EP 2.1 Melanie Sue Hicks: Invisible Snake Bites, The Economics of Broken Workplaces

Join host Vinny Tafuro and guest Dr. Melanie Sue Hicks, a workforce and employee experience expert with more than two decades of experience in organizational development and culture, for a conversation about workplace dysfunction and its broader economic impact. Today's conversation focuses on the hidden costs of employee disengagement, drawing from Dr. Hicks' research on psychological contracts and generational workplace dynamics. Dr. Hicks introduces the concept of "invisible snake bites" - the accumulated damage from unmet workplace expectations that costs the global economy $9 trillion annually.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Vinny Tafuro

Vinny is a visionary, futurist, writer, entrepreneur, communications theorist, and economist. A polymath and curious by nature, he is a pioneering advocate for the twenty-first-century economy that is disrupting society’s rigid institutions and beliefs. Vinny’s economic and foresight projects explore the societal and economic shifts being catalyzed by human culture as a result of technology, corporate personhood, and evolving human cognition. An engaging and energetic speaker, Vinny presents on a variety of topics both professionally and through community outreach. He enjoys an active and blended professional, academic, and personal life, selecting challenging projects that offer opportunities for personal and professional growth. He is the author of Corporate Empathy and Unlocking the Labor Cage.

Guest

Melanie Sue Hicks

Dr. Melanie Sue Hicks is a workforce and employee experience expert, author, TEDx speaker, and corporate trainer with a passion for helping organizations and individuals unlock their full potential. She currently serves as the Vice President of Programs for the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation. Over the course of her career, she has worked with hundreds of clients—including small to midsized businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations—providing experiential, innovative solutions in strategy, organizational development, and workforce optimization. Her expertise has earned her recognition in major media outlets such as Forbes, NBC, and CBS, solidifying her reputation as a thought leader in her field. Beyond her professional work, Dr. Hicks is a dedicated global philanthropist, driven by a deep commitment to fostering human connection and resilience. Her extensive travels have taken her to more than 45 countries, spanning over 120,000 miles, where she has contributed more than 2,500 hours to service projects ranging from educational initiatives to community development programs. These experiences have profoundly shaped her perspective on leadership, adaptability, and the power of service-driven transformation. Dr. Hicks is the author of Incongruent: Travel, Trauma, Transformation, a travel memoir that explores resilience through the lens of adventure and service work. She is also the curator of Shaking Off the Ashes, a resilience-focused poetry collection. A writer from an early age—completing her first book at just 10 years old—she has since been published in numerous esteemed publications, including Forbes.com, Marie Claire, Authority Magazine, See Beyond Magazine, The District, and Doctor’s Life Magazine, among others.

What is Design Economics Podcast with Vinny Tafuro?

Join us to discover how design thinking can revolutionize economics for the 21st century. Learn about the Institute for Economic Evolution's three tenets of design economics and meet the pioneering thinkers who are shaping this approach. From challenging economic orthodoxy to creating human-centered solutions, explore how design economics is evolving economics to better serve humanity and the environment.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 00:00

That was not my reality. I was able to live by myself and by my mid twenties if I wanted to. Right? I'm but I probably I probably could have done it at 21 because the cost of living just wasn't what it was. And so you can't assume that your memory of where you were at that chapter in time is the same and that those people are having the same experience as you.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 00:20

And so part of this idea of translating for different audiences is really fully understanding your audience, fully understanding what are the real issues, the real struggles that people are coming to work with.

Vinny Tafuro: 00:40

Hello, and welcome to season two episode one of the design economics podcast, where we explore how design thinking driven by data is revolutionizing economics for the twenty first century. My name is Vinny Tafiro, a futurist, economist, and your host for this episode. Today, I will be talking with doctor Melanie Sue Hicks. Doctor Melanie Sue Hicks is a workforce and employee experience expert, TEDx speaker, author, and corporate trainer who currently serves as the vice president of programs for the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation. Over her career, she has worked with hundreds of clients across small to mid sized businesses, education institutions, and nonprofit organizations, providing innovative solutions in strategy, organizational development, and workforce optimization.

Vinny Tafuro: 01:18

Doctor Hicks is also a global philanthropist who has traveled to more than 45 countries contributing over 2,500 to service projects. She is the author of Incongruent, Travel Trauma Transformation, and has been published in numerous publications including Forbes, Marie Clari, and Authority Magazine. Today, we explore how systemic workplace challenges reflect broader economic paradigm failures, examining doctor Hicks's insights on invisible snake bites, the $9,000,000,000,000 cost of disengagement, and why authentic workplace connection might be the key to transforming our economy from the inside out. So with that, I hope you enjoy this conversation with doctor Melanie Sue Hicks.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 01:54

Yeah, thanks, Fini. I'm so excited to chat with you today.

Vinny Tafuro: 01:57

If you could start, you and I have known each other for probably more than a decade now through a leadership And program in Tampa so why don't you tell a little bit about yourself, where your work has come from, where you're going, and where you're at now?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 02:10

Sure, I'm happy to. So I am, I consider myself a human connection and resilience specialist, especially in the areas of workforce and workforce resilience. I began my career in government affairs studying the workforce and organizational development, and then sort of what that looks like as it overlays with public policy, and moved into education for a long time, and then came back to my roots, which is training and all things workforce, which includes organizational culture and trust breakdowns and employee trends and what that looks like in different environments and different cultures. And also just different times, pre and post pandemic for that matter.

Vinny Tafuro: 02:55

Gotcha. And you've got your experience, you've published a book or more than well, you've published a book, you've been doing a lot of speaking. I know you just had a recent TED Talk. I'm really interested in this discussion is talking about a lot of the we're getting to reaching people on individuals on how workplace dysfunction affects them personally, but also then how do we get this to a larger topic, more of a macro topic of how it's really impacting the business environment more or the economy more holistically as well or on a larger scale basis.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 03:35

I could kick off this conversation in a million ways, but the thing I'm most passionate about when I do, I now run six executive programs across the Denver Metro Region, which is actually 14 counties. And one of the things that I sort of stand on a hill and scream on a regular basis is that culture matters. And it matters not just because we are living, breathing organizations of humans, but it matters to the bottom line. So those people that are sitting squarely in the numbers of the profitability, the revenue structure, all of those things, culture actually does matter to those things. And it's often kind of overlooked or given some lip service that doesn't have strong behaviors backing it, because it's not valued in the same way as say sales or marketing or some of these more core functions.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 04:28

And so I'm really passionate about talking about both the micro and macro levels of why culture and the employee experience really matter to your bottom line. Some of the most shocking statistics is there's a $9,000,000,000,000 loss in GDP across the world based on disengagement. That's real money. That is real money. And when it's spread to small businesses, it really has a bigger impact than sometimes they can even handle.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 05:01

Particularly as they struggle still, a lot of organizations struggle post pandemic to get back to where they were pre pandemic. So that's that's kind of how I would kick it off is that it really does matter. It matters not just from a touchy feely way, but really from an economics perspective.

Vinny Tafuro: 05:15

So how then going back to kinda your your journey here is how did you come from or or where did you what did you go through to get here? You know, I I you had written written some stuff about invisible snake bites and there's some moments in your life. And and I think we need to how do we take those moments and have corporation have organizations have those moments as a as an organism of people? But if you could tell a little bit about how you kind of came to this point because

Melanie Sue Hicks: 05:42

Sure. Yeah. So I am gonna date myself in saying this, but it is what it is. I wrote my dissertation at a time when millennials were the new kids on the block coming into the workforce. And so my dissertation research, I spent five years studying generational differences in the workplace and what that meant for organizational trust.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 06:04

In that time, like as I mentioned, that time we had five generations in the workplace and the millennials were the newest generation coming in. And I studied under the theory of psychological contract, which I now call invisible snake bites, just because the academic term psychological contract is relatively But basically what it means is that we all show up into the workplace with a varying set of expectations. And those expectations are based on where we might've worked before, the reputation of the organization, how we intend to or how we would choose to run work life balance and how we would choose to get recognition for our work. And if that may be feedback cycles or praise or compensation, all of these things. And those are the kind of dynamics, those expectations that don't get written into offer letters, right?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 06:54

So that's why it's called psychological contract. It is something that we are bringing in naturally and also it's not articulated unless there's an intentional expectation setting by the employer. And I will say that there used to be an intentional expectation setting by employers because we had strong onboarding. I worked for Walt Disney World my entire college career. I happened to go to school in Orlando and so that was my college job.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 07:23

And they sent you to a full ten days, two working weeks of called Disney University, where they set every possible expectation for organizational culture. And it was across it didn't matter if you were working a ride or if you were a character like me or if you were an executive in their admin building. We all had this deep integration into the culture. I don't know if Disney still does that, but I can tell you that those kind of structures existed in a lot of organizations and they've been slowly chipped away. Kind of step by step based on budgets, based on capacity, based on not having the really full understanding of the value and how that can set the trajectory of how people engage in your organization and how their productivity and their happiness will eventually affect your bottom line.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 08:10

And so when the research shows, and this is from my dissertation and there's still research being done on it today, that just articulating, if you just have a manager that says, let's sit down and talk about the expectations that you're bringing here. Even if you can't solve it, even if you can't merge and align every expectation to the reality of the job, just having the conversation vastly reduces the negative effects of mismatched expectations. And I think that is the message I want to say over and over again from a micro I mean, a macro level is not only does it improve the employee experience at a micro level, but if you set a standard that everyone is talking about those expectations, then you don't have what I call invisible snake bites. Invisible snake bites, the reason the analogy comes up, or the reason I named it this is we can often survive a single snake bite, right? There's antivenom, we rush to a hospital, we're gonna be fine.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 09:04

But if you were to sit in a room and a snake was to continue to bite you over and over again, you would eventually die. And that is the same thing that happens with organizational trust. So if you have a misaligned set of expectations in the workplace and they're not being mitigated and they're not being talked about, you're just feeling every tiny snake bite over and over again until your tolerance for being in that workplace is just going to deteriorate. Your trust in the workplace, your motivation for the role, and your tolerance for even being in that seat. And so this is how you lose people.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 09:37

You lose people through a slow I mean, you lose people in a lot of ways, but one of the very critical ways that culture can amplify turnover is through these tiny breaks in trust that happen over the long term and are not talked about and are not acknowledged and therefore not dealt with and not improved upon.

Vinny Tafuro: 09:57

Yeah, I love the analogy, the term for it. I have a friend, and it's funny too because it depends on where people are in their careers. I have a a good friend. He's around our age and a well experienced engineer in civil engineering. And there was a period of time where he was jumping from job to job.

Vinny Tafuro: 10:15

We were like, dude, what are you doing? And it's but he would sign a contract. And within, you know, two or three months, it's like, they're not doing what they said they were going to do. He at at at in his late forties could go, I'm in Florida. There's a lot of buildings.

Vinny Tafuro: 10:30

Like, he could just easily go from one place to another. And he's like, look. Like, you did you didn't keep up your word. Whereas way earlier in your career, you just can't you don't have that flexibility, and you're not in an you know, you may not be in an industry like civil engineering in Florida where you're designing, you know, roads. You know?

Vinny Tafuro: 10:46

And so interesting because I I just read an article recently about Amazon and that there may become a point where they've employed every possible person for their warehouses. And so they're hedging their bet that the AI robots in their warehouses will work before they run out of people to hire in the country. That's fascinating. Like, what a philosophy to to try to target.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 11:12

Right. Yeah.

Vinny Tafuro: 11:13

So I love the analogy. It makes sense in so many levels, which I think taking that to design economics and bringing design thinking into this, three tenants that we have. The first one is acknowledging change in paradigms. One challenge that I've come across is challenging that it hasn't always been like this, which I think, you know, alluded to, you know, illustrated with Walt Disney. You know, if you look at General Electric in the seventies, post World War two industry, like, there was this social contract with workers that if you spent x number of years there, you did.

Vinny Tafuro: 11:45

You had a certain result. And so what I'm interested in in talking with that is what are you running into? Because you work with solopreneurs. You have worked within large organizations and and all sorts of things. What is your perception of, know, using different language to talk to those different audiences, or how do we get those audiences on the same page?

Vinny Tafuro: 12:03

Because in reality, they don't want that. Like, there's a social contract breakdown, but if we don't use the right terminology that different audiences understand, they're not gonna get it, whether it's academic or invisible snake bites.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 12:15

No. You're a 100% right. One of my earliest this is a fun story. One of my earliest jobs, I worked underneath a mentor named Bob O'Leary, who I just adore. And he was a big picture guy and I was a doer.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 12:29

Like I'm in by StrengthsFinders, I'm a futurist and an activator. So I want to think big picture, but I want to put it into action immediately. And he used to call me the translator because we could go into a meeting and he would talk about this broad idea. And I understood his idea, but I could look on the people's faces and say, they don't get the language that he's speaking to them. And so I could figure out how to like reword what he said and his great ideas into something that they actually understood because it's all it really is all about understanding the context through which other people see the world.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 13:01

And I think sometimes in organizations, we do kind of blanket culture stuff that is it's often done quite honestly by executives who may not have been in those ranks at all, may not have been in those ranks for years. And they're not keeping up with what needs their employees have. So I'll use a Colorado example. We have an incredible vibrancy here in Colorado for city and culture and jobs and art and all these things. We also have an incredible affordable housing crisis, right?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 13:34

And I don't even mean affordable housing in some of the kind of traditional way it was used like low income housing. I mean, like, just people with good, you know, entry level jobs. Like, people with with college degrees or grad degrees coming out and getting a relatively entry level job and being able to afford to live. I was talking to one of our employees who we were on an off-site meeting, and so we were just chatting. And she said she lives with four roommates.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 13:58

It's the only way she can make it work, right? And she's in her late 20s and dying to live by herself. And I thought, oh my gosh. I'm that was not my reality. I was able to live by myself and by my mid twenties if I wanted to.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 14:08

Right? I might have had it. But I probably I probably could have done it at 21 because the cost of living just wasn't what it was. And so you can't assume that your memory of where you were at that chapter in time is the same and that those people are having the same experience as you. And so part of this idea of translating for different audiences is really fully understanding your audience, fully understanding what are the real issues, real struggles that people are coming to work with, right?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 14:39

Like what are they really dealing with at home? Is it how do I make all this work and also focus on my job? If you are looking at a different, you talked about your friend in Florida who was able to move around. There's a lot of constructs around that. If you live in a more rural area where the jobs aren't plentiful, right?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 14:55

If you have followed a spouse to a place where your job is not in a market, you might be more hindered no matter how much you dislike the organization you're in, you're not gonna feel as flexible and it's movable, right? And so really, the only thing we can do to bring people to the table is first start having conversations that that are deeply researched into what is the real life experience that those audiences are having, getting everyone on the same page using the same vernacular, and then you can start to have multigenerational, multilevel in an organization conversations about culture.

Vinny Tafuro: 15:31

Yeah. You know, we we have a a similar time frame because what what I'm realizing now and this is funny because I've got a couple of students that I've mentored, you know, a decade ago that I've started learning more from them than I've been able to learn from my my former or previous boomer members or mentors. And so I'm wondering as this transition and you see a lot more of of Gen X is now in c level, you know, positions, What kind of shift have you seen from like the boomers that were in that position to the Gen X? Are they really embracing the fact that there's change happening or is there a generational difference at all?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 16:07

There is. Xers are small. We are a small generation. There's So more millennials that are overtaking Xers in a lot of different roles depending on your trajectory and whatever. But for those Xers that have kind of risen to the level and ascended into the ranks that were previously held by boomers, the similarities are interesting because we were such a do it yourself generation, right?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 16:36

Lashkey kids. You know, we didn't have technology early on. And so we really, you know, we still remember what it was like to have to, like, go to a card catalog or, you know, use a phone with a cord, you know, like things that were just tougher. And yet we were able to to quickly get up to speed into technology. We watched technology overtake the workplace.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 16:58

There is a sense that is very similar to what boomers had for millennials that Gen Xers have for Gen Z, which is you haven't paid your dues. You wanna set boundaries and while Gen X may, and these are broad generalizations, let me just say person by person this could totally change. But as a general rule, there is still a sense of like, learn how to solve that yourself, I shouldn't have to solve that problem for you. Because we were told learn how to solve that yourself. So we value the ingenuity involved in self starters and self problem solvers in at least attempting before asking for help.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 17:38

And that's a real shift because quite honestly, Gen Zs were brought up to just ask for help. Don't be afraid to ask for help. And that mantra is true as it personally, I mean, particularly as it relates to mental health. Right?

Vinny Tafuro: 17:54

Because we don't ask for help.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 17:56

Right. And also, you should be a problem solver who is adept in, like, trying a lot of things and figuring some stuff out on your own. That's at least from a Gen XO perspective, that's where there's a gap in kind of expectation setting. Have a staff of employees, I expect them to all attempt to find the answer and come to me as a last resort. Not come to me first and ask me all the questions that if it's something they've never done, I'm happy to train.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 18:24

I'm a big person on training. My door is always open. However, if we've been through this and you're just hitting a roadblock, don't be afraid to try to search the answer and then come to me. And know some of that is a personality thing. I had a previous staff person who was just very intimidated about making a mistake.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 18:41

So she would ask me all the questions all the time. And it wasn't that she was really being the stereotype that I just relayed, which is she wasn't being lazy or trying to get me to do the work. She was really intimidated and nervous about failing. And so once I understood that, I worked really diligently to try to get her to step out of her comfort zone and say, try this, right? Just try it.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 19:03

I am not gonna be upset if we fail. Just come to me if something happens and let's work it out. And I think that it just takes intentionality in conversation to be able to do that. But that's what I'm seeing from like a broad perspective. I think some of the that's a similarity with a boomer.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 19:19

What some of the differences though is intentionality. Right? Like, boomers were very cut and dry. Right? Here's the rules, follow them.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 19:28

I don't have time for this. I don't mentor. Whatever. Later in life, some of them became pretty good mentors, but I think is a lot about legacy building and ego and and some other things. But in general, in the rank and file, we were not given any coddling.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 19:40

Right?

Vinny Tafuro: 19:40

Yeah.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 19:41

I think there's a general sense that like, yeah, these things matter and mentoring matters and humans matter. And yet I want to bolster you. I'll give you a recent example actually. I was talking to an executive and their employee is she was feeling conflict with other employees in the organization. And she had come to her boss and said, you know, this is what I feel.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 20:05

I feel I feel like they're not speaking to me very respectfully. I feel, you know, hurt by this. And what I said to the executive is, don't solve it for her. Let's embolden her to go and have a candid conversation with the person she's having a conflict with. And if we need to be in the room to back her up, great.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 20:22

If we need to role play what that conversation would be like, then let's do that. But let's not take it to HR and put it all into executive ranks before they even have a candid conversation. Because that's a learning moment. That's a teaching moment for all the parties involved to be able to say, I'm brave enough to tell you that you've hurt my feelings in these ways. And the other person needs to be have that teaching moment to receive that.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 20:48

And if it were to escalate, yes, then there's protocol or whatever. But we shouldn't avoid the first thing which is just candid conversations and being brave enough to do that. And as managers, we have to embolden our people to have that kind of courage to say, I need to first have a candid conversation before I just turn to someone else to solve this for me.

Vinny Tafuro: 21:09

Yeah. That that makes a lot of sense. And I think I'll start with the the last thing on the candid conversation because I have another friend that he does he's he's a comic, and he does a lot of speaking to HR organizations and whatnot, ad organizations about bringing comedy into that. And I think what what what just resonated with me with that is the idea in improv of not punching down. And it is like like, we we've almost gotten a little bit skittish about having those candid conversations because we're so afraid in the corporate side of like HR and this and that, What's gonna happen?

Vinny Tafuro: 21:40

But it really is, you know, if you're mindful, you know, and this is an emotional intelligence thing. And as we as we we work on that of not punching down and and, you know, what was the problem? Not why are you know, being able to identify that, I think, is important as as we as we mature within organizations. One of to the generational side, it's interesting too because I I look at identification that they didn't pay their dues or this idea that they'll ask instead of just figuring it out. It's like, so now how do we get to a point where, you know, Gen X learned to do it themselves because there was nobody home at the end of the day.

Vinny Tafuro: 22:17

You know? Whereas gen it's gen z that they've been told just to ask. Well, what if you balanced out telling youth as they're coming up to ask and do for themselves? And so, you know, how do we find that middle ground with with the two to figure it out? And I I I'm interested then, you know, structurally where you've seen examples of organizations starting to do that or people talking about that, whether it's in the kind of influencer or thought leader sphere or academia on on bridging those gaps and and starting to be come up with ways for those generations to interact a little bit better.

Vinny Tafuro: 22:58

So because I I think the the challenge that boomers had is they they never really had access to some of those things. And so there was no no bridging that gap so much. I think Gen X is definitely emotionally open to that. It's just a matter of how do you bridge that gap.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 23:16

Yeah. I will tell you that there are great pockets of work being done. The Stanford Center, I'm gonna get this title wrong. The Stanford Center for Good, Science for Good. They are sponsoring a program here in Colorado that was really an awesome program to be part of.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 23:35

We wrote a grant to be a part of this program so that we could integrate some of their great science into our curriculum. The program here in Colorado is called Belonging Colorado. And it is literally a train the trainer model on how to train people who run executive leadership programs, on how to integrate into their curriculum things like how to mentor, how to do candid conversations in the current context, right? There has been tons and tons of learning and research around these concepts for a long time. But there's real value in thinking about how they are done now in the context of where we are in terms of employee experience.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 24:23

I think what people forget when they're talking about the employee experience when it comes to Gen Z is this is a group of individuals who didn't have a mirror for proper social interacting in a professional sense at all, like ever in their formative years, right? Most of them did some part of high school, potentially ended high school in a COVID environment. Definitely was no matter what they were in a COVID environment at some point in college. And then often were remote when they first started. Some of the most entry level positions are the remote positions or the hybrid positions.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 25:01

And and I can do an entire podcast on how you do hybrid properly, so I won't belabor it. But I will say it's an all in, all out model. This hot desking is actually a culture killer, and and that is where hybrid goes awry. So I'll leave it at that. I can talk all about it.

Vinny Tafuro: 25:17

That's an interesting conversation. If you do an episode somewhere on that, I wanna hear it. If not, you and I should have a a coffee over that or something.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 25:23

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There's a real there's there's real value and connection. Yeah.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 25:28

And what I think that we take for granted is especially, you know, for that generation of of young workers is that so much of what we expect as professionalism, we learned by watching. No one taught us, no one told us. We were in an office watching how our boss dressed, watching how meetings took place, watching the vernacular of conversation that happens with professionals well above our pay grade, so to speak. We had conversations at water coolers or at executive lunches. Just, there's so many tiny ways that we learn face to face.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 26:08

That if you strip all of that away, all of us who've already learned it, yeah, we can pop in and out. We can do both. If you never learned it and there's no one there to teach it, then you are gonna fall into the trap of a lack of professional you know, you're gonna fall into all the stereotypes, right? The professional deficits, the the this idea of disengagement or what does engagement look like? What does professionalism look like?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 26:32

All of these questions that get asked, you're gonna fall into that because we have forgotten that we didn't, nobody taught us that. And so we have to be intentional about teaching it in a way that we've never had to do in the workplace before.

Vinny Tafuro: 26:45

I hadn't really thought through that. So much of how we learn is through nuanced nonverbal communication.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 26:51

That's right.

Vinny Tafuro: 26:51

And that's why even Zoom calls, until we can figure out how to center eyeballs on the camera while also looking to who you're talking to, there's still a disconnect on even a Zoom conversation with somebody you know very well. And we watch so much. I was thinking about my young professional times in ad two and learning how you know, those are the first times I was at formal banquet dinners long before I had really joined a chamber of commerce or went to some other event. And then, you know, jokingly, I just thought of Jack from Titanic and being told eat from the you use the utensils from the outside in.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 27:26

Right. That's right. Yeah.

Vinny Tafuro: 27:28

Yeah. We learn by watching, and that makes a lot of sense. So I guess, how do we then and this is kind of in that we've we've been already kind of talking in that that second tenant of of embracing creativity and coming with ideas, you know, in that bridging gaps. What are different idea what are different things that are coming up now or that you've experienced that you're working on that have that have really new ideas that are kind of can break that wall to go, okay. We are in the new paradigm, and there's new things we can do as organizations, I guess,

Melanie Sue Hicks: 28:01

is Yeah. That's a really good question. It's really interesting. There's so many, and yet I am hyper focused on basically connection and adaptability. I mean, these are what I am highly focused on.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 28:14

So what are the ways that we need to get back to genuine connection? So I talk about connection a lot in my workshops and you know it's really tied into expectation setting. So I you know I can't get away from that because it's my it's apparently my foundation. You know I was talking to a psychiatrist when I was I'm working on my it's technically my third book, but I took a brief hiatus for a poetry book, so that's a little different deal. So the book that I'm working on is really about connection and what that looks like for the workplace and what that looks like for society.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 28:47

And one of the psychiatrists that I was interviewing about this said, you know, we used to have very deep robust social structures, right? You were either a part of a religious organization, you were deeply a part of a club, like a triathlon club or a running club, or you know, or a Rotary,

Vinny Tafuro: 29:06

like all of those groups. Yeah.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 29:08

Right. And we were deeply involved in those. We weren't shallowly involved. We were we were like deeply but we had these hobbies that we were that we were deeply passionate about. And that served so many purposes in our life.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 29:18

And what has happened is we have have narrowed in our social circles to where we have two or three close friends. And maybe we have a lot of other associates or whatever for people that are very extroverted, they probably have a lot of contacts. But we've really narrowed in. And what that does is put a lot of pressure on those people to serve all the functions that a larger social structure used to serve. So I do this thing called connection mapping with folks.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 29:42

And I'm like, yes, we can think about connections as like professional, personal, and then family, the closest ones or whatever that's chosen or blood family. But, like but what I care about is where are your people you would call at 3AM if you were in jail? Where are the people that you know will listen while you cry over a breakup? Right? Yeah.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 30:01

Or your dog passing away, right? Who are the people that can cheer you up no matter what? They will make you laugh no matter what. Like, these are the kind of connections we don't like to articulate and put people in those kind of like categories but you need all of those. You need the full spherical human emotion cycle to be covered and connected somehow to other people.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 30:23

And so when we start to narrow in our little social groups to be so small, and often when I say so small, sometimes I mean your husband and your kids, right? And that is too much pressure on your husband and your kids. You're putting too much pressure for them to be all of the things, right? So I talk about connection when I relate it in Colorado. I relate it to aspen trees, right?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 30:42

And so aspen trees are really, really beautiful. Their leaves are very light. They make like little shimmering noises in the summer and then they turn beautiful colors in the fall and then they fall away, right? Those friends are for fun, they're for laughter, they are for, you know, bringing beauty to your life, but they are not there for a long time. They're not meant to stay, right?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 31:04

And then you got your branches who might be around for a little longer, they're a little more stable, they can do a little bit more, but you get a big storm, they're gonna break away. They can't handle, they can't be with you through life's really tough parts, right? And the trunk says your family, right? That's your chosen and or blood family. They're gonna be there.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 31:21

They're gonna be around all the time. We might be able to identify those in our lives. Hopefully, you have them. Hopefully, you, those are the easy ones. I think the thing that people often forget is about the roots, right?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 31:34

Many people in your life who are truly your roots. They don't have to be around a lot. They don't have to be on all your social media, pictures, but people who truly feed you and truly help stabilize you as a human, those people are just as important as actually the trunks and your family. And we need those. Know, roots are in the ground, they're dirty, they provide much nutrients, like they're beautiful.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 31:58

They're intertwined, aspen trees intertwined their roots with each other, so when one dies they all die. This is the kind of social structure that we want and should want to build for ourselves. And organizations need to understand that those social structures matter for employees as well. You have to be able to provide employees with opportunities to connect deeply with the organization and its values and each other, while also just doing some you know, all the way up to the leaves. We're we're inter intertwined teams at a Christmas party.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 32:31

You know, like, you need all of that. And there's not you can't just do the leaves or people are not gonna be invested in your organization. And you also can't get any work done if you're always in the ground doing the roots, right? Got to have this idea, this ideal utopia for an organization or an individual is to have a really robust set of connective tissue. Because that's how we build trust and it's how we really solidify our connection to others.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 33:01

The other piece that I say I talk about all the time and that I'm seeing, we absolutely have to start talking intentionally and training intentionally around adaptability. Right? Like this word gets thrown around a lot, but there's not a lot of intentional training around it. We tell people to be flexible. We tell people But then, you know, we're not giving them tools to do that.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 33:22

We're not setting up spaces that are safe enough for them to fail and fail early. We're not giving them tools to solve problems on their own, you know, without feeling that failure. And so adaptability is just to me this like very, very critical component of Yeah. Organizational success and personal success.

Vinny Tafuro: 33:41

Yeah. I love the the tree analogy and and part of it. Because I know in my own life, like like, that that is so easy to kinda translate in in visually and emotionally, especially the roots because they are. They're the people that you literally maybe talk to once a year. Like I've got friends from elementary school growing up on Long Island that in the last year we've connected again in ways that just are important.

Vinny Tafuro: 34:09

And they'll they'll they'll always be there. That that that's that's beautiful. One of the things I I've seen is is the killer be killed capitalism organizational structure that's like, well, we can just shed people and hire new ones if we need to has come out of this, you know, the the version you know, the level of science that thought that, you know, survival of the fittest, every tree in the forest was an individual. And I think as science is starting to go, no. There's myoceleal networks.

Vinny Tafuro: 34:39

There are root exchanges. You know, entire trees may be dead from the ground up, but their roots are still feeding other ones. And I think as science now proves that nature is absolutely not individualized and that they have to be collaborative. Now it's like, okay. How do we apply that science to us?

Vinny Tafuro: 34:58

Because applying science is how we atomized everything. So how can we use science to reconnect everything again? And I think I'm I'm heartened by that potential and story and and analogies like the tree that I think really, really I might actually borrow that because it's I really enjoy that. Moving to, you know, this idea is this interconnected and and how do we start talking about this? One of the things we you know, earlier you were talking about the social contract and this invisible snake bites thing.

Vinny Tafuro: 35:27

And it it reminded me, you know, how do we build the structures for this to talk about new ideas? And then on, you know, our our our third tenant is this cultivating literacy. And I think when you go back, you had organizations like GE that had training programs for culture. And then you got, you know, Neutron, Jack, was that his name? He was CEO of GE for, like, twenty years.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 35:52

Oh, Jack.

Vinny Tafuro: 35:55

Yeah. That guy. Jack Welch. Jack Welch.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 35:57

Welch. There you go. Jack together together, we'll find this.

Vinny Tafuro: 35:59

Yeah. And and I I kinda refer to him as, like, the Lombardi of CEOs because you can trace where his influence is GE's CEO with this idea of yanking rank and and building the biggest corporation in the world. Yet less than twenty years after his retirement, GE is a syndicated brand selling light bulbs made in Germany. You know, it it's not what he said it was gonna be. And so how do we institutionalize the return to what was before that?

Vinny Tafuro: 36:35

What do you think those structures might look like?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 36:37

You know, I'll start where I or I'll repeat what I where I started, which is we have to keep beating the drum that culture is a profit center. And until people value it like one of their profit centers and understand that there are economic consequences to a bad organizational culture, there are reputational consequences, there are direct economic consequences. And until we continue to kind of get that or that's the narrative that has to change. Culture has to matter to people who care about profit. And then it because it already matters to a lot of us who I mean, not that I don't care about profit.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 37:20

I I don't don't let don't let him at the chamber here that I don't care about sales and profit because I do. But I also know the value of culture stands on its own in my mind. And But I'm not the one stopping those kinds of programs from being developed. It is the people who are in charge of cutting budgets and watching numbers. So we have to convince them that these are endeavors worthy of investment.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 37:41

And once organizations change that mindset and say, this is an investment in our productivity, this is an investment in our profitability. Then we can see the resurgence of these kind of initiatives that will drive you know, stronger cultures and really bring back those kind of intentional training efforts.

Vinny Tafuro: 38:02

Now is that something, you know, from a leadership foundation, is there a role for chambers and leadership programs to be the ones beating that drum either as individual committees within it if the whole chamber is not there or their foundation? What kind of role do you think that can be? And how would that be how is that evolving? Because we might not have a GE that's gonna do this training and have this big influence. How do we get an organization outside of of that to to do something?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 38:32

Yeah. I mean, I will tell you 100%, I believe it's my role to continue to be an expert in this field and to share that broadly and be a train the trainer model in that sense. Executives join one of our programs for a variety of reasons. Each program has its own career goals, but there is not a program where I don't talk about connective tissue and how important it is. And on our Leadership Fellows program, which is deeply introspective, it is about a personal journey of making sure that you're connecting properly.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 39:01

One of the things that I'm really proud of about my own leadership journey, and trust me when I say I did, it took me years to figure out that this was a strategy that needed to be employed, which is I deeply want to get to know people on other teams and who they are as spherical people. So, will tell you I have a whole relationship with a colleague, younger colleague, because we exchange, we love, we both love chocolate and we do an exchange. She keeps a bowl by her desk, I help refill that bowl. And that's our little, and it just spurs conversation, it spurs connection. I asked her about something else, she told me about her weekend.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 39:39

These are little interactions, right? I brought a mantra into this office that I actually picked up from my best friend from high school is a judge. And she said as part of which before the short term state attorney's office, and they would have this thing. It's actually, oh my god, someone bring it up. It's a podcast, but you can see it Benny.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 39:57

Which is rubber duck and Rubik's cube, Right? So if someone comes into my office and they need to vent about something, they need to talk to me about something. I say, am I a Rubber Duck? Am I just listening? Do you just need to vent?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 40:08

Or am I Rubik's cube? Are you trying to solve? Do I need to help you solve this challenge? And like, tell me so I know how to listen. Because I will listen better if I'm already If you need me to help solve it, I'm gonna be in problem solving mode.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 40:21

If I'm just here to listen because sometimes we just need to be heard, that's okay too. But let me know that upfront, right? So I

Vinny Tafuro: 40:27

brought this

Melanie Sue Hicks: 40:27

to our office and now so many of us have these little trinkets on our desk to say like, okay, what is this moment? Like, is this moment about listening or is this about problem solving? And I think those are that's the little moments that culture is built on. And so for me as a leader of leadership programs, I try to break it down so that I start with like, here's the economics of why this matters. Like, let's go big picture.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 40:51

Here's why this really should matter to you. And now because that feels huge and overwhelming and how do you even start? I have a whole, you know, bucket full of like tiny tips and tricks that just start, you know, the the reverse of invisible snake bites, right? Like baby steps. Just baby steps baby step your way into connecting and bringing out connection with with your coworkers, with your teams, and and cross functionally.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 41:18

And and it will naturally yes, we might need big sweeping efforts, but we also can just do it in baby steps. And so I just try to equip them. I try to give them all the facts why it matters. That's my role as an expert in this. And also here's some practical tips that are not that scary and not expensive and it's just and not they don't take tons of time.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 41:35

You don't need an eight hour retreat in the mountains. You can just do small acts of kindness that are genuine.

Vinny Tafuro: 41:42

I like that a lot. When I got involved with conscious capitalism was kind of my segue into this, you know, this realm. And it was, you know, corporate social responsibility was you people are like, oh, is that like that? I'm like, no. And there was this difference, know, because I think employees, customers, whatever it is, they can tell.

Vinny Tafuro: 42:02

You can they they can sense when you're being fake. And, you know, creating ways for be for people to be authentic because I think, you know, like, your trinkets. Like, that is you are kind of you're you're giving the employer, your team member a thing, but that thing is also something you have on your desk that you have to focus on. Like, oh, wait a second. I'm not in the Rubik's cube mode right now or I'm not in the duck mode.

Vinny Tafuro: 42:28

And I think that that that that is a two way direction as opposed to just having, you know, a comment box for the team to leave messages and may or may not be listened to.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 42:37

Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, I love suggestion boxes there, but that's not always the way that that things need to get done. Right?

Vinny Tafuro: 42:44

Yeah. I'm I'm curious if you've got any any thoughts and and I had because I'm not as plugged in anymore. I'm not a young professional anymore. But one of the things I you know, as a Gen Xer, you know, we have these young professional organizations and things like Add To are still around nationally for advertising professionals. But is there a next step to that or something where these leadership programs rather than just executives, how because, again, we may not be able to recreate the the same environment for Gen Z that that spent the first three to you know, two to five years of their career remote, how do we help catch them up?

Vinny Tafuro: 43:19

Because it's it's not their fault. You know? It's like it was a situational thing. And how do we help correct for that? Because I think that's something that's important.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 43:29

Yeah. One of the one of the methodologies that I used when I worked with groups on change management, right, was I came up with this this copyrighted three e method of change. And it's really just a structure that can be really used on a personal micro level or on an organization level. And the first E of that is how I will answer this question, which is the first E of that is excavate your attic. And it's interesting, I did an international podcast recently, and they didn't know what the word excavate, and they didn't really weren't really familiar with attics.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 43:59

And so it's a very interesting conversation where I had to explain that a little more, but I'm gonna assume your audience knows those things. But what that means from an organization standpoint is really truly those with some authority and budget you know construct need to sit down and be very intentional about what are the norms that exist and what are the norms that we expect, and where are we allowing those things to completely misalign. Because you can't expect someone of another generation or you know a younger employee or another department even. Like you can't expect people to be able to bring in change and to buy in to that change and not feel jaded by it. If you aren't you know looking straight in the mirror, I have an author friend who wrote a book called Disaffected, his name is Sean Pittman.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 44:59

And in it he talks about a concept him and his friend would say to one another which is, what are you pretending not to know? Which is a powerful question for someone to ask you when you are in a decision making point. And that's what I would challenge all executives. What are you pretending not to know about your own organization? Because very few people run an organization or a division of an organization and don't really know what's going on, but lots of people like to pretend that they don't because it's hard.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 45:28

Culture work is hard. Humans are hard. And the first step in broad change is just actually figuring out what are the norms I actually expect, not the ones that look good on paper. For example, I am most days the first person on the Fifth Floor here in the building. We have the Fourth And Fifth Floors of our own building.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 45:50

And I but by the same token, I don't expect anyone else to be here. In fact, I kinda like it when they're not because I use that time to myself. But I very clearly tell my employees, I will probably always beat you to the office. That is okay. I don't expect that of you.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 46:05

That's my time, I choose that, right? But I can see where if I didn't spend that intentionality and say those things that someone might feel pressure, if they wanna impress me, if they're like, oh my gosh, my boss is always here early, I guess I need to adjust to be early when the norm around here somewhere between 08:30 and nine. But I like to get her between 07:30 and eight. Like, I don't so it's sometimes it's about intentionality, but I have to be really clear. Like, do I expect them to be here early?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 46:31

No. I really don't want them to be. I wanna shut my door. You know, I wanna leave my door open actually and like just have quiet time, right? Yeah.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 46:37

But these are these are the kind of things where you just have to be really honest with yourself. And the organization has to be really honest with itself about what's really happening and what do they really want to happen. And that's where you start. Because if you can't do that, nothing will change.

Vinny Tafuro: 46:54

I love that. Yeah. That is I I really enjoyed this conversation. I wanna kinda as we wrap up here Mhmm. A little bit.

Vinny Tafuro: 47:02

Like I said, you recently had a TED talk out. What is driving right now? What are the things where people can find you?

Melanie Sue Hicks: 47:08

The the best place to find me is on Instagram. That's my favorite. It's in pursuit Mel Sue is is my and my hashtag. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on both.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 47:18

I answer every single DM or message myself. So if someone wants to get in touch with me, that's a good way. I will absolutely answer you. I read all the comments. I do all the things.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 47:27

I'm not cool enough to have somebody else do that for me yet. But really, you know, I am I am super dedicated to these conversations. I care deeply about the value proposition of culture, And I mean that from an economic standpoint and a human standpoint. And it is my life's mission to continue to be a researcher and be on top of it, and also to spark these kind of conversations. So if there are places and others that want to have these conversations, places for me to show up and be, I travel, have bag, will travel.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 48:00

Know, like I love doing these things. And you know, if I could just leave advice as just to care, care about this, treat it treat it seriously. That's what I would say is it really does matter, treat it seriously. And if that's not in your wheelhouse to do, find experts like me who can help you.

Vinny Tafuro: 48:17

I think that's a great place to end. I I think authenticity is so important right now.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 48:22

So Absolutely.

Vinny Tafuro: 48:24

Well, Melanie, thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate the time and conversation, and Okay. Look forward to seeing you soon.

Melanie Sue Hicks: 48:30

Alright. Thank you so much. It was so great.

Vinny Tafuro: 48:33

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Design Economics Podcast. We will be back next month with another engaging conversation. You can find the design economics podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Please check out our show notes on our website, designeconomics.io. The designeconomics podcast is produced by the Institute for Economic Evolution, and I am your host, Vinny Tafiro.

Vinny Tafuro: 48:53

Thank you for listening.