Today’s conversation fits under the P of Passion, which is the first P of the Humane Marketing Mandala. I’m talking to my friend John Jennings, who’s an expert in employee engagement, culture change, governance, and leadership style.
John’s career of over 35 years in both the public and private sector has seen him hold senior operational and executive board-level roles for a range of highly reputable UK & US businesses. These include Prudential, Egg, Experian, and Totemic as well as leading the internationally renowned Curve Theatre’s operations in Leicester.
He lectures and presents on the key competitive advantages that business leaders can gain by placing an employee-centric approach at the heart of business strategy, how to apply key governance principles into the day-to-day workings of any business, regardless of size and complexity, and the impact that individual leadership styles play in achieving great results.
"Engaged workers stay with you longer, they work harder. They show more commitment. They take pride in what they do. They're passionate about what they do and the business benefits" – John Jennings @sarahsantacroce #humanemarketing Click To TweetIn this episode, you’ll learn about how companies can survive the great resignation and…
- About passion and why it matters to find out what you’re passionate about
- The Great Resignation – and what it has to do with passion
- John explains why this is happening and why now
- The main ingredients for employee engagement
- The big shift, away from the industrial revolution and towards something different and new.
- and so much more
>> Sir Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk
John’s Resources
Chris Cooper – Business Elevation Website
Connect with John on:
Sarah’s Resources
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(FREE) The Humane Business Manifesto
(FREE) Gentle Confidence Mini-Course
Marketing Like We’re Human – Sarah’s book
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Email Sarah at sarah@sarahsantacroce.com
Thanks for listening!
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Imperfect Transcript of the show
I will provide a transcript of the show whenever I can, but please be informed that this is non-edited, so far from perfect. On the positive side you might get a chuckle from reading it, because these robot transcripts are often quite funny 🙂
[00:00:00] Hey, John’s a good to see you speak to you today. So delighted to have you on the show. Same here. So good to see you. I’m delighted to be invited to the podcast share. I couldn’t have thought of anybody better for today’s topics. So here we are talking about passion. And we’re actually going to go into a very timely topic as well.
[00:05:04] Like we just discussed offline, but let’s start with, you know, the, this idea of passion and maybe, maybe share first what you are passionate about and how you got into this topic of passion and, and yeah. Kind of employee passion as well, because that’s really your specialty as it relates to. Employee engagement is kind of a term that most people will understand, or they will have heard the term.
[00:05:37] And here’s the look. They think they understand it, or maybe not in the, in the, in the in the detail that can really create an engaged and a passionate workforce because their passion covers many, you know, you have a passion for wine, a passion for walking by the lake that you just mentioned, which sounds wonderful on the daily base.
[00:05:56] Or passionate, hopefully a passion for your work, because if you’re not passionate about what you do, if it’s not something that really pops your Coke, then you’re not going to be as committed. And the organization by default is not going to be do as well as it could do, if it has an engaged workforce.
[00:06:16] And I’ll go on and talk about some, some stories about. Businesses I’ve worked for because I’ve kind of worked for a reasonable length of time for about seven or eight businesses, not all based in the UK. So I’m based in the us and have the good fortune to work in and engaged, engaged businesses and work for disengaged with where people were not engaged with the work and the whole atmosphere.
[00:06:37] The whole culture changes, depending on, on which side of the fence you are. So it’s kind of being passionate about your work. Now, a lot of folks will say, well, you know, my work’s fairly mundane. How did you get passionate about it? Well, that’s summit. We’re going to go on and talk about with, there’s never been a more salient time in history than light now for people having those thoughts.
[00:07:02] Why am I doing this job? What am I going to do this for the rest of my. Yeah. So, so it’s kind of being passionate. If you’re passionate about most things you do, then life’s sweeter than than if you are kind of the glass half empty. So I’m curious, John, like for myself I’m actually, you know, I’m passionate about my work, but once I had to think outside of work, what I’m passionate about.
[00:07:31] I kind of felt this feeling of overwhelm like, because passion is such a strong word. It’s almost like there is a bit of pressure on society to be passionate about something. And so I was like, well, you know, I looked at my friend, Valerie, who’s passionate about hockey, ice hockey, which is big and Switzer.
[00:07:53] Then I looked about at friends were, you know, big into playing sports or playing music and I don’t have none of those. And so I was like, oh my God, I, you know, somebody left out the passionate gene in, in, in me. And I’m always a bit almost jealous of people who are passionate about the small things, you know, like football or things like that.
[00:08:18] So how do we, you know, find. Passion and yes, I guess it can be in work, but it can also be in, in other things. And how do we not feel left out? If, if you know, currently that’s not where we are. Well, I think it’s an interesting question. And you just hit on a really interesting point there because you, you said small things like football now, for some people you’ll truly be one of them.
[00:08:44] Who’s growing. W in a, in a culture where football was first AI I’m from Liverpool in the UK where football is something that’s talked about pretty much every day in many families, right? Because it’s a kind of almost without sounding blasphemous, a religious thing or. You follow your team through thick and thin nothing gets in the way and it’s a sense of community.
[00:09:10] So I think in looking, I mean, quite often in terms of passion outside of the workplace, it will just come up with all of a sudden, somebody will think, do you know, I really enjoy doing that. So my passion outside of, of of, of work is to get on my bike and I I’m the great, good fortune to live in. A beautiful part of the English countryside, the few, not too many Hills, but a few.
[00:09:35] So you can get out pretty much anytime of the year, if the weather is okay and go and have a around and come back and feel great about it. Right. So, so what might to other people just seem like go for a cycle for me is a passion, but I only just tap stuff. Adjectives. So I wouldn’t get, I wouldn’t get too hung up on the, oh, everybody else seems to have a passion, but I know, cause you mentioned about walking down at the lake, you might not think it’s a passion, but the way you talked about it, it was, you said, oh, it’s a beautiful thing to do.
[00:10:04] And we try and do it every day and that the calming effect of water and all the rest of it. So and I happened to know you have a passion from astrology.
[00:10:14] Oh. In a way. Yeah. I think it was Bernie brown or no Liz Gilbert who said you know, follow your curiosity that will bring you to your passion. And I always like that a lot because it’s, it’s like, If we start with passion, you have to be passionate about something. We get overwhelmed. But if you just follow your curiosity and yeah, for me, it’s astrology and you know, other things, then yes, I, I can, I feel much better about this idea of you know, this being a passion.
[00:10:45] Yeah. Yeah. What would it, I think curiosity is a great thing. My wife’s business is called furious about because she runs God. And treasure hunt. So UK cities and she loves just going out and discovering new stuff and coming back and bending my ear that said, did you know, in so-and-so town was XYZ? Cause he loves history as well.
[00:11:03] So she might not describe herself as being passionate about it, but believe me, she is. And then she passes that on to the kids and they start asking questions and start getting curious. Asking asking questions and understanding the world. But if it’s something we all need a lot more of than it, man.
[00:11:19] Yeah. So let’s get back to kind of the topic. Does your which is now being framed as degrade resignation. So tell us what is going on in the workplace. Well, it kind of, the story starts with really, for me with what is an engaged workplace, what does an engage work. Look like, and what are the advantages of that?
[00:11:44] The advantages are many starting at the other end. If you like engage workforce, engaged workers, stay with you longer, they work harder. They show more commitments. They take pride in what they do. They’re passionate about what they do and the business benefits is. Nothing not to like Drew’s people’s health and wellbeing.
[00:12:03] This is a very wide gamut of, of benefits what’s happening right now is first of all, if I use the UK as an example where we have a pretty disengaged bunch, this was pre pandemic, we don’t rate well on the global scale of engaged, unproductive. Countries, in fact, the UK if we’re, if I was to use a football analogy, the UK is in the relegation.
[00:12:29] So in terms of its productivity and has been for who many, many years now, since, since basically the end of the second world war UK has lagged behind. And one of the reasons the bankers, the finance use will always come out with all sorts of statistics about the mix of the labor force and the productivity of this group against that group and how they may your productivity.
[00:12:53] But in terms of people jumping out about and saying, thank goodness, it’s Monday, rather than the fact that it’s Friday we don’t, we don’t make well and what’s happening. It’s kind of, lots of whole chicken coop was come home to roost because the pandemic has been the catalyst for that. And I think that the word I’ve had, or the phrase I’ve had most best describes it is that you’ve almost got this global Meese.
[00:13:22] Of people had to do things that they have never in their lifetime, they’ve had to isolate themselves and not have to get allowed to go into the workplace, not being allowed to socialize. All kinds of bad stuff was coming out of that. But maybe one good thing that’s come out of it is that people have sat back and had time to think and thought, do I really want to carry on doing what I’m doing?
[00:13:45] You know, life it’s kind of emphasized life. Yeah. If you’re not passionate or if you’re not enjoying what you do and believe in that it’s hopefully creating or contributing some greater good. Why you doing it? So people having those thoughts, and I know you’ll see LinkedIn and some of the other platforms who kind of got kind of a little bit of a vested interest in people moving jobs I’ve called it, termed it, the great resignation, and that is.
[00:14:13] Again, some focus, slightly skeptical saying, is it really that bad? One little story to tell you from, from yesterday Chris Cooper, myself, we partner with a business called engagement multiplier. Absolute classic sort of had a V right ahead of the game instead of. Measuring and enabling leaders in businesses to understand how people feel about working in that business, which is the first step that you should take.
[00:14:36] If you’re on a journey to improve in the culture and on the engagements and the attraction of your business to some people. And I’m chatting to one of the senior guys there yesterday, they’ve seen such absurd in business, not just at the end of the tunnel. Because some of the clued up leaders we’re also taking the time to think of how I’m thinking my workforce.
[00:14:59] I’m not going to be thinking the same when they come back after this, but that’s only a small percentage of leaders who thought like us. And so they are thinking, right, how can I take advantage of the situation we’re in? Because out of. Situation that comes opportunity somewhere. How can I take advantage of that to take the workforce on a level and show commitment and engagement to them?
[00:15:24] So engagement multiplier, I’ve seen this incredible upsurge in business, unless the stories did, as I mentioned, the great valuations to this gun. We’ve taken on a relatively new clients, only 160 people working in the business. So what we would call a small medium enterprise well kind of, not quite luxury food market, but then a niche market for supplying a particular type of, of of food to to kind of specialty shops.
[00:15:52] So after the 160 people who work for that business in January, 2020, Currently only 60 of them are left on the payroll. 100 have decided, do you know what now’s as good a time as any, not all because the pandemic direction, people retired or that kind of thing, but what a startling statistics. The guy who owns that particular business is completely as a loss as to what to do, because I’ve seen this happening in the us as well, just with what we’re spending on slow labor growth in the market there that, although there’s all these vacancies people aren’t going to employers who just think it’s the same old, same old, aren’t very large independent hasn’t dropped, but then they need to sell themselves to the prospective employer.
[00:16:45] And it’s more than just about a flashy advert by and the salary, maybe because that’s the only a tiny part of the, of the first session. So that particular organization. I’ve kind of had a long, old park. Lot of us, the exists, all the survivors they’ve asked them. So what are we doing wrong, guys, we need to thinking this through.
[00:17:08] We’ve suddenly taken the, you know, the Coke is coming out of the bottle and the genius come on, along with the genies escaped and said, these are the things that we need to think about these things that we need. And often it takes pretty brave decisions by the people at. You have to take a long, hard look at themselves.
[00:17:26] And the behaviors VAT is for most organizations, the most difficult part of taking the first step towards creating an engaged workforce, but the great resignation. I mean, that is just one example. Everywhere you go in the UK, that, that people are particularly if I use the hospitality traders as an example, nobody wants to work there because of, because not because of the way it is because of.
[00:17:50] The kind of, because the short is one good thing is these people are now being paid much, much more in line with the very hard work that they do. They’ve been recognized for that the same with we’ve got a huge shortage of lobby drivers, HTV drivers in the UK causing huge problems, the customer, and the one good thing I can see coming out of that is that they’re going to get paid a third days, pay for 30 days work, and they’re going to get treated better, but it’s not being treated by.
[00:18:15] So many organizations overlook. And what does that actually mean? It means, it may say good morning to people. Yes, of course. From, from the top people, but it means so much more than that. So businesses are waking up to this and we’re saying that there’s a lot of work ahead for, for you and for, you know, for companies to really yeah.
[00:18:35] Reframe the way they lead reframe. They think about. Culture and, and, and you’re right. It’s so much more than just salary because I think that’s another thing. You know, maybe it’s related to the FinTech pandemic because we really became more aware of priorities. And what we all noticed during the pandemic is what really matters is, you know, family, friends, health, those kinds of things, nothing to do with.
[00:19:05] Obviously you need enough money to put food on the table, but it’s really the values have changed. And so what are you saying. Really? Yeah. Like obviously, maybe some employers are now waking up to that, but it will take also, I guess, some time to, you know, regain the trust. So what are the steps that these employers have to take and, and how can you tell them?
[00:19:32] Well, you know, this is not going to happen overnight. How, how can you. Work with them and say, but you still have to do it because otherwise while your business is, yeah. Yeah. Well, they’re not going to keep people, not going to find people and the people that do find that I’m going to stay very long. So, so, and you mentioned the key word and so she lost, so there’s been some great research into what makes for an engaged business and what makes for this engaged business and what the advances are, which I briefly talked about on the last statistics I could drive.
[00:20:03] Well, I just want to talk about one piece of research that kind of a little bit of a game-changer as far as the UK was concerned, because the way, way back about just post the, the start of the financial crisis, 2008, 2009, you can go work commissioned a piece of research because there was so concerned about this productivity gap that I mentioned a little bit earlier, about how badly the UK was doing compared to to, to many other nations And a very extensive piece of research was done by a guy called Peggy McLeod cobalt, co author, Nita Clark.
[00:20:35] And they studied businesses right across the whole spectrum of the UK economy and built on research that had been done in other places, Harvard and another great learning institutions. Basically, there are four things that, that were common to all of the engaged, unsuccessful businesses. And we’ve already talked, we’ve already talked about some of them the first in no particular order, but there’s one most important one in my experience, which I’ll come to in no particular order.
[00:21:04] What’s grandly titled strategic narrative, better known to you and I as per. Okay. What is this business all about? What are we trying to achieve and how are we going to get there? Not to be mixed up with vision and mission and all this kind of stuff, because a lot of that stuff is written for the customer customer.
[00:21:20] Doesn’t care about times in 99% of cases. It’s what, you know, what are we really trying to achieve here? So, You can take a little bit of a rain check every now and again, is this actually helping to achieve our purpose? The question at the top team needs to ask themselves and that filters down through the organization.
[00:21:38] So having something that people can kind of admit the statement, people can, can hang on to you, go into a lot of businesses and we say, say what’s what, what would your employees say is your purpose? We’re quite often the top team can’t tell you. So there’s a little, a little clue there for you. Secondly for me, a byproduct of this is engaging with.
[00:21:56] Good, great leadership. People who actually care about people who work for them, not in any sort of pink. This is where you with sticky with finance Dymocks as you come up against, this is all a bit too pink and fluffy. For me, it’s all about being nice to people. No, it’s not. It’s treating people with respect.
[00:22:13] It’s stretching them. It’s developing them, caring about them as human beings. It’s not just units of production, which goes back to the old Henry Ford way of working. But w way back in the early 20th century so engaging management, the number one reason people leave an organization, all the research shows is because they don’t, they do not respect or get on with the align management.
[00:22:38] And that is no matter where the research is done on, it varies between 60 to 80% of the number. One reason that people give for leaving. I know for what I have left organizations, it’s kind of. Was was not comfortable with the way that I was being managed, being directed, being led, being influenced. And so that’s hugely important.
[00:22:57] The third one then employee voice sounds simple, but it’s kind of, it will be nice to think that what I think actually counts for something around here, or at least someone is. Let’s talk to him and listening, and that’s where you need to create a dialogue, constant dialogue, not just the annual survey.
[00:23:16] The annual staff survey is dead in the water with HR too late. It’s still, it’s still important to do those, but by getting into the other event and asking people like you wallow in work, what’s working, what is. What’s hacking you off. What really makes you puts a skip in your step? What can we do differently?
[00:23:38] All these sort of different these different angles you come up it’s much better than waiting until somebody, a great person has resigned and then sitting there writing down all the reasons that they would have told you if only you’d asked. So that’s that, that employee voice in all its forms, not just surveys, it’s kind of having regular dialogue with people.
[00:23:56] So what do you think we were thinking doing this? And purpose is a great one, because you can get people involved in that, no matter what the size of your organization, you can say, these are the sorts of things that this business is really, this is where we came from. This is where we’re going to, we’d like to know what you think what’s going to give you extra.
[00:24:13] So. Incentive and motivation to answer, to, to, you know, go the extra mile for them, for the business. Finally, the word that you mentioned, trust organizational integrity, as it’s wildly grandly titled. In other words, the top people have to walk the talk. There is absolutely no point in saying we are looking for complete meritocracy here and outside.
[00:24:33] There’s a in the car park, there’s a space for the managing director space for the five-star actor. So they all get reserved parking spaces. Everybody else has to fight for them quite a bit of a banal example, but it’s kind of, if it’s sort of everybody’s first amongst equals type of thing, then all the top team have to walk the talk.
[00:24:54] That is the most difficult thing. When you come to talk into businesses, that’s the thing that these, that the folks at the top find the most difficult because. Human nature, being what it is. It’s so difficult to drop old habits and reframe them with new ones. And we all know that we want to give up smoking.
[00:25:10] We want to lose weight. We want to get healthier, how difficult it is to break some of those habits and get into new ones. So that’s changing behaviors. The top team, we have a little reminder for them. We want you to be brave, curving and identifying. I, the book stops with you. You are the top folks. You actually cared about the people in your job and you’re quite happy.
[00:25:33] You’re quite willing to take some pretty blondes feedback on the chin and say, well, nobody’s perfect. So we’ll go out and do something. Yeah, so much truth in all of these four reasons or, or steps. Really two more in employee engagement, a couple of things I want to, I took some notes. First of all, I guess the last one trust with leaders, we always say people don’t leave companies, people leave their bosses.
[00:26:01] Correct. And so that’s why this work with the leaders is so important. It is no point having these beautiful purpose statements, then they’re not, you know, being in the elevator. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, so yeah, people leave company people leave bosses, not their companies. The other thing that kind of dawned on me is, is this idea you, because I think you mentioned Henry Ford and, and, and so it’s almost like.
[00:26:31] You know, it took us that long to really break free from the industrial revolution. Because if you think about it, we still. Kind of went to work like it was a factory job, really the typical nine to five job no brains off and just like execution. Well let’s face it is kind of still felt like the industrial revolution and the.
[00:27:00] I often talk to my teenagers like that, about the school system as well, to look, we wish we had a new, a different kind of system, but unfortunately the way this is it’s a still nothing has changed. School was invented. When people started to work at factories and so kids need to do be taken care of. And so we invented schools and, you know, we put all our skids to kids, to schools, and unfortunately nothing has changed to school is still taught to same way.
[00:27:33] And we’re just freeing up the parents so they can go. Be good worker bees, the, you know, factories or whatever jobs they have. And so that we, we are John, you and I are in, in this business elevation kind of mastermind or group. And we’re talking about the force turning. So this book that really talks about this new.
[00:27:55] Kind of era that we’re hopefully stepping into after. So there’s the idea is that the history is cyclical and after, you know, four cycles, hopefully we’ll start with a new one. And so I really get this feeling that this is what we need to break free from is the industrial revolution so that we can end a cycle and enter into a Yuan.
[00:28:19] I’d love to hear your thoughts. Well, you mentioned that Keon is I mentioned the employee voice is incredible and I have always, I’m always saying I’m not going to be surprised by what people say and by what people come up with, but I am regardless. And I read the results of all the times that we take on board, start to do regular surveys with.
[00:28:43] So typically every three months and after the initial people sort of fall down, alarms metaphorically inside what? Not, not too sure about this for speaker up. Am I going to get, I’m gonna get fired for speaking up? Once all that’s been put to bad by building that source that we talked about, people come out with the most incredible creative ideas to kind of maybe help boost revenue or reduce.
[00:29:07] And the sustainability piece comes in. So the kind of, that’s lots of ticks in the boxes. Well, that creativity is largely not thought of as at school. So any educationalists, any permanents should watch. The most watched Ted talk of all time by sir Ken Robinson, which I always use as my when I’m ever talking to education.
[00:29:27] I say, watch this great 19 and a half minutes talk or this, I think it’s a hundred million people watch this thing to link to it in the show notes. Absolutely. Yeah. About us simply inside the white schools kill creativity from one of the greatest educationalists. Let’s go to us to sell it. And he passed away last year.
[00:29:46] So I had a lot of time for him. I’ve read his books on finding your elements where your passion for doing something crosses over with your competence at doing it. Wow. Eureka moments you find, you know, and we talked about finding those sort of things outside of the work after the work environments as well.
[00:30:03] So that, that, yeah, to move on from that units of production where people. Almost died at the desks or died on the factory floor. Just being literally worked to death was the expression. Where were all the owners of the of the factories cared about was profit. Didn’t give it to people those days.
[00:30:23] You would hope a gone, but they still exist in little pockets and they still exist in terms of people doing office jobs. From organizations that don’t really demonstrate that the care by you watching the workforce and those chickens have well and truly come home to boost as it, you know just accelerated by the pandemic, then how do you see the next 10 years evolve?
[00:30:43] We would hope there’s, you know, kind of these, this leap in awareness and change. We still have to be also realistic that it’s probably going to take some time for these companies and leaders to, to change. How fast do you see things changing? Well, I think, I think the pace of change will pick up. I think there’s currently great resignation and the things that we’ve already talked about all of a sudden.
[00:31:08] In boardrooms, it’s not looking at sales charts and revenue charts. It’s looking at employee attrition rates on turnover. And so many businesses do not understand. I have some very simple calculations that I always dive that to the finance director, so that, because that’s the way it’s the farmers at heart it’s through the through the whole it’s putting in their, in their revenue and adding to their costs.
[00:31:30] So many businesses completely underestimate how much it costs to replace and so I think the pace of change looks, I think the huge flat stroke opportunity that’s coming faster than people think is artificial intelligence. So that will take over reams of jobs. Where are those people going to be employed in the future?
[00:31:49] Hopefully in much more creative type roles. We need to go green for more reasons than just reducing carbon emissions, the of product it’s there. It’s, it’s the only way forward whereby you’re going to create a completely new industry or which is already in full swing.
[00:32:07] As we know, because on our last call with, with Kristin and the group, we talked to. The great energy revolution that’s going on. So, so there are going to be new opportunities there. Hopefully as one old industry dies, the coal and fossil fuel industry, the green revolution takes place and people go in and retrain and go to those jobs.
[00:32:26] But artificial intelligence is going to play a huge part in that. So the, the there’s going to be a scarcity of skilled labor is going to continue. With, with more employees chasing fewer and fewer people because I, I also think people will given the opportunity we’ll we’ll retire from full-time work and there’ll be a big move to, to part-time work.
[00:32:46] So that people can take that. Trying to achieve that elusive work-life balance that gets talked about for months. So huge changes are going to go on, but I do think on the engagement side, we are going to see a fairly steep lift off. And I’ll give you an example. I I used to work in the theater down in in less than.
[00:33:04] Quite near where I live. I spent a brief time working in the performing arts, which is, which was great for there’s another very big famous they’re set in in the UK was just advertised for a people and engagements executive. Now I’ve never seen that in the title. Yeah, exactly. And then I read the job.
[00:33:21] I thought I should apply for this job, but then I read, what’s been put in it and it’s, it’s kind of, that’s an industry where. It’s a tough, tough business being on the stage and being it’s not highly paid for the vast majority of of performance. It’s tough. It’s long hours. It’s not a search lounge.
[00:33:39] There’s a lot of time away from your family and from your home. And the people who work to support it’s, it’s a, it’s a pretty low wage economy. People do it because the partners about it But to see that that industry is starting to wake up because this is quite a big influential theater. This work, this will send ripples around.
[00:33:55] All those we’ll be thinking, well, do we need to be doing as well? So to say it starting at that industry in the UK is that was just yesterday. That, so that particular lab just emphasizes to me that, that the, the, the evolution is becoming a revolution. The patient’s picking up now, people are saying, well, my businesses is not going to survive unless I’m a very attractive place to come and work.
[00:34:16] And I make people feel like, wow, where have you been alive? I mean, my kid’s generation, by the way, sir, they’ve been doing this for a few years, but you know, I’ve got one who works for the BBC. One of works for a climate change business. One is a teacher. They all, they’re all following the passion. I wish I could have done that at that age, but that generation I’ve got a different view on it.
[00:34:37] So unless you, unless you as an organization, sell yourself, They’re going to say just how much money you’re making, how much you going to pay me and what I’m interested in, in, in the bigger picture, in what I’m doing. So to help save the world or whatever. So I loved, I loved us. I love, love this look, you know, it’s like we’re heading in the right direction.
[00:34:58] It will be probably a rough journey. And next maybe two to three years, it will be like shaking up everything. Right. But it’s so it’s so needed. So yeah, I can’t wait and I can’t wait also for this idea of, like you said, Giving people the option much more to work part-time as well, so that they don’t burn out.
[00:35:23] And we’re in the middle of sort of a mental health crisis. And so all of these things they play together. So it’s really just time for the organizations who are insisting that people come back and work five days a week in the office. Guess what? People are leaving, but actually they found a bit of balance and productivity in the UK.
[00:35:43] I haven’t seen the figures across the whole planet because it gets mostly quite differently in different places, productivity during the pandemic has gone up because, because you know, one of my neighbors who asked to travel into Nottingham saved himself two hours a day. Okay. He’s been able to spend half an hour actually with this.
[00:36:01] Half an hour, national collective is a morning person, nice and productive doing stuff. And his business has done better as a result. So the organizations that say, oh, you’ve got, we’ve got to be rigid about this. Flexibility is key to this organizations who are not listening to their stuff or the not asking them oh, naps to the same thing.
[00:36:25] So good. One thing I did also write down and I need to challenge you on it is, is kind of from the marketing point of view is you just kind of quickly said, yeah, clients, 99% of the time, they don’t care about purpose and I’d like you to maybe also. Think about how this is going to change in the very, very near future.
[00:36:49] It all in my opinion, or already has changed because clients and that, that means customers and, you know, our clients, your clients even the person who’s gonna buy in you. I don’t know a vacuum, you know, people are gonna care about the purpose behind the company. Probably not so much. If you buy a burger.
[00:37:12] You know, or a loaf of bread, but for the bigger things, people are going to want to follow companies and brands who, who stand for something who have the same. We talk a lot about the worldview here on humane marketing who have the same worldview, I have the same values. So I think that’s something that.
[00:37:34] Can also become an you know, a point of interest for organizations is not just to attract employees. It’s also to attract customers because the, the, all the, you know, the big CO2 emissions companies, well, eventually people are not going to want to buy from them anymore. So you’re absolutely right.
[00:37:55] That kind of fell away line. The view that customers have of a business’s purpose. A lot of times it doesn’t even come into the thought process when they’re buying a book for some bigger, more long term more life-changing decisions. I mean, we taught just the other day on our call about where you may be ask your financial advisor or where, if you do what you say.
[00:38:18] Where you invest so that you invest maybe in sustainable ingredient when you get rid of that. So that does matter in terms of tips, but the point is the customer doesn’t really need to know. The detail of that purpose is really written for the for the employees of the company. So they are so they can all get behind one.
[00:38:34] This, this is what we are all about. But definitely the consumerism, the power consumers in terms of say, well, I don’t want, if we use it again and use investments as that, as an example, I do not want to be investing in oil and coal companies. I’d like to be investing in offshore wind farms or solar panels or whatever it may be that that movement is already picking up.
[00:38:54] Hugely. I mean, the statistics are quite incredible in terms of the purpose as well. It’s one of our big, full consultancy businesses in the UK and it’s formally known as probably, probably means that the, the Bowser cheapest to make, because that there’s many, lots of them. They did some great research about.
[00:39:15] For five years ago, showing that companies with a purpose that was understood and accepted and bought into by the workforce where 85% more successful than companies that didn’t have that. So it’s by any measure as well, not just by revenue, but just by what, what their public perception of the company.
[00:39:33] So yes, big changes coming in as well. Really hurry up, John work with all these companies, but yeah. Tell us where people can find out more about you and how they can work with. Well, they can go to Chris cooper.co.uk but my esteemed business partner, Mr. Cooper, that’s his website, which has all our, all our stuff on.
[00:39:59] My, I, I’m pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. I can, I can provide you with the the URL for that. So uh, no problem at all. And the email address is on Chris’s websites. It’s just last easy one. john@chriscooper.co.uk. I’m always delighted to sell it to people. Always delighted to make contacts on a via an easy medium like LinkedIn.
[00:40:20] So yeah, always happy to have conversations with people. That’s wonderful. I always have one last question that I ask all my guests and that’s what are you grateful for today or this week? Well this week on a personal note, my grandson who’s 11 months old. He was Pauly last week. So we had to drop everything and go and help out his parents.
[00:40:42] Cause they’re their teachers and they couldn’t take time out to well, it’s almost impossible for them to take time. So we went and looked after him for a few days. Now he’s back to his public smiley best. So, and it’s amazing if you have a little zoom call with them or you see his mom sends you a little video during the day, just how that sort of make punchy warm.
[00:41:03] It was a, you know, when babies laugh, you know, that world laughs with them. So yes, absolutely delighted about that. And reasons for optimism what might work for. This week, I saw some news about the big cop, 26 summit coming up in the UK in Glasgow and Scotland. The, yeah, well, I’ve just seen some, some positive news there about things that are you know, we see so much negative stuff because for whatever reason, bad news always travels faster than good.
[00:41:31] I’ve seen good news about that. About the, about the intentions, about how people are going to get serious about. And also for the as far as the collector’s concern, I mentioned about my my middle eldest daughters partner go to work in the U S who run a huge wind farm projects off the off the Northeast coast of the U S I kind of circulated that amongst the group.
[00:41:49] And I actually read up on some of it and thought, wow, this is, this is world changing stuff. So you know, I sent James my best wishes for all that. If there’s anything that collective can do to to help or you know, we’re going to be over in in Rhode Island, Massachusetts supporting them once they’ve moved over there.
[00:42:05] So again, that was a reason to be cheerful. So. Yeah, lots of things to be proud of and grateful for. Right. It’s absolutely dreadful and wonderful. And I love the fact that you mentioned children. I really think also I had that conversation with someone last week that going forward, we need to make sure that we, you know, really have, does a way of living where we have different generations in one place, because I feel that.
[00:42:36] The pandemic has also shown us so much lonely loneliness in, you know, especially for old people. So mixing communities up with young and old and like, we can learn so much from the children, but we can also learn from the elders. So just kind of learning to live more together again, I think that’s key going forward as well.
[00:43:00] Absolutely. For sense of community I’m passing the. Yeah. Once you get to the elder stage, which I’m, I think I’m nearly, as you can pass it on. Look, you know, if you asked for it because teenagers, for example, don’t usually ask, you have to tell them all of a sudden, all of a sudden, they get to the age of around 24, 25, and they start asking you advice and say, what would you do?
[00:43:20] So, so being able to hopefully pass on a wisdom that you’ve learned from your parents, and as you say, you need that you need people in the community to do that. So, yeah, that’s certainly something to. It’s been great to talk to you, John. Thank you so much for spending time with me. Fully enjoyed it. So thank you very much for having me.
