Mari Ryan - Wellbeing in the Workforce: Why Your People Should Come First (#54)

Host Tom Bronson sits down with guest Mari Ryan, Founder and CEO of Advancing Wellness, on this week’s episode of the Maximize Business Value Podcast. Mari helps organizations create a thriving workplace environment, where they can focus on the people side of the business. Tom and Mari discuss how employee well-being impacts individual and company-wide culture, productivity and engagement, which makes a people-centric environment imperative. They also address the four dimensions of a thriving organization and Mari’s book The Thriving Hive, which is a wonderful resource for business owners. Listen now to advance the wellness of your organization!

As CEO and founder of Advancing Wellness, Mari Ryan is a workplace well-being strategist guiding organizations to create people-centric workplaces. During her career, she has worked with businesses of all sizes from start-ups to global powerhouses such as Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, and Northrup Grumman. She brings a wealth of experience and expertise. Mari is the co-founder and former chair of the Board of Directors of the Worksite Wellness Council of Massachusetts and is currently the President-Elect of the National Speakers Association New England Chapter. She is the author of the award-winning book The Thriving Hive: How People-Centric Workplaces Ignite Engagement and Fuel Results, which is available on Amazon.

Tom Bronson is the founder and President of Mastery Partners, a company that helps business owners maximize business value, design exit strategy, and transition their business on their terms. Mastery utilizes proven techniques and strategies that dramatically improve business value that was developed during Tom’s career 100 business transactions as either a business buyer or seller. As a business owner himself, he has been in your situation a hundred times

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Tom Bronson is a serial entrepreneur and business owner. He is currently the founder and President of Mastery Partners, Mastery Mergers & Acquisitions, and the Business Transition Summit. All three companies empower business owners to maximize business value and serve business owners in different capacities to help them achieve their dream exit. As a business owner, Tom has been in your situation a hundred times and knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Tom has two books to help business owners on their journey to a dream exit: "Maximize Business Value Playbook," (2023), and "Maximize Business Value, Begin with the EXIT in Mind," (2020). Both are available on Amazon.
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Transcript

Announcer (4s):
Welcome to the Maximize the business value podcast. This podcast is brought to you by mastery partners, where our mission is to equip business owners, to maximize business value so they can transition their business on their terms. Our mission was born from the lessons we've learned from over 100 business transactions, which fuels our desire to share our experiences and wisdom. So you can succeed. Now, here's your host CEO mastery partners, Tom Bronson.

Tom Bronson (35s):
Hi, this is Tom Bronson and welcome to maximize business value. A podcast for business owners who are passionate about building long-term sustainable value in their businesses. In this episode, I am so thrilled to welcome our guests with Mari Ryan CEO and founder of advancing wellness, a business that helps other businesses support employee wellbeing. So employees can be less stressed and more productive. I love that. I met Mari through provisors a professional networking group that you've heard me talk about on this podcast many times, and I'm excited to have her as our guests today to learn more about this incredibly relevant topic.

Tom Bronson (1m 16s):
As people begin to return back to work, welcome to maximize business value. Mari, tell us about advancing wellness.

Mari Ryan (1m 25s):
Well, thanks Tom, for that warm welcome. And I'm delighted to be here. Well, it advancing wellness. Our mission is to create thriving workplaces and the way we do that is by helping organizations develop a strategic plan for the wellbeing of their workforce. And that consists of a variety of different approaches to be able to help them really think through all of the elements that impact an employee's wellbeing in the workplace and help them find ways to create that ideal workplace where when people come to work, they're showing up to be productive, engaged, and really feel part of whatever the work is that they're doing in that organization.

Tom Bronson (2m 9s):
That's exciting, a strategic plan for creating a thriving workplace. I love that because most business owners think about strategic planning as, okay, what's going to happen in the next three to five years. I kind of thing. And they're always thinking about the business side of the business and not necessarily the people side of the business. So I love that. What inspired you to pursue that line of work?

Mari Ryan (2m 32s):
Well, it's kind of an interesting story in the early well, I spent my entire career in business, so I've done sales, marketing, operations management. I worked in all kinds of industries, you know, literally all over the U S and even outside of the U S and in the early two thousands, I was working as a business consultant and I was traveling a hundred percent of the time for almost two years. I had 3000 mile and I had 6,000 mile weeks I spent, let's see, was it nine months in Texas? And I spent six months in Seattle in Redmond working on a project at Microsoft.

Mari Ryan (3m 14s):
And I get home at the end of that nearly two years. And I said, this life sucks. This is not what I want to do with my life. There's gotta be more to this than living on the road every day. And it, so I hired a coach to work with, and it took me a couple of years to figure it out. And I came, I knew I wanted to do something that was going to impact people's lives. That was going to be meaningful for people in a way that was really going to be significant. And I found worksite wellness, which is, we called it wellness back then. And I thought, well, I know work sites. So how hard could the wellness be to learn? And so I just knew from the moment I went through this first certification program that I attended, that this would be the work that I would do for the rest of my career.

Mari Ryan (4m 1s):
And that was over 15 years ago.

Tom Bronson (4m 4s):
That's exciting. And I have to tell you that, that for folks that have never lived on the road like that, I was a road warrior for many, many years. I think at one point I accumulated like 2 million frequent flyer miles, which sounds exciting. Except the last thing you want to do after you get off of an airplane is use those miles to get back on the airplane. Right,

Mari Ryan (4m 23s):
Right. Yeah, exactly. I still got some of those miles.

Tom Bronson (4m 27s):
I think I probably have about 1.6 million miles left all the years that I've traveled. So wellness programs are not new in the workplace. So is wellness the same as wellbeing? And why should employers employers care about employee wellbeing?

Mari Ryan (4m 45s):
Well, I really like it. I like that question because we hear about wellness a lot. And the reality is that when, when wellness has been in the workplace for, you know, literally for decades, probably for as long as we've been in workplaces, somebody had to care about the employees. And what we see is over the last few years, we've moved from this concept of wellness, which was really more thinking about the physical elements. You know, how much I weigh. Do I use tobacco? Am I getting enough sleep? Am I getting enough exercise? What do I eat? So the core physical elements, which really kind of comes from a medical model and what we've recognized over the last few years is that we're more than just our physical health.

Mari Ryan (5m 36s):
You know, my emotional wellbeing is an important element of my wellbeing and things like financial wellbeing are really important. We also think about this from the perspective of connection and community. So there's many more elements that we bring into our models now that it much more about the whole person and not just the physical aspects of the individual, but to your second question of why should employers care well, you and your business and this program are all about helping businesses create sustainable business results.

Mari Ryan (6m 17s):
And let me ask this question and think about this from the perspective of your clients, can any of your clients achieve sustainable business results without their people? Let me think about that for a moment. Go ahead and take time. Okay.

Tom Bronson (6m 33s):
Yeah, of course. Not, of course not. You know, in fact, if you survey business owners and you ask them, what's their most valuable asset, they almost always say their people do. They really mean that is a good question.

Mari Ryan (6m 44s):
Well, that's the whole point, but we've recognized that you can't achieve sustainable business results without your people. And so we really do have to look after the people and that's really the concept of what we're doing with wellbeing is we're looking at all of the elements in the workplace that influenced the wellbeing of the people,

Tom Bronson (7m 5s):
Such a such an interesting thing, because you're right. As, as I have thought about, as you've responded to that question, I most people think about a wellness in the workplace as being all those physical things, but it's so much more than that to make people more productive. So speaking of that, is there a link between employee wellbeing and employee engagement and productivity?

Mari Ryan (7m 31s):
Oh, absolutely. Well, if you think about this from the perspective of, if somebody comes to work and, you know, with everything we've been dealing with the pandemic and the elements of the economic impact as a result of that. So let's take the scenario of an employee who comes to work. Who's got a partner or a spouse who's lost their job. So now there's going to be this financial pressure that exists within the workplace, within that person. And then within that person's life, they bring that to the workplace. You know, they don't just leave that at the door and nor do they leave at the door, the teenage, you know, the fight that they had with their teenager as they drop them off at school or any of that kind of stuff.

Mari Ryan (8m 11s):
You know, what happens is all of those elements are who we are as individuals. And so we have to be thinking about that from that perspective is we're whole people. We bring all of these things with us to work. And so we really need to be thinking about how do we support the whole individual so that they can be their best. Because if that person's distracted by worrying about the teenager or worrying about how they're going to pay their mortgage, they're not going to be focused on the work they're doing. They're going to be focused on those problems. And so that directly impacts. And if you think about this, anybody who's had any physical ailments, they're not going to be able to focus on their work and it, so it all leads to these elements of the productivity.

Mari Ryan (9m 0s):
But we can also think about this in the context of employee experience. So if you think about wellbeing as kind of the base of a pyramid, and we have culture in the workplace that kind of lays on top of that, cause we know culture really has a lot to do with what it's like to work in. Any organization and culture in turn drives the employee experience. So what is it like to work there? Do I feel like this is a place where people care for me? Am I supported? Do I have the kinds of flexibility I need for my life? Am I getting, you know, do I feel like I'm going, I have a growth path.

Mari Ryan (9m 41s):
How am I being sustained as, as a, a career professional? So that's all the elements of the employee experience, which drives the employee engagement and the, and the productivity. And we know that employee engagement and productivity drives that sustainable business results that every business owner is seeking.

Tom Bronson (10m 2s):
You know, I, I, I, I'm trying to think now that brings up a point that someone just raised to me the other day that some astronomical percentage of employees are, are not fully engaged at work. I mean, it's, I want to say that the, that the number of fully engaged or the percentage of fully engaged employees is way down in the teams or something like that, you know, 15 or 14 or something like that. Yeah.

Mari Ryan (10m 29s):
It is very low number. Yes.

Tom Bronson (10m 31s):
And when you have disengaged employees, then the naturally productivity goes down, right. Because writing in what I call the zone, right. Or, you know, peak state as Tony Robbins would say, then, then those people are able to, to work in a more sustained way and focus on their work and do better work. And so, so what you're talking about here really is while it serves the employee, it really does serve the business on the other side. Right.

Mari Ryan (11m 4s):
Exactly. Right. Everybody benefits. Yes. Everybody benefits.

Tom Bronson (11m 8s):
So, so we're talking about kind of creating even a culture of being people centric, right. So what is a people centric organization?

Mari Ryan (11m 19s):
Well, a people centric organization is really one where we put the people first. You know, we often hear customers first. Well, if we don't put your employees first, if we don't care for the employees first, then you know, the employees are the ones that care for the customers, right? When an employee feels good, when they feel committed to the work of that organization, they're going to care for the customers. So in a people first organization, what we're doing is we're really looking after the people first. So putting their needs first, and, you know, we've heard, you know, all heard stories about, you know, organizations that fired their customer because they mistreated employees.

Mari Ryan (11m 59s):
And unfortunately those stories are too, you know, too far and few between, you know, too few and far between. And, but it's really making employees feel cared for. It's making the commitment to their personal and professional development. It's providing wellbeing resources within the organization. It's developing the kinds of benefits that are going to support their employees for the kinds of lives they're choosing to live. So it, it really comes from a lot of different dimensions.

Tom Bronson (12m 29s):
You know, I guess I was fortunate early in my career. One of my mentors happened to be my father, to me, as I was kind of rising through the corporate ranks. He said, Tom, what is, what is the most important thing you should be focused on? And I said, well, our customers and their needs, and he said wrong. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, if you focus on the needs of your people, if you focus exclusively as a, as a leader, as a manager, as a business owner on your people, your people will take care of the customers and you don't have to worry about the customers any more. So I was very fortunate to have that advice very early in my career.

Tom Bronson (13m 11s):
So

Mari Ryan (13m 13s):
Clearly he was a very smart man and a shrewd businessman. Yeah. He, he got it. He got it exactly right.

Tom Bronson (13m 20s):
And his people loved him. I mean, his people just left. So as he just took care of the people. So, so what are the characteristics you talk about creating a thriving workplace, a thriving organization. What are some of the characteristics of a thriving organization?

Mari Ryan (13m 39s):
Well, there are a number of different dimensions that support wellbeing in an organization. So when we think about these, if these, all of these elements are in place, then the organization will be thriving. So the first would be culture. And we mentioned culture a little bit already, but culture is so important because culture is the norms, the values that drive the behaviors. It's the assumptions, it's the stories, the rituals that drive all of the behaviors in an organization. So culture is a really important piece. We also need to have, from a perspective of job design, I'll use a broad category of job design, meaning that the work that people are doing is designed for the people.

Mari Ryan (14m 28s):
So we need to make sure that people have a living wage that they're not being given unrealistic expectations in terms of how their time is scheduled. So some of those processes around how the work is actually done, you know, one of the things in a lot of research, you may have read the book by Daniel pink, called drive of what mode, you know, hit the subtitle on that is what motivates people. And, and that may not be the exact subtitle, but it's something like that. And the concept behind that is that people want autonomy purpose and they to motivate them. So if people have work that is not giving them autonomy and not everybody is going to have autonomy in their job, you know, the factory worker, who's working a machine and creating the widget.

Mari Ryan (15m 14s):
There's a way to do that. And a proper way to do that. They're not necessarily going to have a lot of autonomy within the structure of their job, but maybe there's some ways to build autonomy around that so that they feel that they have some control job control. This whole concept of job control is really one that people forget to think about these kinds of things. When they're thinking about how that influences the role in the way that people function in their jobs. So that, that whole category of sort of the job control and process thing is second. There's another one, which is the environment. So the environment, the physical environment in the workplace is, is a clear driver of wellbeing.

Mari Ryan (16m 0s):
And this is a place employers are spending a lot of time thinking about right now, because we haven't been in the physical workplaces in mass for a long time. Now, clearly some industries have stayed in the workplace, but many have not. They've sent their people home. People are working from any anywhere, but to get them to come back to the office, people need to feel safe. They need to know that the organization has done the things that are going to make it a safe environment. And there's a whole bunch of requirements for that. The, you know, the, where the way that air is exchanged and the ventilation, and, you know, the still keeping distance in the, again, we're going to have some behaviors we're going to need, but that whole physical workplace can actually support wellbeing or diminish wellbeing.

Mari Ryan (16m 50s):
And then the last category is around what we might call management systems. And these are the ways in which employees are recognized and celebrated the reward systems, all of those things that help people really feel like they're cared for. And a lot of those pieces, you know, we, we hear a lot about employee, you know, reward systems and recognition approaches, and I'm always big on celebrations, but I think, you know, finding ways to celebrate people and celebrate accomplishments within the organization are important as well. So those are the four dimensions that I like to think about that really foster wellbeing and create thriving workplaces.

Tom Bronson (17m 35s):
Let me react to a couple of those. The, the first one, that culture, the whole issue around culture, you know, for, for many business owners, they think that, or they feel like culture is sort of that event, that celebration event that you have, you know, twice a year or whatever, but culture to me is what happens when you're not there. Right? And how the, the real unspoken and the spoken rules of how things happen in the, in the business. I always say that because I've been the CEO of so many different companies, you know, frequent listeners know that I bought and sold a hundred businesses in my career and sitting in that CEO seat, when someone asked me, what is the most important role of a CEO?

Tom Bronson (18m 17s):
And I say, it's the keeper of the culture, the company culture, that, that, because culture really gets driven from the top. It's almost impossible for our culture to be driven from the bottom, right? And although the people will do things and find ways to drive their own type of culture, especially if it's a toxic culture that you're in. But to me, the most important role is, is, is being the keeper of the culture and making sure that you have a great environment for the folks who want to work in the second thing is the, the whole issue of job control. I do, I do a lot of public speaking. And one of the topics that I'm frequently asked to talk about is creating a culture of innovation.

Tom Bronson (19m 2s):
And, and when employees, you mentioned this whole job design, I'd never heard that term job design. I liked that I'm going to start using that, but, but job control, even for the guy that is working that machine in a manufacturing plant, who has to follow very strict rules, if, if they don't have any control over their job and their responsibilities and the way they do things, then that really stifles creativity. And even though creativity and innovation are two different things, you have to have creativity in order generate creativity is thinking of new things and innovation is doing new things, but you have to have that creativity in order to drive innovation.

Tom Bronson (19m 46s):
And so, so I think about that in terms of this whole issue of job design job control. If you give the, the employees no free reign over their job at all, then you'd just kill that creativity that could lead to better, faster ways to do things. What do you think about that?

Mari Ryan (20m 7s):
You nailed it. You absolutely nailed it. Yeah. It's, it's so true because, you know, nobody wants to feel like they're a robot doing just one thing after another forever and ever, and ever, and ever, nobody wants that. They want to feel like they can contribute in a way that's bigger than the little piece of work that they might be doing that fits into the bigger picture. So absolutely. You nailed it there. Yes. That's exactly what I, yeah, totally agree.

Tom Bronson (20m 33s):
I love it. We're up on a break. We're talking with Mari Ryan, let's take a quick break. We'll be back in 30 seconds.

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Tom Bronson (21m 48s):
We're back with Marie Ryan CEO and founder of advancing wellness. And we're talking about creating a thriving work environment. So before the break Mari, we focused on the characteristics of a thriving organization. And, and is there a relationship between a thriving organization and business results put another way? How does investing in a culture of focused on the people translate to the bottom line?

Mari Ryan (22m 20s):
Well, you know, what's nice about that. I love that question because you know, of course, everybody wants to know, is this a worthwhile investment? And the answer is it is, and there's four different research studies that have been conducted. And these were done with organizations where they could measure an element of the culture of health. Let's call it within the workplace. And oftentimes these organizations were award winners, or they completed some kind of a survey that gave them a ranking or a benchmarking against other organizations. And in every one of those studies, the companies were either were public companies, so they could be compared and benchmarked against the standard.

Mari Ryan (23m 6s):
And Poor's 500 as the benchmark. And every one of those studies showed that those companies that invested in a culture of health and wellbeing outperformed the, the benchmark of the S and P 500. So it's not just one study that says this, the four separate studies that say this. And I think it's, you know, in, in certain, you know, certainly, you know, from the, the wisdom that your father shared with you early in your career, we get that if we invest in our people, if we take care of our people, then they are going to take care of the business. And, and from that, we know that we're going to be sure we're going to have ups and downs, and there's going to be these environmental and economic things that are going to be, you know, out of the ordinary that we have to deal with.

Mari Ryan (23m 55s):
But if we can really invest in our people and show, we care about our people that comes back to us through the sustained business results that we can achieve.

Tom Bronson (24m 5s):
So this is something investing in this type of thing can actually give a good return on investment. And I'm a big fan of with our clients. I always say we don't spend money on anything. We invest in everything and, and you should be able to articulate the return on investment. And so in this case, what I'm hearing and I think is true is that by making an investment here, you can actually measure the results so that you know, how you're getting a return on that investment. And I love that. I think that every business owner should think more in terms of return on investment. And I love the fact that you brought that up and that it is a worthwhile investment.

Tom Bronson (24m 49s):
You know, it's funny as I, I think back to some of my businesses, you know, employees like to feel like they're doing worthwhile work. And of course we, as owners need to make worthwhile investments. But one of the things that I used to tell folks, we had a, I had a business that served the restaurant industry, and we, you know, I, I told them regularly, look, we're, we're not curing cancer. We're not saving the whales, but we are doing worthwhile work. We are making the lives of our customers so much better and more productive, and therefore they can serve their customers. So the work we're doing is worthwhile. And so I think that, that all of this ties together that, that employees that feel like they're doing worthwhile work and they're in the right frame of mind, then can be more productive and it can translate to a great bottom line.

Tom Bronson (25m 40s):
So, you know, you work a lot with fortune 500 companies or fortune 1000 companies. And let's, let's kind of bring this down to the level of a small business owner. Perhaps many of, many of our listeners are small businesses. They have five or 20 employees and whatever. So what can they, as leaders and managers do to support employee wellbeing?

Mari Ryan (26m 5s):
Well, I think it starts with the, just the attitude and approach that managers and leaders take in the organization. And that is just caring about their people as we've talked about already. And that comes from, especially now, when people are going through a lot of difficult things in the, in the last year it's been, you know, our world's been turned upside down. So having empathy and compassion, being a good listener, and really trying to understand what's going on for those individuals, when we care enough and show, we care enough to really listen and really understand what's going on in someone's life, that goes a long way and all that's free.

Mari Ryan (26m 46s):
You know, it doesn't cost any money to do that. It just takes time. And that's one of the things that we have to remember is that we have to invest whether it's time or money we have to invest. And even just investing time is an important element of this. And right now, it's also really important to particularly aware of the mental wellbeing of employees. You know, it's, people are stressed, people are burnt out. There's for those working from home, there's little divide between work and home. You know, we don't have that natural commute that separated the two, you know, those kinds of things are missing for many people. So we need to have an awareness about where people are from a mental wellbeing perspective.

Tom Bronson (27m 32s):
No, you bring this up. I was going to ask this question in a couple of minutes, but you bring this up, especially at this time of year, you know, the pandemic has had a profound impact on the workplace, on every workplace. So how have those changes impacted employee wellbeing?

Mari Ryan (27m 51s):
Well, employee, you know, I think if we think generally from the, the results of what's happened in the last year, we've come to recognize that there's nothing more important than our health and, you know, foundationally, we get that. If we don't have this first, we don't have anything else. And we are seeing that there has been profound changes to the way that we work. People are not in the normal settings that they're used to working in. So if we take the group of people that are in the office and haven't left the office, they're having to deal with the stress perhaps of being in a workplace where there's potential exposure, you know, where there, there have to be different safety considerations.

Mari Ryan (28m 36s):
So there's stress for those people. And they may, at the same time be dealing with issues at home. You know, we've seen a huge impact on families as a result of the pandemic, the, all the chaos that's ensued as a result of kids not being in school and doing learning from home. And all of those kinds of things has really wrecked havoc with families. And that translates to what happens in the workplace. So, you know, we, we see, you know, many more employers really focused on family, friendly benefits, offering more flexibility. You know, flexibility is going to be such a key going forward for the workplace of the future.

Mari Ryan (29m 16s):
Employees are going to demand this and, and they will do that with, they will, they will do that with their feet, right? If they are going to have the kind of flexibility they need to live the life that they want, they're going to find another job. I heard a statistic this week that said as many as 40% of, of employees may be looking for new work, because they've gotten into this situation of working from anywhere. They gave up the commute that debilitating to their health or impacted their wellbeing. And now they've said, you know, I like this, I like it here. I want to keep doing this. So they're going to start to demand this. And employers are going to have to respond. They're going to have to be putting in these considerations for flexible workplaces and the work from anywhere and rethinking how they manage the workforce and that whole mindset that goes to well, if I don't see you, you must not be working.

Mari Ryan (30m 12s):
And we work nine to five here, as opposed to, you know, managing by objectives and managing by KPIs or OKR is, or, you know, managing to a result, not managing to our person, sitting in a chair.

Tom Bronson (30m 27s):
You know, the, I think one of the things that's happened during COVID is it's proved that so many businesses that really thought that they couldn't have a remote workforce have started to realize that, Oh my goodness, we can have a remote workforce. I think there's going to be a major impact on the office space, a real estate market coming up. Certainly some has, has already happened, but so, so when you're managing people remotely versus face-to-face look, I'm a, I'm a face-to-face kind of person. I like to sit face-to-face with people. I like to talk with them. I'm a hugger. You know, I touch people, you know, we're beings that are made for that. So are there differences between how a manager should be things that they should be thinking about when they're managing a remote workforce versus a face-to-face workforce?

Mari Ryan (31m 17s):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is, and this is where, you know, managing to performance and to objectives as opposed to managing two availability and time. So, you know, thinking about as long as I get my job done, does it matter which eight or however many hours a day I work, you know, if it works best for me, you know, if I'm a night person and it works best for me to work, you know, late at night into the morning, then that should be good for me. As long as I get my job done. You know, I think the big thing that managers and leaders are struggling with is recognizing that it's not the old, remember the managing by walking around, you probably did this, right.

Mari Ryan (32m 3s):
How many times I, you know, and I can, I can absolutely remember when I used to commute from Boston to a corporate headquarter office in, on the New York, Connecticut border. And because I was, you know, working away from home, you know, I'd hang out in the office til six, six 30, seven o'clock at night. And I can always remember the president of the organization, like doing this, like before he goes home tour and just see who's here. And, you know, it's, it's, it's so interesting, but we can't do that anymore. So this concept of managing by walking around and our people in their seats and are they online right now, when I can get access to them, that's all going to have to change.

Mari Ryan (32m 47s):
But I think the bigger mindset that is going to have to change is part of this is that leaders are going to have to do this as well. So if your workforce is working from home two or three days a week, you need to do that too. As a leader, you need to be doing the same thing, because if, and I know so many of us are fulfilled, you know, you and I are both the same way that, you know, you're fulfilled by being around other people and seeing other people. And if, if that's your leadership style, you're going to need to rethink that because you should be doing exactly the same thing that your employees are doing.

Mari Ryan (33m 28s):
And that I think that's going to be hard for many leaders.

Tom Bronson (33m 31s):
I, I agree. I think that that's very difficult. You know, that's funny the, the end of the day, what did you call it when the CEO would wonder around the walking tour

Mari Ryan (33m 42s):
Or walking tour? Yeah,

Tom Bronson (33m 45s):
No, I, I, I, my light work schedule has sort of adjusted through the years when our kids were young. I would sometimes work late. I'd stay at home. So I could be with them in the morning, you know, getting ready to take them to school, that kinds of things. But then I would work late. And occasionally I'm known for working sometimes on the weekends. And when I worked for a big publicly traded company, I remember one night I'm on a, I'm a I'm in the executive suite. I was executive vice president of sales and marketing for a division of this publicly traded company. And it was a Sunday night. It was not long after our second daughter was born and I'd been away from the office quite a bit. And it was like eight o'clock, maybe nine o'clock on a Sunday night.

Tom Bronson (34m 28s):
And I'm sitting there just immersed in my work. And S and, and suddenly I had an awareness that somebody else was standing in my door and I looked up, it startled me. And it was the CEO of our parent company. He was standing there just watching me work. And he said, it's nice to see someone else working hard. So I just, it startled me in. And so I guess I left an impression on him by doing that. And that's funny, the walking around to her, I don't think he ever did that because he was not at the office that often, but just so happened that he caught me there by accident, like in your award-winning book, the thriving hive, how people centric, workplaces, ignite engagement, and fuel results, you use a beehive metaphor.

Tom Bronson (35m 16s):
So tell us a bit about your thinking in creating this.

Mari Ryan (35m 21s):
When I knew I wanted to write a book, I was, I knew I didn't want to write a traditional business book, and I've always enjoyed parables. So this is written in a parable format. And, and you think about this, right? You know, we learn through stories. We learn, you know, we so much of communication in who we are, as people comes through stories. So I wanted to write a story and I was trying to think of a metaphor for the workplace. And then one day kind of serendipitously, I came across this idea of how about a beehive. It's got workers, you know, it's got sort of sorta got some managers, you know, it's, it's a good structure to, to, you know, serve as the system, if you will, for the workplace.

Mari Ryan (36m 7s):
And the way I created the story is there are two hives. So one is called the dive hive, and one is called the alive hive. Now, where might you want to work, Tom?

Tom Bronson (36m 22s):
Well, you know, it depends on what time of day it is, but I'm thinking that I want to be at the alive hive.

Mari Ryan (36m 29s):
You got it. You got it.

Tom Bronson (36m 32s):
That's I love that, that metaphor. In fact, it's interesting. I just spoke at a live event last week. There's a brand new, one of the, these companies that have been popping up these, Oh, I'm trying to think of the name of it, where you can just basically rent some space, but you've got common, you know, areas where folks can be together. And there's a new one here in Dallas. So it's really for small businesses, they can just rent some space and they've got access to conference room and had a coffee. I forget what the name of that coworking. That's the one that's co-working spaces, but there's a brand new one here in Dallas called the beehive.

Tom Bronson (37m 12s):
And so I'm going to have to make certain that, that they get copies of your book to lay around, to talk about that. Cause it's based on a very similar concept to that. So

Mari Ryan (37m 23s):
Yeah, we can, we can make sure that they've got a copy of the, of the thriving hive.

Tom Bronson (37m 27s):
Excellent. So in your book, you described different types of work culture. How does work culture impact employee well-being?

Mari Ryan (37m 36s):
Well, I think, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier and you know, the, the way that if you use the metaphor of the two, the dive hive and the alive five. So in the dive hive, it's top down management command and control what we might call the old style management kind of approach, and employees don't have ownership of their work. They're just told what to do. They're managing to the numbers, they're managing to profit, and it's all about the numbers and the profit and many organizations still exist like that. But the contrast of that is in the alive hive, where leaders are very visible, where employees from the first day that they join the, you know, the, the team that they're connected to the purpose of the organization, which in this hive is for the bees to pollinate the plants so that there can be, so the pollination will result in fruits and vegetables and healthy food being available to all of the people in the surrounding area.

Mari Ryan (38m 43s):
So it's a purpose that is bigger than, you know, the producing honey, honey producing honey is not the, the, the goal it is to, you know, this bigger purpose in the world. And by thinking about how people can be connected to that purpose that comes through in the way that the organizations managed through purpose through values, through the, you know, communication around how those values translate into the behavior, the norms, the assumptions that make up the culture in the organization and in the dive hive, that's all missing, right? There is no connection to that. It's all about purpose.

Mari Ryan (39m 23s):
It's all about profit. That's the, that's the goal. And so what we really try to do is show that you can create this much more meaning for the people which will engage them, give them a better experience and drive to a better result.

Tom Bronson (39m 40s):
Well, I'm very allergic to bee stings. So, so I, in fact, even the many of his many times, as we said, bees and beehives here on this, I'm actually starting to get a rash. You know, that's how allergic I, if I walked by a bee, I typically break out, right? So, so, but th this type of a thing, and I love the metaphor. I'm, you know, normally I would have read the book before this, but I'm excited about reading the book now. And I can't wait. I love books that are, that are done in metaphor, a style like that. It sounds like the kind of environment, the, the alive, alive is the kind of environment that business owners really want to create. I've got one last business question for you.

Tom Bronson (40m 23s):
And that is, this podcast is all about maximizing business value. So Mari, what's the one most important thing you would recommend to business owners to build long-term sustainable value in their business.

Mari Ryan (40m 37s):
It's about people first, because we recognize that you can't achieve your business results. You can't achieve achieve sustainable business results without your people. So put your people first and take care of them and let them know that they're cared for.

Tom Bronson (40m 54s):
I love that. I think that that is wise advice and something that everybody can follow, but of course, we've reached the point in the podcast that all of our listeners wait for. It's the last golden question. You know, the bonus question that I ask at the end. So Mari, what personality trait has gotten you into the most trouble over the years?

Mari Ryan (41m 14s):
The most trouble? Oh boy,

Tom Bronson (41m 18s):
This is not a question by the way that you want to ask your family, because mine gives me a list. I just want, yeah.

Mari Ryan (41m 23s):
Oh yeah. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you want me to start? Right. I would say probably my perseverance, because I'm passionate about things. And once I get passionate about something, I will, you know, be like a dog on a bone with it and not let go of it. So if anything, that's probably gotten me in trouble of, you know, instead of stepping back and, you know, maybe being a little more rational about things. So I think that the passion and perseverance is probably the things that got me in trouble most.

Tom Bronson (41m 59s):
Yeah. That's, that's one. That's gotten me in trouble so many times. So how can our viewers and listeners get in touch with you?

Mari Ryan (42m 7s):
Well, they can find us on our website at advancing wellness, which is advwellness.com. Or you can connect with me on LinkedIn.

Tom Bronson (42m 18s):
Awesome. ADV. You told me a, an acronym for that. It's what is that

Mari Ryan (42m 25s):
Like a daily vitamin, a

Tom Bronson (42m 26s):
Daily vitamin. I love that. So thank you, Marie, for being our guests. You've been just a wonderful guests for us today.

Mari Ryan (42m 34s):
Thanks so much, Tom. I just delighted to spend time with you.

Tom Bronson (42m 38s):
Mari Ryan and her website, ADV wellness. It's like advancing wellness, advwellness.com or on LinkedIn. Of course you can always reach out to me and I will be happy to make a warm introduction. This is the maximize business value podcast, where we give practical advice to business owners on how to build long-term sustainable value in your business. Be sure to tune in each week and follow us wherever you found this podcast and be sure to comment. We love your comments and we respond to all of them. So until next time, I'm Tom Bronson reminding you to build a people centric organization.

Tom Bronson (43m 18s):
If you can have a profile, it can have a profound impact on your business while you maximize business value.

Announcer (43m 31s):
Thank you for tuning into the maximize business value podcast with Tom Bronson. This podcast is brought to you by mastery partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to maximize business value so they can transition on their terms on how to build long-term sustainable business value and get free value building tools by visiting our website, www.masterypartners.com that's master with a Y masterypartners.com. Check it out.

Announcer (44m 0s):
<inaudible> that was perfect. I wouldn't make any changes on that.