Unknown Speaker 0:00 Kurt Nelson, Kurt Nelson 0:07 welcome to behavior grooves, the podcast that explores the human condition through a behavioral science lens. I'm Kurt Nelson and Tim Houlihan 0:14 I'm Tim Houlihan, and today we're thrilled to bring you a wide ranging funny and insight packed conversation with the remarkable Ken Hughes a global expert on customer experience and human behavior. Kurt Nelson 0:27 Yeah, and Ken is more than just a thought leader in CX. He's a captivating storyteller, a deep thinker, and basically he talks about three really important topics. One, human connection, two, emotional loyalty and three, what it means to build brands that truly matter. He's worked with some amazing brands, from Coca Cola to Google, and he's known for his sharp wit and even sharper insights, which Tim, I think we got a good, good dose of both of these Tim Houlihan 0:58 today. Totally agree on that. In our conversation, we explored how brands need to embrace the shift from transactional loyalty to emotional loyalty, how vulnerability brings builds brand intimacy, and why most companies just completely understand what creativity needs to flourish. Ken challenges us to rethink efficiency as a goal, because sometimes getting lost is exactly where we need to be to find a new future. Kurt Nelson 1:27 Yeah, we get lost a lot. Tim so all the time. He also shared, he also shared this tip how painting his toenails and drinking his own urine. Oh, what? Yep, that happened transformed his understanding of creativity and risk taking, yeah, but he really, so that's called a cliffhanger. Tim capturing people's imagination. They're gonna go, Ooh, I gotta find out what that what happened? Why would he do that? All right, they're gonna tell him in the introduction. They have to listen to the entire So, Tim Houlihan 2:02 whether you're a leader strategizing about how to foster innovation, I'm sorry, but like after the urine drinking thing, that whole idea of being a leader fostering strategy, okay, but, or if you're just someone who wants to bring more mischief into your life that see that works, that works with this conversation is for you, Kurt Nelson 2:22 yes. So sit back and relax with a perfectly steep cup of berries tea. You thought, you thought I was gonna say that Barry's tea, you know, that is if you're in the south of Ireland and you know you've got to do it just right. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 2:37 just right. Okay, and enjoy our conversation with the one and only Ken Hughes. Speaker 1 2:50 Ken Hughes, welcome to Behavioral Grooves. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. It is a pleasure to Tim Houlihan 2:56 have you, and we would like to start by knowing first and foremost coffee or tea, Ken Hughes 3:00 I would have to do tea. I think, yeah, I'm not a coffee person. I'm an Irish person. Our whole economy runs on tea. We have about six cups of tea a day. It's our secret fuel. And what do you favor? I live in Cork in the very south, for such a small island, is hilariously tribal in the in Cork, we have a brand called Barry's tea. If you're in Munster, the south of the country, you drink Barry's tea. You drink nothing else. If you drink everything else, you'll explode. And then up the north of the country, Lyons is based in Dublin. They're a Dublin tea, and that's what you drink if you live in Dublin. I think it's really 200 kilometers away. People, when they go on vacation, take their own tea bags in their in their in their cases, because God forbid you drink a tea outside of the Ireland. That isn't real tea, yeah, and it's, it's finally a leftover from colonialism. You know, we had the English here for 800 years. They gave us teas, the only good thing they gave us. Tim Houlihan 3:52 And yet, there's no English breakfast, or Earl gray or anything, no Ken Hughes 3:56 one. Yeah, that would be too English. Then you see, so you've got the the overthrows of colonialism left over. So no, no English teas, please, only Irish made teas. Yeah. Kurt Nelson 4:05 And do you have a specific way that you have to create make your tea? Do you have like, Ken Hughes 4:10 Oh, God, yeah, you put whiskey in it? Kurt Nelson 4:15 I wasn't really going there. But okay, when you think about the Ken Hughes 4:18 Irish people come to Ireland for a vacation, and they always say, oh my, I was loving the people. Lovely. The people are so lovely, and it was so green, yeah, why do you think it's so green? It rains here all the time, and so we invented whiskey as a way to cope with the weather. The Irish people there, they're really friendly, yeah, we're already friendly after our first cup of tea in the morning. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 4:39 all right, well, we could probably go down that, that rabbit hole for a long time. But let's get to the second speedrun question. All right, you mentioned, and as we were talking beforehand, that you're, you're based out of court, but you, you kind of are on a plane most of the time. So if you didn't have to travel for work, would you rather travel on a fixed itinerary or no itinerary? At all. Oh, Ken Hughes 5:00 definitely no itinerary at all. One of the happiest vacations a few years ago, I was doing a gig in Sydney, and a gig got canceled, and I ended up staying for two or three weeks extra between the next gig of that side of the world. And so I had suddenly this free time, and I just took my shoes off, got in a ferry, went to Fiji, and spent 12 days just bopping from island to island, no agenda, wherever the next person I met in the beach was going, I went and just that freedom away from schedule, away from knowing what you were going to do any given day, where you want to end up, was actually something I need to lean into again. So definitely, as a person who makes his way around is the world with a tour manager, I'm told where I'm to be, where I'm to be. I get picked up by cars, technical rehearsal. It's all so structured. Yeah, I definitely yearn for a bit of chaos. Tim Houlihan 5:48 I love that idea. Yeah, that that's a wonderful thing to yearn for, I have to admit. Okay, third, third, Speed Round question, yes or no, is digital convenience now considered more important than brand loyalty. For most consumers who I Ken Hughes 6:01 don't think brand loyalty even exists anymore, that's the really scary thing. Digital convenience certainly first. I want it now, one click, one swipe, I want to instantly the brand that delivers that to me first gets my business, and loyalty becomes Yeah, we'll talk about emotional loyalty a lot in this podcast today. I think relationship. So yeah, to short answer the question is, convenience first, Tim Houlihan 6:20 all. Right, we will talk about that more. Yes, Kurt Nelson 6:23 absolutely. And the last question here in our speed round, which is never speedy, is blue dot consumer meaningfully different from the traditional bricks and mortar consumer of the past? Oh, 100% Ken Hughes 6:36 so the blue dot consumer is a metaphor that I took from from these things. Remember these? These are the old traditional paper maps, yeah. And what I know I have them, yeah. So many divorces were caused by these. And so this was like the old way of working. You say you had to know where you are. You didn't know where you were going. You then had to plan the route between those points. So you did all the work. And you grew up. What you understood was that you grew up in a huge, big world, and you're a small, inconsequential part of it, and you do all the work. And that was the old way and the new way, which is, of course, that blue dot consumer, that little blue dot that sits in your phone, is the world you are, the world you're not navigating away through anything. The frame of reference continuously changed around you. You stay perfectly in the center, and that revolutionized customer centricity, customer experience, marketing, branding, retail, everything. Because at this point, the consumer isn't some end point of a customer journey like the terminus. They are the fulcrum. And that really is a fundamental metaphorical flick in terms of how we do business. Tim Houlihan 7:36 It's a massive metaphorical flip Ken and I can, let's take just a minute to dig in into that, because we have a generation. I mean, right now in our world, we still have people who grew up with with maps, basically, and not with GPS. Now I think virtually every human being is happy to use GPS. But we also have generations now who have never seen a map. I think you've called attention to this, that they just don't even know what that paper map even looks like, or what would it be for I had the experience of going to hotel in a city that I didn't know and asking concierge for a map. And he said, Well, do you have a phone? And I said, I do. And he said, Do you have a you know, there's a map on the phone, and it can help you get to wherever you want to go. And I said, part of the problem is I don't know where I want to go, and I'm hoping that a map might help me there. Yeah, Ken Hughes 8:34 and a paper map. What's interesting, and this is, stick with maps for now, when you use the old paper map, you often got lost, because even though you had the map, the scale might have been wrong, and certainly, my son is 18, is learning to drive at the moment, and I was trying to explain this to him, and it is quite comical. Let's do a physical representation. I'm trying to drive a car, ridiculous notion. But you got lost along the way. And getting lost, I think just to lean in a little bit to innovation and creativity is always, not always, but is usually a good thing, because when you get lost, you come across something or somebody or a village or a town or a business that you didn't intend to come across. If we only ever get to where we intend to go every single time we journey, both corporately or professionally or personally, that's not a good thing, because it just continuously joins the dots of our intended journeys all the time. I think one of the issues with GPS and Google Maps now is that that's what happens. You just get exposed to your intended destination. You get exposed to your intended businesses. And even when you search for a restaurant, it'll show you the Indian restaurant on the street near you. And so you tend to gravitate to what you've always done. I like Indian Okay, where's the Indian restaurant? Oh, there's one. I'll go to that. As opposed to the old way of wandering down the street that you didn't even know you were probably on the wrong street anyway. And then you thought, Well, look, I'm starving. Let's go in here. What is it? Korean? I've never eaten Korean. I don't. COME ON and OFF went the adventure. And so I think in terms of creativity in the corporate world, or even in your own personal life, unless you're stepping outside of your norms, you're not putting anything new into the funnel. And it was one of the real watch outs for for sheltering at home and the lockdowns, everyone from nearly 12 to 18 months spent their their entire work day and their entire personal day in the same environment. The environments weren't shifting, and while working from home was great, you don't do the whole crazy commute. It took away all the stimulus, all those additional micro conversations you might have somewhere, all the things that you might see in an average day, and think, oh, maybe suddenly you were just exposed to your own, your own echo chamber of people you already know, the people you talk to, your environment. Environments. And I think that's quite Kurt Nelson 10:44 a dangerous thing to dig into this metaphor a little bit more. There's an aspect of this where the GPS is very efficient, right? You are, it is. It will route the fastest way from point A to point B for you and make sure that you have an you know, 200 meters ahead is where you turn, and different things so you never even miss your your turn off like you do. But that isn't always as you were talking about that creativity part of the other aspects of this, there are some aspects about not being as efficient that lend itself into having a more richer, more broadening type experience that sometimes can be really helpful. And again, taking that metaphor into work, is that something that you see companies maybe over indexing on some of that, that efficiency component, or am I making up crap in the area Ken Hughes 11:35 you're you're doing both? I think, Kurt Nelson 11:39 I think I think you can one Ken Hughes 11:44 of my favorite things in corporate is when they tell lady, and often I'm involved in these I'm hired on the day to be that motivational speaker and meet the teams, and, you know, engage them and set them off for their year. And the CEO will stand up and say, I want you all to be more creative and innovative, and we need new ideas and when. And then they give them like structures and templates to fill out. And this is the irony in corporate where you know you want your people, of course, to be creative and innovative, but then you don't give them any of the tools, the training or the really, the stimulus, the environments, to be that. And so, like the deadlines we set for people, takes away space, for instance. And so I'm often asked, Where do you come with your ideas, you know? And the answer is, always space. It's in sitting in airports, and it's on trains, it's in planes, it's in forest walks. As you're distilling the thoughts that you've had in the last week, that you come up with an idea, but you never come up with that idea if your back's against the wall continuously, from a deadline point of view. And the same thing to do with the environments we build, you know, they put a pool table in the canteen. They think, oh yeah, we're really super, super cool, creative company that's not going to change anything. Are my favorite, the bean bags in the meeting rooms, you know, like, as if someone's going to win sit the bean bag and think, oh my God, I've had a genius idea that I wouldn't have had on a chair. And so, you know, it's lipstick on the gorilla stuff. And I think if corporate are genuine about having a core of creativity at the hope of everything we do need to look at the way people work. And I'm not talking about working from home, in terms of the structures of work, in general, the talent recruitment strategies that we take. Because one of the problems with Kurt, one of my favorite things to do with a large audience, is maybe, you know, once it goes over 1000 maybe 1000 2000 3000 is to have a show of hands in the room as to who here plays an instrument on a regular basis, paints or draws on a regular basis. You know, anything truly creative art would be defined as creative. And about 5% of the room put their hands up. And I always ask people, look around, this is the issue in corporate because we recruit the same type of mind again and again, the logical, rational mind. You know, we can all sit down and perv out about a good Excel sheet. But actually, you know, understanding the nature of of emotional intelligence and creativity, there's a different type of person I think we need in a lot of our organizations. And the diversity argument is really interesting because we use things like gender, race, age as a proxy for diversity. Actually, what we're really saying is we'd like different types of minds around the table. That's what diversity actually means, a diverse way of thinking. And so women do think differently, and so that's why it's wrong to not have them represented as much. Younger and older people do think differently. Different cultures think differently, but also neuro diversity, this one we ignore hugely in corporate we tend to not not engage our recruit neuro diverse people because they're a nightmare to manage. They don't understand time. You know, all these reasons come out, and that's what they're all true, by the way, but that doesn't mean that they're not a wealth of information. When you take when they when you look at how they think, how someone with autism or ADHD or dyslexia or any any other versions, they have a different way of thinking, different way of looking at the problem. And so we need to stop, in a way, hiring all the data engineers and the rational and the people, and maybe have some more of the creative people that, yes, maybe they're more difficult to manage in certain ways, but their output in terms of creativity and problem solving are fundamentally different. What's Tim Houlihan 14:54 keeping us, what's keeping us from that, what's keeping corporate leaders from exploring. Ken Hughes 15:00 That I think, I think it's it is starting to change. I think the acknowledgement that IQ isn't the thing that we need to put first, and I think there is a slow shift now to realizing that EQ gives us more return on investment from a talent acquisition perspective, so the people that have good leadership skills in EQ and have a better connection with the teams. They're trying to motivate better connection with the customer. They are the people that will change the nature of the brand. IQ will just do the same stuff, maybe more efficiently. Back to your point earlier on our let's face it, AI is going to do that. So I think there is a shift in how we recruit. And yeah, the previous block has been just, you know, that standard question that the job interview panel have. As the candidate walks out of the room, they all turn to each other and they say, you think Jane will fit in here, into the corporate culture? And if Jane, if the answer is yes, we hired Jane, but the opposite should be true, no, I don't think Jane will fit in great. Let's hire because if we keep hiring people that will fit in, we're hiring the exact same cookie cutter person again and again and again and again, and then we're surprised that we don't have new ideas or new ways of doing business. Why are we surprised? We just keep cloning our staff every five or 10 years, and 95% Tim Houlihan 16:09 of the people don't raise their hand when they're asked if they play an instrument or do art or something like that. Ken Hughes 16:15 They don't, and actually often, and I do have a go at them later on again, I challenge their their own answer, because obviously, everyone's creative. My definition of creativity is to create something from the nothing. So if you're in the shower and you start singing, you have created a noise from the nothingness. If you draw one line in the piece of paper, you've created a line that didn't exist two seconds ago. And so to create something from nothing is my definition, and everyone does that every single moment. So we were taught quite young, usually around seven or eight, where some kids in the class were getting a gold star on the art and some weren't that you maybe weren't as creative as you thought. Like if you look at a five year old, there's a wonderful experiment I do in my talks where I tell people to get ready for an exercise. They all get a blank page and a pencil, and they write their name on the top. It's all very exciting. And then I say, swap is what give your name someone else. Okay, it's weird. And then I say, you've got a minute, and minute in the clock to draw a portrait of that person. Go. And they'll think, what is it? You draw a portrait? Go. And they all start laughing, of course. And they, you know, the minute goes past. And then I say, Stop, swap back. And of course, the whole room erupts in like laughter and embarrassment. And, you know. And what's interesting with that experiment is that when I say go, the very first thing you'll hear and you'll hear it ripple across the whole room. I'm so sorry. Before they even start, before they even have started attempting at this, they're going to apologize to the other person for the lack of creativity or the shit show that's about to go down. And then when they swap them, of course, there is humor, there's excitement, there's fun. The difference in doing that experiment with a group of five and six year olds is amazing. So once you go past 12 or 15, particularly, you get that natural laughter and embarrassment. But if you give that same exercise to a group of kindergarten kids, you say, go. There's this absolute silence. And they do their best, and when they exchange them back, they go, look at that, look at that masterpiece. There's no embarrassment, there's no lack of of courage to do a creativity. So somewhere, usually, unfortunately, schooling system is where kids learn that there's a better way to do it. There's naturally creative people in there, and there's us, and there's me, and I'm maybe not as good as that, and that's a real shame. And so part of my work in the playology field is to use play and risk and mischief to connect people back to their essence of creativity. And I did a TED Talk God 10 years ago now, it was an experiment I took part in for a year, a personal experiment, right to do something new every day for a year. So by midnight of every day, I had to do something new that I'd never, ever done before in my life, which was a big ask the first month was grand, but by then you start to back yourself into a corner, and so, and I couldn't do two the next day to catch up, like if I missed it by midnight, that was it. The whole experiment was gone. And so it puts you into like a tight rope of, okay, I have to find something today. I have to find something today. And of course, weekends were easy. This when you had time, but it was the wet Wednesdays when you were stuck in your office. You had to find a new way to do so. One day, I wore all my clothes backwards, just, you know, I it didn't matter what the thing was. You just have to find the thing in your own environment to do differently. And after about 90 days, I heard a click inside of myself, literally. And I've never been the same since. That was 10 years ago. And I would now look at life fundamentally different from an opportunistic perspective, because there was that kind of false creative push that you created through the experiment that meant that every notice board you went past, you stopped and you found, you know, I was the only man in the Zumba class. I was, you know, you kept just doing things all the time. Had to drink my own urine. You're supposed to chill that, by the way, made that mistake warm at 1158 one night, when I had forgotten to do something all that day or didn't find and so the curiosity and the creativity that came from that experiment, and again, it's a whole TED Talk. It's a whole corporate talk I do now with people, led me to believe that the habit and routine or the enemy of creativity and innovation, doing the same thing with the same people in the same environments, you will never. Power ever reach your full potential. It's only in and again. Going back to my earlier question, to your speed down. So, you know, into the chaos, into the chaos we step because it's in the chaos, like the real laws of physics, you know, the vacuum would be filled, and so that we have to create the vacuums for them to be filled. And so habit and routine don't let us create any vacuums. We keep doing the same thing again and again again. Whereas if you let the vacuum exist and you step into the new It takes courage and vulnerability, which are, of course, the same thing. But once you step into that space, something's going to happen. And some of the things I did at Denver do again, of course, again. I learned to don't like that. Don't like getting my ass waxed. It's not fun. Whereas some of the, some of the things I did, I started to do regular rock climbing. And, you know, you think, Oh, I'll try this. I'll try that. And so I think in the corporate world, in our professional lives, we need to step away from habit and routine and really be curious about what that vacuum could be. And so, and that's different for everybody, of course. Kurt Nelson 20:54 Yeah, so it sounds like the you rewired your brain to a certain degree by going through and doing that exercise, kind of like gratitude often. You know the gratitude practice is really when you look at neurologically. What that does is it actually makes your brain wire to look for pieces of gratitude in your life, as opposed to just letting them slide by. It might be something small that we wouldn't normally see, and now, because I know I have to write a gratitude, you know, journaling piece tonight, I take notice of that. It sounds very similar in this kind of like you're looking for things in a more creative way. Would you, would you categorize it that way? Or is it something more fundamental, even though Ken Hughes 21:37 it is, I mean, it's definitely plasticity of the connections and the decoding your brain to look for the new opportunity, because ultimately, we live in a society today that is very predetermined. Everything's timetabled, and it's very much the blocks of your week in terms of time, are already given to you laid out there, you click them together like Lego. And really escaping that kind of prison is it requires conscious effort, and so once you repeatedly do that, it's like going to the gym. You don't get the six pack on the first day. You know, you kind of have to turn up every day. It's really sucks. And so from a creativity, innovation point, I think the same thing is true. We cannot expect ourselves to bring our best self to our personal our professional lives creatively, unless we actually train that muscle also, and it does require training. So it's a case of, how do I continuously train my mind for the new and that's only by putting new things into the funnel every single day. And when I mean new, I mean fundamentally new. I don't mean like, Oh, I haven't had this for a while. No, you have to actually seek out a way of living or a way of doing things or a person. And the simplicity of it was fantastic, because people always say to me, what was the best thing you did? And they want the big ones. You know, they want the naked bungee job. Naked bungee jumping off the Sydney Bridge, which also happened, gave myself an accidental salt water enema. Don't do that one either the small things and things that made a difference. So the one I talk about all the time is my daughter, who was around seven at the time, she was painting her fingernails. And I looked at her, and I thought, wow, how did I get to be this age and have her for seven years of my life already and not have her paint my nails? That's kind of weird. And it was only because I was doing this experiment. Of course, I took off my socks and gave her my feet. She was seven, so she painted each toe different color. And I went to bed that night, woke up the next morning, and of course, had completely forgotten, swung my legs out of bed and started laughing, because it looked like Eminem's funny. I put my socks back on, went to work again, forgot. So every night when I would take my socks off, I would laugh because they looked ridiculous. And so for two weeks, every morning, every night, I laughed. And I remember thinking, Oh, my God, I've given myself this gift of laughter, this little micro Joy moment every morning. And every because I kept forgetting every as you would, and I realized something so simple as that has given me so much joy now, and it's something I still do this day, and I do it every now and then, just to watch the reactions and the changing rooms in the gym as well, and so in a quieter women for like and this is, this is about stereotypical norms. Now, why do women get to paint their toenails and have the joy that that brings you. And straight men don't like what's that about, right? Why is that norm being created? And anyone what listen to this podcast today, has the choice tonight to take their daughter, their wives, their lovers, there maybe of all three, I don't judge you. Take their take their nail polish, and paint your nails, and trust me, see how you feel the next day. And you might think, Oh, I feel weird. Or someone sees this. Why is that? Then? Why do you and so challenging norms, challenging behavioral norms in society, in professional life, in corporate in your personal life. I think this is the nature of humanity. Actually, this is the nature of what it is to be human. Tim Houlihan 24:38 Let's talk about emotions in when it comes to the consumer experience and the customer experience. Behavioral scientists have, you know, revealed in the last 40 years that emotions drive a lot of our decisions. They drive a lot of our behaviors. Of course, what's, what's, what's the importance, the critical importance of. Emotion and feelings when it comes to the consumer experience. Ken, Ken Hughes 25:04 yeah, I mean that this is my field, ultimately. So I'm a customer experience strategist, and I would work with brands all over the world, you know, NFL and Coca Cola and Starbucks and Google and Tiktok and, you know, huge brands all to do with connection. So every brand in the world is trying to connect with their customer. That's that's all the business is. The part of the service is just a conduit for that connection. And so the nature of connection, of course, always changes over time. But for human and, you know, Bernays, who was, who was Sigmund Freud's nephew, he traveled to the States with all his his uncle's work in his head, thinking, and he was kind of the founder of the PR and the marketing discipline, the idea that, let's stop selling people functional stuff, you know, and let's, let's lead into the emotional guilt and the fear and sex appeal and aspirations that's way, way stronger to, you know, determine purchase. And he was right, and he was right. Of course, he was right. And today, because of digital we kind of seem to have left that behind, in a way. And people think it's all about to your point earlier on, digital convenience, one click and one swipe and make it easy. That's what people want, and it is what they want. But as we head deeper into the digital society that we are heading into with AI powered by quantum computing, which no one's talking about because that's going to be a fascinating space, and then layer on humanoid robotics onto it, any customer experience interaction is going to be heavily commoditized, so even the mom and pop store in the corner is going to have access to kind of technology that only Microsoft would have had 10 years ago. And so every business and brand is going to be able to do hyper personalized customer experience. Every business is going to be able to do predictive analysis and be able to, you know, predict what your needs might be before you even realize them yourself. Every business is going to be able to pivot data and do magnificent things with it. Every business is going to create amazing ad campaigns and again, back to Mom and Pop, even now with generative AI, you know, the local mom and pop bakery can now design an amazing storage based video and put it on social media, whereas that was only the the life of a big marketing agency a few years ago. And so with that commoditization comes the question about differentiation. Or how would brands refer to themselves? And the answer to that is emotional connection. And so the definition most companies have of loyalty is is very screwed up. So they think about loyalty as transactional. Loyalty really frequency. So it's kind of, buy nine cups of coffee, get a 10th coffee free, and they they call that a loyalty program. That's entrapment. That's what that is. If that was, if that was dating, if that was dating, it'd be like, does this hanky smell like chloroform to you? Does it? That's not loyalty. And most businesses mistake that. They think, well, you know, this customer has been a customer of the bank for 20 years. That's probably just because it's convenient. It's close to my my home physically as a branch, or it's just I'm too lazy to swap because it's too complicated. And you know, so emotional loyalty is very different. Emotional loyalty is heart. Space is where the brand owns a part of my, my soul, my my my values are intertwined with your values as a brand. I identify with you as a brand, and there's a sense of community and belonging in tribal fandom, and that that's the space, and that can only be delivered with emotional loyalty. And so when you think about the words customer experience again, and to go back to dating, I like that analogy of human relationship, dating and brand consumer relationships, because they're no different. A relationship is a relationship. And so we can use all the knowledge we have from relationship theory, people like Esther Perel and Brene Brown and gabriate and amazing people doing amazing work in relationship theory, and we can use all the work and plug it straight into into branding and customer experience. So an experience, for instance, can be good or bad, and a bit like a one night stand, it can be good or bad. And as a one night stand in dating, you could have multiple one night stands week after week, and lucky you if that's the case, but eventually it's going to run dry in terms of emotional connection. You're going to end up being kind of a place where you're actually kind of, maybe even self loathing, because what we crave as humans is intimacy. And so my work in customer experience has brought me to using the word customer intimacy instead, because customer experience is exactly that's an experience, but customer intimacy is fostering some sense of closeness with your customer, and so with closeness comes that emotional engagement. Let me tell you a really simple story. There was a guy called Kerry Drake, lived in San Francisco. There's an average guy, and he got that call that maybe you have had before, some of your listeners might have had, or if you haven't, you'll get it someday. His mom was about to pass away, and she lived in Lubbock, in Texas, the other side of the country. And he was, he was told, get home tonight. You know, tonight could be the night get home. So he packed an overnight bag, went on United Airlines, got himself a couple of flights home from San Francisco to Houston, and then a one hour connection Houston to get back to Lubbock in Texas. Races. The airport is on the first plane, and the pilot comes on to say, look, we're going to be held here for about 45 minutes on the apron, and he immediately realizes that that 45 minutes is his connection time, and it's going to miss the second connection. And Hollywood kind of feeds us that, that reality that you should be there at your parents bedside, and it could be a beautiful moment, and it sometimes is. So he starts crying on the plane, understandably, and the Aeros test comes down to give him some napkins, because she sees. Is upset, and kind of gets the story as she's talking to him, and she thinks, Oh, my God, that sucks. And she goes back and casually mentions it to the pilot, who also thinks, God, that does suck. And so he does something that's quite unusual in aviation. So he radios ahead, gets through to HQ, and gets talking to the pilot of the second plane, the next plane, and between them, they collude off system, outside of United's scheduling and air traffic to delay the second plane. Now, obviously, anyone, anyone who works in aviation, understands that planes in the air make money, planes on the ground don't make any money, and so you know, pilots and crews are based on quick turnarounds and keep the plane going. So it's unusual, but they knew what they were doing was right, as opposed to right for revenue, right for profit. This was right for this passenger. And they made up a little bit of sky, sky time in the in the first plane. But he's still, you know, 3040, minutes late when he landed. So Mr. Drake runs out of the first plane, flies down the airport, you know, arms flailing, bags flying airport Olympics like we've all done at some time, comes around the corner to the next gate to meet the second pilot, standing at the top of the ramp with his arms folded, Pam outstretched, saying, Mr. Drake, stop, stop. This plane goes nowhere without you. No need to run, sir. And he gets on board. It does make the connection. Makes it to the bedside of his dying mom to say his goodbyes. And that's lovely. And so it became a story. It went viral. You know, he's on CNN, all the usual stuff that happens. But who will Mr. Drake fly with for the rest of his life. And that's the question that that's how brand, emotive loyalty is built, even if United don't fly to his destination. I can see the man taking a local flight and cycling the rest of the way on a bike. You're like you know, intimacy is born in moments where a customer feels seen, heard and valued, and they are all emotional properties, to be, to be heard, to felt seen, to feel valued, their feelings as the point. And so we don't, we don't lay down any foundations of customer lifetime value or loyalty unless there's emotions involved. So the race for mind space, which was the big thing in the 80s and the 90s, Share of Voice advertising, you know, be seen billboards, mainstream media, that has given way to the share of heart space, conversation and goes one further, even spiritual intimacy, the kind of the intimacies that are there. And when I say the word intimacy, people often immediately have images of physical intimacy in their head. It's natural you think of people kissing or having sex or massage, but actually intimacy, there's experiential intimacy. Going through an experience together can be a very intimate thing. There's mental intimacy, emotion intimacy, spiritual intimacy, even even conflict intimacy, crisis. Intimacy also bonds people together. So even when you have a disappointed customer, how you handle that will create a new potential for intimacy. And it's that intimacy there's invoking the emotional part of a consumer as they use your brand is so key, and I use the words invitation these days. Also, like every time someone buys a product or a service, they invite you in to their life. They're not buying you, they're inviting you in. And so if you know, we should respect that invitation as brands. And just like if we're a host of a party and we've invited people, we should look after them when they come into our home, and so there has to be an emotional engagement. And again, to go back to our earlier point about talent, that's why having people with high emotional intelligence in terms of recruitment is pretty critical, because you're not going to have those connections, that wonderful moment, unless we have people in the business who are attuned to EQ Kurt Nelson 33:17 So Ken, why is it so hard for organizations or leaders to to lean into that. I mean, we just, we just had a conversation on another interview that we did where they talked about the Ritz Carlton and the the giraffe question, the giraffe, right? And so that's been around for 20 years or so. I don't know exactly, but it's been around for a long time. So we, we intellectually know that it's important. And yet, if you were to ask, I'm assuming you probably have done this as like, asking people like, how many times they've experienced this, it's minuscule, right? And organizations don't do what's keeping organizations from doing that, I think, I think Ken Hughes 34:02 they have always done it, but now we have the sharing platforms where people talk about it, which is nice. So you can, you do see it every day. I see it every day on my feed, something's happened somewhere, and people share it, and that's great. But the question is, how we can scale it? Yeah, and the tradition has been, you have one good person, they do these amazing things, and then we tell the stories. But how do you make everybody behave in that way? And it comes to the top, ultimately, in an organization, let me give you a good example of Virgin Airlines. So again, another airlines example. Sorry about that, but it's just leaning into the philosophy of customer experience. So we know Sir Richard Branson believes fully in employee empowerment and that every single person can make a difference at every single moment. Single moment, this is family emigrating from the UK to the US. They're checking in, and the lady checking him in looks up and kind of starts laughing, because behind the parents their little age old boys holding his goldfish in a plastic bag full of liquid. And she thinks, well, it's more than 100 mils of liquid in that bag, and fish don't get the gold. America, you can't just bring animals. And so she explains the parent and the kid, you can't bring the fish on board. And the boy starts roaring, crying in the airport, of course, because he's leaving his friends, his hobbies, his school, his family needs to go to a different country as well to bring his fish. Snot and tears everywhere. And Quick as a flash, the check in operator says, No, honey, you don't understand. What I mean is you, you can't bring the fish on board. You got to give them to me, sweetie. And he's going to travel with all the other VIP goldfish that are traveling today in the plane. There's a special section for fish. So he hands his fish proudly over, dries his eyes. Fish is going to go VIP. And so she gives the boarding cars to the parents. They wink at her, and they think, thank you so much. Thank you. And they usher the kid through security? And they think, okay, that's over. She's dissolved the pain point. He'll forget about the fish. It'll all be fine. Aren't virgin wonderful? But that's not where the story finishes. That's his normal customer service. What she then does is she takes her phone out of her pocket and takes a few pictures of the fish. She sends those pictures to her colleague in Atlanta, who leaves her workstation, drives to the local pet shop, buys an identical looking goldfish, and 10 hours later, when that little boy's plane touches down, she's standing there at the top of the ramp with his fish, and he takes it to America. And that's that wonderful story of the Virgin brands values being brought to life first of all. So you think, okay, Virgin is brand that cares and go beyond expectations to deliver parts of service. That's great. But what's interesting about the story, and of course, it gets told by the family and family who tell hundreds of 1000s of millions, and it goes viral and blah, blah, blah. But what's interesting about that story, to me is that neither of those women involved in that story had to pick up the phone and call Sir Richard Branson and say, Do you mind if I take an hour off to buy a fish? Because they live inside an organization that says, if you see something where you believe you believe you can make a better connection with a customer, dissolve a pain point. You do it. You don't need management, management approval, and you know. And so that's where the magic happens at the top. And good luck trying to inject a magnificent customer experience into your brand, unless you have employee experience down. First, I was on stage recently with Danny Mayer, the founder of Shake Shack, the CEO of Union Square Hospitality in New York, wonderful man, and he had this wonderful quotation so simple. He said, Your employee is your first customer, like you look after your employee as well as you would look after any customer first. And once you've got all that done and your employees feel empowered and feel that they belong, then you can move on to delivering magnificent customer experience. And so a lot of a lot of companies get that wrong. They try and push out CX without really investing heavily in ex. They don't do it from the top, and they expect the kind of frontline to just do this magically, whereas the middle management, top management don't even live those values. Doesn't work that way. It's a really, it's a philosophy, and so it has to be carried from the top down. Kurt Nelson 37:44 Hey, Groovers, quick break from the conversation to talk about something we don't bring up enough on the Tim Houlihan 37:49 show. Yeah, that's right. When we're not behind the mic, we're working with organizations to apply behavioral science in ways that actually move the needle for leaders, teams and whole cultures. Kurt Nelson 38:01 So whether it's designing smarter incentives, boosting engagement, setting goals that actually stick, or helping teams navigate change, we bring real science to real workplace challenges. Tim Houlihan 38:13 And we don't just talk theory. Our approach blends research backed insights with hands on strategies that drive results. And we've seen small behavioral shifts lead to big wins in Fortune 500 companies and scrappy startups, and even in mission driven nonprofits, yeah, Kurt Nelson 38:30 and we bring the same curiosity, creativity and care to our client work that we bring to every episode of the show. Billy, I think people might want more than what we bring to the show. You you probably have a point there. You're probably Tim Houlihan 38:46 right. Okay, so we'll bring more care and creativity to our work with you and your teams than what we do on the show. Kurt Nelson 38:54 Yes, more care. So, so if you're ready to build stronger motivation, better team dynamics, and maybe even make your workplace a little more groovy. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 39:04 reach out to us. Grab us on LinkedIn or Facebook or just drop us a line. We'd love to help you and your team find your groove. The first story, though, the United story, was the pilots colluding in the background like that. There wasn't a policy around that to make it work. They didn't. They didn't necessarily have empowerment from the top, but they were willing to take whatever risk there was, because they felt like there was, as you said, the right thing to do. How do you think that there are more companies following in the the Virgin Airlines kind of kind of story, the Danny Meyer, you know, Shake Shack model? Yeah, Ken Hughes 39:48 I think there are. I think it's happening, because as the millennial manager takes the C suite positions, each generation has become more emotionally intelligent of my perspective in corporate. So if you look. Of the traditions and the boomers, leadership was all around fear and ego and power. And then as you come down the generations, the intelligence around emotional intelligence and leadership and agile leadership and vulnerability and authenticity, those values have started to become core to leadership. So if you had gone on a leadership course 30 years ago, you would not have heard the word vulnerability or authenticity at any point. You know, it was very much with a stick, and today, we all know it's very much around people only respect leaders who are authentically themselves, who are willing to show their own vulnerabilities. I remember at the very beginning of the pandemic, obviously, I did this for a living, and so, you know, within a week or two, we had pivoted and built a home studio, and we were broadcasting to all our clients, and but a lot of the corporate world was kind of six months behind because they're not into performance or production. And I was doing a show for, I won't mention the brand, a large international company, and we were doing a fireside I did my piece, my 45 minutes, and then we sat down for a fireside chat with the CEO. And obviously I'm broadcasting from a professionally lit studio, and all looks lovely, and then we have this fireside chat. And up comes during the early days the pandemic. Oh my god, people were like home, bedroom, offices, and the CEO of a really, really huge international company was in his attic, like Anne Frank, surrounded by just chaos and really bad lighting, dodgy sound, and just the contrast was hilarious on the screen where you've got, like, professional version. And I started laughing in my own mind, to give my god, this is a car crash. We got talking about it because before, you know, obviously we done tech rehearsals. I could see where he was dialing in from, and he he's people had tried to make him go to a studio to do it, and he had decided. He said, No. He said, This is the reality of the lives everyone is living today, and I'm expecting my people to do work in their bedrooms and in their children's bedrooms and in their en suite toilets, and that's what the reality and why should I be any different? And he said, I need to show people my own vulnerability here. And it was a genius move, because the whole their whole internal piece, was about like, you know, these are hard times, and we got to get through them together. Them together. It would have looked awful, as everyone else was struggling to be doing it together. Their CEO was broadcasting from his yacht, you know. And so, yeah, authenticity, I think, is so important, and I think we are getting to see a lot more of that in leaders. And as Gen Z go into the workplace, that's all they care about. They want that authentic connection. And, you know, they interview you for the job today, and they'd say, like, you know that that standard question that we used to ask in interviews, you know, how would you see yourself fitting in? They asked that today, you know, why should I bring my talents to you? What are your brand values, and how would they resonate with mine? And so they're quite emotionally intelligent, so I think, I think that will definitely change the nature of work, and the nature of how we what we want from work, which is a good thing, because no one needs to, and that's where AI steps in, because no one needs to sit in a cubicle and just do tappy tappy all day, really, and get fulfilled. So I think AI is going to take all that heavy lifting away, and what we're going to hopefully be left with is the creative parts, the parts where we meet each other and we discuss what it is to be human and how we better connect with customers, and what's the magical moments, one of the goldfish moments that we could create ourselves, you know? Yeah, Kurt Nelson 43:07 So Ken, where do you see the future going? I mean, and again, as we think about this, at least, you know, the for our listeners who are in the United States, we have kind of crazy components of work in business and various different things. Is this movement going to be kind of stopping? Is it going to continue going on? Where do you see this moving forward 510, years from now? Ken Hughes 43:35 I think we go deeper digitally in a negative way for the next five. So I think AI and quantum and robotics is going to bring us really exciting places. But I think places, but I think we're going to even become more disconnected as humans, potentially because of it, and like everything in cycles, we'll come out the other side of that cycle and realize everything we've lost. So in Spain and Portugal this week, we had those huge power and communications outages all over an entire country with no phones, no laptops, no TVs. It took about an hour for people to realize what was happening. They all clustered around radios like World War Two, and then once they realized what was happening, and there was no kind of end, potentially, and it was literally nothing to do, no power, no comms. For the first time, for most customers, they couldn't just their phone was useless to them, which is a whole new concept to Gen Z and younger millennials. And so the streets just filled with people, and they started singing and dancing. It was at the beginning of COVID pandemic without the scary part of the disease. So people just connected to each other, and they they played games on the streets. They played sports, they played their pets, they read, they painted together. And then local businesses started giving away products. No could pay anything because there was no digital payments. So this gave away ice creams. They gave away bread this tomorrow, and there was this whole community piece of what the essence of humanity is to connect with one another. So I think what's going to happen is going to go deeper digitally, with AI, quantum robotics. It'll all be exciting. But then out the other side of that comes this fundamental need to connect with one another. And really, connection is everything. There was a wonderful pop up restaurant in Tokyo. Called the restaurant of mistaken orders, where everybody who's a waiter or a waitress has dementia, so they give them purpose. They give them a reason to go to work. And it's proven that, obviously, you know, if you give people with dementia purpose, it slows down the onset slightly. And when you think about the concept, like, would you get what you ordered? No. Would you get any food? Would you get any food at all? Possibly not. But that's not the point. That's not why you go there. You go there, because you're supporting the purpose. And I think that's the future for branding, brands that will will win the race for relevance, or brands that will fundamentally be very clear in their purpose, their meaning and their values, and customers will invite those brands into their lives, and all the other brands will just become commodity products that we buy on occasion. Tim Houlihan 45:41 Well, and what advice would you give to leaders who are struggling to sort of move fast enough, or or, you know, that feel this crush of, I've got it. I've got to move faster. I've got to innovate. I've got to do all these things. My customer experience needs to be better, better, better, better. Ken Hughes 45:57 Yeah, I would say, firstly, hire me. Secondly, the technology race is a real one. Yeah. I mean, everyone's terrified because AI is moving at a pace. It's so fast that no matter how much you know, you don't know enough you know the next day. And so you're never going to win that race. There's always going to be new tech every day, every day. So definitely outsource that piece to someone who does know what's happening and bring you the new tech. But the real secret, I think, is just to have a belief in you and your team to swim off in new directions. I was on a beach last summer, and there was this Riptide sign, and the lifeguards were there explaining what a riptide was. It's very simple concept. You know, most people, when they get caught in Riptide, get carried straight out, and they immediately started to try and swim back to the shore. It's natural you're being carried away, so you try and swim back, but you're never going to be stronger than the current. What they were trying to teach people is like, when you get carried out, you swim out of the current, you swim sideways, and then once you're out of the Riptide, you can return to shore. And I think in business, it's a very good metaphor. The minute things change and they're a bit chaotic, we try and swim back to the shore. Swim back with what we know, it's safety, whereas what we have to do is lean into the courage and the vulnerability. Imagine what it takes, as you're drowning to have the vulnerability to swim off and not like swim off away from the shore. Imagine the courage that takes. But that's what we need in business leaders, to pick a point, and then let's go that direction and see what happens, and if it's not, and this is the problem with ROI and return on shareholders and all that kind of stuff, because people want the return. But again, that traps you back into the way things have always been done. And so really, the future of all businesses, of all industries, is to swim off in that new direction, bit like Columbus, see what happens. And more than likely, you're not going to fall off the edge of the world. More than likely you're going to discover something new, and have investors that encourage that, and then the talent joining your company. If they're joining a philosophy like that, they'll be in whereas no Gen Z student at a college today wants to join an organization that'll say, here's the way we do things. That's the way things, that's the way we're gonna do things for next 10 years. You need to sit there and do that. They're not even gonna join they're not even gonna entertain you. They'll ask one day that'll be it to Kurt Nelson 47:50 come. Yeah. Tim Houlihan 47:51 So let's go back to that beach. Imagine that you were stranded on a beach, a desert island beach, for a year, and you had a listening device with you that could only carry two artists on it. You have their whole catalog, everything that they've ever recorded, but you only have two. Ken, which two would Ken Hughes 48:13 you choose? The first one is easy. My book comes out later on the year. On Taylor Swift. I'm a massive Swifty. I've been sucked in, fell down the well. So I wrote a book on customer experience. She has a very successful international, global brand based on 20 years investment in customer experience. And, you know, inviting the fan into her life, stepping into their lives, huge surprise and delight beyond expectation. Understands that the product doesn't mean the product, the products the relationship, me and you together. Buy the book, it's amazing. So I've fallen down the well. So I've researched that book for two years. I've spent so much time with her fans online and cyber behaviorism that my social media feed now looks like the feet of a 14 year old girl. What are they doing today? So Taylor Swift would be one, because I'm brainwashed. The second one is the interesting one. I'd probably go back to my teenage years. I was a huge REM fan. And I always liked REM in terms of their, again, going back to chaos and variants. That the way they kept changing musical styles between albums, you know, at the green album being so edgy and pop based, and then out of time, being so acoustic. And, you know, as they as they kept just changing their musical styles, you know, albums, it was really, yeah, so if I know all their back catalog, I think I'd be quite happy, and I'm quite disappointed that they haven't got back together yet for one last hurrah. I'm sure they'd run out of money soon, Kurt Nelson 49:32 and we'll see them there. Oh, Michael Stipe is, I think he might have some hard, you know, holding fast morals on some different things. He seems, uh, kind of like that, but, yeah, I think that would be, I love the way that you talked about that as being like how they changed in every album. And they, they did, they evolved, and they, they, as you said, tried new things. I remember, just like different instruments that they brought into I forget which one it was like, you know, very different elements of that. And it really is allow. Them to grow, but also as a listener, to be able to grow with them and kind of experience some Ken Hughes 50:04 of that goes back to our whole point of this podcast, new things connect in new ways. And so for every new instrument, they brought in a new style, probably talked about the mandolin, I'd imagine, in one of their automatic for the people, they connect with, new consumers, new fans. If you keep doing the same thing, you're not going to bring in new new consumers or new fans. Consumers or new fans, are you? And so being brave enough and vulnerable enough to change direction, even though you've had success with the previous business channel or product, that's that's the piece. And so in terms of customer connection, you know, connecting with your customers in new ways, in in more emotional ways, and having depth and scale for the first time, because AI gives you scale, but now we've got depth as well. We can use the AI to actually have genuine, deep, fake emotional conversations with people, which is amazing. Tim Houlihan 50:48 Ken Hughes, it's a pleasure to have you as a guest on behavior grooves today. Thanks for joining us. You're Ken Hughes 50:53 very welcome. It looks a pleasure. Kurt Nelson 51:01 Man, welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Ken. Have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our non urine drinking brains. Tim Houlihan 51:13 Yeah, let's stay away from the urine drinking. Oh, come on. That was Kurt Nelson 51:16 a good that was a good cover. The the idea of trying new things though. Tim, I mean, I think this is it, right? It's, it's that getting out of your comfort zone, making sure that you don't just take, you know, others words for things that you're looking and like understanding. There's, there's a lot of different things that we just limit ourselves because social norms, because of our past upbringing, a number of factors that we don't challenge. Tim Houlihan 51:52 That's a really good point Kurt, that we don't push back on that stuff, because it's the social norm. And by the way, social norms work, to a large degree because of that, because we kind of go, we collectively agree on them. But of course, social norms are always changing as well, and so we have the opportunity to where we see discrepancies in the way things are going, especially in the corporate life. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking about corporate cultures to make changes, to introduce a nudge to introduce a little push in a different direction and to get the corporation possibly moving in a better way, especially when it comes to brands and brand Kurt Nelson 52:31 development. And 100% agree with that, I will push back a little bit on my own thoughts and your thoughts here as well, because social norms typically happen because of a reason, and that reason is often good, right? It isn't just willy nilly that those norms drinking urine. There's a good reason we don't do that, right? That's right, that's right. And the idea that we are pushing on boundaries just to push on boundaries, sometimes may not be the best way of doing this. However, to that point, we often just go with the flow, as opposed to really taking our time to understand and to think about, why are we doing this? What is the reason behind this behavior, this thought, this action, Tim Houlihan 53:32 I get that in a lot of corporations that are complex, matrixed work streams are oftentimes, oftentimes involve many people across many departments. And so the idea of saying, I think changing this work stream would actually improve our productivity is hard, yeah, under fully understand the complexity of that. At the same time, there's a part of me that says, Unless somebody raises their hand and says, one of these things doesn't belong. Yeah, something here isn't right. Or it could be so much better if this was worked out and and I don't think that the person who raises their hand has to be the the solution provider, but just to raise their hand and say, I think that there's a problem here, or that it could again, it could just be better if we did it a different way. Those are those people need to be recognized and supported in the organizations that they're working in. Kurt Nelson 54:32 And so many times we are doing things because this is the way we've always done them, and those might have served us well in a prior life, it's that story of the woman who cuts off the ends of the ham, or whatever it is would before she bakes it. And why do you do that? Well, my mother did it well, let's ask her mother. Well, why did you do that? Well, because. My mom did it and go ask grandma. And Grandma goes, well, I did it because my oven at that point was so small I couldn't it didn't fit otherwise. Now we have bigger ovens. We don't need to do that anymore. And that's the thing within organizations is, you know, oftentimes, particularly, you'd mentioned matrix organizations, right? Well, maybe the social norms, the ways of doing business within that organization, have been structured from a smaller when that organization was smaller, when people maybe didn't have the same types of things, and so the way of working worked well in those situations, but may no longer serve that same purpose or have the same efficiency or get the same outcomes Tim Houlihan 55:49 right. And when it comes to brands, if you're going to break out, if you're going to be different, if you're going to differentiate yourself in the market, you might just need to do something that is truly different, as as as ridiculously obvious as that sounds. There are so many brands that don't do that. They're looking to make these tiny, incremental changes to a customer service thing, or the color in the in the messaging or or the cons, or are we using the right demographics in the in the photos. And those aren't bad considerations to make. No, no, those are reasonably good things to decide on. Kurt Nelson 56:27 And there's also that we need to do that. We need to constantly look at those little things and make sure that we're getting the little the 1% improvements. We need to make sure we do those. Yes, but at the Tim Houlihan 56:39 same time, we need to get outside of the box, right, like when, when? Ken use that metaphor of the old school map versus the GPS, and how GPS is very efficient. It is the shortest path between two points. It's going to get you from here to there very efficiently, very carefully. And the old school map, first of all, the old school map, you have to figure out, Where am I on the map? Where am I? That's an Kurt Nelson 57:06 internet and you're going, and it's like, oh, wait, you had to look and like, oh, that's the cross street there. Okay, yeah, I think I'm right here. Okay. Tim Houlihan 57:17 And then you have to plot your course. Then you have to decide what and you get to decide. You get to actually make these conscious decisions of, do I want to take the freeway, or do I want to take the back roads, and which back roads might I want to take? Or if I'm walking, do I want to take a more scenic route, or just the fastest way possible? I get to decide. Kurt Nelson 57:39 Well, you get to decide, but you also get this opportunity to just get lost, and that's maybe not a choice that you make to get lost, but you don't have a blue dot showing you where you are all the time. So you make mistakes. We are more likely to make a mistake following an old school map and assume that we're there, or it doesn't give you. Turn in 300 feet. Turn in 100 feet. You just blow past that exit, and all of a sudden you're three miles down the road, and you're like crap this. I don't think this is right, but you've experienced something, because in that three miles, you might have discovered something that you would have never seen before, or in your trying to get back to the original route. Now you have to take some back roads. Those back roads are beautiful, or there's a new business that you didn't know that was there, or there is something else that you see or experience that is bringing you some new information, new ways of looking at the world. Now, on the other hand, it could just mean that you're 10 minutes late to the appointment that you're at and you screwed it up. That's right. Tim Houlihan 58:50 Well, I love that. John Cleese, the great humorist you know, said that that the greatest killer of creativity is the fear of making the mistake. So exactly what you brought up, like we, especially in the corporate world, it's like, man, heads are going to roll if we don't get this marketing campaign right, if we don't get this HR communication just right, and sometimes getting lost a little bit and getting a new perspective. I think one of the things that you're addressing here, Kurt is that when we get lost, we might adopt a new perspective. We might see part of the world that we hadn't seen before that can inform us to actually make better decisions in the future. Kurt Nelson 59:28 And I always go back to this, this in the in the early 80s, if you people who weren't born at that time or don't remember this, there was this battle when IBM came out with their personal PC, right, their personal computer, and corporations by and far, adopted the IBM PC over at that point, the Apple Macintosh, right, and the Apple Macintosh, you. By and far at that point, was a better computer. It had more functionality. It was probably easier to use, even to a certain degree more power. Had more power. There was a number of reasons why. If you just looked at those two, you would say, Oh, we're going with Apple. The thing is, is IBM had inroads into organizations. All the mainframes were IBM's, and nobody would get fired for trying to bring in the PCs from IBM if they failed, right? So this isn't even about this fear of failure that that Cleese talks about, it's this fear of repercussions from failure, and those repercussions that would happen if I brought in Apple computers and they didn't work out, is much greater for me, if I'm a purchasing agent or the technology guy who's recommending these than the IBM PCs, even though they're not as good, and that, I think, drives a lot of it. It's the fear of the repercussions of that failure. And so organizations that say we need to fail, that there is a part of our culture that knows that when we fail. We're pushing the limits. We're pushing the boundaries, and that is what we need to do, because otherwise we've become stagnant. Tim Houlihan 1:01:27 Yeah, I kind of missed the fail fast thing that came up. Maybe it was maybe the early 2000s and, you know, Kurt Nelson 1:01:37 early tickets, yeah, even early the arts, you know, those, yeah, yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:01:41 especially in the tech industry of create something to figure out. And I think there, there's a bunch of crap that is involved in that. I don't want my dentist to fail fast, you know? I want my dentist to just do a good job every damn time. Be conservative, stick to the book, do it right? But, but there are definitely times when it comes to brand development that it's worth stretching to find out really where, where new brand ideas could be, could be working. And Ken talked about this idea of vulnerability as a way to build intimacy with the brand. And I love that you know, sort of acknowledge the fact that the brand isn't perfect. It's okay to set yourself up for we're not perfect, but we're trying all the time, Kurt Nelson 1:02:31 right? And I think when we when we look at some of the behavioral science underpinnings of all this right, status quo bias comes in as we're thinking about it, but also when we think about this idea that we need to have cognitive diversity, right? Yeah, and that cognitive we too often hire people who who not just look like us, but think like us, and innovation arises when diverse perspectives challenge our mental models, right? And efficiency rewards sameness. Tim Houlihan 1:03:03 It really does. It really does. And that doesn't help us. It doesn't help the business that we're that we're working with, because we can't just be the same day in and day out. And I think that gets back to Ken's do something different every day. And I wasn't going to bring up urine, but I'm guess I'm bringing up the drinking your urine thing, because as outlandish as that was, it was a clear and memorable example of doing something different, that, in some ways, that that builds some neuroplasticity. It kind of builds in this idea of, I'm going to do something new every day. I'm going to try something outside of my world so that I might get a new perspective. Some things work, some things don't, Kurt Nelson 1:03:46 and I love that. So again, if we think about corporations, and we think about what this means from a creativity purpose, right, putting bean bags and a pool table in the break room is not the way that you're going to build genuine creativity. What Tim Houlihan 1:04:07 that's all we needed. We're beanbag chairs and pool tables. Kurt Nelson 1:04:10 We know that environment is important and context matters, and so that it's not going to hurt you from being creative. But it's not enough. It's not sufficient, and we need to do things from a different man manner, different perspective. Yeah, in the world of like motivation versus hygienic factors, beanbag chairs and pool tables are hygienic. We're gonna get used to them. It's not that it's a bad thing, but don't expect that to be the stimulant of creativity, right? Yeah, that's kind of what you're saying. Yeah, there was Gordon Mackenzie who wrote this fantastic book. He was a chief creative officer at Hallmark, and he wrote this book, giant or orbiting the giant hairball. Yeah, and again, think about orbiting this giant hairball and just, you know, you get stuck in this loop around that giant anyway. It tells a number of little snippets and these little stories that he brings in. And one is this idea of, you know, we, we get stuck in the ways that we do things. And he talked about this from his own experience of giving presentations. And he said he created this presentation, went in, gave it to these people. He had spent hours kind of thinking it up. And it was great. It was received awesome. It was fantastic. It was all of this energy in the room and different pieces. So they asked him to do it again. So he did it again. It wasn't quite the same, yeah. And then they asked him to do it again, and it kind of felt flat, and he realized that, you know, this was it didn't have the energy for him. And I think that's some of this aspect of doing the same thing isn't just about creativity. I mean, the reducing this creativity element within our within our work, isn't always about the new model of what we're doing, or the new product, or whatever that is. It's also about how we show up at work and having creativity in our work. Yeah, I'm Tim Houlihan 1:06:28 reminded of how sometimes we need to introduce a little chaos. If I were to think about something that companies can do about this, if you're a leader, if you're in a role, let's say not in accounting, because we don't want to add a lot of creativity to accounting. Kurt Nelson 1:06:46 Maybe do, maybe you do. Maybe, let's be really creative with our accounting. Tim, let's be careful Tim Houlihan 1:06:53 there. But in most roles in organizations, we need to, we need to express some creativity. And I reflect on an experience I had with my son, who was a circus performer, and at this at this recording, he's working on a new Cirque du Soleil show that they're they're just starting to create right now, which is kind of cool, but he was visiting me one time when he was between tours, and he said, we're getting ready to do, start the creation process for a new show. And he said, I need to get to an art museum. Like, Oh, okay. I said, why? He said, just creative stimulus, just like, just, you know, performing in a circus has, in some ways, nothing to do with paintings and sculptures, but it was a stimulus that he could rely on to just get outside of himself, out of all of the routines and things that he's done, and be challenged with new ideas. So maybe what what you as your you're the HR leader or the marketing leader or the sales leader, maybe take your team to a museum. Maybe you need to just get out and do something, not another happy hour, Kurt Nelson 1:08:06 or just have everybody paint their toenails. Tim Houlihan 1:08:11 That would be much safer than drinking your own urine. Kurt Nelson 1:08:17 You might get fired for making people drink their own urine. There is an aspect here, though, Tim, I think that is really important, is that we are so hyper focused on efficiency and those little things that sometimes not just chaos, but just being inefficient, being redundant, being lazy, being non efficient, taking half a day to go to an art museum, you know, making sure that you have more people on staff at this point. That you know, everybody isn't 100% working all the time that there's, you know, ability to just relax and downtime and maybe have conversations with other employees on the team, all those things, and they get bashed around by business you know, gurus who it's like we need to get every ounce of effort Out of these people for every minute of every hour of every day. No, stop that. Unknown Speaker 1:09:27 Stop that. Tim Houlihan 1:09:30 That's not the way humans work. That is just not the way humans work. We are not we are not machines. We work better with rhythms where we have high, high periods and low periods, and it's within the rhythm that things really work. Kurt Nelson 1:09:45 I couldn't say it better. So I think it's time to wrap up. There. Tim Houlihan 1:09:49 Sounds good. I want to just say that, you know, Ken did remind us that creativity doesn't happen when you're on autopilot too, like you just can't just it just can't be. So routine, it's going to happen when you turn off the GPS and you start to follow your own curiosity and that willingness you might not get lost, but the willingness to get lost is a key part of it Kurt Nelson 1:10:13 that yes, so All right. So here's our challenge to you grooves out there this week, find something to just disrupt your own routine. Turn off the GPS, go out there, explore, get lost, try something unfamiliar. Paint your toes, go to a go to a Art Museum. Go sit at a bus shelter. Go whatever it would be, get outside of that routine, maybe push yourself to be a little bit uncomfortable. That's where your next great idea might be hiding. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:10:51 as always, we hope that you join our Facebook Behavioral Grooves community, because it's fun. It's a place to interact. We like it. We hope that you like it. We have lots of lots of folks who do like it, and that this week, you use some of Ken's insights to help you find your groove. 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