm not saying it's not superficial. Yeah. I'm not disagreeing with the fact that customer service people are important. I'm just saying it's harder to model that and people, and we're cognitive misers, and so it's much easier to say, well, if I sell an incremental whatever.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

When taking these challenges, what makes you interested in the field and in this issue in general, like changing culture internally and applying behavioral science there, and how do you also see or maybe overcoming some of these challenges?

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Well, I think, you know, when you talk about applied behavioral scientists, we're a pretty meaning-oriented bunch, right? Like, you know, we we like doing things that are impactful. And I think that investing in people's work happiness is a huge part of investing in their individual happiness, in how they approach the world, in how they feel in in terms of helping them get to a place that feels good for them. And so my interest is less about because it drives profitability and more in the like it enriches people's lives. And that is the job of applied behavioral science is to enrich people's lives. Now, I happen to work somewhere, and I try and choose places like this fairly deliberately where there is a greater economic incentive to improve work life. So at Oceans, right, we are, you know, we hire Angela and then we help place her in another company, and then we help her grow and feel supported as she works as part of that embedded team, right? That's part of how we do global talent. So that Angela chooses to stay at the company and continues to grow and doesn't leave is a great predictor of clients staying with us, right? Because if Angela leaves, there's a pretty good chance that client leaves because they were bonded to her, and we don't know if we're gonna be able to get her bonded to somebody else. So we want divers that are growing and happy in their placements. So we have a very more than many businesses, have a much easier time having a direct economic incentive to work on things like growth and work, work life and other kinds of pieces. That's very different than other people in our space, right? If you look at the sort of BPO outsourcing space, you know, if they are, if you if they're an outsourced call center, they say, cool, like our average attrition rate is 20%, and we just hire at 20% try hire and train at a 20% replacement rate. We don't really try and stop people from leaving. We just let them leave and then hire new ones because people are cogs to us. There's no reason to invest in, you know, when you're sit when you're commoditizing people, there's no reason to invest in them as individuals to invest in their work life because they can swap them out with new people that you buy from the market, you know, easily. So I think working in companies where the revenue is attached to work life is makes it easier to invest in work life.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Yes, I mean it that makes sense, but also what I'm kind of thinking about is for me internal change also has a lot to do with things like innovation. Let's say you have a culture where predominant you have a fixed mindset, you have a culture where predominantly you have gross mindset, right? One is more pro-innovation, the other is more pro how things are and status quo. And so we do have really great case studies in the wild, so to speak, showing that when you change that aspect, then business can explode. Like in a sense of Microsoft, for example, they reinvented the culture from inside out, and that's how they were able to solve their business problem from not being innovative enough and being behind, not generating revenue, etc. Right. So I guess my question is uh well hey, like uh why do you think more companies don't see it that way?

Meaning, Money, and Growth

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Well, but let's take Microsoft as an example, right? Yes, they they converted to a more innovation-focused culture as they changed CEOs. I lived through this, so you know, I came in with Balmer and left with Satya. So I lived through the CEO transition. Yes, there was a definite change in culture there, but they also were under tremendous market pressure to reverse, right? It's still economically motivated.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

And so companies that are in air quotes doing well are not under pressure to ramp up innovation and are not under pressure to make those culture changes that they that they need to make. I also think this feeds back into my original point, which is sure, you're right, innovation drives revenue, but it's still about revenue, right? At the end of the day, if you can't connect the behavior change to revenue, and innovation has always been a hard one because when you approach it as a behavioral scientist, what do you mean when you say innovative? What is the physical literal behavior that you want people to do? Suggest more ideas, work longer hours? Like what is the behavior of innovation? And that becomes a tremendously hard one to define, right? I want a culture that is more innovative, is one of the toughest statements to then say, okay, well, what does innovation mean to you and to really dig in on. So I I agree with you that that things like applied behavioral science can help with the behaviors of innovation, but I think that requires market pressure and and a tie to revenue.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Right?

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Innovation alone doesn't count. It's only innovation that pays me money.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah, which well based on on data, it says that if the company is more innovative, then it does over the course of long term, brings more revenue, or at least has the chance to stay relevant in the current market environment. Whatever that is.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

But it is, but not in the same way that like I can run a model that says an attrition rate of this, an attrition rate of divers at oceans means and a client attrition rate of this, which means a uh revenue attrition rate of that, right? So I can run a very direct model. You cannot run a model that says, what is even the metric of innovation? One extra innovation point gets me two dollars in additional, like what is the model? Right. And so people are hesitant to how much should I invest in innovation?

SPEAKER_02 29:11

No.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

I don't know. I can't run on a financial model that tells me what the return rate is. And so if you can't model the return rate, how do I know how much to invest? I know exactly how much to invest at oceans. Okay. Like if I can get people to churn, if I can spend, you know,$100 a diver a month and I can reduce the churn rate by, you know, the attrition rate by this, then that means I can reduce the customer churn rate by this, which means I can retain$200 in revenue, which makes$199 bet a pretty good bet, right? It means I make a dollar of profit on$199 bet. You can't do that with innovation, right? You wave your hands around, like, ah, yes, innovation helps. Sure, okay, great. But like, where's the model that tells me that that's you can post hoc say, well, because Microsoft made more money, they must have gotten more innovative, right? But it's very hard to say, like. It's like utilitarianism. You know, that the unit is a util. What is the what is the unit of innovation? An innovative?

SPEAKER_00 30:11

I agree. It's harder to measure it, but it seems that company who do dedicate resources to innovation do well over long term, and companies who don't uh seem not to well, um yeah, I might be biased. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

But maybe again, how do we even model that? Right? How do you say that how do you even metric what companies are spending on innovation? Time is that RD spend? Is that that they have an innovation head in an innovation department? Like, what are we talking about when we talk about the money that somebody spends on innovation? If innovation is very deeply embedded into a culture, it's hard to extract out the innovation portion and say, well, it's 20% of our budget. 20% of our budget is innovation. What does that even mean?

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, I agree that it's harder to manage to measure like anything in culture, to be honest. And that's why probably it's also hard to apply any science to it. But maybe let's switch gears because we could be talking about that for hours. But let's uh talk about something that you are excited about to work on. Like when you talk about internal change, what it is you want to work on in companies, maybe what kind of companies, what problems do you want to solve and go?

Decoupling Growth from Opportunity

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I'm deeply obsessed with these days is it is abundantly clear that meaning is a very powerful promoting pressure. It is very clear that money is a very powerful promoting pressure. What I think newly is emerging is that growth and the feeling of development, the feeling that I am becoming better than I was the day before, is sort of the third leg of that stool. I want to be paid well, I want to be compensated, I want to do work that is impactful in the world, and I want to feel like I'm growing. And so I'm working a lot on the like, well, what causes people to feel growth and what behaviors are predictive of growth? So one of the things, for example, that we're doing at Oceans is moving to a much more detailed rubric of performance to be able to say, Hey, Angela, like here are the places where there's room for growth. Let's work on those specific places, right? Very often companies stop at a leveling system. So they say, Angela, you're a marketing level 59, to take Microsoft Parlance. And you know, if you work really hard, you'll become a marketing level 60, right? What we don't do is say, well, what does it mean to be a 59? And what does it mean to be a 60? And where are the gaps that Angela needs to fill between 59 and 60? So what we're doing at Ocean is just trying to say, you know, in a very specific way, here are 12 characteristics that we are looking for between levels. Here are the frameworks at each level. Let's give you some really detailed feedback about like, hey, Angela, you're great over here where you need to work is right here, right? And those are as objective as we can make them, skill-based, you know, behavior-based. And then we can go after that. I've always been fascinated by the Boy Scouts. So I'm an Eagle Scout. And the way advancement in the Boy Scouts works is you only advanced ranks when you are able to demonstrate all of the behaviors associated with the next rank. So what happens is, let's say you're a tenderfoot and you're gonna become a first class or a second class or whatever. Here's a list of skills. You have to be able to show that you can do CPR, you have to be able to show that you can do a fireman's carry, you have to be able to start a fire with a flint and steel, whatever, right? So what happens is one at a time, you demonstrate those skills over time, right? This den meeting we're gonna work on fire starting. That den meeting, we're gonna work on fireman's carries, right? Then once you've checked all those off, and adultists said, Yep, I watched Angela like light of fire, and I watched Angela do a fireman's carry, and I watched Angela do CPR. Then you come before a council and they randomly select. So they say, Hey, of these 30 skills, Angela, demonstrate this one live, demonstrate that one live, demonstrate this one live, demonstrate that one live. And you either pass or don't pass. And if you don't pass, you know, then you have to wait a month and then you can try again. That's really interesting to me because it's so different from how we typically look at performance at work, right? We don't sort of say, like, here are the capabilities I expect to see at the various levels. And so a lot of performance at work becomes tied to opportunity, right? It's not what Angela is capable of doing, it's whether she's in a position to be able to exercise those capabilities to affect the company's outcomes. But the problem is, Angela doesn't have a say in that, right? You, Angela, don't get to decide the opportunities that are presented to you. You have to angle for those politically, et cetera. That makes it my responsibility. So weirdly, I am accountable and responsible for your advancement. We don't want that. What we want to say is regardless of the opportunities available to you that we have been able to provide, what are you capable of doing that allows us to do this place?

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Does that make sense? Sort of. I'm still wrapping my head around that. And so can you explain uh maybe shorter or side by side, like how they do it in Boy Scouts and how they do it in workplace um, well, typically in in workplace-based things, we say, all right, Angela, it's your year-end review.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Tell me what you accomplished, right? Tell me what value you brought to the business, right? But that is largely a factor of the opportunities that were available to you. Yes. Right? What projects you were assigned to, et cetera. And so the internal behavior that creates is competition for opportunity. So Matt and Angela are gonna duke it out to see who can be on this project that is probably gonna have differential returns. And whoever wins that fight politically and gets assigned to the project is the person who's gonna get a promotion because they got assigned to a really good opportunity. Right? That's very different than saying, hey, it is our job to provide you with opportunities. It is you your job to be capable of executing on those. And so what I'm gonna measure is not your the value you create, but rather your capability for creating value, right? Regardless of what I assign you to. So that way, Matt and Angela don't have to compete with each other to get on the special project. What they need to do is compete with themselves to be ever more capable. And then the business gets realigned around how do I create as many opportunities as possible, right? So if you look at oceans, rather than saying, well, you got with a good client and you got with a less good client, and so you're gonna get a promotion because your client is a better client. Instead, we can say, in an alternative universe, you would have done really well with this good client. You didn't happen to get this more powerful client. That's okay. That's not on you, that's on us. We're the ones who decided where you end. And so it's we shouldn't hold you responsible for that. We should take responsibility for that and instead measure your uh expressed ability. And so looking at like how do we create growth, how do we measure on growth, how do we promote on growth, rather than how do we promote on value creation, which is really our responsibility as a business. It's my job to create opportunities that create value. It's your job to be able to execute on those when I create them.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Yeah, it's some, I mean, it sounds logical and good. I I guess I would ask, but opportunities are always limited. So even if you create capability, like not everyone would be able to exercise this capability.

The Boy Scouts Model for Development

SPEAKER_01 37:45

I think But that's but that's our job as a business. That's not your responsibility as an employee. That's my job as a business, is to create as much opportunity as possible, right? And so I should pay according to your capability and promote according to your capability, not to whether or not I did a good job of creating opportunity, right? So a sales department needs to create as much opportunity as we possibly can. We then need to assign that to divers, but it's not really the divers' fault if they don't get a really great opportunity because that's on us, that's not on them, right? So what we want to do is hold people accountable for the thing that is that they are responsible for, right? Rather than the thing that we are responsible for.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Yes, I love the idea that you're talking about motivation here, like in general people's motivation and the sort of pillars, which are so well aligned with self-determination theory, right? Well, money sort of like max low before all of that, before relatedness mastery, and uh relatedness, mastery, and all what purpose? No, that's what do we have three self-determination theory? I'm blinking here. Purpose, mastery. Do you remember which one? The third one.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

I know that's what Google's for.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

But anyhow, so mastery, yes, it it is uh one of the core motivators for a human being. If we are not growing, we don't feel comfortable, we feel unfulfilled, then we want to switch jobs and we want to, I don't know, do something else, right? And the problem, as you mentioned at the workplace very often, like in order to grow, you have to like go through this politics and have to, I don't know, compete on the things that you don't want to be developing, like uh figuring out who how to talk better to, I don't know, certain people to get those opportunities. So that's one of the aspects of internal culture that you're trying to change, your passion to change and creating, I guess, equal opportunity to exercise this need of people to grow.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Well, or or I want to decouple opportunity from growth, right? If that makes sense. Meaning I can't guarantee a plethora of equal opportunities. In fact, I know inherently there will be some projects that are better than other projects. I know that there'll be some clients that are better than other clients. Whatever business you're in, there will be more growth areas, more shiny, shiny object areas than others. And instead, what we want to say is our understanding of people our understanding of people is not based on the opportunities that are presented to them, but rather their capability. If we had, if in a if in a perfect world we had been able to give them an opportunity, would they have been able to execute on it? And how do we measure that? Yes. Because it's our job to provide those opportunities. And then hopefully we get to a place where if you measure capability in that way, hopefully you can make more, you can create more opportunity because you're confident in your in your workforce's ability to activate on that opportunity. I can take bigger and risk. So you talked earlier about innovation. I can take bigger and riskier bets if I know that a company will, if I know that my company can rise to the occasion, right? And so if I know the true capability level of my employees, I can take bigger and riskier bets because I know I have the employees to fulfill those bets.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Yeah. And what I'm also, you know, hearing about what you're saying is don't try to somewhat fix people or figure out, I don't know, how to make them more engaged, but but fix the system so you create the conditions where people, for example, feel more engaged because they have opportunity to grow and develop, is one of the things. Uh so growth, is there any other aspect of culture that you are passionate about changing?

SPEAKER_01 41:52

And I mean, I'm always passionate out about every part of a culture. It's just what I happen to be obsessed with today is growth. Right. Once you solve, once you get to a place where you solve is the wrong answer. You never do something can always be better. But if you think about it again from this economic priority issue, what you want to do is get someplace to a, you know, you want to get something to a place of diminishing marginal return. Meaning you want to get to someplace where investing more in lowering attrition. So our attrition rate at at Ocean is about 3%. Getting it from three to two, so, and and as in contrast, the average is about 10 to 15. Way below the average. Getting it from three to two is going to be really hard and gonna cost a lot of money and time. So thinking about other business imperatives, you know, becomes more profitable to think about something else at some point. And then you come back to this, right? As you know, as you know, you eliminate other economic opportunities by by improving those. So I think that that one of the things that is inevitable is it can't just be what are you passionate about. It has to be, well, what does your business need from you today? Where is the greatest economic opportunity for change, right? Because the sure way to kill an applied behavioral science unit is to chase only your interests, right? And not the interests of the business. Because you know, your funding is based on your ability to deliver value.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Yeah, it's business world, like uh in in in my view uh as well, like whatever you do in business, it has to be tied to business impact. It has to bring profit revenue, it's like otherwise the business will not survive. And then what's all for? So 100%. It's uh also like looking for those for that leverage, like where does it make sense to do more? And in in terms of people development as well, if the there is, you know, you can try to make something perfect, or you can work on something which will, with a little bit of investment, bring you a lot more return, even though you're not going to be maybe perfect there. So yeah, totally makes sense. And I feel like growth and development of people is one of those big problems that becoming more and more relevant in a sense that you know our tools start to learn faster than than than we can, and AI specifically, and we need people who know how to learn, who know how to grow, have the opportunity to develop themselves and upskill themselves and find the opportunity to go to their next level. It's uh I feel like that is very important, and plus it's one of the core motivators for human beings.

Growth Without Lowering Standards

SPEAKER_01 44:39

Yeah, and I think that last part is really important, right? Often we view this as a promoting pressure problem when in have when in reality it's an inhibiting pressure problem. People that want to be innovative, they're lazy, they're not thoughtful, blah, blah, blah. No, it's mostly that your organization makes it incredibly hard for them to do the thing that they that they see as innovative, impactful, et cetera. And so there's this very basic problem where people have this tendency to sort of assume a promoting pressure problem when in fact it's an inhibiting pressure problem to most of those things. People don't want to grow. No, everybody on earth wants to grow. It is an intrinsic human desire that everybody on earth, unless they're sort of a psychopath or sociopath, like everybody wants to grow. The question is just how easy do you make it for people to do that? And so doing things like, hey, Angela, here are 12 characteristics of growth. Here's some really careful evaluation of which one of those to work on. And by the way, I'm going to help you work on those. That's not about making growth more attractive. I don't have to convince anybody that growth is a thing they should want. I just have to make it slightly easier to do the thing that is growth. Right. Yeah. That's the place where focusing on inhibiting pressures really makes a difference.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

That's uh also that there was what there is a book, The Progress Principle. I don't know if you read this, but I only read fiction, so the answer is no. Teresa Amabali, I think that's her name is. Well, they did the study with uh in uh they made people like in in a few companies to do work-life diaries where they registered their satisfaction with work, trying to figure out what makes people's work-life like the happiest, so to speak. And they did 12,000 to work diaries. They have like a lot of data. And they would what they learned is that progress is what motivates people the most and makes them the happiest. And then it's basically growing, making progress on meaningful work. And what they also learned, they they call them the catalysts in the book, is that the easier, for example, you make the opportunity to make progress for people, the more like this work life satisfaction goes up, right? And it speaks to what you said. It's people already want to make progress. It just sometimes it's so damn hard at the workplace, whether you don't get resources, you don't get help, you that could funding, whatever that is, then people just give up, stay unsatisfied until they leave completely.

Start Simple: Write Growth Goals Down

SPEAKER_01 47:16

And I think one of the things that happens here is managers hear that from people like you and I. And what they do is lower the bar. And that's not what we mean, right? Making it easier to grow is not the same thing as lowering the bar for what growth means. I still have very high expectations. At oceans, we have extraordinarily high expectations of our divers, and we are pushing them very, very hard to get better, right? And we are so, but we're supporting them in that growth. So I think sometimes people hear we got to make it easier, and it becomes the participation trophy of childhood, right? Like, oh, I just need to reward people. I just need to like, you know, give people that constant serotonin boost, right? I just need to like push down, push down, push down the standard. That's not what we mean when Angela, when you and I say make it easier, we don't mean lower the standard. What we mean is provide the support, right? Yeah. Hey, how do you measure growth? Right? Hey, here's a characteristic on which you have an have an opportunity to grow. How do you measure that? How do we support you in doing that? Those make it easier to grow without lowering the standard of growth that I'm holding for you, right? And so I think getting managers to look at the system not as, well, how do I give the illusion of growth? How do I give the like constant, you know, gold star participation trophy gamification version of growth? But instead, in a real and meaningful way, say, hey, here is where the where you have an opportunity to become better, and I'm gonna support you in that betterness. That's where I think there's there's opportunity. No, no, because I think everything every company is unique. I mean, I think the easy and most basic thing is I mean, there's a fun trick that I like to do, which is if you just walked around and asked people what is the one thing you need to improve at, right? How concrete of a behavior can they give you? Right. So one of the things we have at Oceans is a documented growth goal. So if Angela is a MOS 2, right? A marketing operations specialist too. She says, I want to grow vertically, I want to become a MOS three. Horizontally, I want to become a business operations too. So I want to change into a different role. I want to move into a different function entirely. So, like, hey, I want to join the internal team, for example, I want to join the HR team, et cetera. Or I have some external goal. I want to become an entrepreneur, I want to join this particular company, I want to go work for the government, whatever. And everyone has a documented growth goal that they are working on, and then they have a documented growth plan. So they could, so if you ask somebody at Oceans, hey, Angela, like, where are you going and how are you getting there? They'll tell you, I'm going from Moss 2 to Moss 3, and what I need to work on is this, and the plan that I have to do that is this. That's a really easy place to start. Is literally just start asking people, where are you going and how are you getting there from a growth perspective and see what they say, right? And if they don't know, that's a cultural problem. That's a systems problem, right? How are you systemically creating an environment in which people are very explicit about where they're going that's public to other people so that they can provide opportunities for them and work on that? Keep going from there.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

And uh do you have any again advice maybe on how to start structuring that kind of system where everyone knows where how they grow in uh just write it down to the next step?

SPEAKER_01 50:51

I mean, it depends on the size of company that you are. But look, if you are a 10-person startup, you can just make a spreadsheet and say, Am I moving up sideways, in or out? Right? And then here's how I'm planning to get there. Here's what I'm working on right now.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

Yeah. And I feel also like we are so lucky to have also AI tools, and there are so many learning systems which are also powered by AI, that they're probably a solution that can help.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

I mean, there are tons of more advanced solutions than that, but do the stupid easy thing before you do the more complicated thing. And the stupid easy thing is write it the fuck down in a place that everybody can see it, right? We can get more complicated with AI coaches and growth, blah, blah, blah. We can do and do all this stuff, right? But start with the dumbest possible, easiest possible thing, which is just everybody write down where you want to go and how you're gonna get there. You know, way in a place that we all can see. Right? Then we can talk about how to add more time, more layer, more expense on top of that. Sure. Right. But people aren't even doing the basic, is what I find. Right. I would find the majority of companies you go into cannot say with any degree of specificity, here is where people want to go, and here is how they're getting there, and here is how I'm gonna help them. People can't do it for themselves, managers can't do it for their employees, other people they manage, and culture, you know, people's teammates can't do it for other teammates. Yeah, and that's the problem. And it has to go in that order. You have to figure it out for you, Angela. Then you have to figure out how to communicate it to me, your manager, and then jointly we need to figure out how to communicate that to everybody else in the company.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

And I do and why do you think a lot of companies don't have this figured out? Is it simple the lack of understanding of importance of that? I don't know, awareness not urgent enough.

SPEAKER_01 52:43

Yeah, I don't I don't think that you know most people don't create the time. I think some people feel like it's breaking into jail. Meaning they worry that having somebody write down their desire for growth will make them dissatisfied with their job if they're not growing. Right. And this is a very classic one, right? It's like inclusion. People don't want to run an inclusion program because they are afraid of what they'll hear or see. Right. And so, you know, they don't look at things like how are women treated in our workplace because the cost, the economic cost, the risk, et cetera, of finding out that women are not treating equally means you have to do something about it. And so I think a lot of times people don't lean into growth because they think growth will mean that people will leave the company. And what I would say is you you know, if you're unwilling to look at that, you already have the problem. If you're unwilling to grapple with the fact that somebody might need to leave your company to grow, then people are already leaving your company to grow and you're already experiencing the most negative outcome that you can possibly experience from that. And so you might as well be looking at it.

Why Leaders Avoid Growth Conversations

SPEAKER_00 53:53

Yes, I so agree. You know, having the experience of being an executive coach helping very often leaders to figure out their next step, like once they figure out where they want to go, if the company doesn't provide that, like there is nothing stopping them from leaving that company. It's literally like once that desire to change, to grow crystallizes, like there is nothing stopping that. It's that dissatisfaction actually gonna something at some point gonna happen sooner than later. And uh if there is a system that which will help to identify that dissatisfaction and have the conversation have some sort of intervention sooner than later, then company has a lot more chance to retain top talent into their leadership.

SPEAKER_01 54:40

And if you waited for it to become dissatisfaction, that's too late, right? Like you need to assume that everybody wants to be growing and be working on that before they become dissatisfied with their growth, right? The worst position is to ignore it, but the second worst position is to only wait until it's a problem, right? We need to acknowledge that everybody wants to grow, right? Yeah, absolutely everybody. You, me, everybody else. And so if you don't have some sort of thing lined up to acknowledge and celebrate and work on a thing you know to be a core human motivator, well, you're already behind the ball. Let's go, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:19

Don't wait. Well, I think it just assuming a leader still did not catch up with this self-determination theory understanding what people need at the core.

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Come on, folks. You need to be more economically rewarded over time because of the hedonic treadmill. People need to have direct connection to the meaning of their work, and they need to feel like they're growing. There you go. And if you don't have a program addressing each of those three things, you gotta go.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

The third one I remember autonomy, ability to make choices and exercise your I think autonomy is really important.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

I think autonomy only comes with accountability, right? You have to know how to measure people's, you know, are you doing you have to be clear on here's the things I expect out of you. So to me, this is related to growth. We could call it a separate thing, but but you can't. What I would say is I would argue it's tough to grow without autonomy. So autonomy is an ingredient that allows for the outcome that is growth, right? Or honors the motivator that is growth.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

But I guess where I see it a little bit different is that let's say somebody says, okay, well, my people have a clear path of progression. I don't know from where they are at, where they they supposed to be wanting to go according to the definition of their like professional skill, their skill set. But what if I'm like here and I want to jump there, right? So for me, autonomy and being able to do that, that is the where it's remember the way that I defined growth, right? I didn't tell you. Yeah, you yeah, you said that. Yeah, but I'm what I'm saying is in a lot of companies, it's like that, you know, you have this sort of letter whereas, yeah, you said, you know, it can be horizontal, it can be vertical, and um yes, and Angela has to have the right to choose that, uh right is a weird word in that sense, in the sentence, but like has to have the ability to make that choice for herself. Nice. So we don't have a lot of time, and we again could be speaking about that forever. But I do want to ask you, you know, because it is something that you're working on, you're developing, let's say, I don't know, we are speaking a year or two or three years, and you made considerable impact in that, helping companies to create better systems and um for growth internally. Like how would it look like? I guess what's your impact for the next, I don't know, several years?

SPEAKER_01 57:40

What ideal future? Yeah, I mean, think if you look at an ideal future, the only people who would need to move companies are the people for whom that was an explicit goal, right? Meaning if we look back at the sort of like in, out, up, sideways, only the people who already had an out goal would be leaving a company, right? So I think attrition zero is is not the goal that we're shooting for, right? It's not attrition zero, it's zero attrition among ins, ups, and sideways. Right? The outs. Okay. I don't I don't think we should be keeping people in companies if their desire is to go start something themselves. I think that's a great goal and we should be comfortable with it, and we should be able to accept it. So in a world where this is working really well, people are staying in companies because they're feeling like they're growing, unless their explicit growth goal is going out.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

Yes, it's it's more like sometimes people say, well, it used to be that people stayed in their job for like 10 years, the whole life, and now people switching jobs like this. And maybe the reason is because there is no sufficient or adequate way, desirable way for people to grow inside of the company. Either there is again no like path the way that they want to see it, or something else, there are not enough opportunities, etc. Whatever the reason is, right? And maybe just the company's structure and processes have to somehow be more flexible, allowing people to grow as they like. And so they stay longer. And maybe we can have the future where people stay again with their organization for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, growing sideways and vertically.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

And in the same thing, it's proportionate to the size of a company, meaning the smaller the company, the greater the likelihood that I will not be able to find the growth that I want within that company. Right. And so I think being reasonable about the fact that, like, hey, people leaving is okay. One of the things that we always so I do exit, everybody who leaves Oceans, no matter why they leave, I do the exit interview. I sit down with them for half an hour and we just look for everything that we could do to improve our processes at Oceans. It's a really valuable experience for me and it's a valuable for them. But one of the things I always tell them. Is so there are three ways to leave the company resignation, termination for performance, and then what we call gross negligence, meaning you lied, you cheated, you stole, you did something incompatible with our values. The last category, you are not eligible to reapply. Right? You know, you do something bad, you're gone forever, right? You need to go somewhere else. But for the first two, even if a performance termination, we say you're always welcome to reapply. So go work on the thing. We're not gonna pay you to sit around and work on this thing. You go work on the problem that you have, but once you fix that problem, you're welcome to come back. And as long as you meet our standards, we'll let you back in the door. And so to me, there might be lots. So ideally, what you want in a small company is, hey Angela, in order for you to get the the necessary growth that you want, you might need to leave. But once you have it, please come back. Right. So when we are the right option for you, we want you to choose us, right? We're not interested in you choosing us when we're not the right option for you, but when we are the right option for you, we hope you decide to come back.

Autonomy, Accountability, and Growth Paths

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

Yeah, that's uh I like that. You know, keeping the door open. Life is life changing.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

Well, I think that solves the small company problem, right? It's okay for people to leave as long as they come back.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:20

Yeah, we break the great course, yeah. Yeah, yes, they are. Do you uh sort of conclude our conversation? Is there anything else? Well, a good question. Yes. Uh was there a question that you wish I'd ask, but I didn't? Something that you'd like to express. No, but but I'm asking to add value to this conversation. So there is anything that you feel is valuable, but we didn't get to talk about that. Let's talk.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:47

I mean, that list could go on forever. I thought it was a lovely and wholesome conversation. We had to talk about a lot about growth, which is something that I care a lot about. And, you know, if there are new, you know, six months from now we do part three as I have new new things I'm obsessed with and new problems that I want to solve. So I'm about to head to Sri Lanka to see my oceans colleagues, and I'll stop in China on the way back to give a talk. And it's a wonderful talk because they're basically doing a best of. So they've been doing this conference for for 10 years, and they are getting speakers from across the 10 years to come back and give updated talks about what they're obsessed with these days, which I think is really interesting. I think it's a really interesting format to say, hey, before you said this, what do you think about now? Right. Because there is that lovely contrast, and I think it emphasizes the degree to which we are learning and changing. I don't believe the same things that I did 10 years ago. I don't even believe the same things I believed yesterday. So anything we talked about today is subject to change. And, you know, I think it's valuable to have those conversations about how our how we're evolving our beliefs. And so later on down the line, we'll have to do it again and then we can talk about how we're Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

Uh I'd love that. And just speaking about that conference, what's the main sort of change that you're going to be speaking about?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:01

So I'm going to, I think I'm decided. I very rarely decide what I'm going to talk about until I'm on stage. I think what I want to talk about is, you know, about 10 years ago, I gave a TED talk that turned out to be fairly prophetic. It was about sort of the meaning-money divide and how moving from money as motivation at work to meaning at motivation at work was going to have pretty profound changes for the workplace, which, as people evaluate Gen Z has turned out to be very true, right? They are extraordinarily meaning motivated, less motivated by money, and it's changed the way the workplace works. I think I want to talk about how the problem with that is there is a lot of non-meaningful work in the world. And so because we are asking people to do non-meaningful work, it it there's a limit, you know, just like money, just like there's a fixed budget of money, there's a fixed budget of meaning, and that's a little bit of a trap. I'm interested in talking about, I think, how growth might be the next frontier of that. Because growth, in fact, can be unlimited, right? Yeah. As long as we define growth as skill acquisition and not title at a company, right? There can only be so many CEOs. But as long as we define it about actually literally becoming better at things, human potential is the only uncapped budget, right? And so if that's the uncapped thing, that's what we should be focused on. And so I'm interested in that. I'm interested in the in the potential and opportunity for us to use the untapped and uncapped potential of growth. And I think that's what I'll end up talking about.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:35

That that's so amazing. I I, you know, if you have a recording, please or have someone recording. I I'd love to see that. And I can so relate, you know, since uh I was a kid, I don't know, I was never motivated by money. And I think it it, you know, maybe sort of slowed down my growth in business arena because I'm just not motivated by finances, right? I I'm all about meaning. And I feel like right now, finally, a lot of people in the companies, uh, cultural culture has in companies start understanding what I was talking about, right? And and I actually do believe that meaning is also untapped and you can connect almost anything to something bigger. But also, you're so right about the growth. And what I also, you know, would like to add here is growth can be about profession, but it can also about being human, like being a better teammate, being a better leader for people who you get to work with, or being a better communicator, like in so many ways, you can grow at a workplace where a place where you spend pretty much the majority of your waking time. If you're not growing there, where are you gonna be growing? So yeah, uh very excited for people who are gonna be listening to a talk. So uh please do share links and also maybe some people can attend in the audience. And uh what else? The last but not least, what would you like to leave our listeners with, especially leaders, somebody who can uh influence culture in their workplace, in their company, big on or small, like what maybe the first place they can start to start creating that workplace where people can continuously grow?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

Well, I mean, remember, we talked about how it's it has to start with you. Can you say where you're going and how you're getting there, right? Because it's if you can't do that, then there's no point in creating a system for other people to be able to doing it if you're not doing it. So start by saying, where am I going? How am I gonna get there? And then use that as the catalyst to create better systems in the company.

Rethinking Attrition and Boomerang Hires

SPEAKER_00 1:06:47

I guess start the conversation about that, maybe somewhat publicly. And to can ask you, where are you going? Where is Matt going in terms of growth?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:58

Ugh. So my documented growth goal at Ocean the moment is maybe at odds with the company. Like I, you know, I think that they're in a succession planning way, you always want to look at your C-suite and say, okay, well, who can who can step into CEO roles, who can do those other kinds of things? I think for me personally, when I look at my growth goal, you know, I would like to be better at the thing that I'm doing now. So I would have what we call a vertical growth goal, meaning as a heavy operational leader, I would like to be better at the operational bit of the thing that I'm doing. And the way that I do that is, you know, every week I have a misses meeting where we sort of talk about like, okay, where did I miss something this week and what could I have done differently to not miss it next week? And so, you know, some of that is interpersonal, some of that is communication, some of that is cultural stuff. You know, there's always a healthy mix of stuff. And it changes kind of week to week because I try very hard to action it week to week. And so, you know, stuff is if if if we're, you know, if I have if I'm missing the same thing three weeks in a row, that's certainly indicative of me that that something needs to needs to change.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:09

Yes. Great call, you know, and probably the answers in the systems missing or growing. And we could do another podcast probably on that one. But yeah, thank you, Matt, again for coming to Changewired as a guest, sharing your insights in this evolving field of growth, I guess, growth mindset cultures. And looking forward to what you develop in the field, probably something uh amazing, very useful, and that will change a lot of people's lives and companies for the better. So, thank you for doing the work. Thank you for sharing your insights, knowledge, and passion for the field. And yeah, looking forward to the next round. Thanks for watching. Thank you. Take care. You too. Well, thank you, Matt.