My guest in this podcast is Dr. Jeanne Hurlbert (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeannehurlbert). She is a leader in the realm of surveys, employee/customer satisfaction, and data analytics.
The theme of this episode, one of The Big Six Leadership Principles®, is “When In Charge, Take Charge.”
Jeanne and I also talk about the importance of recognizing unchanging values while adapting to change, building a culture where team members feel supported, and more!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Podcast Episode 13: Jeanne Hurlbert interview
Robert Mixon:
Well, welcome, everybody to the Level Five Associates “Journey With No Summit” podcast series. And today we are privileged to have with us Dr. Jeannie Hurlbert, the president of Hurlbert Consulting Group and the partner in CJ Innovations. And I know, Jeannie, that you specialize in helping companies, teams, organizations understand their customer base and maximize their effectiveness in dealing with people.
So that’s why I think it’s very germane today that we talk about the principle “When In Charge, Take Charge.”
And so welcome, Jeannie. Thanks for being here.
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Thanks, Robert. It’s nice to be here.
Robert Mixon:
So today our topic is, “When In Charge, Take Charge.” And so first, I’d like to ask you, Jeannie, when was the first time you were placed in charge of people and resources? And what did you learn?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Well, it was probably when I was a young graduate student, and I was a teaching assistant at the University of North Carolina. And the way they ran introductory classes was, they had these enormous classes. And then there would be a TA like I, who was teaching once a week.
And that’s where they got into a smaller group, and were able to ask questions and engage in the material. And like most of those survey introductory courses, it was a mile wide and an inch deep. And so, trying to engage the students and get them to really, find them something other than utterly boring was challenging.
And I learned very, very quickly that it’s not nearly as easy as it looks to get those students involved and engaged. And the constructs that, you know, I knew so well and found fascinating, weren’t just inherently fascinating to them!
So that that became my first challenge in trying to engage them and convey material, not just to get the constructs across, but hopefully to spark some real interest in what this all meant and how they could use it.
Robert Mixon:
So, what tools did you take away, in terms of getting the group engaged?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
I think what I took away was, a better understanding of my own discipline, first of all, because when you have to engage material and convey it to people, you learn it in a different way. And I learned how valuable that is.
I learned a lot very quickly about what to do, and what not to do when you have 18 year olds who are interested in almost anything except what you’re trying to talk to them about!
So it was… it was fascinating.
Robert Mixon:
Great. Well, that’s an important part of it, I think, is the connectivity part. You know, in my journey, I found that many times if you could connect early on, then you get them in the moment.
But I don’t know… I think I saw something recently that we’ve got the attention span of a goldfish… 16 seconds, which is kind of scary.
Jeanne Hurlbert:
It’s very scary.
Robert Mixon:
But by adolescence or, you know, almost adulthood, then you have, you know, kind of a scary scenario here to get people engaged early on!
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Well, this was an age before cell phones. Once cell phones entered the picture, they’re sitting in class on their cell phones! It’s really remarkable!
Robert Mixon:
So, what’s the best example of you’ve seen of someone else taking charge? Somebody you saw, read about, worked with?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
I would say Russell Honore after Katrina. Yeah, he had he had a joint task force… Katrina… he went into a city that was just utterly chaotic.
And he came in… And famously, the first thing he did was to tell the National Guard and New Orleans Police Department to put their weapons down. He said, ‘this is not Iraq. Put them down and put them down now.’
And he took charge, and he took charge very quickly. His language is salty. His manner is somewhat gruff and coarse.
But as Ray Nagin, who was mayor of New Orleans at the time, said: ‘he gets stuff done.’
He did get stuff done. He was even credited with saving the lives of a couple of twin babies. He walked their family to a Navy ship and got them on the ship.
And I think I have a tremendous amount of respect… I served on a couple of panels with him after Katrina, and I have tremendous respect for him. He used text messages to call down the helicopters, and texting was really relatively new at that point.
The cell phone service was completely… even in Baton Rouge, where I live, the cell phone service was completely disrupted. And so the text messages became a very effective mechanism to call in those helicopters.
Robert Mixon:
Yeah, I had the privilege of serving with General Honore… actually working for him for a period of time, as he was promoted to three-star general and… held in tremendous esteem by a lot of people.
I certainly think that General Honore was a great example. It seems to me that he took charge, not necessarily by a force of language.
It was more by, it seemed to me, being … some of the calm in the chaos. Do you agree with that?
Jeanne Hurlbert
I agree with that totally. I mean, it’s really hard to overstate how chaotic New Orleans was at that point. I served on the IPET after Katrina, which was the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force that the Corps put together.
I was one of 10 teams who documented what had transpired. And I walked the levees with the Corps. And it just, it was a surreal place after Katrina.
And I think you’re exactly right. I think the calm and… it’s hard to think of an individual with more confidence than Russell Honore. And in that situation, that confidence was critical because … he was completely in charge.
He was completely confident in his ability to do this. And I think everyone felt that.
Robert Mixon:
And in the transformed world we’re in… do you see a direct corollary between some of General Honore’s leadership in the chaos of Katrina, and some of the principles that we need to see and have today in our environment?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
I do. And I think it’s sort of ironic, because I think sometimes we think the world is really more transformed than it is. It’s hard to overstate the amount of social change that we’ve seen.
One of the things that sociologists know about social change, is it’s not just that change accumulates, but the rate of change increases. It’s a curve rather than a straight-line slope…
This is really one of the first times in human history that people have been conscious of having to adapt to social change.
So we’re very aware of it. But at the same time, I think there is much that is constant, even in the midst of all that change…
For example, I grew up in a small town.
I grew up in a town of 200 in a county of 9,000 in Northeastern North Carolina, where my father was a country banker.
… I remember distinctly, he shook the hand and looked in the eye of pretty much everyone who came in that bank. And I can remember a guy saying that my father had taken a chance on him when nobody else would, and he was able to build a house for his family.
And that may sound like it was liberal loans policies, but in fact, he had one of the best loan ratios of any bank around. And the reason was really simple. The reason was, he knew the people.
He knew on whom he could take a chance and on whom he could not take a chance. And that was really the secret to his success. He had what we call ‘business intelligence’ now. They didn’t call it that then.
If we can go back to basic relationships and engagement, and in those basic principles, those things are timeless. And there, I think we forget that in the midst of what is a very transformative time.
Robert Mixon:
Excellent point, Jeannie. You know, in some cases, the enduring principles, in fact, I think most enduring principles haven’t changed. It’s the adaptation that we need to make, as leaders, to keep those principles alive, such as being in charge.
… In that context, I’d ask you, Jeannie, so what do you think characteristics are today of a world-class culture in an organization?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
That’s a really, really interesting thing right now. I think COVID has really underscored for us that it’s not enough to bring good people into the organization. You have to support those people. You have to invest in those people.
People are kind of worn out after COVID. And I think that’s reminding us of the importance of this.
And I’ve got a couple of notes here I wanted to use because there’s something else that I think underscores that. And that’s an SEC ruling that came out in November of 2020.
This was the first time since 1977 that the SEC had changed the definition of human capital.
So what they’ve done is require that public companies not only report how many employees they have, but what they’re doing to support employee well-being. And that’s a fundamental change. And I found some data that I thought were really interesting.
If you go back to 1975, and you look at the S&P 500, 83% of the value of companies in the S&P 500 in 1975 came from physical capital. And by 2015, 84% of the value came from human capital.
That’s a really rapid change. This new SEC ruling is interesting, because it’s putting the focus squarely on what companies are doing to support well-being. And I had a quote, basically there are a couple of quotes from the ruling.
They have to describe their human capital resources, and any human capital measures or objectives, that management focuses on in managing the business, including any measures that address attraction, development, and retention of personnel.
One of the former SEC chair people has said that human capital is so critical to every organization’s success that every public company should be reporting on this. And I think that’s a really interesting shift.
Robert Mixon:
I think so too, Jeannie. You know, human capital has in some ways, I think earlier we sort of took it for granted.
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Yes.
Robert Mixon:
And today we cannot afford to do that… in every way, shape or form. The environment that we’re in now, human capital, as you said, has already been designated as being the most important aspect of a company’s culture.
But then again, we come to the point of, okay, so we all have a culture, and it’s either getting better or getting worse, every day.
So how do we influence it to get better? … It takes persistence, don’t you think?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
I think it takes tremendous persistence. I think it takes conscious focus and effort… Drucker is famously quoted as saying that culture eats structure for lunch.
I have never found the evidence that he actually said that.
But culture is a really interesting thing, because it’s a hard thing to get your arms around. And we’ve been in a world where everyone was virtual for the last year.
And that has been transformative. And I think what that did, was to make people sit and really consciously think about what culture is, how you create culture, how you maintain culture.
I have a retainer client that is a completely virtual company, and they have a fantastic culture.
It can be done, but it takes a tremendous amount of effort and work. And it takes constant vigilance.
Robert Mixon:
Yeah… I agree with you 100%. That vigilance is absolutely fundamental. And so today I’m talking about culture as an ecosystem, and as you know, I’ve been fascinated by it.
That’s why I wrote a book about culture.
But, I think that there’s opportunity here for us in the world that’s changed to bring our culture to a new level… What do you think?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Yeah, it’s a chance to do things over into them and hopefully do them better this time!
You know, this was a huge reset. And in terms of social change, it’s going to be fascinating.
The biggest thing to me as a sociologist, is seeing what is going to be the net change coming out of this. What’s the net change in remote work? What’s the net change in business travel? What’s the net change in commercial office space?
You know, those are all open questions at this point. And IBM was virtual pre-COVID, and they came out with a paper two years before COVID, that said virtual work/remote work doesn’t work.
And I’m a little hesitant to go there… because I think it can, but I think it takes a very, very deliberate effort and structure.
It takes ways to essentially create opportunities for those water cooler conversations to happen… that we have to substitute for what we do in a physical space.
Robert Mixon:
Excellent point. We’ve got to figure out how to have the water cooler conversations, even when we’re not in person, face to face.
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Exactly.
Robert Mixon:
So, who’s a person… I mean, we talked about General Honore and the great leadership he demonstrated and being in charge… what other leader or person perhaps in the current environment that you’re working in, our environment, would you say is really stepping up… someone who is maybe a hero of sorts is overstating it… but someone who is really setting the example in terms of establishing a culture where people feel as though they belong.
Jeanne Hurlbert:
I think we have a lot of creative companies who are doing that right now.
I don’t think it’s the tech companies right now. You know, I think they’re struggling.
And in terms of culture, it used to be that we pointed to them, you know, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, we pointed to them as sort of iconic, you know, in creating and maintaining culture. I think people are a little over that at this point!
But … I think there’s some companies out there, and some leaders out there who are changing our notion of how we invest in not just in companies, but in people.
And I think that’s a really fundamental shift.
Robert Mixon:
Is there any one particular leader or person that you think is setting the standard?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
I don’t know… I thought about the question a little differently. And I’m a little bit off guard and I’m not, I’m not sure I really have an answer for that.
Robert Mixon:
That’s fair!
I mean, again, we’re in the conversation here, I think for our listeners, what we want to be able to share with them is a greater understanding of the idea of being in charge and leading a culture without a lot of uncertainty.
You know, people ask me all the time, how do I tell people where we are if I don’t really know where we are?
I think a little bit is… we’ve got to have greater candor and transparency.
Jeanne Hurlbert:
We absolutely… we absolutely do. And I think… I think there’s some, some really problematic expectations right now… about what people… when people come into an organization, like what they’re going to contribute and how they’re going to contribute it.
… I think we’ve got to change some of those fundamental assumptions.
You know… you sent me these questions beforehand and I was thinking about them.
When you asked about a hero or a heroine, I actually went back to my family… because my father and my aunt and my uncle were left by their father in the depression.
My father was the oldest of four and he was seven years old.
And my grandmother had a lot of challenges. And my father went to work when he was seven years old after school and on weekends. And, you know, they grew up with just tremendous dysfunction.
And if you think about that fact, they can and should have been dysfunctional in their lives… And what happened was that they determined not to let that happen.
My aunt, for example, was pulled out of school in the sixth grade.
And she married later, married a great guy, and he died of cancer. And she was left with two very young children. She didn’t even know how to drive a car.
She learned to drive. She got a job. She supported her family.
One of the things my cousin likes to talk about… is the fact that they lived in a neighborhood with a lot of kids. They were the only kids in a single parent household… And they were the only ones to finish college.
My uncle became an engineer. He went on the GI Bill with support from the GI Bill.
My father got through. My father became a banker.
All my cousins and I are professionals. And it’s kind of remarkable.
To me, that is leadership. That is amazing leadership.
Robert Mixon:
Leadership by determination and example. Is that fair?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Yes.
Robert Mixon:
Okay. So, Jeannie, what advice would you give aspiring leaders on how to learn to be ‘in charge’ in the world we are in, and going in to?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
That’s an interesting question. I think agility is probably one of the best characteristics that someone can have because things are changing rapidly.
I think going back to those basic principles, and the fact that the fundamental rules of the game haven’t changed.
People are still people.
… I think they need to recognize, we live in an environment right now where your customers can buy from anywhere. So, people are just radically connected technologically, but they are disconnected interpersonally.
And that is documented to create depression.
People crave community. They crave engagement.
They crave connection.
If leaders can remember that, and if they can take the time and trouble to answer two fundamental questions, which is:
… what do my customers want?
… how well am I giving them what they want?
… If they go back to those fundamentals, then they’re going to change the game because most companies aren’t even thinking that way.
Robert Mixon:
Interesting. So, the customer focus has to be really in terms of leadership of an organization or a team… You have to be able to look inward as well as out.
Is that what you’re saying, Jeannie?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Robert Mixon:
Okay. That’s terrific insight. Thanks very much.
… Is there another big idea you’d like our listeners to take away from today’s conversation?
Jeanne Hurlbert:
I think what we just hit is probably the big idea right now.
I think the fact that people are so disconnected, and that we’ve just spent a year getting even more disconnected, I think that’s left people reeling.
We know that there was a lot of weight gain in COVID. We know that anxiety and depression rates went through the roof.
Suicide rates escalated. Those things are not going to abate quickly.
Robert Mixon:
Yeah, those are excellent points, Jeannie. Thanks very much.
I noticed an article… USA Today, I think yesterday or the day before, about onboarding and how important it is that we as leaders and organizations pay particular attention to the onboarding process, which may be totally or at least partially not in person. It may be virtual.
One of my heroes used to say it’s almost impossible to undo a bad first impression.
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Yes.
Robert Mixon:
I think as we go forward here, we got to pay attention to the basics, as you said, the fundamental principles, such as, for example, the Big Six and today’s topic, ‘When In Charge, Take Charge.’
But I think the human capital discussion that you teed up, is also very interesting in terms of… that’s really where our opportunity resides, is in investing in ourselves as a leader, being personally accountable to ourselves, and be persistent and focused on people and their needs and the ability to communicate. I think that was really insightful, Jeannie.
Thanks very much for spending the time with us today in our Level Five podcast series on the “Journey With No Summit.”
We look forward to putting this out for your audience, and our audience, and all leaders to benefit from and look forward to the continued opportunity to learn together in our journey.
Thanks very much, Jeannie, and wish you all the best.
Jeanne Hurlbert:
Thank you, Robert. It was great to be here today.
Robert Mixon:
All right. Take care.
Don’t forget! Subscribe to our podcast to get our latest episodes right away, as well as have access to our past episodes.
Did you find this podcast beneficial? If so, please consider sharing it with your audience. It’ll just take a second, but could improve someone’s work habits for a long time to come.
