Amy Leschke-Kahle – The Myth of Measurement

Connect with Amy:

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Connect with Dwight:

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• dwight.brown@salary.com

Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

 

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• The Marcus Buckingham Company
• HR Data Labs Season 4 Episode 21
• HR Data Labs Season 4 Episode 19

• “‘What's measured gets measured,’ not ‘what's measured gets done.’ The ‘what's measured’ part, the performance measurement part of that is a whole different process with different intended outcomes. . . . [but] really frequent connections—moments of attention between, particularly, team leaders and team members, that's the performance movement, performance acceleration, however you wanna phrase that.”
• “[in ADP Research Institute’s 2022 People at Work Study], people who were working offsite responded more favorably to many of the items on the survey than people who were working onsite. . . . If you think about people who are not working in the same place, when [you] call them, it's usually not, 'Oh, what are you doing today? How's it going? What's the weather like, wherever you are.' It's usually really intentional.”

Announce: 0:02

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

 

David Turetsky: 0:46

Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we bring you fun, fascinating people from around the world of HR and beyond. Like always, we have with us our co host, friend, and Salary.com employee, Dwight Brown. Hey, Dwight!

 

Dwight Brown: 1:04

Hey, David, how you doing?

 

David Turetsky: 1:05

Very good. How are you?

 

Dwight Brown: 1:07

Good!

 

David Turetsky: 1:08

And today, we have with us one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. And I do not give that out lightly. Never. But we have with us, Amy Leschke-Kahle. She is the vice president of performance acceleration with the Marcus Buckingham company, an ADP company. Hello, Amy. How are you?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 1:29

Hello, David. Hello, Dwight. And that's quite an introduction, I feel a little bit of pressure to, you know, say something brilliant!

 

David Turetsky: 1:36

No pressure, everything you say is brilliant. So don't worry, it'll be okay. Amy, why don't you give us a little bit about your background. Why don't you tell us how you got here? Because it's actually a fascinating story.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 1:46

Yeah, well, you know, I'm a chemical engineer. So naturally, that fits right into the world of HR and data, of course, an absolute natural transition. So I came to ADP as you just introduced me through my title through the Marcus Buckingham company and actually started with the Marcus Buckingham company, I think seven and a half years ago now. And because we are a small company did all kinds of things for them, including lead product development. And when you're small, you do everything, including working with sales and all kinds of things. But as ADP acquired as I kind of migrated and settled into doing actually my three favorite things, which is beautiful. And I'm so lucky to be able to kind of craft my own job, if you will. And that is I lead our applied research team. I lead our professional services team. So I spend most of my time working with clients and working with data and gathering insights and thinking about things we want to get curious about and learn more about in terms of the world of work, then I spend a little bit of time doing this. I spent the bulk of my career as an HR practitioner leading HRIT teams HR analytics, pretty much everything at a talent field learning and development, leader development, performance, management, engagement, all the things I spent a bit of time in academia and started my career as a chemical engineer in the pulp and paper industry.

 

David Turetsky: 3:02

Wow. That is basically living the dream as far as I'm concerned, because you've touched on so many awesome pieces. And you'll have some really cool stories to share. But one fun thing that no one knows about Amy is

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 3:19

Oh goodness. Well, my my go to is that I play the accordion incredibly poorly. But I do play the accordion.

 

David Turetsky: 3:30

That's awesome.

 

Dwight Brown: 3:31

You didn't bring it with you today?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 3:34

No, I didn't. If I would have known I would have brought it is that an HR Data Labs first?

 

Dwight Brown: 3:42

That would have been an HR Data Labs first.

 

David Turetsky: 3:45

It would have been, yeah, it would have been.

 

Dwight Brown: 3:47

Totally, it would have been awesome.

 

David Turetsky: 3:49

If you want, we can actually get out all of the instruments we play or try to play. And we can jam on something like Stairway to Heaven or whatever.

 

Dwight Brown: 3:57

Or we'll sing for you.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 3:58

Next time. We can do a little polka for you.

 

Dwight Brown: 4:02

That was awful quick. Yeah, next time.

 

David Turetsky: 4:04

So our topic today is one very close to a lot of people's hearts who listened to the HR Data Labs podcast. It's the myth of measurement. And in today's world, it seems almost sacrilegious to say that, how can measurement be a myth?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 4:28

We have gotten so used to believing the phrase and as an engineer, I kind of blame myself a little bit for this or blame our profession of what's measured gets done. And if you think about it, it's not true at all. It's what's measured gets measured. So it's not that measurement itself is a myth, although we can talk about the over precision of metal measurement when we're talking about humans at work. But if you think about just take temperature for example, like human temperature, you're not feeling well you take your temperature with thermometer. And that's great. It helps you to know how sick you are. But taking your temperature does not lower your temperature doesn't impact your temperature, it's simply awareness, which is really important. So we've kind of grown up in this world of thinking that if we measure something, if we put something on a scorecard, that it's going to change. And that's not the case at all. And the same thing is true of people at work and humans at work. So for example, if we measure performance, that doesn't mean we're gonna get more performance. If we measure engagement, we're not going to get more engagement, you have to do something, and that activity that you do is very different than the act of measuring.

 

David Turetsky: 5:44

But I mean, go back to your example, taking the temperature, without context without knowing what your earlier temperature was, without knowing the other symptoms involved. Without knowing the trend in temperature, I guess. So I was saying before, and without knowing whether or not it's bad or good. The without that context, whatever it is, lacks any actionability at all. In the same way. I I've said this in conferences before I measured my kid one time, and the temperature was 101. And my girlfriend was like, Oh, my God, we gotta get your son to the to the hospital right now. And I said, No, let me look it up. And I looked it up. It said, Only take your kids to the doctor, if their temperatures over like 103. And so context is everything. We know that 101's bad. We don't know how bad it is, though. Right? So in that same context, Amy, you know, what, what do we know without context? Or what do we do without the context?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 6:41

Yeah, context is king. It's so important. And as you mentioned, David, trend is critical. Because it single data point is super interesting. That's it. It's super interesting. So without context of knowing, is it going up? Is it going down? Is it flat? Is it steady what's happening? When was the last time it changed? Without that kind of information, it's simply an interesting number.

 

Dwight Brown: 7:08

It, it reminds me a lot of the and I have very publicly railed against all of the COVID measurements that that were out there in the media, and the media was very fond of reporting, what actual cases were for a day? Well, I mean, unless you followed and tracked on your own, there was none of the context that you're talking about, like you said, there's is it trending up? Is it trending down? What other context is there? So I totally agree with you, you know, it's the context is king, when it comes to measurement.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 7:43

Well, it's also it kind of speaks as well to benchmarks and we live benchmarks in HR, you know, whether it be you know, salary benchmarks, or engagement benchmarks, or whatever it might happen to be. And benchmarks are also a little bit tricky as well, because benchmarks are helpful. And they do give you context, that organizations and people and teams are unique. And so when we're comparing to benchmarks, it's often misleading because your benchmark your norm, your kind of where you happen to settle in might be very different than someone else's. And although we look at temperature, you know, 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is that you know, the human when we say normal temperature, people run different. Some people run a little warmer, some people run a little cooler, just like organizations do. So I think we've gotten so used to thinking that because something has multiple digits after a decimal point, that implies precision. And that's not always the case. And you can take engagement as an example, or performance. Performance is such a great example of this, actually. But you measure someone's performance, and you say, Oh, your performance rating is a you know, 3.79. And that 3.79 is better than the person sitting next to you who has a 3.60 you know, performance. Really, I don't know if I can tell the difference between a three and a four, let alone a 3.79 and a 3.6. So we've, we've carried over this scientific precision of some things into the world of uncountable, and particularly we do that in the world of HR, because humans are you we're variable, we're very different. We're very unique. And it's led us quite frankly, down a path of a lot of not so great practices in the world of people at work.

 

David Turetsky: 9:29

Yeah, but but to be honest, what was before was either a vacuum. And we all know nature abhors a vacuum, especially the world of work abhors a vacuum, because people make up their own stuff for their own or like managers will make up rules or make up while their own their own law, if it suits them to make to make their lives as a manager easier. And so having those things having those measurements having those benchmarks, having those policies, give them something to hold on to. They may be, they may be terrible, but the lack of them is even worse. And I've been working with a lot of clients, especially lately, who didn't have, there was nothing. And putting in some structure means there has to be a change in culture, right? Because you can't just implement something, even if it's good. Actually, if it's good, it's probably worse implement something without change management without training without communications, because that will, you know, people will resort to their old ways, won't they?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 10:36

I think to some degree, I kind of go to root cause, you know, I'm gonna put my engineer hat a little bit and go to root cause, well, like, what's the root cause of that? Like, how do we actually do some of these things like I'm gonna say, measuring performance or measuring engagement, or helping people do more better work, like, let's let's go to the foundation and not settle for mediocre, let's not settle for a bad practice, just because it yields a number that we might want to do something like, I don't know, inform compensation with perhaps, or promotion, or decide who we're going to riff or not, like the data that we use in HR is. So I mean, that one might even argue it's some of the most important data that we use in the world of work, because of the downstream implications, the downstream decisions that we use. I mean, we're impacting people's livelihoods with this data. And some of that data is not only poorly collected, infrequently collected, but some of it, quite frankly, it's simply not even valid.

 

David Turetsky: 11:35

Well, and that's been, I guess, the criticism of Performance Management for so long. Rightly so because we, we started this terrible expectation that you have to have at least two conversations a year around performance management. One is goal setting. And the other one is performance evaluation, when there should be and I know, this is where you go, typically, regular ongoing communications about what's expected between the manager and the associate and the employee. So that one can help the other, you know, one might have different might, one might have challenges, and the other might have solutions. One might have roadblocks, and the other might be able to pave the way. And it may not necessarily be the manager who paves the way for the employee, it might be the other way around. So having those regular conversations, and then documenting them and measuring them, I think this is where you're gonna go. Those are great things. But to me, there's a little bit when you get too regular, you get a little bit of artificial noise built in, because it becomes too routine, right? It becomes too familiar. And it becomes a checkbox, doesn't it?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 12:48

Yeah, well, I think part of the problem is, is we're smooshing two things together, we're smooshing the get more performance with the performance measurements. If you go back to that what's measured gets measured, not what's measured, gets done, there, what's measured part, the performance measurement, part of that is a whole different process with different intended outcomes than the how we get more of it. So this conversation piece, you're right, David, I mean, you know this, because you know, our work that we do, that really frequent connections, really frequent moments of attention between particularly team leaders and team members are what moves the needle on performance and engagement. It's not the only thing, by the way, but it is the most powerful thing that we found. Great. Put that in a box, put a bow on it. That's the performance movement, performance acceleration, however, you want to phrase that. And the totally other side of the kind of world at work equation, if you will, is performance measurement. And we don't measure or I would say, at least our clients don't do this. We don't measure performance. To get more of it, we measure performance to know where it is to be able to see into the talent landscape, if you will, the organization. And we use that data to inform downstream talent decisions. So we don't measure the conversations. Those are between a team leader and a team member. Like HR in our world, we don't we don't go look and see what people are talking about or what that data looks like. We don't do any of that. That's a team leader, team member thing. And then fully on the other side of the fence on the other side of that wall is oh, let's go get some data. So we can see into the talent. Are there people that need help? Are there people that need support? And have organizations choose to use that data to inform downstream talent decisions like potential, you know, variable compensation, for example? Great, you can do that, too. However, understand that that data is not you know, it's not necessarily accountable in the world of knowledge workers. Like it's not a precise number, but it does give us some guidance around how team leaders are experiencing their team members performance.

 

Announcer: 14:57

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David Turetsky: 15:08

We're practitioners though, Amy, we love data. And we love to try and measure things because we want to be able to help. We want to make better decisions using that data, right? So what, what, what's going on with this equation? What's wrong with the equation? What do we have to do to make the data better? Or the measurements better of the data of the transactions to make this more useful for us to make better decisions?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 15:35

Well, weirdly, it's not making it more complicated. I think we've had history, if you will, that we can't we know something's wrong and so we make it more complicated. We add more complex models, competency models, all kinds of things that we try to get a number out of. And weirdly, it's not that that's the opposite. It's counterproductive. What we do and what our with our clients and what we recommend and what they what they do. That's why they we work with them, is actually kind of simplifying it. So if you think about what are the critical few things we need to know about employee performance? What are the critical few things and a great way to kind of peel this back, David is to ask team leaders, managers, the question of Do you know who your best people are? And of course they do, right? I mean, you you've been a leader, you've led people, you know who your best people were in your team? Everybody does? It's like, of course they go? Of course I do. And if you ask them why you typically get a very, very long pause. It's like, I don't know, you just you just know. And when you again, when you ask why. And let them pause and ponder for a minute, you get the same answer virtually every single time. And I've done this 1000s of times, it's how we did some of the original work and kind of checked our original assumptions around how do we measure people performance at work? And the answer is they get high quality work done when you them to get it done. So quality and productivity. And the second thing is we this thing we call, we call it teamyniess, because we didn't know what else to call it. So that that kind of softer behavior thing, we tried to capture it with competency models, but that didn't quite work and rating people against it. That doesn't quite work. So when you smush, all that kind of softer stuff together, we just call it teamyness because we didn't know what to call it. And that's it. It's those two things, can somebody get high quality work done? And I'm gonna use kind of an Amy term and say, Are they reasonable to work with? Like, that's it. And if you don't overcomplicate it, and don't over engineer that, it gives you some really interesting, incredibly useful data. Now you can ask people, team leaders, the people who know someone's work best to rate that you can say a scale of one to five, that works quite nicely. We love a five point scale. And you can get quantitative data from that. You have to be careful, because you have to understand that we're kind of trying to count the uncountable, if you will. And in the world of knowledge workers, we don't often have countables.

 

David Turetsky: 18:04

But but those two things seem a little bit subjective. I mean, they're very subjective, right? What are we trying to measure with teamyness? It's Yes, it's easy to work with. But is there something you can tie it back to?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 18:20

100% it's subjective. Absolutely, we should not pretend, particularly if you've got a countable by the way, if if an employee has a true objective countable, that we can measure that you can put your finger on you sales is the The easiest example of that, does somebody meet their quota? Oh, my gosh, you should so use that, like 100% should use that that's way better. But most of us don't have that. So we in HR, and kind of the business world, if you will have manufactured countables, to say that we can count someone's or we can measure someone's performance objectively, which in most most cases we can't. So we should just be really upfront and honest, everybody knows that. We just don't say it. So we should be really clear about, hey, this is a subjective measurement, if you will, or subjective opinion of a team leader about a team members performance.

 

David Turetsky: 19:12

But that is now impacting compensation decisions. And the decisions around promotion. And around, you know, as you said, you know, layoffs and reductions in staff. And one of the things that we get bitten by a lot is the subjectivity of a lot of the the evaluation criteria we use often in HR. So does it really kind of hold up against that? Or is it something where to your to your point, we should try and find the things that can be measured about a job, and then measure it to be able to have that objectivity?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 19:49

If there are objective measures, we should use them. Absolutely. In the world of information workers and knowledge workers that often doesn't exist and so we in HR, unfortunately have oftentimes kind of manufactured a countable. Goals are a great example of that. Yeah, SMART goals, right? I mean, you're you could even take your work like, what's the quality of your podcast, David? That's, that's a subjective measurement. Some people love it, some people

 

David Turetsky: 20:15

Wait wait wait. Who are these people who don't don't love it. love it? I want names, Amy, I want names.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 20:21

I love your podcast, David.

 

David Turetsky: 20:23

Thank you, Amy.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 20:23

So, so we've we've manufactured these things. And it's very convenient, right? Because it's a great cop out to say, oh, you know, you didn't, you didn't get your 3% merit increase this year, because your performance review was too low, or you got to 2.5 on your performance review, not a three. And if you would have gotten a three, we would have given you that 2.8% increase, but instead, you got to lower performance rating. So now you're only going to get a 2.7% increase. Like so we've manufactured this world of over precision of this subjective thing that most of us do, we often referred to it as knowledge work. So you're right, the downstream implications in terms of promotions, in terms of merit increases, in terms of a lot of things we do with that data, I don't want to say we've kind of been living a lie, but we've kind of been living a lie, like, it's, it's a great thing for us to lean into. It's like, oh, it's not my fault. You know, it's not it's not my fault that your your performance rating was this number, it was a two point, whatever 3.26. And so you know, it was below the cutoff. So so sorry. And we're we're making we're humans, our world is made up of making lots and lots of judgment calls. And to pretend that a judgment call is not a judgment call, and that at some objective decision, blamed if you will, on some over precise number that somebody came up with, because of I don't know, is, you know, some formula or some model that someone said, was the perfect engineer, the perfect HR person is kind of ridiculous.

 

Dwight Brown: 22:00

It's, and it's one of those things that we need to be very honest and prepared to mix both science and art. And that's a tough thing, that's a tough thing for a lot of people to swallow, it gets to that subjectivity that you talked about the judgments calls judgment calls you talked about, but at the end of the day, nothing is so scientific, that it can be explained just by data points, there, there's always going to be that subjectivity to there.

 

David Turetsky: 22:30

Well, especially when it comes to these emotional topics of getting an increase or, or getting an incentive award or losing your job or getting promoted. They are they require the recipient to know why. When you sit when you and your your employer, you and your manager sit together. Maturity is sometimes tossed out the window, because the employee wants to know why what rule what policy what, why did I get this? Or why did this happen to me? And that's the reason why, Amy, I was talking about before that, that over subjectivity, you know, gets into arguments with employees, and the manager falls back on, you know, whatever creative crap they can come up with, in their mind, if they don't have good policy or good rules to stand behind. And say, Well, the reason why we did this was this and this, and, you know, next year, you know, if you perform better, you'll, you know, you'll have potential to get this. managers don't go to school, to learn that. It needs us, the practitioners as well as the people who write those policies, and, and help companies figure out these policies to write good scripts and to give managers good insight as to how do I communicate this right?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 23:51

Yeah, I've we could talk for hours around it just one problem, or one highlighting one issue or focusing on an issue such as measurement that we're doing today, kind of leads to a whole nother discussion around well, how do we do some of those other practices merit increases is a great example of that. Well, if we're saying this measurement in quotation marks of a person's performance in the world of work to a large degree for many of us is subjective because we don't have objective countables. Well, then what do you do with merit increases? If you're saying that this data isn't particularly precise, and we try to over precise over precision, whatever that word would be merit increases? Well, what do we do with that? Well, maybe we need to rethink how we do merit increases. While Wow, okay, well, that's a whole different thing. Maybe merit increases are over or too granular, because we can't differentiate between, you know, really good and really, really good. That's boy that leads to a big open question. And it's one that our clients again struggle with every single day because once you kind of start to go, oh, this is a bit of this is not a little bit subjective, but it's actually a lot subjective. If well then what are all the downstream implications of of kind of realizing that and it's it's a lot of rework and a lot of reengineering. But employees what we have found anyway, what I have found is that employees go, oh, well, this makes so much more sense. Now. I now I get and you stop saying, Well, I'm gonna blame HR. So sorry that you couldn't get a you know, meets expect or exceeds expectation this year, because you were that last year, and I only have so many fours to give. So this year they are three. But by the way, a three is not a C. That's not a C, I know, it's not I know you think it is, but it's actually not. And it's not my fault. Anyway, it's HR's fault, they made me give you a three because you got a four last year, and there's only so many I can give.

 

David Turetsky: 25:49

So that gets us to the next question, which is, with everything we've just talked about, how do we actually get more employee contribution, because at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is we're trying to make employees happier, to feel better about their situation, and to, to buy into this company that we're talking about, you know, this fictitious company being a place that they want to work, and they want to actually believe in and be able to, you know, give themselves to?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 26:17

It's a great question, David. And I'll tell you what we found again, it's not the only thing. But one of the biggest things that we found, and it's one that can actually easily be implemented by anyway, anyone is to create a culture of high attention at work between your most important people. So for most of us, that's our team leader, not all of us. But most of its, it's our team, leader, call him your manager, whatever, however, whatever term your organization happens to use, and by frequent, I mean, at least once a week, so really light touch, it doesn't have to be complicated, doesn't have to be over engineered or over scripted, but not a drive by. Drive bys are fine. I hear this from team leaders and managers all the time I talk to my people every day, we talk all the time. But driving by doing that walk by or kind of phone call that quick thing of going, Oh, how you doing? Yeah, I'm good, fine. That's not it. It's got to be focused on what are your most important work that you need to get done? Do you need anything from me, and through that strengths based lens of you're not a broken person, you are a person with all kinds of opportunity and potential. And my job is to help you put that on the table more not to fix you. But to help you do more of your own unique best work. And that's true anywhere in the hierarchy. So creating that culture, that habit that practice that expectation that we pay really frequent attention to our most important people. Through that strengths, based lens, I see you for the best of you. Yes, I see you for all of you, and all the flaws and all the things that drive me crazy. But first and foremost, I see you for the best of you. Doing that really frequently, is the not so secret sauce to performance, productivity, engagement, all the things. I mean, you could do you could think about it maybe outside of work. A good way to kind of get your mind around or some people go like, what is it that really that simple? Like we don't have to do quarterly IDPs? No, you don't, please don't do that. Oh, my goodness, don't do that. And think about it outside of work. And so when someone says really frequently to you sincerely, authentically, I love you really, really frequently. It's like, oh, that's a game changer versus I love you once a year, like, yeah, it's not even a question. And what we're doing inside of work, when we create that practice and that habit of frequent attention through a strengths based lens on your most important things, your most important work. It's, it's Oh, you see me, you acknowledge me, thank you for seeing the work and the contribution that I'm giving to the organization, there's other things. But that habit we have found through the data is critical anywhere between employees who receive frequent attention from their most important people at work, it can be one and a half to two and a half to three and a half times more likely to be fully engaged or online at work than those who don't receive that kind of attention.

 

David Turetsky: 29:03

How does this change with working at home? You know, does the tension change? Does it become something different? Does it mean that they have to have an in person meeting? Or does it mean they have to zoom? You know, what is that? What is that evolved to in the in the world of work of most people working from home and knowledge workers at least working from home?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 29:23

So there was a study from that the ADP Research Institute put out recently called the 2022 people at work study. And there were some fascinating data in there. And one of the things that it found is it looked at a number of factors, including things like there were some career questions in there, there was some kind of retention type questions. And people who were working from home who were working off site actually responded more favorably to many of the items on the survey than people who were working on site. And I don't know if I have a hypothesis. I don't have any data to support this. But if you think about people who are not working in the same place. And I think about this with with my team that that I work with every day, when I call them when I pick up the phone, or when I do a huddle on Slack, for example. It's usually not Oh, what are you doing today? How's it going? What's the weather like, wherever you are? It's not that it's usually really intentional, like, I have a reason to call you like, I'm going to talk about something. And I think I don't know this for sure. But I think it's actually because we are more intentional when we're not sitting next to each other. And it's that intentionality of what are you working on? What's the most important work you need to get done? Do you need anything for me? Are you doing okay? That's really important as well. But when we're not sitting in the same place, oftentimes, our conversations are more intentional about work. And that's a difference maker versus doing the drive by what did you do last night, that's fine, by the way. But the thing that moves the needle on engagement and performance and productivity, not the only thing, but that really frequent attention about things that are really important to me. And in the context of work. That's, you know, that's the work I do.

 

David Turetsky: 31:09

One of the fun things I get to do with working with people like Dwight on a daily basis is that they know that I'm always there. And that not not only my phone call away, but I'm literally a team's meeting away. And it used to be the case. And you know, I've been in the world of work for over 30 years, that people couldn't find me I was on a client meeting, I was I was out, I was doing things, I was always on the move, or I was traveling. And so a lot of times what used to be thought of as face time, you know, people being in the office or whatever, had a lot of gravity, right, because you were with people, you you kind of you felt their presence. But now they know how to get me they know where I am. And I'm always a phone call or teams meeting away, isn't that kind of one of the interesting changes to working at home and to the ability to communicate via smartphone or computer or whatever, or even even our watches these days hasn't really changed the equation for the World at Work.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 32:09

100% has changed the equation, it will be fascinating to see what happens in the months. And, you know, not so many years ahead about how much of this sticks with the world of work. And you've probably experienced this and talk to folks on the podcast and worked with folks who have I'm going to say in quotation mark kind of mandated people to come back into the office. And I think it's going to be interesting to see how that evolves and how sticky that is certainly most of us have experienced, as we've been some of us for a long time have been working off site or working from home or working from wherever, and have experienced that that feeling of being treated like a grown up. I mean, you know, we're kind of grown up-a-fy this is this is kind of caused caused us or forced us to grown up-a-fy work a little bit, it's like I don't need to see you sitting in front of a computer to know that you're contributing to the organization. I don't need to count the minutes that you're sitting there. And for many of us, I think just as humans, it's really nice to be treated like a grown up.

 

David Turetsky: 33:14

There was a time Amy was in one of my previous roles where I used to commute 250 miles to go to work. And I used to drive down 250 work from Sunday night to Wednesday night and then drive home. And it did tremendous things to my life. It it changed my stress levels it it changed, it changed my ability to relate to my kids when I stopped doing that work. But of course, I had to leave that job. Because the leadership believed that it was better to have someone in place, you know, co located but I also manage people around the world. And I didn't commute to them. Although I did travel to them once or twice a year to see them to speak with them to listen to what their problems are. But again, they were a phone call or a team's meeting away most of the time. And so I think you're right, I think the world of work is maturing to trust and believe, given that we had to over the last two years because we couldn't be co located it was It wasn't possible. But I think it's going to change. I think you're right, I think we will see. Or we should see major changes to how work gets done, especially from the knowledge worker perspective, manufacturing still has to be in person. Obviously, your retail still has to be in person for the most part still today. Maybe that'll change. But so does it change our equation at all what we measure, or how we measure and how we look at those results for what we've been talking about because of that difference in colocation.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 34:50

We certainly have to take into account the type of work and the regulatory and compliance aspects of that for some types of work. It's it's we pay people, some people based upon the time they spend doing the work, for those that that are not under those compliance, you know, regulations, those rules. I think it absolutely changes it. You know, we've seen organizations and you know, many organizations experimenting with four day workweeks, for example, and not just for 10s. But for eights. Yeah. And, you know, of course, Tim Ferriss and The Four Hour Workweek, right, many years ago, when he wrote that book, I think it's worth it for all of us to think about it and challenge it and not rely on the old assumptions. That for someone to make a meaningful contribution at work requires 40 hours or 50 hours, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. So if we can focus more, and start to again, treat people like grownups, then perhaps maybe work itself will become more grown up, and perhaps maybe will act more like grownups in the context of work. I mean, this doesn't, we shouldn't have to raise our hand to go to the bathroom anymore. Like that was second grade. I think we're over that. But yeah, you know, kind of an extreme example, but yet that's still the case. In some places.

 

David Turetsky: 36:12

It definitely is still the case in some places. In fact, I seen policies which talk about SOPs. And so those SOPs demand, you know, that certain things happen at certain times. So I, I think you're right, I think there is this, there needs to be this maturity that people bring to work. And then there needs to be a maturity level that managers and supervisors can trust that those employees are being mature and making mature decisions. Unfortunately, we know that there are a lot of employees who take advantage of situations right, especially with things like unlimited PTO, and it requires managers and HR to measure and be able to stay on top of them. So they don't, it's sad. But but hopefully there is that level of maturity.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 36:55

And I think we have to pick as organizations, we have to pick, we have to choose, are we going to start that conversation? Are we going we as organizational leaders in human resource practitioners, are we going to be the instigators of a grown up workplace are we going to wait for somebody else to do it? My My recommendation would be is that that we do it, that we're the ones who instigate that and we say, Hey, you're a grown up, not only are you a grown up, but you're a super smart grown up. And we're going to see you for the best of you, we're gonna put practices in place that treat you like a super smart grown up. And the exception is going to be what you just talked about David, the exception is going to be the person who might take advantage of some of those policies. And we're going to treat that like the exception. But the rule is going to be you're a super smart grown up, we trust you to do amazing work. If that doesn't happen, we're going to deal with that separately, we're going to that's the exception process, right. But for the rest of us, for the other 99% of us who are doing great work and the 99% of you who are coming into work and contributing, we're going to treat you like that. I think that's we can do that. We have the ability. And now we've proven that that is a reasonable way to approach work. I think we ought to go do that. Because I think employees are going to choose, they're going to choose to work at organizations that treat their employees like grownups. And if you're not doing that, I think you're putting your organization at risk.

 

David Turetsky: 38:23

I love the term voting with your feet when it comes to that.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 38:27

Yeah, exactly.

 

Dwight Brown: 38:28

It's better for us to do it on our own terms until as opposed to waiting to the point where we have to do it on somebody else's terms.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 38:38

Absolutely.

 

David Turetsky: 38:48

So Amy, we've talked about a lot today, we've talked about the myth of measurement, we've talked about what it is and how, as practitioners, we need data, we need good data to make better decisions. We've talked a lot about the policies and procedures that underlie really broken assumptions in HR and how we need to change them. And we've also tried to figure out how we can eke better contribution out of employees by treating them like mature humans and adults. Anything else you wanted to talk about before we close?

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 39:19

I hope we the royal we HR practitioners in particular, but also organizational leaders. I hope that that we use this as an opportunity none of us want the tragedy of COVID Like that was that's not a clearly not a good thing. But it has left us a bit of a gift. And I think it would be a shame to not utilize that gift that we've been given to rethink work to treat people more like grownups to be more responsible with the data that we use and not simply assume that because we've got multiple digits after the decimal point that it's more precise. Not pretend that much of the data that we use is objective when it's not. And we all know it's not. So we've got an opportunity here to as I often like to say, you know, to go be smart. Let's go be smart. We're smarter now. And it would be a shame if we didn't put those smarts to use.

 

David Turetsky: 40:15

Brilliantly said, Thank you so much. You're a pleasure. And we invite you back again at some point.

 

Amy Leschke-Kahle: 40:22

Thanks so much, David. I'd love to come back again. And thanks, Dwight.

 

Dwight Brown: 40:25

Thanks for being here with us. We appreciate it.

 

David Turetsky: 40:28

And thank you, Dwight, and thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe.

 

Announcer: 40:33

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