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Welcome to The Culture Code podcast. On this podcast, you’ll learn how to grow, shape, and sustain a high-performance culture with the CEO of LEADx, Kevin Kruse. From designing and delivering highly effective leadership development programs, to measuring and improving the employee experience, you will understand what it takes to cultivate a thriving company culture. Through interviews with Chief People Officers, deep dives into key topics, and recordings of our invite-only community sessions, we bring you cutting-edge, data-backed insights from the most desirable companies to work for in the world.
Kevin Kruse: Hello, everyone. I'm Kevin Kruse. Welcome to Culture Code. Our guest today, I'm very excited, is the Chief People Officer at Bristlecone, Lisa Lesko. Lisa, welcome! Where are you joining from today?
Lesko: I am actually from Chicago, Illinois.
Kruse: Chicago, Illinois. I'm just outside Philadelphia. I haven't been to Chicago in a little while. Is Chicago where the company is located, or are you working remotely?
Lesko: I work remotely. I was actually hired during Covid, so we were all remote at that time, which created an opportunity, I think. And no, actually, our headquarters is in San Jose, California. We also have another operation in Dallas, a large operation in India with four sites, and a growing site in Europe.
Kruse: Oh, that sounds great. I just spent a month in San Jose and got back a couple of weeks ago. I don't know how well you know San Jose, but I was staying at this place called Santana Row. Do you know that, Santana?
Lesko: Yes, yes. Did you stay in Valencia?
Kruse: I was in an apartment there for a month, so I wasn't at that beautiful hotel. But I'm trying to describe it to my friends, and I say it's sort of like this retail bubble with high-end shops, around 30 restaurants and bars, but above all, it's totally fake, and I loved it. It's kind of like Disneyland, right?
Lesko: Oh, it's fun! I was just there a few weeks ago, and we actually went to Santana Row. I can't go there without visiting that place.
Kruse: I think it's gonna be where I stay every September from now on. It was so delightful.
Lesko: Oh, yes, the weather's perfect. And yeah, it's a great place to be.
Kruse: For those who might not be familiar with Bristlecone, how big is your organization and in plain language, what do you do?
Lesko: Bristlecone is a leading supply chain consulting organization, with close to 3,000 employees. We work with our customers to understand their needs and provide solutions that create overall business value. We have five capability areas or areas of expertise that we bring to our customers. That includes SAP, which is probably where we conduct most of our business. But we also specialize in connected platforms, platform solutions, AI and analytics, and modern engineering. Some of the things we do include cognitive manufacturing—how we get smarter and faster to get to production, or how we accelerate time to market. We assist our customers in solving some of these issues to achieve success. One other thing I'd like to mention is that we also belong to the Mahindra Group, which is a $21 billion revenue company with a vast portfolio, including automotive, farm equipment, and technology services. The Mahindra company is based in India.
Kruse: Okay, we're here to talk about culture. How would you describe your company culture in just a few words?
Lesko: Sure. One of our taglines is that we thrive on change. We're agile, engaging, empowering, supportive, and flexible. We're also learning-focused, inclusive, and global. We have a thirst and passion to learn more. As an organization, we invest heavily in this. We listen and respond to our employees, which is vital to us. We're global not just geographically, but also in celebrating and appreciating different cultures.
Kruse: You mentioned a lot of great traits and attributes: agile, flexible, inclusive. What are some of the ways you foster or sustain this culture? Any unique rituals or traditions related to your culture?
Lesko: We walk the talk. The elements of our employee value proposition have been derived from the voice of the employees, so we don't just foster it - we live it. In terms of new hires, we search for facets to ensure the individuals joining us will thrive from within. Our policies and practices are designed to enhance the values we stand by. We've introduced numerous initiatives that have significantly contributed to fostering our culture. Our "People Week" initiative is aimed at bringing people together, promoting collaboration, learning, networking, and building a sense of community among employees, both physically and virtually. We've implemented "My Day, Friday," a program that encourages employees to allocate the second half of Fridays to aspirational projects, self-development, or even planning for the following week. During this period, we discourage meetings, and employees are urged to spend the time in the most impactful manner to increase their productivity.
We also successfully transitioned to a work-from-home culture with an over 82% utilization rate for available employees. This shift attests to the trust and loyalty we have in our workforce. "Triumph" is our annual recognition event dedicated to acknowledging talent, celebrating successes, and genuinely having fun. This event engages more than 75% of our employees, fostering a sense of camaraderie and shared success.
Additionally, we've established inclusive leave policies. Our PTO and parental leaves across all countries surpass industry standards. In the US, we offer unlimited vacation time for exempt employees. Our medical benefits include options like gender reassignment, surrogacy, and coverage for infertility treatments. Same-gender partners are also covered under our benefits. We have provisions for work-from-home for expecting mothers and for parents until their child turns one. These are just a few of the programs we've put in place. They have driven a lot of engagement and fostered a high-performing culture.
Kruse: Lisa, you just rattled off so many cool programs and generous benefits. I want to underscore, you know, for our listeners, that you actually started talking about hiring. There are some – I mean, I'm not in this camp – but like Jim Collins who wrote "Good to Great," he even says you don't change culture. You hire culture. People are a certain way. So, if you want people to be innovative and creative, you don't hire people that want to, you know, wear the same clothes every day and eat the same meal at the same restaurant every Friday, right? So there's a lot of truth to that, right? It starts with the hiring, and then all these other things to maintain it and to sustain it, I guess, is the answer.
Lesko: Exactly. It covers the whole lifecycle. And you have to look at, you know, these facets and what's important to the culture and what we look for in people who can thrive in this culture. You need to look through the whole lifecycle, from the time they start to, you know, the time they leave the company, right? You want to make sure that that's baked into everything that we do.
Kruse: Now, Lisa, you mentioned you've got roughly 3,000 employees. 70% of engagement is correlated to the manager, and front-line managers touch more employees than any other leadership group. What are some of the ways you develop your front-line managers?
Lesko: Sure. And we have multiple channels in which we do this. But probably what has been our most successful model is what we call "High Engage". It's our holistic engagement model we implement in the organization. What it's done is really help to connect managers with their employees. So we went back to basics and said, you know, what's the role of a manager and what role do they play? As we were going through, you know, Covid and the great resignation, we were trying to find out why people were leaving the company. Our attrition was at 27%, and this was a year and a half ago. So we started to talk to our employees. A big part of it was that they wanted to talk to our managers. Our managers were not connecting with us. So we took the time to retrain our managers on the role they play. We equipped them with an engagement report card. We gave them a script: Here are some things you can talk about. Here's what you should be asking, with the intent of retaining our employees. It's not just my team's role, right? It is the role of the manager to ensure that their employees are engaged. So, we created an engagement report card where we assessed as red, amber, or green. If anybody was in red, that meant action. Then the manager would work to figure out what actions to take to ensure we were being inclusive with employees and addressing their needs. Maybe making some changes to existing initiatives that could help employees move forward. We also use feedback from engagement surveys to help our managers determine good actions they should be taking. We introduced what we call the "Meta Conference framework". It introduces career pathing and learning at different levels of work. So for managers, we work with them if they aspire to be a manager or if they are a manager, what they should be doing at certain stages of their development. This ensures they can acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to be effective line managers in the future.
Kruse: Now, Lisa, you were very transparent and said, at one point, you guys were looking at 27% attrition. Is it too early to see the positive impact you've made?
Lesko: No. In fact, we actually reduced our attrition. We got down to 16%. And as of today, we're at 12% attrition. What we've been able to do is create, you know, a 17 to 18% reduction in attrition. We've also reversed 166 resignations that we've had. Just by connecting with our employees and getting managers more engaged, it really helped us understand what was on our employees' minds and to really address those needs. It's been a huge success. Across the company, engagement has improved. We had our most recent engagement survey, the highest ever in Bristol Cone. Our EMPS doubled, you know. So if you look at our Glassdoor rating, it was hovering around 3.6-3.7. We're at 4.1. So many things have begun to happen. Our goal now, going forward, is to keep it this way. We don't want to lose that. We've embedded, you know, the manager and employee engagement in the system. It's been a huge factor to our success and engagement with our employees. So we want to continue to do this.
Kruse: Yeah, well, you got those incredible improvements in, I think, less than two years, right?
Lesko: Yes, and we did this in a year and a half. I mean, 27% attrition was so high, and it was alarming, right? And you know, so we had to be intentional about it and just go back to basics. It was such an improvement in how our managers have been engaging with employees. They've learned a lot themselves. I think sometimes when a manager takes on a new role, they try to do the same things they were doing as an individual contributor and they don't get the basics. What's the role I play? You know, it's not just about delivering results. That's a part of it, but it's also about managing and leading your teams. And how do you do that? The engagement we had with the managers has made a tremendous difference.
Kruse: Lisa, you just gave a big gift to all the listeners and so many of your peers out there. In fact, I'm going to ask anyone listening, you know, to hit rewind in case they zoned out for a second and didn't hear everything you said because, you know, I was asking about leadership development. Many people will give the answer of "oh, we send them all to this workshop to give feedback, or we send them to this workshop." And that's fine. You probably have some workshops, you know. I'm not anti-workshop, but we know that workshops generally don't change behaviors and those kinds of training workshops don't generally move the needle on engagement, which you're talking about. I love this phrase, you know, they get this manager report card. It's color-coded. Managers are given help, and we counsel all the time. Sure, do the once or twice a year employee voice survey, but do manager effectiveness surveys, whatever you call them internally. So managers get their own scorecard on how their team members feel. It's not a 360, it's a 180 that really counts. How are they being graded? What are the behaviors that drive that engagement? Do you want managers to spend more time leading their people? Give them a score on how well they're doing. You measure it, it improves; what a concept! And as your managers get better, overall engagement improves, leading to lower turnover, improved productivity, and so on. It's very real. So, congratulations, and I want everybody to adopt this approach.
Lesko: Thank you. It's been a tremendous intervention in the organization, and this has gone from employees to managers to our CEO and our board. Because this is a huge concern. I mean, if we have employees walking out the door, and we're not finding out what's making them tick or why they're leaving and not intervening and taking action, we're not going to be productive. In that year and a half, we were very intentional. We were very hands-on. It was a lot of work to get this in place, but to see how much this has improved our attrition and that people are excited and engaged, and we're hearing it all the time, it's incredible.
Kruse: Lisa, you already talked about, you know, employee voice surveys and this manager Scorecard. How do you solicit feedback from employees about the culture and their engagement (e.g., engagement or other surveys, town halls, ?)
Lesko: Yeah, so there's other things that we do. We have ELT Town Halls. So anytime that any of our ELTs are traveling, we make sure that they're having town halls and connecting with people, not just in our own business unit, but across. So we make an effort to do that. We invest in, you know, taking people out to lunch, right? And, you know, high potentials that we want to retain. I would say our ELT is very approachable. So people feel very comfortable, you know, having conversations and going to lunch and talking.
We've also put together a new series. Instead of calling it more formally, you know, like a "Quarterly Business Review", we changed the name to "Let's Talk". What we wanted was not just the executive leadership team, you know, talking to our employees and sharing information. We wanted to interact. So, we called it "Let's Talk". Not only do we share updates, but we try to create a free-flowing conversation with leadership and employees. We leave lots of time for questions and answers. All of our executive leadership team are on this call and they're available. Any questions across any of our business units can be addressed at that time. It's been really effective to open up the lines of communication and encourage employees to come forward and voice their feedback, concerns, or whatever it might be.
We also did some ELT up-close sessions. This was about just one ELT member talking to a random group of employees. We looked at where the highest attrition was occurring and then invited a random selection of people. Through these sessions, we'd find out, you know, what's working well and what are some opportunities. We found out a lot of good information and some low-hanging fruit that we could change for the better. We communicated back, saying, "Hey, we've done this." But then we also found some bigger issues that we could address. Whether it was at an organization level, a BU level, or even just within a work group, we could notify the right people, talk to them about what we found out, and start to put some actions into place.
We also have peer groups that we've created. We have an employee council consisting of about 7 employees across Crystal Cone. These are peers that talk to people, keep their ears to the ground, and if they hear of anything going on that maybe an employee doesn't feel comfortable coming to their manager, a leader, or even my people and culture team, they can talk to a peer about their concerns. That peer can then share with us, in a broad-based situation and also anonymously, some concerns that are out there.
We also have what we call "Code Champions'', representatives of our code of conduct. We've aligned them across each of our business units. They help uphold our code of conduct and advice or seek help if needed. We like having these peers because I think employees feel more comfortable talking to someone they can trust.
We also have an online system. If someone wants to file a complaint or anything, they can use our online system, either anonymously or openly. We then take it, look into it, and we also have an Ethics and Governance council that we've put together, which includes some of our leadership team. We discuss any concerns and determine the next steps. We have multiple channels where people can feel free to talk, disclose anything, or give feedback. I think that's really helped us show that we have this culture of listening within the organization.
Kruse: Lisa, you mentioned so many stealable ideas already. Related to culture, are there any special initiatives or results you’re most proud of?
Lesko: Yeah, I think we've covered some of the best things. One other thing I would say is that we have really built a culture of learning. I am not the type of person that says every employee has to have a certain amount of learning hours each year. What I want to do is create a pull factor. I want people to want to learn. So we put the learning in front of people and encourage them to learn. Starting last year, and continuing annually, we have a "Learning Month". We set aside this time for all types of learning, whether it's from a functional standpoint, organizational learning, or even ethics and governance. All learning is centered in this one month to encourage people to take advantage of it. We do it during the month of November and we call it "NoVember". It was widely successful. We had many participants and created healthy competition amongst the business units to encourage more learning. This approach helped the business from both a functional and organizational learning perspective. It made the learning process fun. On average, we achieved over 42 hours of learning per employee during that month. We offered various types of learning and also included families. For many of our events, like our "NoVember" or people week, we try to include families. Especially since COVID, people's work and personal lives have become intertwined. Their families are vital to them. So we provide opportunities for families to participate. We had some fun learning sessions for families too, which were well-received. We got a lot of positive feedback and plan to host it again this coming November. We're in the process of planning for that. This initiative was very valuable within the organization and truly created that pull factor for learning.
Kruse: Lisa, you stumbled on, I think, an interesting concept about the pull factor for the culture of learning. There's a company, I won't name them; they're actually a client. This company has an expectation that 1 hour a week is dedicated to learning for everybody in the company. And when I first heard about this and the way they phrased it, it was, in my mind, 100% granted. Why isn't everyone doing this? Because the way they said it, if we're asking everybody to do it, then managers can't say, "Lisa, what are you doing reading that book, taking that learning, watching that Ted talk? We have a deadline to hit." No, it's baked in as part of the job. And I thought, "Wow, what a great idea! Just mandated." But then many others said the problem with that is people might feel forced into that time and they might just, you know, tap through that e-learning program or scroll to the bottom of that document just to get credit. I wrote a book called "Great Leaders Have No Rules" about this idea. Even if you set rules with good intentions, people won't own it. They'll get around it. They won't do what you actually want them to do, even if it looks like they are. So you're saying, in your organization's case, rather than just having a mandate, a rule, or an expectation, you create something fun and thematic. All of your leadership can model it, provide incentives, and pull people to it, and, at least in your case, it's really working.
Lesko: Well, yes, and it was funny. We set our own internal goals. We wanted employees to have 40 hours of learning. But to an employee, as you said, you can't just tell them that because it becomes a mandate; it's a chore, something they have to do. That's not what we wanted. We wanted the learning to be meaningful. We wanted to pull people into learning and show them all the opportunities. We actually give learning credits for people who participate in our different learning opportunities. The outcome turned out to be even higher than our goal. We were hoping to achieve this just by creating fun in learning, showing all the opportunities, and fostering a sense of competition and camaraderie among the teams. That was a way we were able to get the learning hours. The outcome was exactly what we were hoping for, but employees never felt it was something mandated or a chore.
Kruse: This is a short format podcast. What book would you recommend that your colleagues read? (or podcast, video, etc.)
Lesko: I would say, and this was a book that was introduced to me, it's called "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance" by Angela Lee Duckworth. It's really interesting. She explores the concept of grit, which she defines as the combination of passion and perseverance toward long-term goals. So, you know, if everyone in the organization could read this, it offers valuable insights into, you know, some of our human behavior and our approach to achievement. I think this would be really interesting to promote some of these principles within the organization. So, employees can develop resilience and the determination needed to thrive in their careers, and contribute to organizational goals and ultimately drive overall success. The one thing that we say at Bristlecone, because we're a smaller company, is we're really looking for those who have that passion to be here and that growth mindset. We are looking to grow as an organization, and she also correlates grit to having a growth mindset. So it's a critical skill set for us here at Bristlecone.
Kruse: Love it! And what's something that you know now that maybe you wish you knew on your first day becoming chief people officer? If you could give advice to a younger version of yourself, what would that advice be?
Lesko: I think it's that there's a very delicate balance between the business focus and the people focus. When I first started, it was very much focused on supporting the business and enabling the business. But there's been a lot of learning, and I would say I'm always learning. I think even Covid was eye-opening because it really was about, how do we connect with our people? I think the focus shifted from business leaders running an organization and we support the business leaders to, we really need to support our people. People are the most important. We are a consulting services company, so our business is our people. And I think what happened during Covid, and what I witnessed even being here, was the way our leadership team came together to support our people in need. Our people are our biggest asset. They are our business. So we need to take care of them, listen to them, be transparent, provide opportunities, and really develop them. Based on this renewed focus on people, I even changed the name of our team from human resources to people and culture. To me, this is our priority, and I think it's what we care most about.
Kruse: Yeah, I love that focus. I often say, and no one's ever taken me up on it, but I wish big companies, especially because of the number of employees, would change the word manager to coach. There's some magic in naming and "human resources", which doesn't always have a positive connotation. "People and culture" suggests that this is what it's really about. It's right there in the name.
Lesko: Exactly, and it's made a huge difference. I think people feel that we're different, that we're listening. We're not just about administration, and we're not just supporting the business leaders. We have a balance; we support our leaders, but we also support the people. That to me was eye-opening from what you learn early in your career and what you think you're supposed to do versus what you need to do. We've defined ourselves here at Bristlecone, and I've been in large companies too. I've seen the good and the bad. I think that what we've been able to experience here in a smaller company is that we can make an impact. We can change the culture and set our culture moving in the right direction, helping people feel valued about what they do every day. I see a difference within our leadership and within my own team in how we operate and work with our employees. People feel it. The engagement surveys, the Glassdoor rating, and our net promoter score all give us a clear message that we're doing the right thing, and that's what's most important.
Kruse: So, Lisa, the last question for you: Bristlecone is obviously having success in a great environment. What excites you the most about your company right now?
Lesko: Yeah, we are actually focused on a new effort. It's a collaboration between my talent development or learning team and our AI and analytics area. We're working on future skills. Generative AI is a term we're hearing about often, so we're ensuring all of our developers go through new training. This will be a blend of self-paced learning and instructor-led training, which will also include pre and post assessments. I think it's been a great collaboration, something that we're putting together now. People can learn and become familiar with some of these new terms. Chat GPT, for example, has been amazing. I've been using it where you can, if you have a question or you're trying to create a slide presentation, input this into Chat GPT, and it provides you with data to use in your presentation. It's like having everything at your fingertips. We want to ensure our employees, especially in our AI and analytics area and other developers across the organization, are aware of these tools and are proficient in using them. They should be taking advantage of some of these new AI applications. This initiative is exciting for me, and we just kicked it off. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out in the coming year.
Kruse: We'll come back in nine months to hear about that because I'm sure this is going to be on a lot of people's minds.
Lesko: Exactly. We're just so excited to be working together on this. We're looking for opportunities where we can collaborate directly with our business. The more we can build this skill set internally, the more we can deliver it to our customers. This is going to be interesting to our customers as well. We see this as a win-win opportunity for the future.
Kruse: Lisa Lesko, Chief People Officer of Bristol Cone, thank you so much for your time today.
Lesko: Thank you. This has been a lot of fun.