Adapt or Fade: Embracing the Adaptability Quotient with John Spence | [Sidecar Sync Episode 88]

Summary:

In this energizing interview, Mallory Mejias is joined by leadership legend John Spence to unpack the three essential quotients of leadership—IQ, EQ, and AQ (Adaptability Quotient)—and why AQ might be the most critical of all in today’s AI-driven world. With decades of global experience, John shares how leaders can foster resilience, embrace change, and build cultures that thrive in uncertainty. From AI pilot projects to emotional pulse checks, this episode is packed with practical wisdom (and a few gut-check moments) for association leaders ready to adapt and grow.

Timestamps:

🔗 More about John Spence:

At 26, John was the CEO of an international Rockefeller foundation, overseeing projects in 20 countries. Two years later, Inc. Magazine named him one of America’s Up and Coming Young Business Leaders. John has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Thought Leaders in America, one of the Top 100 Small Business Influencers in America, one of the Top 50 Small Business Experts in America, and one of the top 500 Leadership Development Experts in the World.

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Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress 🔗 https://BlueCypress.io, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.

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Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space.

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Read the Transcript

🤖 Please note this transcript was generated using (you guessed it) AI, so please excuse any errors 🤖

[00:00:00] John Spence: We're adopting ai, whether you like it or not, help them understand the vision of the future. This isn't going to take your job. This is to strengthen your skills. This is to help you to assist you, but saying that you don't want to use it does not work.

[00:00:16] Intro: Welcome to Sidecar Sync, your weekly dose of innovation.

[00:00:19] If you're looking for the latest news, insights, and developments in the association world, especially those driven by artificial intelligence, you're in the right place. We cut through the noise to bring you the most relevant updates with a keen focus on how AI and other emerging technologies are shaping the future.

[00:00:36] No fluff, just facts and informed discussions. I'm Amith Nagarajan, Chairman of Blue Cypress. And I'm your host.

[00:00:44] Mallory: Hello everyone, and welcome to today's episode of the Sidecar Sync Podcast. My name is Mallory Mejias and I'm one of your co-hosts along with Amith Nagarajan, and today we have a special interview edition of the Sidecar Sync.

[00:00:58] Podcast for you with [00:01:00] John Spence. If that name sounds familiar, it might be because you saw John Spence's keynote at our digital Now 2024 conference last year. We are so excited to have John Spence on the podcast today. You will see he's so energetic and engaging and approachable. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while.

[00:01:18] For those of you who are not familiar with John. At 26, he was the CEO of an International Rockefeller Foundation overseeing projects in 20 countries. Two years later, Inc. Magazine named him one of America's Up and coming young business leaders. John has been recognized as one of the top 100 business thought leaders in America, one of the top 100 small business influencers in America.

[00:01:43] One of the top 50 small business experts in America and one of the top 500 leadership development experts in the world, the American Management Association named John, one of America's top 50 leaders to watch, along with Sergei, Bryn, and Larry, page of Google and [00:02:00] Jeff Bezos of Amazon. John is a voracious learner and consumes a minimum of a hundred business books a year.

[00:02:07] He has been a guest lecturer at more than 90 colleges and universities, including MIT. Stanford, Cornell and the Wharton School of Business, where he has been a lead instructor at the Securities Industry Institute for more than 20 years. Whether addressing an audience of 20,000 business professionals facilitating a training workshop or coaching and executive John readily establishes a strong connection through his honest, open, and approachable style.

[00:02:34] So in this conversation today, John and I are going to chat about the three quotients. So that's iq. EQ and aq. You might be familiar with the first two, but we do spend some time diving deep into the third one. AQ is what John calls the adaptability quotient or how fast a person can adapt or learn, unlearn and relearn something.

[00:02:58] So the question here is, which of [00:03:00] those is most important for leaders IQEQ, or aq? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out what John thinks. We, of course, discuss artificial intelligence and how important it is for associations to lean into their wisdom in a world where knowledge is available to any and everyone.

[00:03:16] In just a few clicks at the end of John's bio, he has a really great line that says he has made a career of making the complex awesomely simple. You're gonna hear him do exactly that in this podcast, so please enjoy the interview. John, thank you so much for joining us on the Sidecar Sync Podcast today.

[00:03:38] Our sidecar audience is a familiar with you if they attended Digital Now 2024, where you gave a fantastic keynote. It was actually the last keynote of the whole conference. It was a great one. I will say, can you share a little bit about yourself with our listeners who may not be familiar with you?

[00:03:55] John Spence: Uh, after being a massive failure, the first try through college, I [00:04:00] graduated massive, massive.

[00:04:01] I, uh, redid it and graduated number four in the country and was hired by the Rockefellers and took over one of their foundations when I was 26 with offices in 20 countries around the world. Did that for a few years, uh, and then I went independent as a. Sort of a leadership trainer, executive coach, keynote speaker, and been doing that for over three decades.

[00:04:24] Uh, I read more than a hundred business books a year to try to keep up with my trade, and that's a very short from college to global thought leader guy.

[00:04:34] Mallory: Man, that was a really easy journey for you, I guess it was so fast. Oh yeah.

[00:04:37] John Spence: That was a, so the college I got kicked outta had a building named after my father.

[00:04:44] So,

[00:04:46] Mallory: wow.

[00:04:46] John Spence: You gotta, you gotta really miss up and get kicked outta a college where there's a building named after your family.

[00:04:51] Mallory: Talk about pressure. Talk about pressure. John, how did you get connected with Amme? I actually don't know this story myself,

[00:04:58] John Spence: uh, through the [00:05:00] Entrepreneur's Organization. Okay. He saw me give a, a speech many years ago, and then he invited me in to do some work with, uh, the CEOs of the different companies, uh, in your portfolio.

[00:05:10] And then he and I have seen each other at events for years and years.

[00:05:15] Mallory: Well, we were so happy to bring you to our Digital Now audience last year, and in that keynote you talked about three, three topics, we'll call them three concepts. So you talked about iq, eq, and aq, and I'm hoping you can give our listeners kind of an overview of, of that topic topic.

[00:05:33] John Spence: I'd be happy to. I, I'd talk about some non-negotiables of leadership. Mm-hmm. Honesty, character, courage, vulnerability, right. Communicator. Those are, you know, being honest as a leader to be an effective leader is never gonna go away. But those three quotients, if you will, are what I believe you need to be successful as a leader in the future.

[00:05:53] IQ is not the number, its competence. At what you do, uh, and I'll do the quick [00:06:00] one is, uh, the average business person for professional development to get better at what they do reads about a half a book a year. Uh, yeah. If you were to read six books a year, or the equivalent thereof, you'd be in on the top 5% in the world for personal development, read 12, know.

[00:06:23] Communication skills, conflict resolution, how to be a better leader, a better team member, whatever it is, 12 a year, you're in the top one to 3% on the face of the earth. So that first one, iq, you might not be able to increase the number, but you can definitely increase your competence level and the bar is very low.

[00:06:40] EQ is your emotional quotient or emotional intelligence, and there's. Five factors in that are six. But the, the ones that are, I believe are the most important. Where I, I do a lot of executive coaching. Where I see leaders, uh, stumble is self-awareness and then self-regulation. Um, being good at. [00:07:00] Identifying your real emotions.

[00:07:02] I'm not enraged, I'm upset, confused, offended, anxious. And if you change the name from, I'm enraged to, I'm confused, or I'm offended. That's a different emotion. Okay. And then the self-regulation part says, now that I understand my emotion, emotion clearly, what is the appropriate response in this situation?

[00:07:24] EQ is actually five to seven more times important than IQ as you move up in an organization because you go from doing the work, mm-hmm. To managing the people that do the work, to managing the people that manage. And eventually you get up there where almost all your work is, people work. Uh, so you gotta be competent, but you have to be able to get along with other people.

[00:07:42] Well, then the last one is aq, which is your adaptability quotient, and that's your ability to successfully and effectively navigate change. And there's several factors to that, and I'll hit two and then I'll let you ask a question. This is a long answer, which I normally shouldn't do on a podcast. [00:08:00] Uh, the, my favorite part of AQ is learning agility, and that's.

[00:08:06] Learn lots of new stuff like I was just saying. But here's the fun part. Unlearn things quickly and relearn. So it's learn, unlearn, relearn. And then the other part, the big part to adaptability to me is resilience. Because things happen fast, change happens fast, there will be mistakes, there'll be failure, there will be difficulties.

[00:08:26] And to be effective and be adaptable and agile, you have to be able to bounce back from setbacks.

[00:08:34] Mallory: Man, this is all so, so fascinating. I'm used to the long answers, by the way, because of ame, which I love. It gives me a lot of time to, it gives me a lot of time to think through exactly what, what I wanna ask next, but, okay.

[00:08:45] You talked about iq, EQ, and aq. You said EQ is five to seven times, uh, more important as you move up in an organization than iq. But I'm curious, how do you see AQ as relating to EQ as a leader of an [00:09:00] organization?

[00:09:09] John Spence: I can't adapt, I resist change. I, one of my favorite quotes in the world is, if you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less so, especially with the speed of technology, ai, all that said sort of stuff. You've gotta be fast, agile, adaptable, quick, nimble, and if you can't do that, it doesn't matter how well you get along with other people or how competent you are, you will not succeed in today's super fast-paced business world.

[00:09:35] Mallory: Mm-hmm. You will cease to be relevant as you said. So, okay. It goes as a leader of an organization, it goes aq, eq iq, though they're all important. So I, I just wanna stress that as well. John, you mentioned this phrase, uh, learning fast, unlearning fast and relearning kind of as a, as a concept in theory. That sounds easy enough.

[00:09:55] Sure. I learn, I unlearn, I relearn. But how can you expand on how this [00:10:00] works in practice? How you've seen this play out in the businesses that you've worked with?

[00:10:04] John Spence: Yeah, the, um, it's actually the unlearning part is the hardest. Some of my colleagues use the business as usual mindset. You know, we've always done it around here.

[00:10:13] What happens is people get really comfortable, they get comfortable using a, and we'll keep it in the, I know we're gonna get to the AI stuff. They get comfortable using a certain software product. And they've been using it for 20 years and it's, uh, outdated. But I love Excel. Uh, and I, I studied it in college or something else that, you know, uh, and I'll give a, a, a leadership one is early in my career, I did not believe in going with your gut.

[00:10:42] Uh, intuition. I thought that's just, no, just gimme the data. Let's make a logical decision here. And then someone explained to me that intuition is really pattern recognition that you look back over all your experiences. You, you tie them together [00:11:00] and say, in the past, these sort of things have happened to me, so there's probably a good chance this is gonna happen going forward.

[00:11:06] I'm huge on, I built my whole career on pattern recognition. As soon as they put it in that framework, I went, oh, I gotta use intuition to go with my gut more often.

[00:11:17] Mallory: Uh, I love that. I, I, I am one of those people too that tends sometimes I don't trust my gut. Uh, and I'm with you, you think intuition, what is that?

[00:11:26] But I like the idea of reframing it as pattern recognition. You've had x experiences in your life, you've reacted this way. Therefore, if you're having a similar experience, maybe you're likely to have that outcome. I think it makes sense, John, how. How do you recognize when an organization seems to be struggling with adaptability?

[00:11:44] What are the signs you look for? What are the, the alarm bells going off for you?

[00:11:50] John Spence: The, the, the first one is, is how well are they handling change? I. And you probably know this, Mallory, and a lot of your listeners do that. [00:12:00] When people are faced with what they perceive as negative change, they go through the same emotional cycle as if someone close to them had died.

[00:12:08] They have fear at first. They're. You know, destabilize, they don't know what's going on. Then they'll fall into depression and then they go up to anger, then they go to bargaining, then they go back to depression. When I see people that are stressed, anxious, worried, uh, I mean truly scared. 'cause it's, you know, for some people change is easy.

[00:12:29] For some people. If you change the chair in their office, they freak out. Uh, so the first step I see is how resistant is everybody and what's the emotional, um. Sort of pulse of the organization. Mm-hmm. Are they excited about change or are they all worried and stressed? Um, the other thing that, that holds organizations back, and this is part of the eight Steps of a Change Process by John Kotter, is I see organizations that don't make what I call an irresistible case for change.[00:13:00]

[00:13:00] We're making this change whether you like it or not.

[00:13:06] They will resist as hard as they can. It's, you know, this too shall pass. This is a flavor of the month thing. But if you let them know, you know, we're, we're adopting ai whether you like it or not, period. It's, you know, and help them understand the vision of the future. This isn't going to take your job.

[00:13:23] This is to strengthen your skills. This is to help you, to assist you. But saying that you don't wanna use it does not work.

[00:13:31] Mallory: Mm-hmm. You make an interesting point there on AI about taking a firm stance and kind of making it a non-negotiable. What is your take in terms of the emotional pulse, as you mentioned, and team culture in let's say mandating AI education saying, you must do this.

[00:13:48] This is essential for your longevity as a professional in this world, versus I highly encourage you all to learn about ai. Here are some resources. Do them on your own time. [00:14:00] What do you think about? Both of those options?

[00:14:03] John Spence: I think a little bit. It depends on the business.

[00:14:05] Mallory: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:06] John Spence: Uh, but every organization is gonna have to adapt to ai, period.

[00:14:12] That's the, that's the truth, the facts. And that now for organizations that can increase efficiency, increase effectiveness, use it for, you know, mining their data, things like that. What I've seen, I've got a couple CEOs I coach, and that I just went to work with an executive team. He said, this is a core strategy to our business now.

[00:14:31] We will use AI and we're gonna aggressively do projects. And if you don't like that, you will likely not be comfortable here. And they did actually have people that said, I, I don't trust this stuff. I don't wanna do it. I don't like it. Uh, I don't wanna work here anymore. And that's rare, but there's, you know, that level of resistance.

[00:14:51] And unfortunately, it's mostly people my age are in their fifties and older that didn't grow up with technology and they're still a little [00:15:00] freaked out about all the technology, but especially AI and other things like that. And they're, and they're the ones that are resisting, unlearning, and relearning.

[00:15:10] Mm-hmm.

[00:15:11] Mallory: I think this is particularly relevant for associations because Amit often mentions on the podcast that in their respective industries or professions, associations are often the anointed organization within that industry. They're the long standing organization that's been here for, you know, maybe a hundred years or so.

[00:15:28] So how could you, how do you recommend that associations balance preserving tradition, which has worked for them up until this point, while still embracing necessary change?

[00:15:41] John Spence: The, the business I just talked about that said this is a strategy, is an association.

[00:15:47] Mallory: Alright. Yeah.

[00:15:48] John Spence: Uh, it's actually someone that attended digital now.

[00:15:51] Oh, wow. And said, yeah, uh, we need to, we have to adopt this period. I mean, he was just serious. Mm-hmm. And. The one thing I, you know, and I ran a large, not [00:16:00] an association, but a large not-for-profit, Rockefeller Foundation, uh, at some level, and here's the thing that, that I've always taken with me and this CEO of an association said, is don't run this like an association.

[00:16:13] Run it like a world-class business. You know, don't compare yourself to other associations. Compare yourself to Apple and Google and Amazon, because those are the expectations of your members. If your member can go click, click and have something delivered to their house in 10 minutes, or they can get an answer in a couple of seconds, or Google or chat, GPT can give them an answer instantaneously.

[00:16:36] Running, running, an association of kind of caught in, in the old way of doing things. Uh, now let's say the other part of that is. AI and technology will never, ever, ever replace building, uh, member relationships. That's where.

[00:16:57] There's four levels to me of knowledge. There's [00:17:00] data that AI can give you, which is just raw numbers, raw information. There is information which, which is when it starts to pull it together. Mm-hmm. It starts to make sense of it. There's knowledge when the AI actually compiles it and gives you answers, but that's as.

[00:17:19] So it's the difference between knowledge work, and wisdom work where people add the most value. And in an association, all of the places you can apply AI for creating knowledge. Great, but realize the AI isn't gonna create a, uh, loyalty from a member. It isn't gonna have empathy, it won't be able to create a relationship.

[00:17:41] Those are the things that level of wisdom work that only the, the employees can do. So I see it as a tool that will help them and allow them to do the really high leverage work that a computer will never be able to do.

[00:17:55] Mallory: Hmm. I love that idea. So, leaning into the, the wisdom work as an [00:18:00] association. John, I know you have seen some technological shifts throughout your career

[00:18:06] John Spence: a little bit.

[00:18:06] Mallory: Uh, I'm sure a couple. Uh, I if internet didn't

[00:18:09] John Spence: exist when I started by career.

[00:18:13] Mallory: Alright, so you've seen a good few. I'll say you've seen a good few. I think most of the listeners on our podcast are. Pretty much in agreement. Alright. This AI stuff is here to stay. It's going to transform, uh, our personal lives, our professional lives.

[00:18:25] But I'm curious when this started coming about, so like the generative AI boom, several years ago, you, having worked with so many organizations, how did you decipher, uh, this is something I really need to focus on and this is going to transform business versus another. Tech fad that's gonna pass. Kind of like as a leader, how do you keep tabs on the landscape and say, this is something I need to pay attention to?

[00:18:49] This is something, uh, I'll give it a little more time.

[00:18:52] John Spence: So when it first hit you, you know, and the major, uh, let me see. Uh, tattoo PT was open to the public on March [00:19:00] 14th, 2024. That's the first day it was, you could really go sign up and get, so it's only been around a little bit more than a year now. It existed a long time before that.

[00:19:08] Right? Long time before that. But for. John Spence to get on it, start using it. It's only been around about a year and a half. Okay. Uh, so I, I thought my career was over.

[00:19:20] Mallory: What all your wisdom you thought it was over?

[00:19:23] John Spence: No, I, I didn't understand that. I thought, well, you know, all the stuff I've spent years learning.

[00:19:28] You go to Chachi Pete to ask a question, it'll give it to you. And then so I started playing with it and I realized that. Strategy work. Something that used to take me literally a solid week to do analysis I could do in 45 minutes. I also learned this. I can create an incredible document of, of ideas around strategy.

[00:19:51] I mean, just fantastic. But if you haven't done 50 strategy retreats in your life, it's just a list of numbers. I made a huge mistake, and this [00:20:00] was another association I was working for. Mm-hmm. At a very, very specific industry, and they asked me to customize my talk to their industry. So I use ai. And, uh, gathered all kinds of data.

[00:20:13] Absolutely fantastic. Amazing. Started build my, my, uh, re my, uh, speech on it. My report. I sent the report to the person I was, uh, working with. Yeah. And she said, prove these numbers. I said, what? She goes, I, I've never seen numbers like this for our industry, so show me your citations. And I went on and I couldn't find any.

[00:20:38] Wow. And here's when I learned. I didn't know enough about the industry to know that the data wasn't accurate. That doesn't happen with me in leadership or or so. So one of the things I think is important is you have to have enough wisdom to see if the knowledge and the data is actually. Verifiable and on track.

[00:20:57] So when I do step now, it'll give me [00:21:00] a report on strategy or something like that. Uh, 90% of it. I'll go, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then I'll go, oh, I never would've thought of that. So I look at it as a great thinking partner. Yes. And, but I'm still the one that has to go deliver the, the work. I'm still the one.

[00:21:20] Revolutionize my job. I cannot imagine doing what I do for a living without ai. Wow. But I'm still comfortable that I'm the only one that can, not the only one, but it, from my standpoint, I'm the one that has to go and create the client relationship and do the work face to face.

[00:21:38] Mallory: Yep. I really appreciate too you sharing that example because I feel like we often wanna highlight all the successes that we have with ai, but it's important as well to share, okay, this didn't go so well.

[00:21:48] I think hallucinations like that have have certainly improved, but the same thing has happened to me even recently. I'll use podcast transcripts to create blogs, and even to this day it [00:22:00] will. Make a fake quote that Amit said, and I'm in the podcast, so I'm like, I don't think Ames said that. Are you sure?

[00:22:05] And it'll say, no, I just made that up. Sorry about that. And you know, so you have to constantly be aware of these things that can happen. I also like what you said, John, about kind of. Now you have access to all of this information, this knowledge, this data, but you focusing on what makes John Spence uniquely, John Spence, and leaning into that, and I think associations have to do the same.

[00:22:27] Like what makes the association unique? The only organization that can offer this experience to its members and lean into that. Does that make sense?

[00:22:35] John Spence: Makes total sense. And, and I'll circle around a lot of the stuff interacting, you know, um, doing, doing, signing up for events, choosing which event to offer based on the feedback from your members, doing your newsletter, uh, doing your, uh, frequently asked questions.

[00:22:53] Uh, I could do a whole bunch of, um, getting a. Good customer, uh, CRM, but would be what an [00:23:00] MRM, uh, but really understanding your, your members at a much deeper level allows you then to uniquely apply that information to create a very unique experience for every single member. And so let's use this. Two examples.

[00:23:17] Netflix, I don't watch a lot of movies, but it, it knows that I'm not watching romance. Yeah. I want a Jason Bourne movie, so when I turn on, it goes recommended for you. The reason it is it has an algorithm that is seen every single movie I've ever watched Amazon recommended for you. Hell, stuff shows up in my house.

[00:23:38] I don't even think I.

[00:23:41] Well, Amazon did something amazing using their algorithms. They build warehouses in certain parts of towns or cities and they stock it with what they anticipate based on the algorithm the people in that area will buy. That's why sometimes you order something and it's at your house later that afternoon.[00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Mallory: Yep.

[00:24:00] John Spence: They had it on the shelves 'cause they knew you were gonna buy it before you knew you gonna buy it. And now let's take it if, get that every day in my life. I'm gonna expect that from my association. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna expect that level of responsiveness and personalization and understanding me and building things that are valuable to me, uniquely, uh, and to all the members.

[00:24:22] But the expectations are so high. Now I, it's, again, it's why I don't think you can not use this technology because it frees your people up to do the really important things that make you unique. That the relationships to people create loyalty. Nobody's loyal to an ai. People are loyal to the people that they know in the organization and how much the organization, the association helps them.

[00:24:47] Mallory: Mm-hmm. So John, very exciting that you've been working with some associations on AI as part of their core strategy. I'm curious when an association comes to you and says, alright, we are kind of dropping everything else, or maybe [00:25:00] putting a pause on some other projects, we're focusing in on artificial intelligence as part of our core strategy.

[00:25:05] John, where do you recommend that they start? Because that's a really broad statement. What are kind of your line items of, we gotta make sure these things are in place, uh, to take action.

[00:25:15] John Spence: So the first thing is to identify a couple of very small pilot projects. Something that costs 500 bucks or a thousand bucks that if it failed, it wouldn't have any major negative impact.

[00:25:26] Uh, you know, you, you run a little test over here, and then if it, it's good, maybe it's, it is on, on a chat bot. On your website to answer frequently asked questions, and you build a database of those for all the ones that have been, and 80% of the time, 90% of the time it can answer the question. A lot of the for-profit or private organizations I work with have turned almost their entire call center over to AI and.

[00:25:54] Instead of taking 700 calls a day, seven, go to the staff. The other [00:26:00] 693 are handled by. So doing something like that, that's small, scoping it out, getting a good idea of what you're trying to achieve, uh, making sure that you know it. Are you gonna buy something off the shelf? Are you gonna have somebody come in and build it for you?

[00:26:16] Uh, the, and if you're gonna have somebody come in and build it, make sure it's not a black box that you don't understand how it works, and don't give them access to too much of your data. Uh, and then run a small trial. And if it works, expand it, expand it, then just look for the next place that it's, it's an obvious application efficiency here.

[00:26:36] Uh. Do our member database with, uh, renewals and, uh, we can put all the renewals in a database that had to automatically pop up and send out an email letting people know that it's time to renew. And if they do it right now, they get a 10% or 5% off on their membership. Uh, no one should touch that again.

[00:26:58] That should all be done by ai. [00:27:00]

[00:27:00] Mallory: What role do you see education playing when you're working with an association and their staff might be unsure when it comes to ai. Maybe a tad resistant, maybe the emotional pulse is a bit nervous. I.

[00:27:14] John Spence: So I, it's kind of like me a little bit. I see two sides to this. I see the side that you could do amazing education online, uh, and have highly customized things for each individual member's organization.

[00:27:27] Mm-hmm. Uh, the one of the associations I recently worked with, uh, is in the.

[00:27:36] There's a little bit of difference between the people that make refrigerated trucks for grocery stores and people that make dump trucks, and they don't want both the same education. They're not looking at the same regulations, they don't have the same common equipment, and on and on and on. Being able to use AI to say, I'm gonna send you highly customized training education newsletters specifically, that will [00:28:00] be perfect for you.

[00:28:01] So on one side, the online education training, things like that. Then what I look at is using the, the answers and the information you get from members to build customized. One-to-one, not one to many training with instructors or through, uh, webinars or things like that. One of the things I'm doing a lot more with now is I'll do major surveys of the people that all the people are gonna be in the audience, uh, of what's important to them, what they wanna learn, what are the most important factors than I use that to go back and, and customize my speeches to the real issues of.

[00:28:38] In the audience instead of, and I've always customized stuff, but this is a whole nother level of being able to really put your finger on the pulse of the, the member or the audience and give them something that is highly unique and specialized just to them.

[00:28:54] Mallory: Hmm. I love that. I love the idea of kind of taking the, the tidbits that you get from your members.[00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Maybe you roll out a chat bot in a pilot project. You start noticing all these questions appear over and over and over again, and maybe you create educational content. Based on those questions, I think that's a great idea.

[00:29:10] John Spence: Betsy, again, your example was absolutely perfect.

[00:29:13] Mallory: Yep. John, I'm also curious though on the education front, what you think about educating staff internally on artificial intelligence.

[00:29:22] Because if you roll out a PI pilot project and your staff is kind of not really up to speed with what's going on, it might not be successful.

[00:29:31] John Spence: No. No. It won't be. You've a factor in that is upskilling your folks. Is helping them understand it, embrace it, not be scared of it, uh, and making sure that they have the tools, the training, the support, the resources they need to be successful, uh, and to constantly be communicating with how you doing.

[00:29:52] Are you know, we having any speed bumps here? Do we need to give more training? Is there something I can help you with? But upskilling [00:30:00] is fundamental to, to rolling out successful AI programs.

[00:30:05] Mallory: And of course we, we believe that here on the podcast, which is why we do it. And we believe that here at Sidecar in your digital Now keynote, you said something, a phrase that I really liked, which was creating a culture of catching people, doing things right, you know, and that phrase, you, you expect to hear catching someone, doing something wrong, but catch people doing things right.

[00:30:24] Can you expand on that a little bit?

[00:30:26] John Spence: Yeah, you know, it's the, the average employee, uh, and I just saw the global report on employee engagement from Gallup, and it, it's, it showed that only about 21% of employees are highly engaged and the group that is hit the most, yeah, that means 79% roughly are disengaged or actively disengaged.

[00:30:49] And the group that it hit the most was managers. Age, gender, any other, uh, thing was managers and one of the key things they said was, I [00:31:00] don't get enough praise. I don't get enough support. Uh, there was three areas that the managers that they identified that managers need help in training, uh, upskilling, number two, coaching skills, asking questions and listening and, and growing their people.

[00:31:18] And the third one was wellbeing. And a huge chunk of the wellbeing was celebration. Telling 'em they're doing things right, uh, finding a way to support them. I, I think I just may have just said it. The average employee needs some sort of genuine, specific, honest praise about once every two weeks. Okay. And it doesn't have to be a, you know, trophy of the employee of the month.

[00:31:42] It could just be, Hey, I saw that PowerPoint deck you put together. I love that. And the colors were awesome. Nice job. Or, I saw that email you wrote to one of our members and you copied me on.

[00:31:55] You handled that beautifully, or Here's a great email I got from one of our m [00:32:00] uh members talking about you. I'm so proud to have you on our team. Something like that will carry people for weeks and get, keep them engaged in what they're doing.

[00:32:11] Mallory: I love that. I love all the good, good feeling side of business, but I think it's interesting what you also said about training upskilling and then that wellbeing component as well.

[00:32:20] So it's not enough just to celebrate people, but providing them with opportunities to, to advance themselves and their careers is essential. I.

[00:32:27] John Spence: Yeah, I did a huge research study of 10,000 high potential, more than 10,000 high potential employees at top companies around the world of all sizes and associations were in there.

[00:32:36] Mm-hmm. And I asked those folks, 'cause these are what I call voluntary employees if they are not happy. They could quit and get a job at the competition tomorrow. So they don't come back to work at the organization because they have to. They come back because they wanna, so I asked them what they wanted and I think there's six or seven things we'll go through.

[00:32:57] 'cause it changed recently, and I'm tying this to the [00:33:00] wellbeing. First one was fair pay, not the most pay, just fair 10% above or below what they would make to do the same job any place else. As long as you get parity on. It comes off the table. The next one is meaningful work. And I think a lot of associations can point to what they do and they're doing super important things.

[00:33:20] The next one is cool colleagues. A players only wanna play with other A players. Uh, you put an A player on a C level team, one of two things happens. They drop their performance to sea level, or they get frustrated and leave. The next home is a great culture, a culture of engagement, a culture of celebration, which has to be balanced with a culture of accountability as well.

[00:33:42] Uh, next one was personal and professional development. Um, my company is investing in me. They're helping me grow. They're sending me to conferences, classes. They're giving me they training and education. Uh, and then professional development is, can I see a place for myself in this company five years from today?[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Uh, if you hire somebody good and you're not constantly investing in their development and they don't really see a career path, they will leave and go someplace else. The next one, which is like wellbeing was flexibility slash compassion. Uh, and that one wasn't on the list eight years ago, huh? Um, and it shot up amazingly during, uh.

[00:34:25] Uh, and then the last one is, which is not the last one. It's actually the single most important factor is I work for a leader I trust, respect, and admire. About 80% of people don't quit their job. They quit their manager or their leader.

[00:34:39] Mallory: Wow. That there's really nothing to say to that. What you said I feel like resonates so clearly and makes a ton of sense.

[00:34:45] I think associations do, as you mentioned, Excel for sure, and some of those areas. I wanna focus in a little bit on the culture piece. Mm-hmm. And also circle back to what we were talking about at the beginning, which was adaptability quotient or aq. [00:35:00] So if you're a leader. You've had this culture that's always been kind of, everybody is in agreement and everybody wants to do this next project.

[00:35:11] We get kind of consensus with everyone, but. They're not adaptable, and you as a leader realize, or maybe they're struggling with aq, not that they're not adaptable. Mm-hmm. You as a leader realize, okay, we've gotta bump up the AQ as a team. This is essential. How would you recommend doing that in a team where you've, where your culture is always having consensus, always being in agreement.

[00:35:34] John Spence: Number one, you have to lead by example. Period. Uh, and I've said period to data like five times.

[00:35:40] Mallory: There's a lot of period moments in this one stop. Boom, that's it. Period. We're not talking about that

[00:35:43] John Spence: anymore. I

[00:35:44] Mallory: like it.

[00:35:44] John Spence: But I've got a, uh, I've got a phrase as goes. The leadership team, so goes the entire organization.

[00:35:50] So if your leadership team is in embracing AI and they're not aligned and they're not growing and upskilling, do not expect anyone else in the organization to do it. [00:36:00] Another part of that is making it clear. And you know what that's a factor of, and this is a huge issue in organizations I'm working with, is lack of psychological safety.

[00:36:12] Is I, people don't speak up. They don't want to talk about uncomfortable or difficult things because they're afraid they'll hurt someone's feelings or they'll be made fun of, or they'll be retribution. So in order to have, uh, a, a group that isn't, that is willing to disagree, agreeably, uh, and challenge each other, Microsoft has a great phrase when I work with them, people are safe, ideas are not.

[00:36:39] We will never attack each other, but it is our duty, literally our duty to, to try to improve every idea. It might already be as good as it can be, but we could try to make it better. So if you, if your idea doesn't get challenged and pushed around, uh, not you, then the culture is not where it needs to be.

[00:36:57] So you need to create a culture where [00:37:00] it's safe. To ask hard questions, to push back to, to challenge, you know, projects or things you think aren't going well. And again, the number way, one way that you create that culture is when someone says that the leader metaphorically has to run over and give them a big hug and say, thank you.

[00:37:18] Wow. That's a tough question, but boy, I appreciate you asking it. That's gonna help us look at this from a completely different perspective. So that phrase and celebration of people when they do take risks or challenges or pushback, creates a culture of what's called radical candor. Mm-hmm. Where people not are only okay with it, but they expect it.

[00:37:42] Mallory: Leading by example is integral. And even though Amit's not here with us, I've gotta give him a shout out because I feel like he does an excellent job of that. Particularly when I first started working with him. We would, you'd work on a project that, for me, seemed all consuming, the most important thing ever that we were working on.

[00:37:58] It had to succeed. Had [00:38:00] to succeed. And then at times Amit would say, that's not working. Let's just scrap it. Let's pivot a little bit. Focus on this direction. And I remember thinking, wait, what? I thought, I thought this was the thing we were working on, that we have to put every, you know, blood, sweat, and tear into, and then to see a leader say it's not working and, and we can pivot and we That's okay.

[00:38:19] We have permission to do that, I think is very powerful.

[00:38:22] John Spence: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I'm gonna balance that out with pivoting too much. Ah, I've got some that are like, well, let's try this. Oh, shiny red ball squirrel, shiny red squirrel, boom, boom, boom. Um, my answer is only pivot when the market demands it. When the product you've created, nobody wants to buy the program you put out for your members.

[00:38:42] Nobody signs up for, uh, you know, I've got one client I coach right now that pivots in the middle of projects before they've had a chance to succeed or fail. She just constantly wants to upgrade the process, change the process, change the process. It's killing her team. Mm-hmm. And I'm, I'm [00:39:00] trying to help her understand sometimes good enough is good enough and let them get to the point where it's.

[00:39:06] Truly gonna fail before you step in or let 'em fail sometimes. Right. If it's not mission critical and it ain't gonna cost a lot of money, how do you, how do you have good judgment by messing stuff up and going, well, that didn't work. I don't think I'll do that again in the future.

[00:39:22] Mallory: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:23] John Spence: Experience of failure leads to good judgment,

[00:39:26] Mallory: and if you're never failing, you're playing it too safe.

[00:39:28] I.

[00:39:31] All right, John, I asked this question on another interview a few months ago, and I kind of like it, so I think I'm gonna redo a, a variation of that with you. And the question is, if you were an ai, which I think you're gonna resonate with this because the idea is if you could look at all the interactions that you've had over your career with organizations and identify patterns.

[00:39:51] Which you mentioned that you love. What would you say is one practice or one trait that you wish [00:40:00] leaders could adopt to transform their businesses? Just this one. Oh, every time you go into a business, you'd say, man, if you just would do this one thing, it would be better.

[00:40:11] John Spence: Be the one that's studying it the most.

[00:40:13] So you're the most knowledgeable. Show genuine interest, do tests, do work, come and show people how it's working. I tried this new thing, like I build a lot of custom chat bots for my projects and for the folks that work. You need to use these things. Yeah. They're not resistant, but like I thought I'd get in trouble if I was doing reports with ai.

[00:40:33] Like, no, you can get 'em done in five minutes instead of five hours. Mm-hmm. That's what I want you to use. Look at what I created. You know that report you saw for me? I didn't do that. That's the AI I built and now they're, now they're realizing, but I'm constantly sending out notes and emails and letters and, Hey, did you see this article?

[00:40:51] Here's how to build a custom chat bot. Here's something I use the custom chat bot to do. They're seeing me. Embrace [00:41:00] it and engage a lot. So it's making them, you know, feel more comfortable. So if I saw one thing, it would be, hey, the leaders need to be the ones that are, you know, change champions for this.

[00:41:12] But doing it again by example, by reading, studying, learning, testing, sharing ideas. You know, I think the culture of, of knowledge sharing is critical too. I always tell people, if I, if I came in your shop, if you had a. Knowledge based culture. People would be sending each other videos, articles, they'd come back and write a, a writeup from a conference they went to.

[00:41:33] They'd have a book club or something like that. If you don't have any of that and the leader's not doing it, don't expect a lot of things to change positively,

[00:41:44] Mallory: period. Full stop. John. I'm sure all of our listeners are gonna want to keep up with you, learn more about you. Where can they follow you? Can you share your website?

[00:41:55] Share all the socials, all the things?

[00:41:57] John Spence: Yeah. The on, I do a lot of content on LinkedIn. Mm-hmm. [00:42:00] Write a newsletter and I write daily stuff so there's good content there. Uh, and then my website is john@johnsmiths.com. And I always say this, if, if something we talked about, somebody has a question on it or they wanna know where, where I got the research or whatever, my recommended book list or whatever, just shoot me an email.

[00:42:18] My email's john@johnspence.com. That's really in innovative, uh, and yeah, wow, creative. Uh, but I answer all my own emails and I'm happy to, to point people in a direction. If I don't have the answer, I can find somebody who does. You guys absolutely.

[00:42:38] Mallory: And you can all tell John is just a fantastic intelligent speaker.

[00:42:42] He's amazing at keynotes. If you saw him at Digital now 2024, you already know that. So keep him in mind too for your Thank you. Upcoming annual meetings.

[00:42:51] John Spence: I appreciate that.

[00:42:52] Mallory: John, thank you so much for joining us today on the Sidecar Sync Podcast. We appreciate your time.

[00:42:57] John Spence: My pleasure. Thank you, Mallory.[00:43:00]

[00:43:01] Intro: Thanks for tuning into Sidecar Sync this week. Looking to dive deeper. Download your free copy of our new book, ascend Unlocking the Power of AI for associations@ascendbook.org. It's packed with insights to power your association's journey with ai. And remember, sidecar is here with more resources from webinars to camps to help you stay ahead in the association world.

[00:43:23] We'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, keep learning, keep growing, and keep disrupting.