Transforming Business through Culture with Tonille Miller

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to The Future of Teamwork. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group. And today I have Tonille Miller joining me from New York City, the founder of EXT. And really excited to talk about experience transformation, workplace change with Tonille today. So welcome to the show.

Tonille Miller: Thanks for having me, Dane. I've been looking forward to this.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's going to be fun. So you've got an interesting background. Naturally, you're out there doing some pretty cool work across companies big and small, but maybe you can share with our listeners how you came to be passionate about doing this work and where you're really crafting your niche right now.

Tonille Miller: Yeah. Well, I mean, I spent my early career in a lot of the large consulting firms, and I just kept seeing over and over and over all the different levers and things that we could do in an organization to make work better for people, make them more productive, make them have more wellbeing. This is way pre- pandemic even, but even then I was doing a lot of work with the wellbeing space, engagement space, and just kind of flourishing in general at work. And so I just kind of got hooked from day one. I mean, it's been, I guess close to two decades at this point in time, but kind of just found my way. And now I've done startups, I've done large consulting firms, like I mentioned, big corporations, and it's just really exciting to be able to find out all the different ways that we can make work better for people.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it is. And like you said, pre- pandemic, there was a movement, but it seems like the pandemic's been an absolute accelerator for us all.

Tonille Miller: Yeah. In many ways, of course.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, good and bad. But when you think about teams in workplaces, so often we've seen a lot of the industry, particularly bigger businesses, focusing on leadership development and workplace type efforts, whether that was bringing in yoga professionals or doing what it is in the workplace to make people feel healthier, better, more well. But actually getting teams to grow together, I like the use of the word transformation in your business. I'd like to hear a little bit more about where you are seeing some emerging best practices, next practices around getting teams to grow together.

Tonille Miller: Yeah, that's a good one. And I think the importance of teams has always been there, I think we know that. But I think to your point, I mean, a lot of the times, if you think about corporations or even smaller businesses, there's a hierarchy and the focus is on the boxes and the sticks, it's not on how do these teams... And now, really most work, depending on the industry, but most work is really moving more towards those networked teams. The hierarchy is one of these abstract things now, and it's there, but it's not really there. That's not how we organize work. And so I think it's great that you bring this up right now. I think there's a lot of things, I mean, I'll just rattle some things off, but obviously creating an abundance of psychological safety is number one. I mean, I think we've all read the Google project, the Aristotle study, and Amy, oh, I'm blanking at her name now.

Dane Groeneveld: Edmondson?

Tonille Miller: Yes, thank you. Yes, there's several Amys in this space that I'm thinking of. But yes, so Amy Edmondson's work and others as well. So the psychological safety is number one. And then I think of course, some of the things that I've seen lately, I think it's David Burkus, a psychologist as well.

Dane Groeneveld: Yep.

Tonille Miller: Yeah, good. So you know. Yes, I love his work around creating interdependence with the team, have you...

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Tonille Miller: Yes, helping everybody, and this can be done with a small team or a large organization, but it's insanely powerful psychologically if every person can see what they're doing, even a spreadsheet fits in with everybody else on the team and how their input is their output and maybe other teams and maybe the customer, whatever. Creating that interdependence I think is super powerful. And it actually has been shown, I guess, to minimize the need for extra managers, because you get the group norms and the group accountability, getting everybody kind of doing what they need to be doing and being motivated. So you don't need some manager there directing people. So I think those are pretty interesting.

Dane Groeneveld: They are. Actually, we had David Burkus on the show. We didn't go deep on that interdependence in teams, but the way you described it really captured my attention. So we're hearing more and more that there's a lack of skills, development, training, support for middle managers, across all businesses, any size, middle managers have really become squeezed, particularly through all of the change we've come out of COVID with. And so unfortunately, a lot of organizations are driving change through these middle managers who are already overburdened and they're not leveraging the team. So creating that team interdependence, allowing the teams to drive norms, to drive behaviors, to appreciate each other is huge.

Tonille Miller: And the culture plays in with that too. If you think about it on a larger scale, if you can get everybody doing that and kind of living by the right values and doing the right accountability and that sort of thing, that becomes your culture at a broader level too.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah. And you had a cool article out on LinkedIn on how to do more with less, and there was some great points in there as far as getting teams to play well together. I'm intrigued by that. I think there was one point in particular in that article when you were talking about ownership mindset and really inviting team members, employees in, to have some autonomy, some agency, but be co- creating. And that whole sense of creation seems to be coming back around with a lot of, I guess, energy, a lot of support from all levels of the business. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Tonille Miller: Yes, and I think this is one of those things... And I'm glad that you saw that article because there's so many nuggets I think in that article too, just because I kept finding them as I'm researching this book that I'm doing, I kept finding so many great things. And so I'm like, " Let me put it somewhere." So the interesting part about this is it's perfect timing for trying to do, like we said, the title of the article and doing more with less while engaging your people. So all the things leaders are really trying to hone in on right now, more productivity and more efficiency and more engagement, all those things and saving costs and all that, you can actually do it while engaging people. And so to address your question with this piece, what you have to do though, the leaders need to be comfortable pushing as much information and decision making capabilities as low in the organization as they possibly can because then that enables everybody to be driving it forward like an owner. So it's literally, think of how much more efficiency, productivity, and scale, and people are just happier because they have more autonomy and they're treated like adults, how much better can that be for everybody, especially in a time when leaders are trying to do more with less. And so that's really important for leaders to be doing that. And then also managers as well for them to understand their role in that and kind of reinforcing that and getting any obstacles that are in people's way out of the way, having my directional feedback so we can be updated and iterating things as they're working or not working. So I think those are really key.

Dane Groeneveld: They are key. When you think of ownership mindset, because I know everyone has a different, language matters, everyone has a different read on this, is it getting employees and teams to feel like they own the business or is it having them take ownership of their unique strengths, talents, roles in the team, both? Where do you see that landing?

Tonille Miller: I would say both. Because the beauty is, again, they know their strengths, but they have to feel comfortable in that it's rewarded for them to do that. So for example, if you have people who, this happens all the time where people have so many more strengths and capabilities that are beyond the bullets in their job description, but because nobody ever asks what they're passionate about, nobody ever asks what they're really good at or what their side hustle is or what's going on over here on the weekend, they're employing these skills and passions and whatever and energy elsewhere out of your organization because you're not asking and kind of eliciting that. So I think it's key to really... And managers, it's simple, just have these one- on- ones with your people and just be like, " So where do you want to grow and develop? What are your passions outside of work?" And really talk to them as a human being. And once you have those human conversations, they'll share, " Oh yeah, I actually coached so- and- so's team on Saturday and I do this over here." And you're like, " Whoa, we could totally use those skills in our team. Why do we not know about this?" So I think that's part of it, first of all. And then to get them to want to do it though, they have to see what's in it for them, I think. They have to understand whether it's the purpose of the organization or it's, we're all working towards using some of David David Burkus's work, that common enemy or competitors or whatever it is. Everybody's given that information and they're all kind of put in that leadership chair as well. Then they all are like, " Okay, I definitely want to drive toward this. And guess what? I have these three skills over here that I could bring or connect you with this person in the marketplace," whatever it might be. There's so much value we're not tapping in our people today, and it's also stifling them at the same time.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think I read in that same article you mentioned from another study that only 5% of people feel like they're really being exposed to put their full potential to work. That's a pretty low stat.

Tonille Miller: It's so sick. And we wonder why people are disengaged. They're not being tapped to their full potential, they're not growing. And then we're also telling them that you're not being productive or being creative enough or being whatever. It's like, guys, it's so simple.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's almost unfair that a company's asking these teams to do all of this stuff, but not really asking how they want to do it and what they bring to the table because of that mismatch between job descriptions, resumes, work tasks, they're all static documents that aren't very human, to be honest.

Tonille Miller: A thousand percent, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So are there any good examples of teams that you've been working with that have been able to create an initiative, a workshop, a project that you've seen bring that energy out of people, allow people to start sharing and managing as a team?

Tonille Miller: Yeah. I'm trying to think of all the different clients I've worked on recently. There's several that I've had over the years where they've done this in kind of a more scalable way. And so for example, I had a client a few years ago and they had what they called a tiger team. So this was a cross- functional team, it was kind of a combination of people volunteering, they heard about this opportunity, they volunteered, and then there's also a little bit of tapping on shoulders of somebody who might have a great skillset or have a good growth area to be on the team. So they did this, and so they had this cross- functional tiger team across the organization. And they were really tasked with, " Hey, the organization knows we need to be more innovative, we know that we have these strategic initiatives coming up and we know that you are people that have that skillset. You've already said you have. You've already shown interest in it." And so really getting folks, got them aligned around that mission to really be this internal kind of cross- functional SWAT team to come in and drive these awesome initiatives and this innovation. And people were really, really inspired by that. And I don't even remember if there was... I don't feel like there was even a manager. I think in the beginning there was the leader set up the parameters and here's the goals, we get everyone excited so everyone can see they have all the information. But then after a while, I don't even remember the manager even being involved anymore. I mean, they were occasionally when they were kind of telling them what's going on, but it wasn't like, " Every day I have to come in here and control you at a standup meeting," or anything like that. It was more like, " Hey, we know our report out is every quarter," or every month or whatever. And that was kind of it. And it was really cool to see these people take ownership. And like I said, they were at all levels. There were plenty of junior people there. We wanted to make sure that we had digital nomads in there as well, because especially with technology and innovation, we need to have not just analog folks, but also the digital folks. So it was really cool.

Dane Groeneveld: That is cool. And you mentioned leaders set parameters, do you find that there's a trick or a rule of thumb as far as how you set parameters, timeframes, budget allocation? Does any of that matter or is it more important that the team's just there to see what they find and bring their ideas forward?

Tonille Miller: Okay. We won't leave it completely one space here, but in general, I don't think it matters what... If you have a tiny budget or if you have no budget or whatever. And in fact, the more constraints that you have inspires more creativity usually. So I would say I don't think it matters what the parameters are, but what does matter is that we're crystal clear on what they are, people understand them. They're not changing moment to moment based on politics or other priorities and things like that. And that people know no matter what, they know why they're doing it and what the end goal is, and they know how they're contributing to it. So I think the main job of leaders then is really just creating that clarity and making sure real time, it's always updated, it's always transparent, and that people are really truly empowered to drive it.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that. You touched on, constraints inspire creativity. I haven't heard that before. I've heard a lot about constraint management, but not constraint management and creativity. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?

Tonille Miller: Yeah, and I don't have the data in front of me. I could certainly send it to you later, but there's been so many studies done by lots of people that are studying creativity and innovation. And essentially what happens, and I've lived this firsthand just in my personal life, so I can really see it come clear. But when you have constraints, let's say for example, let's say we have budget, we have timing, we have resources. Those are the three things typically. Let's say that you have a really low budget, well then you're going to have to get pretty creative to figure out how to deliver a project. Either you're going to have to have lower priced labor or other... You're going to have to shift some things. Or if you only have three people, this is again with companies today, they're doing more with less. Well when you have less, as long as it's positioned in the right way. Because the problem that happens I think is that people think they have no resources, no support, burnout, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is being deliberate about saying, " Okay, our budget is X, we can't move that. The resources are y, we can't change that." And the fact that it's constrained in some ways actually makes you have to put on your thinking cap and say, " Okay, if we can't move these needles in any ways or increase them, how are we going to do it?" And I don't know if you've done that in your personal life, but I think people could think in their personal life like, " Oh, I'm trying to buy Christmas presents for people and I don't have as much money as I," or whatever it might be, or maybe I make a homemade present, whatever it might be. But there's a lot of ways I think people should be playing around with that personally and professionally.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that. So what I'm hearing is that it drives a focus so that you're not procrastinating getting stuck on all the options. You're very like, " What can we do with what we've got right now? And let's just start and experiment from there."

Tonille Miller: Yeah, it's like trade- offs. If you think about your strategic priorities, you have to make trade- offs, it's kind of the same idea. You have to pick and choose, you can't just have all of them, even though a lot of leaders like to have a lot of strategic priorities. And then we wonder why they don't all happen.

Dane Groeneveld: I definitely want to, and I'll make a note of that with Alicia who helps run the show with me. I'll do some research and trade emails with you offline on that. But there's something there that excites me about psychological safety too. And the reason I say that, and I'd love your opinion on this, Tonille, is that often in businesses with hierarchy and specialized knowledge, people have all of these barriers and guards up. But if you put people together in a tiger team or a pilot, certainly from my experience, as I think back on it, people just have to turn up with what they've got and do something that might be uncomfortable and they get an opportunity to see what each other's capable of, to appreciate each other for that contribution and it's in a fairly safe space. So I wonder if that starts to drive more team psychological safety, more support for each other rather than some of the concerns, barriers, and guardedness that we can't otherwise see in teams.

Tonille Miller: Absolutely. And I think it drives inclusivity as well, right? Because if you truly have that psychological safety, I've seen this, like I said, that specific team I mentioned as well as others, when you have that environment, like I said, leaders' jobs are very much about architecting environments now. It's not telling people what to do, it's environment architecture. And so when you have that psychological safety and everybody knows there's zero tolerance for toxicity and all those other things, you do see the titles and the ego go away. I've seen this with reverse mentoring programs where you see these most junior digital nomads coming in, they're either interns or associate levels, and they are guiding and leading and cross mentoring the senior partners of a firm, CEOs, leadership team, that sort of thing. And you do see, at first you can tell they're kind of like, " Is this really going to work? Can I really speak my mind?" But as long as leaders continue to role model it, and it's always the case, it will happen over and over and over. And that is where the innovation comes from.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that link to inclusivity and innovation. And reverse mentoring's another one I'm not very familiar with. So how have you seen that play out? Is it around a project or is it a more ongoing program?

Tonille Miller: Yeah, a couple things. So I saw it first when I was at PWC. I was internal there, and so the senior partners of the firm were my clients, and that's what I was kind of referring to. We realized when we were doing a lot of digital transformation and a lot of new technology that the partners just weren't as comfortable with it, and that's fine. But it was pretty significant shifts in the technology that we were making. And so what we figured out was part of our change management plan and the way we drove it was we had those most junior folks who wanted to get... Think about this, as an intern or an associate, if you're very good with technology, you're going to cross mentor this leader. So this is probably for a three, four month period, but then they can continue the relationship. So you're getting a ton of professional development, both sides win. So the younger person gets lots of development, they have a connection, they're building their network and they're teaching something, so they're already feeling valuable. And then the leader, it's a very no strings attached, low stakes environment, because you're not actually on a project together with a client and you can kind of have those bantering conversations. So that builds inclusivity as well, because you think about you get matched randomly, it's not like you pick your mentor. And that worked super well. That was really neat to see.

Dane Groeneveld: I really like that example. In fact, I'll take that up with our people and culture team because we do a lot of mentoring in the traditional sense. But when we look at today's world of work, the workplace, how teams interact, the technologies that we've all adopted through COVID, I think I read a stat somewhere that in those few COVID years, companies spent 1. 2, 1. 3, it was a big number, trillion dollars on new technologies. And I think they've already switched off or have torn up or changed out three quarters of that spend because they bought tools in a rush and didn't think about change management, user experience, how it compliments existing processes. So it feels like that's a really good focus for most businesses right now, regardless of size to get the different generations, different elements of the business working together around a real problem that can be, I like to use the word low stakes, too. It's a bit more ideation than live fire piloting and that sort of thing.

Tonille Miller: Yeah. And the beauty is, like I said, not everybody I'm sure, but most people, that relationship can and lots of times does continue beyond that few months or that implementation. So like I said, it's professional development, it's mentoring, it's network evolving, it's all these wonderful things. And then again, the leader also feels more comfortable too. It's like, let's say a couple months pass and there's a new technology, " Hey," mentee, mentor, cross- mentor, whatever, " Can you help me with this because I'm not sure how to do this new thing either." And it just gets to be a really cool thing in the organization and it just drives so much engagement with people as well.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah. Oh no, I'm definitely going to steal that. Thank you.

Tonille Miller: And it works too... That's reverse mentoring, but also cross- mentoring is really helpful too. I had this one role where it was a global role and you would have people in India mentoring somebody in Ohio on a new work process or something and vice versa. And just, it's such a cool way to just bring people together across borders and barriers.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think that's a big one. It was interesting, we had a guest on the show, Kian Gohar who'd previously been director of the XPRIZE, and he and a colleague had written a really good book that was starting to explore asynchronous meetings, use of video, pulling teams together around innovation. And it does, from a cross border perspective, from a cross department perspective, it gives you opportunities to get people playing together at work.

Tonille Miller: Yes, removing the silos, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, exactly. Which is big, it's really big.

Tonille Miller: Especially with the teaming thing that you're talking about too, I think there's a lot of really tactical things that I've seen too with that is something as simple as making sure all the departmental or functional meetings are open. I think Spotify does this, we're the calendar invite is sent to everybody and someone from IT, if they want to learn how finance works, they just show up and listen in. You're not going to participate, but you can learn and listen to what's going on. And that's a way for people to kind of bond across your organization, break down silos, learn what other groups are working on, because again, that builds that interdependence as well across the organization because they say, " Oh, this is happening for IT, I'm going to keep that in mind for my project over here," and all these other great things.

Dane Groeneveld: And I'm going to come back round on that interdependence as well. We had a great speaker, I'm part of a Vistage group here locally in California, and a speaker came in from Colorado by the name of Todd Musselman. And Todd talks a lot about ownership mindset, which I saw we touched on earlier, and he talks a lot around creativity. It is human to create. It makes us feel good, it makes us feel alive. It puts us in the present moment. And his read on ownership mindset, which I took a lot away from, was that in an ownership mindset, you are saying, " Hey, I get to, I could do this." You feel like you have agency, you have some autonomy versus that victim mindset of, I have to do this. And so when you think about teams and interdependence, one of Todd's tips for the day was, it's better to be appreciating how to work with each other and the way that you work rather than what you do. So rather than saying, " Hey Bob, hey Jenny, I need that spreadsheet by this time," sharing why you need the spreadsheet, what it allows you to do, it creates more clarity, more interdependence. " Hey Bob, hey Jenny, if you could get me this spreadsheet it's going to allow me to work out how I position this service, position this product, position this next task for my customer, for my next team member." And it creates this human connection and they all feel like they're creating something rather than doing rote tasks. So it's interesting that you are talking interdependent, that I was at that conversation yesterday. I know I'm keeping an eye out for some of this stuff, but there's a lot of alignment there.

Tonille Miller: There is. And I love that you brought that up. And there's actually research, very famous research from a Harvard professor called Ellen Langer. And it literally is, what you just said, is when you tell someone the why, it doesn't even have to be an important reason. She did this work on photocopy machines, I won't go into it, but essentially just telling someone why you need something or you need their help with something turns off the amygdala, which is the part of their brain that doesn't want to make change, doesn't want to be inclusive and partner in all the things that we're looking for. And so that's so great that he did that because just telling them why is a huge deal.

Dane Groeneveld: It's a big deal. And one of the practical tips he gave me was, " Don't say thanks for giving me the spreadsheet. Say, 'I really appreciate the way that you bring that spreadsheet to me each week and you point out the things that I should be looking at.'" Because then they're being thanked for the way they do something, not for what they do. And I thought that was really cool too.

Tonille Miller: That is so cool. I don't know if you, you know who Zach, is it Mercurio, have you heard of-

Dane Groeneveld: I haven't, no.

Tonille Miller: Okay, so he does a lot of work on mattering and I'm actually writing about him in this book, but it's exactly that piece of don't just say thanks, thank them for, like you said, you appreciate it, to your point, not for what they did, but something that's very specific to them or how they... Do you know what I mean? So they're feeling like it's me personally and it's not very generic. That's really cool.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, as soon as I heard that, I'm going to look up mattering that, that's definitely a big piece. I thought I'd given kudos to one of my team members, Reza, he does a lot of our FP&A, so he'd been building some models for us, looking at some BI. And I'd said, " Hey, thanks for that great work." And he responded with, " Oh, that's part of my job. I'm excited to do the next thing." It was a good interaction, but it felt a little bit hollow. So I actually went back after hearing that and said, " Hey, Reza, what I really like is the way that you have a vision for making this something that I can easily get in and use. And you're being very practical in your viewpoint and your vision for where you want to take the project, so that's what I really appreciate." And that actually felt like a better form of appreciation to give.

Tonille Miller: A thousand percent. And the beauty of that... I mean, I love that. I wish all of us would make the time to do that because it also shows that employee what good looks like. Because it's one thing if you're like, " Oh, thanks for doing that." I mean, a lot of people don't even say thanks. Even if they say thanks-

Dane Groeneveld: There's no feedback really, is there?

Tonille Miller: Well, you don't know what was good about it, what wasn't as good. So the way you did it was beautiful, that's fantastic.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Well, I borrowed it from Todd, but it's an interesting space. So tell me a little bit more about the book. Where do you see the opportunity to be crafting the story, the behaviors that excite you most?

Tonille Miller: Yeah, it's been... I've been writing it for about nine months and it's been really a labor of love. There's imposter syndrome. There's, " Oh, I'm awesome today." Just the whole gamut. For me, it's because my work has been so systematic and systemic in the sense that, like I said, I've been inside organizations, I've seen all the different levers. I don't just see it as a change management issue or just a leadership issue or just a this or just a that. I've seen all of it, how it all plays together in a system. And so for me, I've been trying to think of, how do I share all these nuggets of knowledge that I've picked up from the research and also personally in case studies and whatever, how do I share it? And so for me, I know the biggest problem on people's minds right now is, how do we attract, retain, unlock talent? How do we do that? Especially in this new world and all the crazy things that are happening. So I figured this book, I'm positioning it as a way to answer that question and help leaders transform their organization in different ways. Large and small, most are low and no cost actually. And it's things that will actually achieve the... What we've been talking about, where it's a win- win, where it will achieve their business goals and it will engage their people and/ or unlock their people and/ or attract. So it's very simple, practical. So that's what it is as a whole. And it's about 95% done.

Dane Groeneveld: I like how you've moved from attract, retain, unlock potential, which a lot of people think of as learning and development, employer branding, talent acquisition strategy, but you are moving it more into the business operations, the change management, the achievement of goals. I think that's a theme that I'm really starting to zero in on as one that is maybe more iterative. It evolves with the team, with the business, and likely more reliable because so many of these initiatives to try and hype up why you should come and work here and, " Oh, we'll give you this two week training program," they just fall by the wayside after time.

Tonille Miller: We can have a whole podcast about how employees themselves as well as managers, are not trained and prepared for their jobs.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of brings me onto the topic of growth, I'm seeing more and more, particularly with the younger generation, the newer generation coming in, that growth is a big currency and-

Tonille Miller: Oh, it's number one, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: And so if you think about that growth, and you go back to some of the interdependence of teams and clarity of why we're doing this and why it matters, I don't think industries have necessarily done a good job of painting potential future pathways for people outside of maybe a more traditional career path within the business. And I think we're living in a world now with gig work, side hustles, all of these emerging new technologies and ways of doing business where maybe employers have a greater responsibility to help employees start mapping out, tracking where they'd like to go, whether it's with or without the business. I'm intrigued by your views on that.

Tonille Miller: Yes, there's a whole chapter about this, about the fact that these career paths are so antiquated and they don't account for that when you look at the manager specifically, why do we reward an amazing individual contributor with, " Hey, now you can go manage people and lead them. And we're not going to train you and we don't even really ask you if you want to do it, but that's the only way for you to progress. And since you've done such a great job, let's get you doing that." That's the biggest gap right now. And so yeah, I'm talking about this there. And I think there's so many ways... And it's simple. Organizations, some of them are starting to get it where they realize that one of the main desires of Gen Z and millennials... Also, everyone says, " Oh, they just want to get promoted after two months." It's not necessarily that. It's the fact that they want to be able to at least see a lot of progression, especially Gen Z, because they're really focused on security, which no one really feels like they have in a company. And so at least if they feel like there's eight steps ahead of them, " Oh good. I have a secure future here for quite a while because I know there's eight steps, it's very clear. It's on expectations of how I get there, what development I need. The organization offers that development as well." And it's just being much more transparent about it. And the really good organizations will go even further and say, " Even beyond your time with us, we know you want to develop in these four skills. So guess what? We're also going to make sure we give you assignments and tailor and job craft if possible, to get you to have skills so when you leave us, you are new and improved better version, versus you feeling like you wasted four years of your life here." Because that's what a lot of them think. They're like, " I don't want to waste away here if I'm not growing, I'm not getting promoted." That kind of thing.

Dane Groeneveld: And job crafting another topic that I'm only just learning about. Could you share with our listeners what your read of job crafting is?

Tonille Miller: Yeah. And this is another Amy in the space. This is Amy Wrzesniewski, I think you say her name. She's a professor in the work psych space. And she came up with this job crafting, and I actually did this a couple years ago in that global role that I mentioned, and what it is basically you would meet with your team, if you're a manager or whatever, you manage people, lead people, whatever, you meet with them and you just understand what are the areas. Again, simple questions, where do you want to grow, where do you want to develop? What aspects of your job currently do you feel actually really passionate about and that are using your strengths? And which ones would you really, if we could, would you prefer we do without them? So whether that's certain relationships in the organization that are not working so well that you'd rather not partner or if it's certain skills you're using are certain tasks. It's that kind of stuff. And just making small tweaks where you can. And I did this on my team. Like I said, I had this wonderful team of learning and development and leadership development people. And one of them specifically, he had been delivering instructor- led training pre- pandemic. And he's like, " I got to be honest," when I asked him this question, he's like, " I got to be honest, I don't really like that. I'm much more of an introvert. I don't like the delivering it, but I love the instructional design and actually developing it." Well guess what? We had other people on the team that were more than happy to swap out some of their skills and shift some things off of his plate that he didn't want to do as much. And again, not every company has these options, but I guarantee you there's at least a little bit of latitude, if not a lot on teams to do these swaps and shifts in small ways.

Dane Groeneveld: No, I agree. And I think it needs to be a team sport because you can't do that in isolation. If Dane turns up to work and says, " Hey, I want to change what I'm working on." If I don't have a relationship with Tonille or whoever else is on the team to say, " Would you mind picking this up?" Or, " Who else could take this on?" Then I can't really free myself up to do more of what I'm really talented at or get a lot of energy or drive out of.

Tonille Miller: Exactly, but it's magic when you can make that happen. Because then, to your point earlier, the interdependence and the team bonding happens even more because you're like, " Whoa, this person took this part of my job, I'm willing to go and do whatever..." It just builds that culture on the team as well, which is really cool.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it does. So I'm wondering whether maybe in this next iteration of workplace design/ role design, where the job crafting starts to feed team crafting, and ultimately that might feed products and services because if teams start working differently, maybe they find different ways to deliver and design products and services. That could be, going back to your point on autonomy agency for employees, that could be really interesting.

Tonille Miller: That would be so cool. And it's such a great way to cross- train people. Again, this younger generation, they want to develop and grow in all kinds of ways. Well, that's a great way. It's almost like if you can... And actually again, at PWC, they just had so many things they did right. They had what they called a tour of duty, they had tours of duty. So that kind of thing, it's a version of that, it's not exactly that. But it's like, " Oh, my job is here, I want to learn supply chain." Okay, cool, I'm going to take a six month, one year tour of duty internally or externally. And it's in the understanding that, hey, this isn't my expertise, but I want to learn it. And I have enough adjacent skills or adjacent experience that I can apply it and kind of get a little bit of coaching. But for the most part, I'm kind of just trying it on and learning and growing and you're adding to the business. And to your point, bringing different vantage points is going to bring a lot of innovation and other ways of doing things.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And innovation is, we've talked about it a few times in this conversation, it's exciting for individuals who are part of it if they choose to be and it's becoming more and more critical for businesses, particularly with the rate of change in technology, but also in social environments.

Tonille Miller: Absolutely.

Dane Groeneveld: I was listening the other day to burnout, and I'm intrigued again by your views on burnout. I was listening to the Prof G podcast with Scott Galloway, who's always got some pretty candid straight shooting approaches to things. And he told this story with his guest about, there's a lot of people waking up in their mid- 40s. They were talented and bright, so they've worked hard for 20, 25 years and being good at their job, but now they're waking up, burned out and saying, " But what is my real talent? What is my real passion?" And almost starting to think about retraining, having a sea change, going, doing something different. Now it's sad that they've got to that point that they've been burnt out, that they haven't had the opportunity to explore their talents or job craft earlier in their careers. But it does seem to be a bit of a growing phenomenon in teams, particularly in some larger organizations, more traditional structured roles. What is your view on this burnout epidemic that we're seeing and ways that teams can be trying to get ahead of that and save some of their employees from getting to that sort of point of no return or point of having to leave an organization?

Tonille Miller: This is a big one. And even pre- pandemic, this was a big one, but especially now. A friend of mine once said something like, " Don't let burnout happen to you." And I think that's a really good way to think about it. Because I mean, I'll talk about two things. There's things the organization can do, there's things the manager can do, but the onus is also on us. So for example, as an individual, I've had to learn this about myself because I'm a workaholic. I love working. I could work all day, every day, weekends. I have no problem with that. So I think number one, we need to set our own boundaries. And the more we as individuals set boundaries, whether it's I don't check my email after six, or I don't get on a call before nine because I want to get my workout in or my sleep. I literally have had, over the last couple of years, I've gotten really good at those and I set those very proactively and I stick to them. You put them in your calendar. So there's things as individuals we can and should do, but we also need to recognize and respect other people's boundaries. Because one thing I've learned is that the people that don't respect your boundaries are the ones that don't have their own boundaries. And so it's weird at first, but you can teach people how to treat you, if that makes sense. So that's on the individual level. There's the other thing I want to call out here is that I think a lot of people think burnout is just working too many hours. And I think that yes, it can be. It can be, basically the definition is chronic, never being able to recover enough or something. So it's almost like you never have enough time, whether it's weekends or nights or whatever, to recover and fully recover from the stress and from all the back to back and whatever. So that's one definition of it. But I will tell you right now, there are certain things that I know for a fact amplify burnout or can mitigate it, and that is things that the manager has control over. And that's things like micromanagement. When they're micromanaging somebody that takes the autonomy away. And there's all kinds of data here that psychologically, chemically, neuroscience wise, if we're micromanaged, that depletes a lot of our resources and it makes us feel super burnt out as soon as possible. And that's why I always talk about autonomy. The other part is meaning and purpose. Again, going to the interdependence of the team, the understanding of where the organization's going, maybe your own purpose and/ or your own passions, and you're somehow finding ways to connect the dots between what you do day- to- day in your spreadsheet and how that impacts other people and how that is purposeful and how it has meaning. When you have meaning, you're not burnt out. It mitigates burnout is what I'm saying, it helps mitigate it. So those are some things that I think are kind of simple tools at a leadership or an individual level that you could do. And then also just the culture. I mean, I've been in companies, as we all have, I'm sure, where it's a hustle culture. It's a burnout culture. And actually, it's the badge of honor on your sleeve for burning yourself out. So I think part of that is individuals need to get real clear, and thank God, since the pandemic one of the silver linings is people are more clear, I think on, it's not worth it anymore. I'm not burning myself... And I hate that the term is called quiet quitting, but that's where a lot of that quiet quitting termage comes from, is that people are like, " Hey, I'm not quitting. I'm literally just doing what my job is supposed to be and not going above and beyond as a baseline every single day because it's killing me." So I'm going to pause here. I rattled a bunch of things off, but those are some thoughts that come to mind.

Dane Groeneveld: No, I like them. And it ties again, back to that article on do more with less and engage people. You're absolutely right, don't micromanage. I know at one of the points in the article, you're talking about removing meetings so people have more space to be removing that busyness. And creating meaning and purpose. Actually, on that same podcast, Prof G podcast, they talked about, is it dangerous for young professionals to be trying to get their meaning where they make their money? Maybe you can make your money at work and you can get your meaning outside of work. And I found that very interesting because meaning and purpose is something that everyone needs. But often I think people confuse meaning and purpose with that dopamine hit of being good enough at work, getting the boss to say, " Hey, great work. Thanks for getting that report on my desk." And they're chasing it again and chasing it again, and not actually stopping to think, " Well, here's my work goals, but what are my life goals and where do they intersect?" So I like that you started with personally setting boundaries and maybe even adding to that, setting boundaries, but also setting some goals that help give you a measure of, am I becoming preoccupied with my work and am I balancing myself out in what's important to me?

Tonille Miller: Yeah. And honestly, I just personally, candidly, I've struggled with that because for me, I know for myself and the work that I do, one of the holy grails is finding a way to have meaning and purpose, whether that's your work. And that's where a lot of my work comes in, is trying to help people find that in their work. Because my whole thing is, I know we have to work, most of us have to work a lot of our lives. And so my thought is if we can make it that it's not soul sucking, that it is giving meaning, that it is enriching me, that it's not burning me out, that's amazing, because it's something I have to do anyways so why can't we have it actually enrich us while we're contributing? But also to your point, it's a double- edged sword because there's also that thing of, I've experienced this, because I do get most much of my meaning from my work, just it's how I operate. And I do that at times at the detriment of relationships, and I don't want to do that, but it's just because I'm almost obsessed with it. I just love it so much. And so that can be dangerous. And so to your point, I think that the main way to mitigate that as an individual is just checking in with yourself frequently, whether it's quarterly, weekly, annually, whatever that looks like for you, making sure... Because it shifts too. I mean, maybe when you become a parent, your meaning isn't in your work anymore, maybe it is your children then, or maybe it's something over here or whatever it is. But just always, I think, just being very clear on what is your meaning. Because the thing is that, on your deathbed, it's only you. So you need to make sure that you're okay with those choices and trade- offs that you made. And if it's working all the time because you love it, awesome, not a big deal. But if you look back, like most people do, and they realize they weren't present, they weren't checking in and they lived someone else's life, that's not going to be pretty.

Dane Groeneveld: No, it's not. And I like the use of the word trade off there. It is a trade off. I certainly have always considered myself a bit of a workaholic. And when I heard that played backed to me on, hey, it's dopamine hits, and you are giving your best self at work and not always giving your best self at home to Claire and the kids, that one kind of hits you pretty hard and you kind of stop and think, " Well, how long can I let that go on for before I make a few adjustments?

Tonille Miller: Yeah, good for you for reflecting on that though ,it's important.

Dane Groeneveld: And maybe that's part of what we need to do in teams here is one- to- ones, check ins, appraisals. It shouldn't just be about the work goals. Are we asking about life goals? Are we checking in on, not going deep into how's the relationship at home with Bob or Jenny, whoever it is, but how are you scoring right now on fatigue, anxiety, when you get home in the door to your family. Are you making time for relationships? Maybe going back to, I guess the origin of this line of discussion is, that helps employers start to get ahead of some of the future problems.

Tonille Miller: Very much so. And actually it's one of the best ways to engage your people too, and prevent the burnout and all that stuff. Because I think there was a book a couple years ago called The Dream Manager or something like that, but I've seen this replicated in a lot of organizations where, to your point, something as simple as the manager having that one- on- one and asking, " Beyond your work tasks and your work goals for this week, what are your health and fitness goals? Did you get up for a walk? What are your long- term goals in your life? Is it to learn Spanish?" Or the things like that, just treat... And the beauty of that is, it brings transparency so the manager knows what's going on, so they can kind of anticipate, " Oh, Jane is going to be a little bit distracted next week because her dad's in the hospital, or something like that. It's going to know that kind of thing so it can kind of build that relationship. But then also, it makes your people feel like you care about them as a human being, not just value to be extracted from an employee, which really is a game changer when it comes to engagement.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, value extraction definitely is a way a lot of people have been feeling for a little while now. Yeah. So my final question for you, Tonille, this time's race by, we've talked about some really cool, and I use the way you said it, low cost, no cost approaches for businesses to be engaging their people while they achieve their business goals, which is a really nice kind of collective approach. What is your personal kind of hope for the future of work, the future of teams at work if you look forward 10 years? Think about the book that you're writing. Think about what you're seeing out there in industry at large. What would you like to see?

Tonille Miller: I'll break it... I mean, there's a lot of directions I could take it, but just very succinctly, I would love for organizations and leaders, and hopefully this book will do that, to start looking at these ways that are low, no simple costs, costs almost nothing and it's actually going to enrich your people's life. You're just going to do all the things you're looking for, you're going to achieve the business goals, you're going to attract people at higher rates, you're going to retain them, you're going to unlock a lot of things in them, not just learning and development, but a lot of these things we talked about, that extra motivation and all that. Doing that while achieving the business goals is not impossible. And so I want organizations to be doing that, to do both, because that's how it's sustainable. Because you can usually do one or the other, but not sustainably. And one's at the expense of the other. And so there's ways to do both at the same time, and they actually enrich the bigger pie.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that reinforcing argument. I think that is critical because you've seen, even in the last week with this whole SVB crisis, everyone's saying, " Oh, the banks are being too woke. They're being too focused on ESG and that's impacting their risk management, their time and focus on risk management." Which is a bit of an extreme, but it shows you that there's a sentiment out there that all of these culture initiatives, people initiatives, are not reinforcing good business practices. So I think starting with that, as you say, starting with that mindset, which is, " Hey, we're here to improve people's lives and improve the business, it means that your eyes are wide open." So I love that approach that you bring.

Tonille Miller: Yeah, and I promise I won't go on forever here, but this is exactly what I'm talking about, because I think a lot of times... Just because, I don't know, I don't know why, but a lot of times HR people or people in organizations will create a culture program, create an engagement program, create some program, and it costs time, money, effort. And some people think it's okay, but it's usually never amazing and needle moving, it's definitely not pushing the business forward usually. And so for some reason, like I said, my work has always been at that intersection of the people and the business, not one or the other, it's both. And the one should drive the other and vice versa. And so it's very strategic. So when I come in and help you design a new culture or a new employee experience program, it's not just, " Here's a nice little fluffy cosmetic thing." It's, " No, this is a strategic piece that's actually going to..." It's tied directly to what you're trying to do in the business, and I think that's where more organizations need to get and think of these levers as strategic, but you have to actually operationalize them strategically and measure them strategically as well so I think that's the difference.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, I think that's really powerful. So if any of our listeners are out there and saying, " Gee, there was some great topics today, I'd love to get with Tonille and see how she could come and help my team out." How do they best find you?

Tonille Miller: Yeah, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn, so feel free to connect with me there. I love having an ongoing dialogue there. My website is tonillemiller. com, and then I've also got my company website, which is experienceandtransformation. com.

Dane Groeneveld: Wonderful. Well, thanks for joining me today, Tonille. It's been an awesome conversation and it's actually really reinforced a lot of things that I ran through naturally this week. So it's a nice way to cap off a week and be focused about bringing some of these great ideas forward.

Tonille Miller: Awesome, thanks again for having me.