Leadership Mistakes Most Companies Make with Ben Baker - Episode 160

But as soon as all of a sudden there's other things that you care about in your life, that that travel for most people and a lot of people loses interest very quickly. You're that a utensil as you said you end up losing the relationship. From humble beginnings insurance claim HQ has grown to one of the largest property casualty firms in the country. We didn't do it alone and you shouldn't either. Every week we're talking to claims professionals and top experts from all over all to help you grow your business and make you stronger. Let's level up together. I'm Galen Ham. Welcome to the Level Up claims podcast. In a high stakes world of property claims, legal services and contracting information moves fast. But clarity often doesn't. Even well-intentioned communication can get lost in translation. Today's guest Ben Baker has made it his life's work to bridge that gap. With 25+ years helping organizations turn internal communication into a strategic asset, Ben brings practical frameworks, storytelling insight, and real world tools that leaders can use right now. It's not about lead teens that are just informed. They're inspired. Let's hear what Ben has to say. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me, Galen. I enjoyed, you know, I enjoyed getting the phone call. I loved doing these type of things. Well, and you're very prolific at it. You have done so many podcasts in my research for the show. I was really excited because there's just so much content and it's always easy to kind of drill down deeper when there's so much out there. Before we jump into that, though, Ben, I have to know, how does one become a professional communication strategist? What does that path look like? You know what? It's one of those things that you fall into it by accident. Quite honestly, you know, I got into communications 25, 28 years ago based on the fact that I got out of high tech. I used to be up in the air 200 days a year. I ran a sales team and my territory was North America. I was the guy that went in and solved problems. And I spent my life in the air and my wife and I looked at each other and said, hey, listen, this is a divorce way to happen. And I went up to my boss and said, look, you have two choices. You can either cut my travel days in half or you can double my salary to pay for the divorce. This is your choice. And they said, while we buy you out, I said perfect. And I met a guy playing golf that was in the communications game. It was actually started off in direct mail. And the world just changed from there and a lot of it is the world of hard knocks, a lot of conferences, a lot of conversations, a lot of trial by error, a lot of learning few courses along the way. But a lot of it comes down to being down that hole, knowing how to get out of it, knowing how to avoid it. And that just takes time. It sure does. So real quick, let's let's segue for a minute into uncharted, unplanned territory, I should say. Perfect. Up in the air 200 days a year, been there, done that. What do you think it is? Now in your current world in communication and storytelling, right? What do you think it is about that story that's so sexy to us when we're younger? Because like, I can tell you right now, when I applied for law firms at a law school, I picked the ones that said things like, you need a passport to work here, we'll have you all over the place, you know. But I lost a, I lost an 11 year relationship over mine and hers travel schedule. So I'm very cognizant of the damage that does. So why do you think we do that to ourselves? You know, I think when we're young, adventure is the end all and be all. And you know, that there's something else always over the fence and around the corner that we're chasing. And we're always looking for what's next and what's new. And the fact that somebody can put us up in the air or around the country or around the world and be able to do new things and see new things, you know, is excited. Hey, listen, I've traveled around the world. I've seen the pyramids. I've seen, you know, I've seen the wailing wall. I've been through Asia, I've been through North America, Europe. It's exciting, you know, it's, it's fun, seeing new things, but I'll tell you something. It also takes a lot of toll. There's a big difference. And the problem is is most people who travel, you know, travel for fun. There's a big difference of traveling for work because when you travel for work, you get on a plane, you travel to whatever city, you get in an Uber and a cab, you head to a hotel you head to an office, you head to a business, whatever you do the work that you do, you go back to the hotel, you go back to the airport and you're done and you're off to a different city. And you really don't get to see that adventure, you don't get to see the cities that you're in. You know, there were 50 or 75 cities that I visited on a regular basis. I couldn't tell you one from the other because all I saw was airports and hotels and conference rooms. And that's the part of that business travel world that most people never get explained. And when you're young and you're single and you don't have, you know, a dog to feed or a plant to water or a house that you got to mo the grass and you're living off somebody else's expense account, it's a fun life. But as soon as all of a sudden, there's other things that you care about in your life, that travel for most people and a lot of people loses interest very quickly. You're that a you tend to, as you said, you end up losing the relationship. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's so hard to prioritize, right? And I think we're not so good at that one or younger and we get better at it as we get older, just like we get better at most things. We don't usually get more physically adept as we get older, but everything else we get better at usually. So I, but speaking of getting better as we get older, one of the things I notice is and it's a huge growth area, I think, for a lot of companies is how our internal communications have changed at least internally here, right, over the year, right? I look back on internal communications. I'd sent prior mission statements, things like that. And I kind of cringe and wonder why I would ever work for me, right? Now, I look at things today and I feel a little more proud of where we're at, where we're going, where we can be, but talk to me about what internal communication really is and where you think most companies tend to fail. Well, my friend Alan has agreed with Alan Williams in England, he has a great saying that values are lived, not laminated. And we tend to have a lot of companies with laminated value statements, admission statements and goals. These are things that they put up on the wall because you know, somebody told them we need a mission statement, we need a goal statement, we need a value statement. And so a bunch of people go off on a retreat somewhere and they hire somebody like me. And we band you around a whole bunch of words and we think, yeah, that's it, perfect. And they put it up on a wall and they never live it. And they have nothing to do with how these companies actually interact. And the leaders don't live the values and the leaders don't live the mission. And goals and decisions are not made based on mission vision and values. They're based on expediency. And when we do that, internal communication fails because we're saying one thing and we're doing it in another. And people will believe your actions far more than they will believe what you say. And if we're not as an organization, speaking the language that we're living, our internal communications is falling on deaf ears, it's not listened to, it's not understood, and it's not valued there. And I think that is, I think that's very true that we as leaders sometimes, we just do things because people told us we're supposed to do them. But what I'm hearing from you is like our team can sense whether we actually buy into those things or not. You know, even if even if it's not immediately apparent, right, they can sense it. They can sense it if you're not body and I think that's a really important issue. So let's talk about that as a leader, having to communicate with a team. What are some common traps that leaders fall into when communicating like frontline leaders really? Yeah, I think they talk about the what, not the why. I think it's a big deal that people talk about. This is what we're going to do. This is not why we're going to do this. I'm a big believer of telling people there's a mountain. We're going up the mountain and to get people to go up to get the mountain together, it's not enough to show them a path. You have to show them what they're going to be able to do individually and collectively when they get over the mountain that they can't do themselves. We also need to say if we don't reach the top of the mountain, here are the ramifications, both as an organization and to you personally because people do things mostly for individual reasons. Yes, they work as a collective, yes, they will buy into a set of mission vision and goals if they believe that they align with their personal mission vision and goals. But if it's a company just sits there who says we're doing this and there isn't the why behind it, then it tends to fall in deaf ears. The other problem that leaders have is leaders get together and they bandy things around. They get into these board meetings and they say, okay, we're going to do this. And they spend days, weeks, months, figuring stuff out and they leave these board meetings going, okay, we're bought in. We know we need to do this. We know why we need to do this. We know how we're going to do this. We're there. We've figured this out and we're all bought in together because we've taken the time and the energy to hash this thing out together. They're on step number 32. But in the office who hasn't been part of these meetings is on step number one. This is beating them from left field. They don't understand what's being done. They don't understand why it's being done. They don't understand the value of doing it. They don't understand what the ramifications are. They don't understand how it's going to affect how they do their job or if it's going to affect whether they have a job or not. And they get scared. People get scared. And people get apprehensive. They tend to block good programs from proceeding. So the number one thing leaders need to do is to sit there and say, look, we've done this. These are the things that we've done. This is what we've talked about. These were the pitfalls that we came up with. This is how we think that we can get through these pitfalls. This is where we're going and this is why we're going there. And this is how it's going to benefit us as an organization. We've got some questions. And you need to be able to sit there and be willing to take those questions and listen to people and say, wait a second here, people have good ideas. Maybe we didn't think about this in the group of eight. Maybe when we bring this out to a group of 100 to 200 or 500 or 1000, they're going to come up with things based on reality on the shop floor that we never saw. And leaders need to be able to be creative, adaptive, and resilient. Yeah, there's a lot to break down there because it sounds easy, but it's not easy. It's not easy for a few reasons, right? Like I think number one, it's not emotionally easy for a leader to go to what they consider to be the rank and file and say, here's this idea I worked really hard on. Go ahead and shit on it for me, right? I think number one, that's hard. And then I think number two, figuring out the actual verbiage, the actual wording of the message is hard too, right? Okay. Do I put them through a one hour PowerPoint presentation that goes through everything I considered? I don't want to rush through it. So like, help me. I'm not worried about the emotional side. I think the short answer there is suck it up. Do it for your team because it's the best thing for your company and the best thing for you, right? Exactly. But what about the actual presentation? Yeah. And I think the story is probably the best way of doing it. We've been telling stories for generations in millennia and people adhere to stories because people can identify with stories and sit there and see themselves as the hero. And that's the trick is to find a way to make the individuals within the organization see themselves as the hero and the knights that are off there charging on their steeds to make this happen. It's not about the company succeeding. It's about the individuals within the company succeeding. And the company succeeds, you know, regardless, regardless. And it's being able to align mission vision, the values of individuals, the hopes, wants, fears, needs and desires with the actual goals and aspirations of the organization. And stories enable that to happen. And you know, I say this like it's simple, but it's not. It's extremely difficult because it's a matter of sitting there, getting people to not only buy into why, but be able to internalize the why, recall the why and retell the why to others because the larger the organization you have, you can't tell 10,000 employees the same thing at the same time, it's not going to happen because you're going to sit there going, okay, we have times, first of all, we have time zones, second of all, we may have shifts, second of all, we may have people that work on, you know, people that don't work till next Tuesday, whatever. And you need to be able to have your champions within the organization, tell two friends who tell two friends who tell two friends and so on and so on and so on. And you start small, you build with a group of champions, you get people that are leaders within their different diversions and their different teams and you get them excited about it and allow them to be able to retell that story in their own way, in their own voice, to their teams to be able to build on the excitement. Now do you give them things because what I always worry about with that, we've done that. And it's worked. I'd say about half the time and about half the time it's backfired because it's become a game of telephone, you know, where it's like, it's like, you know, I tell someone I'm wearing a purple jacket to the gala and by the time it comes back, it says, he bought a house and burned it down. And I'm like, what, you know, where do, how do we get there? So how do you kind of manage that within a large organization? Key words and talking points, key words and talking points. I mean, to be able to sit there and say, these are the three important things that you need to remember. I mean, here's the thing, if you ever listen to a great keynote speaker, and I've spoken around the world, they will end every keynote that says, if you've forgotten everything that I've talked to you about over the last 45 minutes, remember this, this and this. And it's getting beyond the minutia, getting beyond the details, getting beyond all the stuff that can be, that can be looked up, you know, with your, your intranet and your this and that and everything. There's lots of ways to support the story with facts and figures and information and all that kind of stuff. And you have to do that. But you have to sit there and say, what are the three salient points that you want people to remember? Because they won't remember 10. And you need to make it an odd number because people think and threes, people think in odd numbers. So if you sit there and say, I want you to remember that we're going there together, it's going to be difficult. And in the end, we're going to achieve this. Okay. Okay. Great. I can remember those three things. And when I'm going there, I may not remember all the salient details of the information and say, you know what, I can't remember if it was going to be in Q1 or Q2. We're going to do that. But all that information is available on the intranet. But I need you to remember this, this and this. Yeah, I can't remember the points right now, right? And I think that's a good point is, you know, people do tend to think in threes. Now, there is a way. I was listening to some of your content, watching some of your content, too, on this. And I thought it was fascinating. Something so obvious that I've never considered, which is you do believe that you can communicate with the entire company, maybe not simultaneously, maybe separately in a way. That email and meetings often fail. And your proposal is so simple, yet so mind-blowing because you proposed internal podcast programs. Yeah. Exactly. Tell me, give me an example of the time that that worked and how you felt like that really brought it, brought extra value to the company. Yeah. Internal podcasts are interesting. What we're talking about is being able to communicate sensitive, timely, you know, not to be shared information within the organization in a way that's not going to get outside the organization. So you need to make sure that you have the lawyers, the compliance and all these people on board to be able to make sure of it. And let people know that, hey, listen, this medium can work, but it's got to work with these guardrails. We're going to bumpers on this thing on either side. So therefore, people can stream the information. They can only stream this information if they're an employee. And there's no way to be able to save this information or be able to download this information. But it's available for them to listen to any time you want. And it's got to be key noted and key worded in such a word way that people can go back to the information. The beautiful thing about a podcast is people can listen to this podcast now. They can listen to a week from now. They can listen to it a month from now. They look into it for a year from now. So people can go back and get the information that they missed in their own time and their own way. And if you're like me, I listen to a lot of podcasts at one and a quarter, one and a half speed, and I'll be listening for salient points and be able to do that. But what a podcast enables you to do is hear everything in the first person. So I can interview the person that's on the floor. I can interview people that are in the sea suite. I can interview vendors and customers and whatever within and on disclosure pointing to be able to drive point forward. A time we've done this is when a 50,000 employee company bought an 8,000 employee company. And we wanted to be able to make sure the mission vision and values were aligned as they move forward. Now traditional onboarding of these 8,000 employees was going to be somewhere between two and a half and $3,000 a person based on how they work their systems. People were talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $24 million. What we were able to do is over a three-year period, be able to create a series of podcasts that talked about how the old company involved with the new company, difference and of the different systems and processes that they do, culture, leadership, new people bringing into the organization, technological differences, and all sorts of different things. So people had an understanding, it says, okay, as we morph, this becomes this, this, we called it this, you guys call it that. And not only did this become great podcast information, but it became great conversations to be done within teams. It became great information for trainers to use within the organization. And it also became because we did bring customers on board as we were transitioning them and put them under a non-disclosure, it allowed us to understand what the customers truly were worried about during the transition and be able to be able to work through that, those challenges and have the people within your organization have the insights of how to be able to mitigate all those challenges. So this was like a three-year process. And through that, they had set a target of the amount of personnel that they were willing to lose. We lost 10% less. We were able to onboard people, you know, six months quicker. And we were able to have far, far better retention of people. And we were able to have profitability a lot sooner than they were expecting. Wow. That's amazing. And again, just such an obvious, right? Like when you hear it, you're like, I mean, we're literally on a podcast. Why have I never thought to do that? I have all the equipment set up. It's so simple. So let's kind of stay on that theme because, you know, our time is drawing to a close. One of the things that you have pushed over the years very clearly, and I believe you, is that if your employees, your team genuinely believes your company's story, they become better and fiercer, brand advocates, and perform better externally, fair? Mm-hmm. Oh, absolutely. Well, I'm a big believer, and this is the quote that I use all the time with senior leadership. Your brand is only as valuable as your unhappiest employee on their worst day. Yeah, fair. So when you sit there and go, if you have unhappy employees, if you have discontent employees, if you have malcontent employees, this projects onto your customers, and therefore, it affects your brand and your profitability, and all of a sudden you go from being a brand worth loving to yet another commodity. So how do we get our team to genuinely believe in the company's story? Obviously, I assume we can't just, like, pound this into them verbally. So what do we do? To use a term that I hate, we have to be authentic. We truly have to be authentic. The reason I hate is because it's overused, and we've utilized this word to mean a million different things. But we have to say what we mean and mean, what we say. We have to live our brand. As Alan Williams says, we have to live our values not laminate them. And if we sit there and say people are important to us, our people have to be important to us. And we have to show our people they're important to us. You can't say that customers are, we value our customers and put them on hold for 30 minutes. Yeah, fair. Yeah, you can't do that. And the same thing goes with employees. So you have to sit there and say, okay, these are the three or five things that are truly the hills that we're willing to die on. That's where you spend your time, your money, and your effort, and your leadership. Next time. You have to sit there and say, these are the things that we're willing to fight for. And we're willing to fight against. And those are the things that we're going to tell a story about. And those are the things that differentiate ourselves. And we're not just going to say it, we're going to do it. Yeah. Because if you don't do it, nobody believes you. No, I'll buy that. That makes a lot of sense. Nothing is much to buy. It's pretty obvious. It makes a lot of sense. But on that same along those same lines, maybe taking it out of just internal and also towards external, what are some communication behaviors that move the needle that a listener can start to implement now? You know, whether you're a small organization or a large organization, the biggest thing you can do is listen to your customers, truly listen and care about them. There was just an ink magazine this morning, this morning, it says, the biggest thing we can do for our customers is actually listen to them and care about them. And if we do this, if we actually sit there and say, I'm not assuming I know what's right for you. I'm going to listen to you and say, what are the problems you really are truly facing? And know that Kyle and Galen are going to have different problems. And Kyle and Galen are going to look at the world differently. Kyle and Galen have different ideas of what's right and what's wrong and not try to put a cookie cutter solution on every single one of your customers and realize that, you know what, there are going to be exceptions to the rule. Yes, we need to have systems and processes. Absolutely. We need to sit there and go, you know what, in most cases, we do X. In most cases, we do Y. But if we're not willing to sit there and say, you know what? This doesn't fit in the box. Okay. Now we need to listen. We need to figure out why isn't it in the box? What are the specific challenges? What's making this person furious at me? And what can we do that's beyond the pale to be able to make things right? Because the number one thing you can say to a customer is, you know what? I hear you. I understand. How can we make this better? How can we work together to make this better and actually do it? Or say, you know what, I'm sorry. I can't do that, but I can do this. Yeah. I mean, and I think that's so right and we do need to be better about going above and beyond. So many companies, I mean, we're just pushed all this information, create these SOPs, create these systems, follow these systems, become a robot. And you will make more money because robots make more money because they cost less money because it doesn't require any deviation, right? But most of our customers, none I would suggest very few if any of our customers are robots. They're humans with real problems, especially in my line of business. And they don't appreciate being told, well, you are an outlier, therefore you shall not get attention. Or in fact, we may just get rid of you altogether because you're an outlier and we don't like outliers. Um, I've seen law firms be destroyed over this. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it'd be really interesting if organizations who have, you know, automated phone systems that are, you know, set up with the bots, the AI and stuff like that to be able to move people through the phone trade. If they could listen to say in and so many people are saying, get me a human being, human being, customer service, real human being, I need somebody to solve my problem. It'd be amazing if you could actually listen to how many people are actually screaming into their phone to try to get a human being because there's stuck in some, some phone tree of, some bot that's trying to solve a problem that they can't solve. Yeah. You know, we figured out a solution to that, but that's a discussion for I suppose a different day. But, you know, we, it didn't make sense for us to have 24 hours worth of reception, but we did implement AI has just been so great, right? We implemented a bot that can see the number you're calling from right away. So if you call it says, hey, Ben, are you calling for your attorney, Galen? Your case manager, Carly, were you calling about something else? That way you do not have to have the, no, I am sick, like it asks you right away. Here are the three things we think you might be calling about and we, you, you know, right away. We're almost making you a promise. I'm going to get you to the person you want to go to, just tell me, you know, that's treating them like a human being. And, but so you can implement, guys, the point is you can implement some AI and stuff, but you've got to take this into account. Otherwise, it doesn't matter. Yes, you do. Penultimate question for you, Ben. How do you measure? Is there a way to measure? Whether your communication is working so you can start to adjust that in real time. I think every organization is good to have their own key performance indicators, KPI, IZ, your OKRs, whatever they, whatever you term you, you as an organization, look, you as an organization, you just sit there and say, what are we measuring? Why are we measuring it? And why is it important to us? And some people want to sit there and say, you know, I want to make sure that you know that problems are resolved within X amount of time. Some people want to say, it says that they, the phones are picked up on the, on the first or second ring. Some people want to sit there and say that, that their NPR scores are higher, whatever it is, everybody has to sit there and say, but what you need to sit there and say, is what I'm measuring moving my needle and is it moving the needle of my customers? And if it's not, you're probably measuring the wrong thing. Fair. Genius bent. Then you've been so great with your time before you go though, I do have to ask you, what does it mean to you to level up? To me leveling up is to always be curious, you know, to always be curious to never assume I know everything, never assume that I have all the information, never assume that I, my way is the best way. I know a certain number of ways, I've got a certain amount of experience, I've got a certain amount of knowledge, but it doesn't mean that I have all the answers. And if I don't know the answers, I go find somebody who does. And the more questions we can ask, the more we can realize we have our own biases, the more we can realize that we, we have a limited amount of knowledge and other people may have better knowledge and other things, it enables us to be better value to the people that we lead, the people that we engage with, the people that we interact with, whatever to sit there and say, you know what, I'm not sure, let me find out and let me get back to you and get back to them in a timely manner in a way that's going to help them out. And assuming you know everything and trying to do everything off the back of an napkin, just doesn't work anymore. I could not agree more Ben. Ben again, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Hey, Alan, I enjoyed this completely, the thanks for having me on the show. I'd like to thank Ben Baker for joining us on the podcast. Such an interesting story. From becoming a typical corporate worker up in the air, 200 days a year, to being a mastermind between internal and external communication, and that unendless sense of curiosity has driven him to where he is today. So I'd like you to take stock of your communications, internal and external. Are they working? And if not, what can you do this year to make it better? Follow us on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And make sure you like and subscribe to keep up to date on our latest podcasts.