Kevin Finke shares how gender diversity issues can help spark creativity, more effective leadership, and a more vibrant company culture.
Kevin, the CEO of Experience Willow, talks with The Savvy Entrepreneur about his journey from a small town in central Illinois through several pivots. He’s had successful stints in major public relations and marketing companies, has been a cutting edge Latinx marketer, and a big-time events organizer.
Today, Experience Willow helps companies change their corporate culture and implement diversity and inclusion programs. He says it’s fitting that a small-town Illinois kid who never fit in is now helping lots of other people fit in better
It also makes sense that Kevin, a member of the LBTQ community and owner of a certified minority-owned business is leading the charge for more inclusive and diverse work environments. He helps businesses both small and large change their narratives and stories and rituals to be more welcoming to America’s evolving demographics.
Kevin’s story is sure to open your eyes a bit, and his style is very relatable. Even though he’s had an insanely successful career, you can tell his small-town Midwest background is still very much a part of him.
Read a transcript of our interview below, or go here to listen to interview.
Doris Nagel 0:42
Good morning, all you entrepreneurs and small businesspeople out there!
You are listening to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show. I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour.
The show has two goals: first, to share helpful information and resources. Because I, as an entrepreneur have made so many mistakes. My clients have made mistakes. My friends who are also entrepreneurs have made lots of mistakes. And if I can help those of you out there, not make some of those mistakes, then I’ve been successful.
The second goal is to inspire. I found being an entrepreneur, confusing and often lonely. Sometimes you have no idea if you’re on the right track or not, or where to turn for good advice.
To help with both of those goals and to help each of you entrepreneurs be more successful, I have guests on the show who are willing to share their stories and advice.
This week’s guest is Kevin Finke. He is the founder and owner of a company called Experience Willow. And he’s going to share with us how he started his company and what it does.
And along the way, hopefully, we’ll learn some things about an issue that it probably it’s been talked about in the news, but probably not as much, which is gender diversity and gender inclusion.
Kevin, thanks so much for being with me today. Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show.
Kevin Finke 1:59
Thank you, Doris. I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having me. And I’m excited to hook up with a fellow alumni. I know I was so when I saw your post on alumni link, looking for fellow alumni who are entrepreneurs and small business owners and willing to share their stories and their insights, I jumped at the chance. So I’m really excited to be here.
Doris Nagel 2:18
I’m glad to feature a fellow Illini! It is so fascinating to see the wide variety of things that my fellow alumni have been up to.
One of the things that that resonated with me about your response back to the alumni network was that we’re both very focused on gender diversity and inclusion. And I know we’re going to get to that.
But first, I want you to spend just a couple minutes sharing with listeners what the Willow Experience is, and what are the primary services that you offer?
Kevin Finke 2:44
I feel like to tell the story of my company and to really talk about the company I have to talk a little bit about myself and where I came from, and the kind of person I was even before the University of Illinois.
I am a downstater. I’m not from Chicagoland. I’m a downstater, who grew up in East Central Illinois in a small farm town called Casey, Illinois. And it was a wonderful place to grow up.
I encourage anyone who’s close to Casey or who loves to get on the road, go look at the big things in a small town. It’s a wonderful, small town that really has gentrified itself in the last 10 years and has lots of fun things to do there and has set many Guinness World Records in terms of these big things that they’ve built — everything from the World’s Largest Rocking Horse to the world’s largest functioning mailbox, the largest pitchfork. I mean, on and on.
Doris Nagel 3:38
I grew up in a small farming town to in Northwest Illinois. I don’t know how big Casey is. My hometown was about 4200 people maybe when I left. It had two stoplights. [laughing]
Kevin Finke 3:56
I was very active in high school. I was a student leader of several organizations. I was valedictorian of my class, I was a state champion, running and track. And I know it’s a wonderful story of wonderful childhood.
But deep down inside, Doris, I was unhappy. And although I had friends, I found myself alone a lot of times. And when I was alone, I was an escaper, I escaped into a wonderful world in my imagination — in my, in my bedroom, in the cornfields behind my house. I would get on my bicycle and ride for hours. And I was quite independent.
But that sense of independence and imagination, and curiosity is seriously what powers me today. And so I look back at this town, and this experience I had growing up, where I felt a sense of belonging, but I really didn’t see anyone like me, and I look back, and I think, “Wow, if I hadn’t grown up there, would I have the sense of curiosity that I have today? Would I have the imagination that has driven me to be a creative inside several kinds of industries, like marketing and human resources?”
I’ve always been known as kind of a creative entrepreneurial spirit in these industries where I find myself working in. So I look back very fondly at it, and I accept it for what it was, and I feel blessed to have been there.
Even if it was sort of a lonely experience at times, it gave me something it fueled something in me that has stayed with me in my core, you know, it really defines who I am, especially my values.
I had many mentors, through my life. I had my track coach, Coach Carroll, who pushed me to physical limits and mental limits that I never thought were possible. Mrs. Brown was my science teacher. She pushed me academically like no other teacher or professor I’ve ever had. She made me want to learn and learn more.
And then I had Miss Richards — she was just the best. She was our speech and English teacher, she was our drama teacher, she headed up many of our fine arts programs. And that was a wonderful outlet for me, where I found people a little different than I would find on the basketball court or the track, or that I might find in, you know, Quiz Bowl or Scholastic Bowl, as we call them.
But she ignited something in me. She also taught us mass media, which was the study of television and radio and newspaper, it was during the early, mid, mid 80s.
And I fell in love with media. So when I got accepted to go to the University of Illinois — now it’s called the College of Media, but at the time, it was called the College of Communications. And I got my degree in advertising.
I spent 20 years in marketing. I started my career at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, not in marketing. I was in attractions and was a host of different attractions in Frontierland. Right there in Orlando, Florida.
That began my relationship with big business and understanding that I could be a professional inside corporate America. It showed me that I had the goods. I might have come from the small town, but I had the goods. I could stand on my own. I could hold my own inside a company like Disney.
[And that inspired me] when I left Disney to come back to the university. I’d already been out of school for about a year, but I went to one of my college Deans and I asked if I could interview on campus with the people that were a year or two younger than me and they said, “Absolutely.”
And so I signed up and got my first job in Detroit. I cut my teeth in the automotive industry for the first 10 years, calling on big brands like General Motors and Daimler Chrysler.
And I wasn’t a traditional ad guy. I was an event guy. I was a sponsorship guy. I looked back at all these worlds that I had created for myself, and I just started creating these experiences. I had created for myself and escaped into, and now I started creating for brands.
I worked on amazing project. I supported a PGA sponsorship that Buick had for several years. And we were on the team that signed Tiger Woods to the Buick brand for a major sponsorship. And we followed him around when he was at his peak.
I left Detroit actually working for the same company that was calling on General Motors, and it took me to Atlanta. And this is where my home is. I’ve been here for the last 20 years.
And when I came here, of course, there’s no bigger brand in the world — well actually, that’s not true today, there are some bigger brands — but Coca Cola is an amazing company. It is the heart and the pulse of Atlanta, and I got to call on them.
And I went from working on four PGA tournaments to, all the sudden, helping Coca Cola with its Olympic presence in Salt Lake City and then in Sydney, Australia. I was working on the NCAA and their sponsorship when it kicked off in the early 2000s. I supported a lot of other properties like NASCAR, and I got into their entertainment world.
I had a team of 20 or 30 people at this company called Momentum Worldwide. We were kind of the presence marketing — the experience of special events & sponsorship arm. We were doing a lot of work in retail as well, helping Coke have a great presence inside grocery stores and big box stores and things like that.
This is where I where I really spent my time for the first 20 years. But in 2002, I became a managing partner in a new firm. The 2000 census was very eye-opening for businesses and for marketers. It was, I think, the first time when people really started to realize that America was changing — it was becoming a more diverse America.
Doris Nagel 9:39
That’s about the time when non-white births started to exceed white births, right?
Kevin Finke 9:46
Yes, absolutely. And this company that I that I was part of was really growing to become one of the best agencies in the world.
We were at the top of every best agency list for 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. We were doing amazing work for brands like Coca Cola and other beverage brands like Heineken, and all of the brands within the Diageo portfolio like Johnnie Walker and Jose Cuervo. I was calling on Unilever, I was calling on Kraft Foods in Chicago. I was calling on Wendy’s in Columbus.
Doris Nagel 10:19
That just sounds so amazing. Why would you leave that to do something else?
Kevin Finke 10:26
Well, the unhappiness that I had felt as a child, I started to feel in my own work. I almost couldn’t go to work.
The people I worked with, and people in marketing, — especially on the agency side –they were so in love with what they do. They loved their work, they loved these creative cultures that they belong to, they loved being an engine for helping these brands grow.
They would come and they would read the trades every day, and they would submit into award competitions. And I just sat at my desk, I wouldn’t even open a trade. I wasn’t even interested.
And ironically enough, in the company I had started we were focused on — I don’t want to say nonwhite, that’s not the right word. But we were not focused on mainstream marketing. We were focused on what was called and is still called multicultural marketing.
Multicultural marketing was helping brands, big brands, I think of Home Depot, one of our longest standing clients, we helped them introduce themselves into the US Hispanic market.
And marketing to a US Latino is different because of who they are. The kinds of trades that they over index in, we used to call them prosumers because not only were they consumers, they’re here to live the American dream and to do the best things for their families and especially for their children.
And they have multi generations in their homes. The home itself is coveted and it’s something that they want to improve. They want to make it to the best for their families.
But at the same time, many of them leave their home every day and they go work as landscapers and painting contractors, right? And so they’re also professionals. So this is a really important consumer market, which they called the prosumer.
And we were the ones helping brands like Home Depot get into the hearts and minds of those consumers, to say to them, “You should choose us, we know you better, we are giving you services and products that are more relevant. We’re giving you platforms and programs, we are supporting your communities, so come shop us before you shop Lowe’s, or before you shop Ace, or whoever our competitors are in the places where you shop and work.”
The company doing this work was about 400 strong, and it was 95 plus percent Latino. So, here I am, a non Latino, non Spanish speaker, leading a team of 30 people doing this work for all of these Latinos. And I felt accepted and embraced by them. But at the same time, I also felt like I didn’t belong, if that makes sense.
Doris Nagel 13:00
It does, and I think having come from a small town where I didn’t feel like I belonged either, I can certainly relate. I mean, you sometimes wonder, “Am I okay?” Because I felt like I belong. But then at the same time, I feel like I’m outside watching all of it.
Kevin Finke 13:20
Yeah. So there’s Kevin, walking red carpets with Jennifer Lopez, you’re turning the red carpet green at the Grammys.
On behalf of your Heineken sponsor, you’re building and delivering and activating the 100th and 50th birthday parties for Johnnie Walker, you’re doing all of this with A-list celebrities, A-list sports stars, you’re working with some of the best people in the business.
I kept asking myself, “Why are you unhappy? Why would you not be happy? You’re making the most money you’ve ever made. You have the biggest title you’ve ever had? “
Doris Nagel
You had all sorts of external validation of your worth and your creativity and you were at the top of your game. So what changed?
Kevin Finke 14:01
I got sick. I got the shingles. And now it shook me to my core in 2007. And it was my wake-up call.
I’m a very healthy person. I have not called in sick very many times. And that’s not because I work while I’m sick. I just — knock on wood — tend not to be ill or sick. And I’m also a little bit of a hypochondriac.
And because of those things, it shook me to my core. My doctors were asking me, “What’s going on? You must be stressed out. You need to talk to someone.”
And I realized, yeah, I’m stressed out. I really didn’t go get a therapist. Instead, I turned inward. I started writing a lot. I found meditation and yoga. I became a vegetarian, which I still am today. And I re-discovered the bicycle from my youth, — not the actual bicycle, but the act of getting on a bike.
And before long, my curiosity, my creativity, my brain, my everything started to open up. Plus I got a lot of endorphins and adrenaline. And I started getting happier, I started getting in better shape.
As all of that was going on, the recession — the crash – happened. This is 2007 2008 2009. And when companies start cutting budgets, one of the first places they cut is marketing. And the first thing they’re going to cut in the marketing budget is non-mainstream marketing.
So we started losing clients. And then we started losing talent. And then we started just going after any kind of client just to stay alive. And that was a wakeup call for me as well.
I started to realize I needed to get out. And I told myself that I’m going to take some time off. But when I get back in, I’m getting back in on my own terms. I’m going to bite the bullet and do this on my own. I’m going to build a company on my own.
And that’s what led me to start Experience Willow. I left that other company in 2010, and I took off 2011. At the end of 2011, my phone starts ringing. They said, “Hey, we’re trying to build this creative — I think they called it even a dream team — and it’s going to be like six to eight people and we’re going to help SeaWorld rethink SeaWorld.” And I said, “Okay, well, I’m not working but I’ll try that.”
And lo and behold, I proved to myself that I could be an independent consultant, because it went really well. And I loved the work.
And then a few months later, I got a call from one of the other managing partners at the firm that I had left. And he said, “Kevin, I’m now a chief marketing officer inside the Fox Company, and we’re starting a new Spanish language network. It’s going to compete against the big guys like Univision and Telemundo. We’re going to do it the way Fox has done it in in the mainstream market. Would you come help me launch this network? I want you to do all our event work and sponsorship work, all the work we’re doing with communities to spread the word of the network to take our property out into the US Hispanic market? Would you help me with this?”
And I said, “Well, I’ve got to start my company first. But, I’m really intrigued. The one thing I want to make sure, though, is that I wanted to get back in on my own terms. So you know, is there a way that eventually we can maybe some talk about my helping you with things like corporate social responsibility?” Because I wanted to do more good in the world. And we did that work.
But it was people from my network, calling me and asking me to start working and being on projects that really was an impetus for me starting Experience Willow,
Doris Nagel 17:37
How did you come up with the name of your company?
Kevin Finke 17:39
It was serendipity. So listen to this story.
The willow is very symbolic for me. And I’m a visual creative, I see a vision in my head. So I’ll see a sponsorship activating itself, and I’ll see what the experience looks like.
And then it’s my job to work with my production and teams to make things happen, to bring my vision to life. As I said, I’m a very visual creative. And it’s probably because when I was a child, I was knee deep in my imagination, envisioning things that weren’t even there.
So during this time, when I was rediscovering my health in 2007, 2008, and 2009, the willow was everywhere. I would read something and there would be a reference to a willow. Or I would be flipping through something, and there would be a willow tree. Or we would go to a new city like Asheville, North Carolina, which is one of my favorite places, and there were willows everywhere.
Doris Nagel 18:28
And the willow is particularly flexible and graceful. It’s also quite a creative tree, because it has a lot of very interesting survival strategies.
Kevin Finke 18:41
Yeah, but I didn’t know this, Doris. So what do I do? I’m curious, so I start learning. It was the time in my life where this thing called Google was starting to happen. So I was googling willow, willow cultural symbols, willow symbolism.
And I started reading all these things. I went back to books that I had for Mrs. Brown’s science class back in Casey, Illinois. I had tree identification books. I’ve studied several religions.
I found something from the Celtic Druids, where willows are like this tree oracle thing. I started reading through all these things, and I started seeing themes.
The ones that you’re talking about right now were the some of the things I discovered. Things like: willows are portrayed as feminine spirits. They are seen that way, much related to the weeping willow and other willows, which by the way, love to plant themselves next to streams and bodies of water for the water intake. That’s why they’re so flexible.
They represent femininity in many cultures. They also represent creativity and divination, and there are cultures, indigenous cultures that will sleep with the boughs of the willow tree under their pillows, hoping to be inspired by dreams.
But the one that the one that got me was — and you said this– survival. There’s an acid that runs through the bark of trees of the willow tree. I knew that the willow was part of the Salix family of trees. I had learned that in Mrs. Brown’s class and that had stuck with me.
But I’d never realized that it was named for the acid that runs through its bark. And salic acid is the key ingredient, which is the key ingredient in aspirin. And so it’s used to heal and to relieve pain.
So even in these initial moments, I felt called — and I’m just going to use those words– I was being called by the sacred feminine that I was. I was being called, because I needed to amplify feminine voices and feminine ideals and values.
I felt that from the very beginning, and I felt I was doing that to help heal the world.
And that sounds like a grandiose mission and purpose and vision. But that is what drove me, and it was drive, because I didn’t understand what that meant.
I’m curious, I’m a learner. So I realized I just needed to get busy, and see how this thing played itself out.
And today, the work that we’re doing is less about the consumer world – yes, I’m working with the same kinds of brands and companies. Most of our companies have 1500, 2000, 3000 employees, or are even bigger. But we’re also working with really big brands like Cox, that has 60,000 employees. We’ve done a ton of work with NCR, also located here in Atlanta, and they have, I think, around 40,000 employees.
Now, instead of calling on their marketing teams, and helping them build consumer events and experiences, [I have a different role].
In 2014, while I was doing some work in that space for NCR, the chief people officer, the new name for a chief HR officer, took on some new responsibilities which included marketing and communications. And so I started to meet with her for my work at NCR.
And as we talked, she said, “Kevin, you’re the most interesting marketing person I’ve ever met. You talk about brand and marketing so differently than other people in the space.”
She told me a lot of times, I related branding to the culture, and the importance of having your employees as the ultimate personification of your brand, that they have to live the brand, because the brand and the products and services wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the people.
I really do believe that — it’s the values, it’s the skills, it’s all of the things about the employees. And how they live our brand values and how the products reflect those values, demonstrates the company culture.
So she told me she wanted me to stop working in marketing, and wanted me to report directly to her, as a contractor. She wanted me to help her think about NCR’s company culture. She wanted me to help her rethink the experiences and events that NCR created for its own people.
Doris Nagel 22:55
That’s perfect though, for somebody with an advertising background, to help change culture.
My experience is that a lot of culture change people are pedantic? Okay, that’s a big word. But they’re sort of methodical about it: you know, first we need to have awareness training, and then we need to implement this next flavor of the month.
Having worked in big companies, and some small ones, too, I know people get pretty cynical about that.
So I think it’s very interesting and brilliantly insightful of your client to realize that using advertising is the way to go. Advertising is about changing people’s behaviors and impressions. But it’s just damn sneaky.
It’s kind of like the difference between hitting people over the head with a hammer, and coming up from behind them over the head of the hammer.
Kevin Finke 23:52
I started this work with her, and I still work with her today. She has since left NCR she’s now on Wall Street. She’s the Chief People Officer for a FinTech company called iEX group. They run a stock exchange and they’re, a technology company much, much smaller [than NCR].
She still remains my mentor, my coach, my number one client. I love the work and many times, you know, she allows me freedom and I get to work directly with all of her leaders and helping them think through their strategies and their experiences that they’re creating.
And literally every time I’m being interviewed, I always have to say that Andrea Ledford has been a rock for me and has inspired me to a space where I’ve never been more alive, Doris. I’ve never felt more purposeful and meaningful. I’ve never felt my work has been worthwhile.
Why? Because I’m focused on creating great workplaces. And guess what the number one human activity is today on the planet work and guess what people feel about work and the companies they work for and the leaders they work for? Not very positively.
Doris Nagel 25:02
Yeah, the results of employee engagement surveys are pretty depressing.
So how do you go about changing a company’s culture?
I personally think it has to start at the top. And that’s often very difficult because I have seen over and over again where CEOs and senior management teams say things like, “Well, you need to make this culture change happen.” Ok, but the problem is, you’re not living the culture.
Kevin Finke 25:29
Yes! So when I started this work, I went back immediately to my experience from 2002 to 2010. I didn’t realize at the time that I was falling in love with culture, working at a multicultural agency.
You know, at that company, we were part of something called the American Latino study. We were studying what it means to be Latino in the United States of America.
We looked at what they bring from their countries of origin. Do they hold on to their cultural norms and values from their home countries? How are they assimilating? How is that changing who they are? How’s it changing when they have children, and then when the children are going into the school systems and bringing that American culture back into the home?
We studied that, and that’s where I started to realize that businesses hijacked the word “culture.”
Cultures have been around for 10s of 1000s of years. We have been organizing ourselves into cultures into tribes, communities, right? This is what we do. It is a human longing, a human need to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
So I stepped back from that, and I said, “Andrea, you’ve got a group of people, 40,000 people. What unites them?”
Well, what unites cultures — it doesn’t matter if it’s a work culture, a sports culture, religious culture, a family culture, a national, regional, local culture — at the heart of all cultures is what I call the shared story.
The shared story is the story that binds you many times. It’s made up of several stories, parables, morals, whatever those things are. But these shared stories very clearly articulate the beliefs of that culture.
Doris Nagel 27:16
Which is powerful. And it’s a good thing. But it can be a bad thing, too. I think people like finding other people that they have a shared set of values or a shared narrative with, right?
Kevin Finke 27:35
I think that’s so true. You know, at the heart of this shared story that kind of binds these cultures together are beliefs, and they are values. I think the best cultures who know who they are. They have no problem articulating those things.
And cultures have been written down somewhere, they’ve been archived there. They’re all around them. They are embraced and lived by their cultural group members.
And when you start to act on your beliefs and you act out on your values, you start to behave in certain ways. And you start then building systems practices, you start leaving behind artifacts, you have ritual ceremonies.
And by the way, that might sound very anthropological, and it might feel very much like we’re talking about a tribe in South America or Africa…
Doris Nagel
Or some Cro-Magnon tribe…
Kevin Finke 28:27
Right? But do you know how many rituals and ceremonies play themselves out every day at work? Look at the artifacts of work, the workplaces, and how they’re decorated, what they look like, as objects that people create. Those are artifacts, as they are for any culture, it doesn’t matter.
And so, as I began this work and my narrative started to build, what I started to realize is that in the companies that are celebrated for their culture, there is something internal that people feel, and I believe that it is a sense of belonging. Yes, the thing that I haven’t had a lot of my life.
Here’s the guy who’s lacked belonging, helping people find belonging. But there it is.
Doris Nagel 29:06
You know, without getting political here, it’s tough in our society here in the United States. And I think that’s probably true even in some countries, like, the UK, where there’s a huge push/pull about what the narrative is supposed to be, right?
There’s a very large segment of the population that wants things to be kind of the way they’ve always been, maybe a little backward looking – they don’t really want to change a lot of stuff, because they had it good. And it’s the culture they know.
But then there’s another large group of people who are like, “Hey, it ain’t ever going to be like that again. It’s the future, and the future should look like this.”
So I think it’s hard for people to find culture and sense of belonging with that kind of, you know, ripping at the fabric of what it is that it is to be an American, for example. It occurs to me that maybe some of the answer is that things need to get more local.
And maybe that’s kind of what you’re saying, too, with companies and their culture.
Kevin Finke 30:13
Yeah. And by the way, when I’m working with a company of 1500, it’s so different than working with a company with 15,000, or 150,000, because what you’re doing in cultural change work and the DEI work that I do, you know, it is transformational. And we humans do not like to change.
Doris Nagel
I think that’s true of pretty much all of us.
Kevin Finke 30:36
And why? It’s because we have these brains, and these brains have bias built into them for a reason.
They’ve kept us around for, you know, hundreds and thousands of years.
We have over 150 recognized biases in the human brain. And I don’t talk about all of those in my work. I just zero in on a few that I think are at the heart of some of the issues I find within company cultures. But you know, bias is our brain’s way of recognizing patterns and conserving energy, and yes, of keeping us alive and safe. That’s why we have bias in our brains. And it’s actually helped us.
But it hasn’t helped us as we’ve built systems and practices in business and government — we’ve had biased brains doing that. And there has been, you know, groups in power, and having their voices, their ideas, their beliefs, their values, maybe, you know, putting in systems and practices and a shared experience that honors those, but it doesn’t honor everyone.
And so that’s really hard work to change, you know, when you go inside a company, and you have to start changing systems and practices. It’s just that our brains don’t want that, you know,
Doris Nagel 31:47
Plus, layer on to that the fact that technology is pushing people and companies to change very rapidly. I’m waiting for a bigger dialogue about technology, because it’s all been sort of focused on what can we do, as opposed to really, what should we do?
Because the human brain is not really well-situated, nor are most organizations as currently put together to deal with constant, utter change, you know.
Kevin Finke 32:25
Yeah. Two things come to mind as we’re talking about this, Doris.
You said this earlier that you feel like culture starts at the top — and it does. People look up. They look to managers and leaders at all levels to see how they’re behaving. And that is setting the cultural norms for the company.
And what we’re seeing inside business today is that the employee is being empowered with tools and platforms and opportunities to provide feedback, both internally and externally. Because they’re not shy about sharing their perspectives or the experience they had with others. They want people to know what it’s like.
If you follow a company called Edelman and their Trust Barometer, you know they are watching trust basically decline in all of our major institutions. But the one saving grace right now is business. People do believe that business will hold a moral arc.
And it used to be the most respected, trusted voice inside businesses were leaders. So when a leader stood up and talked externally or internally, they were listened to and believed at a much higher rate than they are today.
The actual most respected and trusted voice inside companies today is the employee, the common employee, that just contributor, they want to hear their story, they trust that another person to tell them the stories, the narratives, the experience they’re having inside another company, a company
Doris Nagel 33:47
Like the power of Glassdoor, right? I mean, everybody who looks at a company to go work for, one of the first places they go look at is Glassdoor to see what other employees have said.
Kevin Finke 33:59
I call it HR, and the practice of HR is becoming consumerized. I’m getting ready to lead and workshop at a conference coming up in the next few months. And it’s about employer branding.
Employer branding is the branding of a company as an employer of choice. Apple has dominated technology markets and being a technology of choice.
And we understand that, like consumer marketing, companies are now being challenged. They’re realizing, “Wow, I have to manage my brand as an employer because it matters. If I want to compete in this complex world, I need to attract the best talent, the right talent. And then I’ve got to have control of the narrative and let people know.”
We do value proposition work for employees and sub employee groups. A really important part of a brand and a company now is their employer brand — you know? Who are the people who work there?
Today, we have a multi generational workforce. There are now five generations in the workforce, and that’s more age-diverse than it’s ever been before. It’s also more diverse than it’s ever been, especially when it comes to race, ethnicity, gender.
But company systems and practices aren’t always equitable for race, ethnicity, age. I myself am a proud member of the LGBT community. I own a minority certified diverse business.
And I have many community members who are not comfortable expressing who they are at work. And that’s not right. They’re lacking, like many other people, race, ethnicity, gender, a sense of belonging, a sense that I can be myself, a sense that my workplace is fair and impartial and values my voice as much as anyone else’s voice.
And this is one of the problems at the core of cultural issues today, and of DEI issues.
Doris Nagel 35:50
So what happens when people can’t express who they are at work, from a cultural standpoint, racial, sexual, religious, all the different facets that we have — what happens, if people can’t be themselves at work?
Kevin Finke 36:07
One, you’re not getting their best work. So they’ll start to disengage.
And engagement is the sense of connection and belonging you feel to this company, and to the people that you work with every day. [Disengaged employees] will start to give less discretionary effort. They’ll start being less proud of that company and maybe not sharing as much socially, externally or even internally.
They’ll stop doing extracurricular work, or taking on extra projects. They’ll do exactly what they need to do to try to get by to keep making money and to not get into a situation where they might be fired, but they’re probably looking eventually to leave.
So their intention to stay decreases over time. And that’s what happens. You are not getting the best work from them.
Doris Nagel 36:50
There’s been you know, a lot of talk about the great resignation, the great quit, even “quiet quitting.” It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation. Maybe somebody’s already done that, but I haven’t seen it.
Kevin Finke 37:03
I have for gender. Women are leaving the workforce are their companies at much higher rates than men.
So gender-wise more women, because of the pandemic and because of the world we find ourselves in today, are leaving to either go home to be with their families and their children. Or they’re leaving to go back to school to get another degree. They’re leaving to go to another company that maybe treats women more equitably with their systems and practices. Whatever — they’re leaving,
Doris Nagel 37:32
They’re also leaving to start companies that they can be in charge of. The fastest-growing demographic of new entrepreneurs in this country are women-owned businesses and particularly, women of color who have started businesses.
Kevin Finke 37:47
Yes. And I know that in my community, there’s substantial growth in small businesses, even inside the LGBTQ community. I study data from the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in Georgia, which we are proud members of, as a diverse business.
Lesbians over index as well, and other groups within the LGBTQ community are also starting businesses at higher rates as well.
So they’re doing what I did, Doris, in 2010. They’re taking back control. They are saying, “I’m done giving my strengths, my talents, my skills, my blood, my sweat, my tears to companies that don’t treat me fairly, that don’t offer me the same opportunities, that don’t care about people as much as I think they should.”
And in this stressful world that we find ourselves in today, they’re taking control back into their own hands, looking for other companies that will honor them, and help hopefully create a more sense of well-being and belonging in them. Or they’re going out and starting their own companies to live those values.
Doris Nagel 38:49
How do you help companies improve their diversity and inclusion to make those different groups of people feel more engaged and accepted?
Kevin Finke 39:02
I’m working with a handful of clients right now, specifically in this space.
And one of the first things is that you have to have a perspective, which leads to a vision of what you believe.
Sometimes that vision extends outside the four walls of work. Some companies are becoming more activist-oriented, especially companies in the technology sector. Many of them are voicing their concerns over social justice issues and other social issues. And you see that play itself out every day.
But I always tell my clients, “Hey, don’t start talking outside first.” First, make sure you’re dealing with what’s in your control – the company, your systems, your practices, your rituals, your ceremonies, your shared experiences. Make sure that that is more equitable, fairer and more inclusive. Work on that first.
The first thing to do is articulate a vision. And from that vision, we start to have some outcomes. And I lead clients through a strategic process to create a D&I strategy.
And what that does is it builds a perspective and a narrative about what this company is. It starts to set the tone of what they’re going to start evolving, changing, transforming to.
I compare the DNI strategy work sometimes to sustainability. Sustainability is another topic that has woven itself through all facets and all functions of business. And we believe that DNI should have the same seat at the table that sustainability.
Because ultimately, this is about not taking care of the planet. This is about taking care of human beings. Human beings that are in your control, within your culture, right.
And so we have to get leadership aligned and vulnerable. Because that’s really what this DEI movement — diversity, equity inclusion – is all about. Some people add B and J — belonging and justice — to their acronyms.
But I think the heart of this is about companies and leaders becoming more open, transparent, vulnerable, courageous, and empathetic. These are things that are not easy for humas these days now.
And for me, these are often feminine, nurturing qualities. The reason I feel like I was called into my business, why it was called into existence was to amplify this. I feel like that’s really what is at the heart of that work.
So how you do that is by starting with leadership having the vision. Then they also need an understanding of the behaviors we’re doing well that promote inclusivity and belonging. What are those behaviors? How are we doing on those behaviors as a leadership team?
Then ask what could we start doing to improve this. Many times that work revolves around bias and self-awareness. For bias, it’s about it’s about training them to have critical and courageous conversations with their people, because DEI work is uncomfortable for many leaders.
It’s uncomfortable having hard conversations in general, and then you layer on to it things like race and ethnicity and gender, and it gets even more murky and dark.
Doris Nagel 42:14
I think the vulnerability is a wonderful way to put it, because I think it requires a willingness to say stupid things and admit you’re going to say some stupid and possibly insensitive things. And, you know, we all have as human beings biases. I mean, I think there’s been a lot of companies lately, focusing on implicit bias. And we all have it.
But I’ll just put it out there and raise my had. When I got your first email and you told me you were a certified minority business, I made a stupid assumption. I immediately thought – well, you know what I thought didn’t, don’t you?
I assumed that you were black. That was the first thing that popped into my head. Now, was that right? No, it was not.
And it’s embarrassing when you think of yourself as a curious person, an enlightened person. And then you make that kind of assumption, and you catch yourself.
Or maybe you don’t catch yourself, and maybe someone else catches you. You feel stupid, you know? And then you start to think, well, maybe I shouldn’t even say anything, because I’m going to say something really stupid.
Kevin Finke 43:32
Yeah, I might get cancelled. Right? I don’t want to say rightfully so or rightfully not, but shouldn’t we care about getting as much control and awareness of this brain that is so wonderful and makes us who we are today? The fact that you were even aware of it is good. I have had to train leaders how to be more mindful and aware that they even have bias. And they don’t like to think they have any biases.
Doris Nagel
Although we all do.
Kevin Finke 44:04
One of the biases that we all have is an inclusion bias. One of our 150 unconscious biases is an inclusion bias. And that bias says to us every day, “Beware of strangers.”
Doris Nagel
Right. Why should I hire this person who seems like a flake, way different from me?
Kevin Finke
As I say, beware of strangers. It can save your life.
But that bias also can make you do things and make decisions, like hiring decisions and all sorts of different leadership decisions, that don’t help create a sense of belonging or equity inside your own company.
We have to talk about these things, we have to be aware of them. And so it’s important to train leaders about bias.
You know, a lot of the work we do is founded in design. We call ourselves an experience design company. And we’re just designing the work experience. You know, the experience of going to work every day and everything that that entails. We can use design to solve all sorts of problems.
And the heart of all design begins with empathy. There’s a massive call for empathy today. On the consumer side of companies, we have no problem talking about empathy. We will have empathy for our consumers, for our customers, what they like, what they don’t like, what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking.
We will listen to them, and we will evolve our products will evolve our services for our customers.
Doris Nagel
Yeah, but a lot of your employees are also consumers. So hello!
Kevin Finke 45:29
Right? But then you say, “Oh, I also need to have empathy on this side of the house. And I actually have to care about the 3000 people that work here, and what they’re thinking and feeling like. No, they don’t want that.
But leadership is changing. You cannot be a leader from the 80s 90s the early 2000s any longer. The ways that we used to lead through command and control is not how you get to psychological safety and trust.
Doris Nagel 45:56
All of those are somewhat stereotypical feminine qualities and yet, women are leaving the corporate world more than ever before.
Sounds like you have your life’s work and then some, Kevin!
Kevin Finke 46:08
It’s interesting to be a small business owner. When I started the company, the consumer side is what brought us out.
In May, we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary. May of 2012 is when I started Experience Willow. In the first two years, we were very much on the customer/consumer experience side. And that industry has burgeoned – it’s just growing and growing and growing.
But then in 2014, I met Andrea at NCR and she pulled me over to the HR side. And since then, 100% of our revenue is focused on this culture and effects work.
But for me, it always comes back to just being a creative problem solver. I solved problems over on the consumer side, and now I’m solving them over here on the employer side. I’m using my design skills and my design sensibility to teach my clients how to be designers and problem solvers.
In the last two years, as you know, George Floyd happened and there has been an upswell in the social justice movement. Even in my own community, my trans brothers and sisters, they feel for them and their work experiences.
But it’s happening at a time when I’m so glad I’m a designer, and I’m so glad I’ve learned how to have empathy and how to teach empathy.
Because I think it is teachable. And it is one of the top skills you have to have as a leader today in the workplace. In fact, I’m waving this flag that the chief executive officer should become the chief empathy officer,
I hope that CEOs hear me say that, because if you aren’t empathetic yourself, your people will not be. They might continue being empathetic on the consumer side because of established practices of developing products and services. And that empathy comes easily.
But over here on the employee side, like there’s never been a more important call for leaders to be better listeners, communicators, and conversationalists. And at the heart of all that is empathy — knowing what people are thinking, maybe actually feeling what they’re feeling.
And that’s just scary for a lot of people.
Doris Nagel 48:16
I love that you focus on empathy.
Another word you use on your website quite often is “curiosity”. And since I’m a curious person, I thought, “How very interesting. I wonder how the Willow Experience uses curiosity to help clients/”
Kevin Finke 48:35
I’ll share the story behind curiosity. You’ve heard me use this word several times already.
I’m a founder, and many times the founder’s story is the company story. I’ve attended enough workshops; I now even do purpose workshops helping companies identify their purpose.
There’s a really big uptick in companies trying to identify their purpose. And purpose is both a contribution and an impact. So what is it that you contribute to the world? And what does that do to the world where you’re contributing it?
And as I did the work on myself, articulating my own purpose statement, the words curiosity, learner, all of that kept coming back at me, from people I worked with, people that I reported into.
I did a lot of fun activities. I was writing and talking and thinking about what Willow was going to be. And I knew it probably was going to be about shared values, a shared purpose story that was going to be at the heart of our company.
But I knew I needed to identify my own purpose and values. And curiosity was something that kept coming back. The other thing that kept coming back for me was contagious, infectious, which are not the best words during a pandemic…
Doris Nagel
Not exactly [laughing].
Kevin Finke 49:49
But people always talk about my energy when I walk into a room or when I’m part of a conversation. It doesn’t matter if I’m positive or negative, people feel my energy.
So I have to do work on myself to make sure that I try to stay as positive as possible in my conversations, because sometimes my frustration with some of my clients probably [wasn’t optimal].
Doris Nagel
There is certainly a need for what you do, but it is tough because — as you say — we human beings aren’t particularly receptive to change.
We can say we want to change. A lot of us want to get on that treadmill, follow the diet, take our meds, eat healthier — I mean, go through the list of things.
We’re just not very good at it.
Kevin Finke 50:34
No. No, we’re not. But I am good at being curious. I’ve been curious my entire life.
I actually think that our we’re born with our purpose. I think we were born exactly in the moment that we were supposed to be here, so that when we become business owners, we can live our purpose with our entire life.
My curiosity and my contagious infectious energy have been with me throughout my life. I knew that that my contribution to ignite a contagious curiosity in others. I wanted to do that. But my impact was something I’ve been struggling to articulate until lately.
I now realize my impact is better workplaces and better lives, because better work equals better lives. That’s especially true today, when so many of us desk workers or knowledge workers are working from our homes. So the energy of work is in our homes. So we need to care about employees having a great work experience.
We want to bring home that energy from work in and we want to be fully alive. At work, we want to feel that energy, and we want to share that energy with our family and our children. We want to be a role model for that kind of adult.
So, igniting a courageous curiosity that creates a better world and better lives is my purpose. And I just wrote this blog for Willow about this. If you go to experiencewillow.com, I wrote about my top five leadership lessons as a small business owner in our first 10 years.
And the number two lesson in that blog was allow yourself to be led.
[As a founder or CEO of a startup,] you’re going to be at the top. But you still have to be led by something: an idea, a purpose, a vision, and that has to ignite you.
Angela Duckworth’s work around grit shows us that if you have this goal, you will do anything to pursue that, and it gives you resilience, it gives you energy. Maybe you make a mistake, or you don’t land the piece of business you wanted. But that drive is still there.
So I think that you have to be led. And I’m led by my purpose every day. I find myself screening my clients now. Do they really want to get curious? Do they really care, and why? Or are they just checking a box?
I personally don’t do well, and my company doesn’t do well either, with companies and leaders who want to check a box. That is not us.
And that, to me is a really, really important lesson for your listeners out there. Allow yourself to be led by something, wherever that leads.
Doris Nagel
That is great advice. You know, Kevin, the hour just absolutely zipped by, I feel like I could sit and chat with you for another hour, two hours. I have more questions, so maybe we’ll get you to come back on the show and do a reprise visit.
But I want to wrap up by letting you give listeners a chance to hear about how to get in touch with you learn more about what your company does, and some of the resources and interesting things that are on your website that they might want to check out.
Kevin Finke
Sure. Our website is experiencewillow.com. If you go there, the story of our company is pretty prominent right on the homepage. You can click into case studies of work that we’ve done both in the consumer in the employee space.
I’m really focused in our 10th year around what I’m calling “designing for belonging.” We’re sort of heading into what I think of as a third phase or a third service offering in our business, which is our own intellectual property.
I’m exploring potentially authoring my first book. Doris, I can’t believe that’s happening!
I don’t know if it’ll have the title “Designing for Belonging,” but that’s what it is going to be about. Because I love this topic, so that’s really what it’s going to be about.
In the meantime, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook, also on Instagram There, you’ll see I do a lot of speaking, a lot of hosting, and facilitating. And this idea of designing for belonging is at the heart of all the conversations I’m having.
It’s where I’m spending the majority of my time, and you can learn more about that at our website as well. And please, if I’ve sparked an interest in you and I’ve ignited your curiosity, I’d love to hear from you.
You can contact us via the website, and I’ll get right back to you.
Doris Nagel 1:04:58
Kevin, thanks so much for being on the show this week. It was a delight to have you, and inspiring as well.
Kevin Finke
Doris, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And I, I look forward to my second visit, whenever that happens in the future.
Doris Nagel
Well, I look forward to staying in touch because you couldn’t see me as we were chatting, but I was nodding and wanting to jump in and add things because I just kept thinking, “Yes, yes, yes!” So it was it was really a delight to have you.
And thanks to all my listeners, you’re the reason I do this.
Check out my new radio show website, the savvy entrepreneur.org. You’ll find lots of resources for free resources for entrepreneurs and small businesspeople there.
My door is always open for comments and questions, suggestions, or just to shoot the breeze. Email me at dnagel@thesavvyentrepreneur.org. You’ll always get a response back from me.
Be sure to join me again next Saturday at 11am Central noon, Eastern.
But until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
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