Every Problem Is A People Problem

In this episode of Beyond Quality, host Rex Wallace and this episode's co-host Laurie Call welcome Dr. Matt Poepsel, PhD, Vice President & Godfather of Talent Optimization at The Predictive Index, to explore why every business problem is, at its core, a people problem. The conversation unpacks how healthcare quality leaders can drive results through influence rather than authority, and why that skill has never mattered more. Dr. Poepsel introduces the Predictive Index, a six-minute behavioral assessment used by 94% of best-in-class companies to build self-aware, high-performing teams. The trio also takes on the AI question head-on: rather than replacing human connection, automation is making it the last real differentiator. If you lead quality improvement programs, manage cross-functional teams, or just want to understand what separates good organizations from great ones, this episode is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey guys, it's Rex. I want to quickly remind everyone of an upcoming conference that's one of my go-to events of the year every year. It's also the best named conference in our space. It's Kualapalooza. It's put on by our friends at Rise who are collaborating with us on season one of Beyond Quality. It's being held June 28th through the 30th at the Omni PGA Frisco Resort and Spa, just outside Dallas, Texas. We'll be discussing and breaking down the most recent regulatory insights on stars, HEDIS member experience. And Koala Palooza doesn't just focus on stars, it brings topics like Medicaid, interoperability, and digital quality into the conversation. In the format leans interactive. Think roundtables, measure level work groups. If you're in the healthcare quality world, I highly encourage being there. If you come, I'll see you there. Thanks. See you, Qualapalooza. Quality improvement in healthcare. It's typically described as a framework for systematically improving care. In reality, it's an endless struggle to align policy, data, and processes with human behavior. Join the RWC team and guests from across the industry as we tackle the toughest challenges facing quality today. From culture to capital, from strategy to technology, join us as we go beyond quality. Hey everyone, welcome back to Beyond Quality. Does your organization or boss meet your innate human need for belonging? Um quality improvement, like virtually every other cross-functional program in an organization, is two things. It's it's data driven and it's human-dependent. I think lots of organizations get the importance of the first, being data-driven, but not necessarily the latter. I submit as evidence a predictive index survey from 2025 where nearly half the workforce feels fundamentally misunderstood by their boss. And it goes both ways. Um in another survey, less than half of leaders believe their staff are really on board with company goals. Perhaps it's because, according to another poll, 43% of employees have suffered burnout, stress, and fatigue, but not related to workload or deadlines just from communication issues, just not being understood. It's undeniably a problem, but what do you do about it? That's exactly what we're exploring today with our co-host and guest. Our co-host for this episode is Laurie Call, who wears lots of hats at RWC, but most relevant for this discussion, she's our team performance expert. She works with our clients to help their teams understand each other so they can work better together and accomplish big things in quality improvement. And our guest for this episode is Dr. Matt Pepsel, the godfather of talent optimization, who is on a mission to liberate leaders from outdated attitudes and beliefs that hold us back from our full potential. I saw that from your website, Matt. So hey, welcome, Laurie and Matt. So glad you guys are on.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Yeah. Um can each of you give just a little bit more context on your background so people know a little bit more about you as we have this conversation. Uh Laurie, can you start?

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah. I have been uh with RWC for about two years now, um, which is time flies. It feels like you know, I just kind of started in a lot of ways. Um my career really started in the recruitment world. Um I really got fascinated with how people uh impact business, but I knew recruiting wasn't the right spot for me. Um eventually went back to school, coached a little bit at the division three level, and then found myself an awesome opportunity working with a predictive index partner where I just really fell in love with the idea of talent optimization. Um, worked with a lot of different clients in that capacity, and then I found my way to RWC, and I do get to wear a lot of hats, which is really awesome, and I've learned so much. But my favorite thing that I get to do is work with our clients and really help them build a people strategy that really supports what our consultants are putting in and a quality strategy.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

Yeah, and uh you've done so much since you've been here so so uh and glad, excited that you're on here today. Matt, how about you? A little bit more on your background.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah, I started uh my adult life with a six-year stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, which was very exciting, but I was happy to move on to civilian life where I took a job as a software project manager and later a product manager and worked my way up through the ranks. And one thing I noticed was that we got a lot of leadership training when we were in the Marines, but uh that didn't quite happen so much as a civilian. So I kind of had to have a trunk full of audiobooks and CDs back in the day before we had podcasts and things, so I could really learn the people parts of business and wanted to continue my education, got my PhD in psychology of leadership and coaching, and I later joined the Predictive Index about 12 years ago and uh came over there to run product for them and started retooling our science and building new aspects of that platform to start to demystify really what these people practices are and why we get it wrong so often. Uh, that's been a real joy of mine. And today I continue to do that. I also teach at Boston College in the areas of leadership and HR, and uh it's really just been my life's work to try to figure out how do we make work suck less by learning people better. And uh it's uh it's it's a rewarding journey, it's one that I'm still on, still learning how to get leadership right. Uh, and on a good day, it it actually worked out.

SPEAKER_03 5:27

Yeah, it's it's uh and it's something that resonates deeply with with our whole team, especially Laurie and me. Yeah, but in Matt, our organization, you know, we work with um health plans to improve quality, right? So it's a matrix program, cross-functional program where there's a maybe a quality leader who who doesn't the people who actually perform the work don't don't necessarily report to that person, right? So that it it's it's all about influence, it's all about um working across the organization, and I think that's where this human connection piece is so important. I mean, I definitely believe, in my experience, it's the secret sauce to being to being good at uh at a cross-functional program, right? Um there are lots of different aspects that you need to be good at, but this is to me the most important piece because yeah, if you're not building those relationships and building trust with those teams, you're I don't think you're ever going to be able to be high performing, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:22

And it's exponentially more difficult to lead through influence and without direct authority than it is when somebody reports to you and you know is is your W-2 employee and you're in charge of their performance reviews. You know, as a as a product manager, I learned pretty quickly on that um, you know, I had to win the support of people and I had to learn how to sell internally and how to really provide that influence and really paint a clear picture of what we're trying to accomplish and all those things. And it I'm so glad that I did at a very early stage, and and it's exactly what you're saying, Rex. It's it's so much more challenging, but so much more important, therefore, to really learn to lead through influence, through empathy, through connection, because you can't just be an authoritarian leader and expect to get away with that for long.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

Well, and and you there's a video on your website where you talk about, and you you touched on it when you were giving your background, but when you were in the Marines and they gave you a manual and said, hey, here's here's how to be a leader, right? And it was the stereotypical kind of you know, marine leadership style, military leadership style, right? And you talk about it's a lot of you know, it's just what you what you what you imagine, right, and what you see, it's it's being really hardcore and and uh disciplinary and in and um I think obscenities, right? Pro profane language. And but but you know, it's it's it's what it's what is believed to be necessary, maybe in that environment. But you said when you started taking the psychology courses and you um came into your own natural leadership style, everything flowed much more easily. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how how like what was that process like and how did you kind of find your leadership style?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, there's a term called impression management. You can think about whenever you're on a first date, when you go to interview at a company, whenever you're you know a first-time manager or leader and you don't quite know what you're doing, it takes a lot of cognitive energy to try to shape what you think you're supposed to be and put on, you know. Sometimes I use the example of it felt like I was wearing a coat that was too small because I was trying to emulate leaders who had come before me, but that wasn't my authentic style. It was only once I realized that I had to learn to trust who I am very deeply, if I was going to have the resonance with other people around me, as well as have the energy I needed to really go through these things, because you can't pretend forever. And even if it's um, you know, this kind of fake it to make it advice, I think it's kind of terrible advice. I'd rather get good coaching about what I'm doing right and try to develop toward that and find my own natural style early as opposed to the alternative. So the unlock for me was exactly that. It's it's when I learned to trust it, start to use my humor, my relatability, my strategic thinking, my persuasion skills. And I was doing it kind of instinctively until I came across a predictive index. Then all of a sudden I had the data, everything became that much more clear, and it really accelerated that next step in my own leadership journey.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Can you talk about predictive index? Can you um so it's uh I guess for those who don't aren't familiar with it, who don't know what it is, maybe they're familiar with some other other similar, similar programs or applications like Enneagrams and and others, but can you talk about predictive index, what it is?

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah, there's an entire uh field of psychology that's all about trying to understand who we are, understand our basic psychology. And so whether you consider it personality testing, behavioral testing, it goes by different terms, but it's basically what can we measure to accelerate that process of self-awareness and awareness of others. And the predictive index is uh an assessment that was developed specifically for the workplace. So it's outside of clinical settings, it's outside of other uses and other types of tools that you know you may have heard of, but it also means that it's suitable for hiring, for coaching and development, for leadership, for team dynamics, for culture, organizational strategy, et cetera. So it's very versatile, despite the fact that it's very brief. So you can imagine in six minutes or less, on average, someone completes the predictive index behavioral assessment, for example, and now all of a sudden we have good data about what their natural work styles and preferences are, how those may relate to other people around them. This starts to help us understand how that natural style that I was talking about can be brought out of someone that much more clearly, or we can align them to a specific job role, or we can coach them to have better team relations, for example, in a complex environment. All those types of things are possible. So we almost have two choices. We can go by gut, it could take a long time, we skin our knees, or we can have the data and we can accelerate that whole process and everything goes a lot smoother.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

And Laurie, you were um well, so when we met you, you were a predictive index. This is what you were doing, right? And you actually, you know, our our team, so man, our our team's pretty small, right? We're 13 people now, but when we met Laurie, we were seven or eight people, probably, right? Something like that. Um we were small, but we realized pretty quickly that we that we had some communication challenges and in when we were making decisions, when we were, you know, just just uh trying to prioritize things. We we didn't all speak the same language, right? We're all very different, which is a very big strength of ours, but it's also makes it challenging sometimes, right? So we brought Laurie and to actually help our team, um and then we hired her. So but but Laurie, can you talk about that like things you saw on the other side working kind of with all industries and then and then working with our team and working with clients here and kind of maybe help connect some of those dots on what's what's missing and how this can be very helpful?

SPEAKER_00 11:52

I'm gonna steal some PI language, but one of the things they talk a lot about at PI is that every business problem is a people problem. And in today's day and age, we look so much and invest so much in our technology and with you know, AI is something now, and what what can we automate and what can we do? But if we strip that away and we just look at the bones of an organization, the most important asset we truly have is our people. And really allowing people to take a step back and to say, let's not make any assumptions about why any of these issues are happening or maybe where we're having some friction, and let's use data to give us an understanding. Um, what it does is just allows conversations to naturally happen and it gives us a really clear picture of why some problems are happening. So it allows us to diagnose some of our business issues at that most critical level. Uh and by doing so, by using PI, we're taking a lot of that feeling out of it, and it's just pure objective data that we can use to support, you know, whatever business strategies that we're putting in place at the time.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Yeah, it's um it's been so so something you you mentioned, and Matt, I'm sure you're well aware of this too. But Adlerian psychology, I've been reading about, right? Where where they make that point that every problem isn't an interpersonal problem, right? Um every problem that we have can kind of be traced back to that. So yeah, if if we increase our understanding of the person that we're working with, the teams that we manage, the cross-functional teams that we're collaborating with. Um I just don't think organizations prioritize this enough. Would you guys agree?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

I would say so. And I think that the other thing we have to recognize is everything is changing so fast. As Lori pointed out, you know, we have this growing AI capability that no one knows exactly where it's going to land. It's never going to stop. So, what's the new trajectory is probably a better way to say that. And the reality is that we had already been in a position where the most interesting businesses are collaborative, and the most interesting and dangerous form of work is team-based work. And so when you think about the most important thing going on in your organization for whoever's listening, the reality is that it's unlikely that that is down to one person doing that thing. It's going to be a team, if not teams of teams, working to pull that off. Well, what makes it dangerous is that whenever you have complex team dynamic, you're immediately talking about competing goals and competing styles. And when that happens and you do it without data, then all of a sudden we run into each other like bumper cars, left and right. And this is where organizations experience a tremendous amount of tension. And you can't eliminate the tension, it's not possible. But in order to be able to kind of metabolize it almost, healthy working relationships, those interpersonal interactivities, as you're saying, Rex, will absolutely put a company at a strategic advantage. So as AI continues to get better and better as a piece of technology, you can imagine that anything it does is immediately commoditized because anyone can do it. So what's left? The human part. And that means the messy part. So this is where tools that give us science, that give us the answers to the quiz that fast forward our learning and our interaction are going to be the organizations that are even more powerful in the future than they have been in the past, because that's what's left. That is the basis of competitive differentiation. And that's where tools and understanding and your Edlerian psychology is very astute here, because if we don't learn to work well together and collaborate and to share information instead of hoard it, to support one another's goals and compromise in a thoughtful way, then the very basis of competitive differentiation and positioning will erode very, very quickly, faster than ever.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

We we had a conversation with with an AI expert um recently, and uh yeah, he made the point that in by 2030, which is right around the corner, right, um every high performing organization will be a hybrid organization. It won't be entirely AI and it won't be entirely human, it will be both, right? It will have it will be equipped or be uh whatever, um enabled and informed by AI, but it will have it will absolutely have to have that human piece um within the organization to give it that differentiator that you're talking about. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

And I suspect that the low-performing organizations will also be hybrid, but they will suck at the people part by comparison.

SPEAKER_03 16:23

That's a great point. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure that's right. Can you um you unpack PI a bit, but uh if I'm if I'm a leader and I haven't used it, what if I all of a sudden start using it, what will it help me see that I didn't see before?

SPEAKER_01 16:40

These I think the easiest way to think about it, I like to say, is work from the inside out. So your own self-awareness will accelerate because it might confirm a lot of what you've already suspected by yourself, but that's an important start. The thing about the predictive index results too is that it tells you your potential pitfalls. So for myself, I'm very persuasive. I like to uh big picture thinker, fast talker, all that good stuff. But the downside of that is that I'm terrible at details and follow-through and all these things. And it's important to know that. And I think that early in my career I had to work really hard to try to get better and better at those things. But there was going to be a limit to that because that's just not 100% of who I am. So knowing how to surround yourself with people or understand where your own natural style that you love so much might be creating friction for other people who have the opposite style, that's an important part of self-awareness. But after that, I think when you start looking at with one other person, so Lori and I could literally sit down, pull up our results, take a look and find similarities and overlap, but also differences. And if we're put together on an assignment, we would be able to pre-negotiate those differences and say, well, here's how I like to work. How do you like to work? And if I need to bring up something, how can we do that before we get into the project when you know tempers are gonna be running high and there's a lot of pressure? Let's pre-negotiate that stuff. And then as you mentioned, even in a team of eight, when you're an executive team, that's a very special type of team. There can be a lot of complexity, a lot of uh power dynamics, and it's not that anybody has any sort of uh nefarious interest, it's just the complexity of passionate people working together that's gonna happen. So, how can we use the data, the insights, the coaching from an expert like Laurie to be able to say, how do we make this go smoother? Because there's a lot at stake here. And um so I I think for a leader, it's working inside out like that. Start with yourself, work with one other person, work with a team, eventually look at your whole culture and figure out are our incentive systems aligned with our strategy? Are people really engaged? If not, have we skipped some steps? Do we need to go backwards and make sure we're checking all the boxes in order to give ourselves the best shot at having a high performance organization like you shared earlier, Rex? If the answer is no, you know, it's not too late, but we've got to get on it.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Yeah, and and I would I would I would argue that um if for anyone who thinks um you know, hey, I know my team and I I intuitively know the difference between the different people, I would argue that these uh applications like Predictive Index pull out things that are not intuitive, right? That are that are um really important to understand though um as far as like uh you know how much how much detail someone really needs to be comfortable to make a decision can be very different for two different people, right? And someone giving a presentation at a very high level when the other person needs a lot of detail to make a decision, there's gonna be some um some friction there, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:33

So well, and let's say that you are super intuitive. Are you in every meeting? Are you in every conversation? Are you in every slack thread? Every hallway, you know, sort of can I talk to you in your office for a minute? Because you said something that last meeting that really rubbed me the wrong way? The answer is no. And so are all your people as good at you as reading other people? The answer is no. So you know, a CEO's job is to make sure that the organization has the capabilities it needs. And I would argue that people working constructively together to deliver on performance outcomes, but also on these human cohesion outcomes, equally important. And uh I hate to say it, but I think we have work to do in that area.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Laurie, what about um now now that you've you know you've actually worked with a few clients to help implement this and see some results? Can you can you talk about one a little bit about like uh kind of what did it look like and and what did what changed when you brought PI into the picture for them?

SPEAKER_00 20:27

I think um uh self-awareness for like the star's leader, whatever that looks like at you know, at a given plan, is huge. Um they usually set the tone for the rest of the team. We had been working with the team, for example, that we knew they were very quick to adapt. And um making those adaptations wasn't difficult for them. So there's a way that we can measure that uh by reading a predictive index assessment. And we knew that the two leaders on the team, one was really focused on innovating and trying new things, and then another leader was really focused on our outcomes. And so, because of that, the team was really able to shift and kind of do what they were saying and wanted to do, but what was really lacking was repeatable workflows. So there was a lot of uh rework that was happening, a lot of waste of tools and health plans are investing so much in whatever tool they're using, right? Uh different analytics platforms, um, member engagement, provider engagement platforms. But uh what they really don't spend a lot of time investing in is looking at how the people at their team are really implementing the strategy that they have in place. So when we were able to work with a couple leaders and say, hey, your team is really good at adapting, and we want to really focus on that. But in order to give you sustainable long term success, what we really need to do is focus on the process part of this. And we didn't have anybody naturally aligned to be more processed, detail focused. So we brought in a couple people that could help, and now we have some workflows that are going much smoother. We're able to focus, hey, we've got this done, let's focus on the next thing, without saying, oh, this is something new and shiny, let's chase that. So we were just able really to help them build structure and you know provide long-term success that they were able to build upon rather than just covering the holes in the boat.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

Matt, is that is that typical of um I guess you what what what would a successful case to you look like of uh where you've worked with an organization?

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yeah, a lot of times it starts uh where PI is brought in because we're having challenges either retaining employees or we're we know we're not hiring well. And so it's a very logical case. And and you know, I think Warren Buffett had said that if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. That's kind of how I look at hiring. If you know that you're don't you're not making the right hires because of uh you suspect that it's behavioral alignment, which is commonly the case, I would say that's a great use case to start. So you know for our clients, a lot of times it measures in the retention or the retention, you know, 90 days in, depending on the industry. Like if you're seeing a lot of turnover, like before the onboarding is even finished, that's a sign that we've hired people into a role that's not a good fit for them, or we're not managing them to the to their preferences, basically. So that's a great uh you know place to start. After that, I think just raising the general awareness for one another, we have to understand the workforce right now has been through some things. And you started sharing some of those statistics earlier, Rex. The reality is that people don't feel cared for at work, they don't feel like they're even human in some cases. They're they feel like because of economic headwinds, because of change absorption, all the things that you shared, it feels very mechanical. And so if we want to rehumanize work, it starts with helping people feel seen and heard. And one of the fastest, safest ways to do that is to use an assessment like this to be able to say, hey, let's celebrate who you are. Celebrate the fact that I'm a persuader, that someone else is an operator. These are PI kind of inside language that just gives us a shorthand to describe and and really revere certain capabilities that people bring to the team. So all of a sudden it's like you see me, you you understand what I'm all about. That goes a long way towards really treating each other as if you know we have these social bonds, so to speak. And it's fast and it's free to do it. So I think that that's another great use case. And then my favorite is team dynamics because they are so complex and so important, and they don't have to be as difficult as we make them. So I think that depending on what the friction is you're experiencing in your organization, I tend to say, you know, moving from left to right, let's stop hiring the wrong people. Let's stop pretending that you know our workforce is okay and we have work to do there, let's stop pretending that our managers just instinctively know how to develop their people because they don't, or that team functions are easy and smooth and frictionless because they're not, and then eventually work your way up to the culture that you want to create. And I love the example that Lori gave. If we have cultural drivers that are not aligned with what we're trying to accomplish around here, because maybe you know we've got a new strategy or whatever it might be, it's going to work at cross-purposes to itself. We can't have that. We can't have that. So I think that increasing complexity, uh climbing that ladder, so to speak, that's my my best advice for clients. Pick up some momentum on those early rungs and then just keep climbing. You're gonna be happy you did.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

Is there if if I'm an organization listening to this and you know I'm I'm uh is there is there a best time for me to jump on this wagon and adopt this and start leveraging it? Um like a best time. What what I mean is is um when at a time when other things are changing, maybe maybe we know there's about to be a lot of turnover, or we're about to hire a bunch of people, or we're all of a sudden or we think our performance is declining um as opposed to climbing, or I'm just curious, is there a best time to do this?

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yeah, the the most common reaction is I wish we would have done this sooner. Because there it really depends. Like if you think about any sort of big initiative or big movement, if you're like, well, we know something stressful is coming, so we'll just wait. Well, it's gonna be a lot harder to get people's attention, you know, when the stress is on. And if you you know wait for perfect timing, that'll never present itself. And the reality is that you get a lot of time back when you start removing a lot of the sort of uh the cleanup that happens. Can I talk to you after that meeting, the rework that happens, the miscommunication, the time to refill after turnover, the absenteeism because people don't want to quit in this job and economy, uh, but they will call out sick. That happens in a lot of industries. And you're like, how do we get that time back? Well, you know, the reality is that you will save so much more time if you start today. So it I don't think there's a perfect time to do it. The only caveat to that is if you're not sort of serious about it, if you're not committed to getting the people part right, if you just want to be able to check a box and move on, it's almost better if you just did even pretend. Just run a transactional business, take your lumps. You won't have to worry about being in business you know forever. But I think that um for those who are like, no, we actually do want to do a good job with this, I think that uh sooner works better.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

Yeah, and I I uh totally agree, and I was hoping you'd say that. And I and I think one of the points I was kind of hoping to make in your answer was no one's immune to this, right? Like even high performing, you you may be high performing now, but I mean we've worked with health plans who were high performing, but they didn't see something coming, right? Something something was coming around the corner that they didn't anticipate, and all of a sudden some area of their business dropped dramatically, and they just didn't s they they weren't prepared, right, from a from a human experience standpoint. So um yeah, I don't think anyone's immune to this.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

We didn't see the pandemic coming, we didn't see the shift to hybrid and remote work, uh, we didn't see the economic headwinds, we didn't see AI, we're not seeing Gen Z coming into the workforce now. Who knows what comes next? But the reality is that it acts as an insulator when we have you know tight cohesion, we have the commitment to excellence in terms of getting the performance right because we have to run profitable businesses, but at the same time, we also have to elevate our people too and make sure that they feel cared for, that they don't report the terrible things that I hear today, you know, in terms of those the level of isolation people feel, the mechanical nature they're feeling today, when it's so straightforward to help people feel committed and attached to the their work, to their teammates, to their manager, to the organization, to the work that they're doing, you know, something bigger than themselves. I I think it's just simply about attention and it's about intention. It's certainly not because we don't have access to the tools or we don't have the time. Like, no, though we're we're beyond thinking those things are true.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Just to add something quickly, I think um there are two things that are really important. One is that when we're working with people, we only really see their how they're adapting. We don't know what changes they're making to meet the needs that are currently being set by their position or by whatever is going on. Um so in order to really understand, like, hey, if we know change is gonna come, which is if we know that, that's awesome, but if we have these assessments, we can really measure how is the team gonna handle change, and then we can come up with solutions to support the change that we're implementing. Um, whereas if you know we're not exactly sure how our team really prefers to work, we're just guessing at some of the change management policies or things that we're gonna do to support that. Um, and that can really hurt engagement. Um, and I sometimes I hate to use the word engagement because I think it can kind of be a buzzword. And, you know, back in the day when when most people were in the office, it's like, hey, we've got a ping pong table and we do Pizza Fridays. Um but engagement is like dirty work, you know, really, really getting to that. How do we increase engagement? And it's really looking at the people. Um, and by providing this data, I think we can get some clear insights that are gonna help really increase true, real engagement in the day-to-day interactions and that messy stuff that really matters.

SPEAKER_03 30:33

Yeah, okay, that's that's awesome. And you're making me think too, like um in in our world, in our world, so so Matt, there's a there's a quality leader who has so I'm the I'm the director of quality for a health plan, right? Let's say, and I have a team under me, so this definitely applies to my team and you know, up and down all the way to the executive, right? Over the area, um, the entire vertical. But then also it applies to how my team works with all these other internal teams that we talked about before, right? Because we're a cross-functional program. I'm curious, I'm curious, do you um do you have organizations leverage this for external partners as well? So in our world, that would be that could be vendors who we're working very closely with to launch big initiatives. It could be physicians and physician offices that we work with to close gaps in care for our members and their patients. Like, do you do you see organizations leveraging it externally as well as internally, or is it all internal?

SPEAKER_01 31:34

No, I think that the entire definition of what an organization is is being radically changed. Great point. And so when we think about the boundaryless organization, if you're using a lot of these freelancers or you know, you're putting people on the team that are contract workers or the liquid labor force, uh, if you look at these cross-functional situations, we have employees who've re-badged even though they have the same job, but now they actually work for the other organization, it happens all the time. And and I think the most important thing is if we're doing meaningful work and we're absolutely collectively contributing toward a shared goal, that's a contiguous team. And I think having the data, the insights makes a ton of sense. And even if you're not responsible for the career development of somebody who's not your W-2 employee for your organization, that doesn't mean that you don't have some responsibility to make sure that they feel seen and cared for as a human, that there's they're giving some thoughtful consideration to their preferences and styles within the context of what you're trying to accomplish as a team. So my preference is to see the clear definition of a group, meaning a team, a work group, whatever it is you call it, and and less of an emphasis on, well, you know, who works for me and who doesn't. We're on this team, you're on that team. Like that stuff is just never going to get us to where we want to go. There are certainly real realities there, right? I understand that. But I think in terms of behavioral insights and how to really use the data to work well together, I would prefer to have transparency regardless of well, this person's a freelancer, but this person's part of the client organization, I'm part of the provider organization. Yeah, but if you're all working together as a team, let's talk about the team dynamic. Okay, we can figure out all that other stuff secondarily.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

Yeah, that's great. If if an organization is watching this and and um you know can can maybe only take one step toward the kind of work that we're talking about today, what what would you tell them to do?

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Yeah, I think get familiar with the assessment. I think whether you go to uh predictiveindex.com and check try the assessment for yourself. If you just have no idea, you've you've heard of it perhaps and haven't experienced it for yourself, that's an easy way to start. And I think also you know, talking to experts like Lori and saying, like, how would we use this? I I'm a little fuzzy on how we would actually use this because the experts can help you save yourself so much time and trouble when they can just help you connect those dots super cleanly. I think that's an important one. So those would be a couple of immediate steps. And if you just don't feel like doing any of those things, I think just checking in with your people and asking them, just treat them like human beings, ask them sort of like, you know, one of my favorite questions, what's your favorite thing about working here? It just really opens the door to them, sharing some positives and it sets up the next natural question: what could we do be doing better for you? Right. So I think that if they start telling you and you hear more and more of this, I'm hearing some friction. I'm hearing some people who aren't being seen, who aren't feeling appreciated, who aren't feeling recognized, who don't feel like their efforts are being really uh taken into the bigger context, that's an indicator that you know you need to do something a little bit more uh more serious.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

Before okay, a couple of wrap-up questions. Before we get to those, anything we missed today that people really need to know? Anything I didn't ask?

SPEAKER_01 34:46

I think that it's the last thing I just kind of underscore on my side is saying that it's the it's the responsibility of leaders to study the craft. And I think that you know, if you run an organization and you're a senior leader, you're on the C in the C-suite, for example, executive team, what percentage of your time is spent doing the technical work anymore? Very little. How much is spent on the people side? A heck of a lot. So the reality is if you're not if you're using data and tools in all of the parts of your business, you're crunching numbers, you got data science and machine learning and these large language models and all that stuff. All that's necessary and great. But the question is, if you're just going to play guessing games when it comes to people, like that's not, in my estimation, you know, what leadership is all about. It's studying the craft, it's using the data, it's taking the steps needed to make sure that elevator is checking off on all the floors. Your individuals are feeling good, your first line managers, all the way up to your senior directors and the executive team themselves, being versant at the people part, I think that's essential.

SPEAKER_03 35:51

Great answer. Laurie?

SPEAKER_00 35:53

I think I would just add that we know that best in class companies, we know there's a group of companies we consider them best in class. We know they're outperforming their competitors. And there's some really cool research that dives into why is that happening and how is that happening. And we know that they're scoring very high in the engagement category for their people. And I think the last time I checked, the research data that it was about 94% of those best-in-class companies were using some type of talent analytic in their pre- and post-hire application for their team. So, you know, we know that this works and uh like we we can see it. But I think the the real thing is um working with people is so complex because not one person is the same. And I'm a small town girl, right? So I know we're saying, you know, the human connection, but I think people are a lot more like cows than we give ourselves credit for. Um, cows actually make the best milk when they're happy. So if you really look at a dairy farm, there is all of these things to make cows happy. Cows are probably a little bit less complex, but people create the best work when they're happy. And it's so natural for us to say, this is what makes me happy. So as a leader, as a manager, here's what I'm gonna do for you because this is what makes me happy. When Rex, we know that you and I are very different. Uh we have so many people on our team, and that diversity of thought is exactly what we want, an organization. So if we can just really harness and leverage everybody's superpower, that's where we get that success as teams. And that's the stuff that really gets me excited and you know, jumping out of bed.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

Right. Ah, that's great. Matt, any um, or I guess what what's one book everyone should read?

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Ooh, that's a great question. I won't say my book. That would be too that would be too gauche. There's uh, you know, I do a lot of work in strategy.

SPEAKER_03 37:57

We can promote your book later for sure.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

I I do a lot of work in strategy these days, and I'm really fixated on uh the role of creating value. And there's a book called Better Simpler Strategy. And uh it came out in 2021, but it was the most clear articulation I've seen of being able to think about strategy from three really key vantage points from you know the the customer's perspective, also from the supplier perspective and the employee perspective. And uh I've really benefited from that. So I and I think it lends itself very naturally to understanding like creating value for employees. That's kind of a lot of what we've been talking about today, but also on blocking them so that they can be the happy cows who create value for the other stakeholders, you know, which are your clients, your customers. I think that's the thing that we take for granted sometimes. If you treat your employees badly and they're cut in customer-facing roles, that is a problem.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

Yeah. Um Laurie, do you have a book?

SPEAKER_00 38:52

I love uh any Daniel Pink book, but I really like A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, which really I think the premise of that book is just leveraging different ways of how people think. Um and it it talks a lot about like in the age of automation, how can we harness what makes us human and using that to our superpower? But I also will make a plug for um uh PI's book, which is Dream Teams, um, which really lays this all out. Rex, I think I actually really listened to it it kind of takes it nuts to bolts, right? And uh I love sports too. You know, coached for a while, and there's so many correlations between sports and the business world that we don't make. Um and I think that book lays it out really well too. So I I always recommend that book.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

It was a great one. Um and Matt, in terms of your book and just in general, where can listeners find your work and follow what you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Yeah, LinkedIn is the best place. I spent a lot of time on the platform over there. So if they have any questions that um that could pop up or anything, would love to hear from you over on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

Awesome. And he does have a book. So I've spent some time on your website the last few days prepping for this, and it's actually a very good website, so lots of great information on there. Um and you have yeah, uh a lot of different mediums that you're that you're doing things on, right? But LinkedIn sort of encompasses it all. Yeah. Great. Okay. And we will tag you, Lari will tag you, obviously, um, so people can connect with you guys and follow you on LinkedIn. But great conversation. I think it's a really important conversation. I think it's way more important than a lot of people uh think. Um this human connection, human um you know, um engagement aspect within an organization as far as to become a high performing team. So thanks so much for all the insights, uh Matt and Laurie. And uh we will talk next time. Thanks, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Thank you, Rex. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you.