Kevin Budelmann on The Connection Between Purpose, Brand, and Experience

Kevin Budelmann on The Connection Between Purpose, Brand and Experience

[00:00:00] Welcome to be customer led, where we’ll explore how leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the accidents and behaviors of lawyers and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host of Bill’s staikos.

[00:00:33] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another week of be customer led. I’m your host bill staikos. I’ve got a great guest for us this week. Kevin is interested in strategic design for business education, healthcare, and society. Those are really big things for, for one person to be focused on. Kevin is president and co-founder of people.

[00:00:51] Design co founded the company over 20 years ago, I believe. And we’ll get into that. And people design as a strategy and human centered design firm based in Michigan. And besides serving as an advisor to clients, Kevin is also an adjunct professor, excuse me, at Northwestern university and is the former global president of the IXDA or the interaction design association, which is a great organization and, or was, I should say, and holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon university, which has an unbelievable design program.

[00:01:19] Uh, I’ve hired someone out of that program in the past. Uh, and the it Institute of design and Kevin has a book, a brand identity essentials, and it’s available not only in six languages, but also has a second edition. Kevin, welcome to the show. So, so excited to have you here.

[00:01:34] Kevin Budelmann: Thank you so much for inviting me.

[00:01:36] I’m I’m pleased and honored to be. Um, and I

[00:01:38] Bill Staikos: can’t, so there’s so much like to talk to you about, I know we’ve got about 30 minutes for a show, but I’m curious, like you started people design, you know, over 20 years ago, I believe. Just tell us, tell our listeners just a little bit about your story and because you know, you come from, you know, really big design organizations and, you know, you’ve got a fascinating story, so just share it with us, for

[00:01:59] Kevin Budelmann: sure.

[00:02:00] Absolutely. Well, thank you very much. Well, as you mentioned, I, I, I went to my undergraduate work at Carnegie Mellon at 15. And, uh, if you’re familiar with Carnegie Mellon as good design program, as you mentioned, but it’s also very technology oriented, uh, uh, school, you know, a lot of tech, a lot of, uh, engineers and computer science.

[00:02:18] And so, you know, I was exposed pretty early on to not only human centered design concepts, but a pretty heavy dose of technologies. And of course, this is sort of early days in interaction design and user experience design and so on. So I think that has sort of fed into my, sort of my, uh, psyche throughout my career.

[00:02:37] And so, um, and then, uh, uh, after college I got a job at Herman Miller manufacturer in the Midwest, which is kind of a design leader in the furniture design space, but a more sort of a traditional sense. You know, that kind of led into this sort of a.com era. And so I’ve made about my experience has been kind of based on this sort of technology front, but then, you know, sort of this more traditional sort of company sort of manufacturing base in particular, which has been informed by practice.

[00:03:03] And so I, at the end of this, not too long into my career started this company have been doing that for 25 years.

[00:03:08] Bill Staikos: Unbelievable. So tell us a little bit about people design before. Before we start sort of extracting information from your brain a little bit for listeners. So you work with clients at an intersection of business brand services on, so what does that mean?

[00:03:22] If you can help our, our listeners and our audience understand that? And how are you working with clients? Like what’s like a typical engagement.

[00:03:28] Kevin Budelmann: Sure. Uh, well, so I, you know, we think about it like this there, there’s kind of a, there’s a, a framework. If you can imagine a two by two, I mean, if you imagine sort of meaning and engagement across the.

[00:03:40] And across the side, you can imagine sort of internal and external audiences. And if you think about the intersection. Meaning for external audiences like customers, its brand, essentially, if you think about, you know, uh, meaning for internal audiences, it’s essentially purpose, right? And you think about the intersection of engagement and customers as customer experience and engagement and internal teams, it’s employee experience.

[00:04:04] So for us, it’s just a way to think about kind of these in our minds of these, these two kind of macro issues, engagement, and, uh, perp and, uh, And it kind of overlaps. So our projects are, you know, based on sort of design thinking approaches for the most part know innovation processes that are established in a lot of places.

[00:04:24] And we have our own flavor for, for doing these things. But, you know, it’s, it’s based on going through kind of methods that to solve kind of strategic problems and, you know, it’s, it can bridge, uh, brand issues and customer experience issues. And I think, you know, trust these things are quite related.

[00:04:40] That’s not always true for everyone, but you know, for us, it’s about connecting those dots.

[00:04:45] Bill Staikos: So I love that. So let’s talk about purpose for a second. So I think largely due to the pandemic, not that brand purpose wasn’t important before, but certainly the pandemic really brought. Conversation to the, for much more.

[00:04:57] Yeah. Y like help us understand maybe for sort of the folks that are not in marketing or from an employee experience perspective. Talk to us a little about the interconnectivity of purpose and brand, because I think that’s a really important one and there is an intersection there, right? Yeah,

[00:05:14] Kevin Budelmann: absolutely.

[00:05:15] Yeah. I think, you know, there’s for us, but what informs our work is the idea of, you know, we think about change and choice. And what I mean by that is we are, all of us are undergoing this sort of macro level of change. I mean, whether it’s, you know, technology change, uh, globalization, climate change, these things are informing nearly everybody’s work today.

[00:05:36] Right? And I think these changes are forcing organizations to make different kinds of choices. And the landscape is continuing to kind of shift from kind of a, let’s say an industrial land. Um, which I think had a different set of criteria for success than kind of an information landscape. And so the choices I think organizations have to make, have to do with sort of this meaning and engagement, as I mentioned, but as it relates to purpose, I think that in, as you mentioned, like the pandemic, you know, I, I’m sort of a believer that the pandemic obviously has a lot of unique characteristics, but in many ways it’s also just accelerated.

[00:06:10] Uh, trends that were already underway. I mean, so whether it’s, you know, working from home, you know, sort of breaking apart sort of the 40 hour work week, I mean, there, there are lots of things that were, there were undercurrents and these sort of Mason trends already before the pandemic independent advocate just kind of brought them to the fore, I think, as it pertains to purpose.

[00:06:28] The reason why we talk about meaning is that I think increasingly we talked about, you know, at our organization kind of an era of choice, we’ve moved from this industrial landscape. You know, like, I think it was Henry Ford who famously said, you can have any color you want and any color car you want, as long as it’s black.

[00:06:44] Right. You know, the industrial era wasn’t about choice. It was just about scale. It was about getting a car into everybody’s garage. And now we have many more choices. Consumers have choices, individuals have choices. And you know, so they’re the, in our minds, the overlap between Branden purpose, as I mentioned these meaning, and, and from our standpoint, the reason why.

[00:07:08] Choose as a customer to work, to engage with a company and buy their product or engage in their service is very similar to the same, to the reason why an employee would want to work there. And, you know, we are for many organizations who are looking for top talent. I mean, the sort of the, the attraction and retention is a, is a massive issue.

[00:07:29] And so, you know, from our perspective, these, these things are, you know, overlap and I think it’s not always intuitive. I think for people, I think it’s. For example with a, uh, a university that had that. It was one department that was actually as the marketing group recruiting, you know, high school kids into their undergraduate program and another department, it wasn’t so much attraction retention, but it was about getting donations to the school.

[00:07:51] Right. So it was sort of fundraising and they had two separate tracks. So together often had two separate messages that were they’re launching simultaneously. And we said that. These things need to be connected. Like the reason you would give money to the school is very related to the same brand. So the reason why you’d send your kid to the school, you know, and I think it’s similar for sort of the, the idea of employee, meaning the employee engagement in another way to think about sort of purpose then, you know, the reason, you know, so I think that the pandemic has just highlighted, you know, is this a sort of accelerated these trends and highlighted people’s, you know, their ability to make these choices.

[00:08:27] Put the onus on these organizations to be clear about what their purpose actually is

[00:08:32] Bill Staikos: and that acceleration. I mean, I get that there were some companies certainly before the pandemic that were really getting that. And I think that their message just become became even louder. Right? Like, you know, look at, you know, like Patagonia is a great example of that on some level, right.

[00:08:49] Um, Tesla, even on some level, why. Why is that so hard to do though? Right? Like if a pandemic accelerated that and people are like, oh my gosh, we really kind of doubled down on this effort. Why did it need that pen? And I hate to focus on this, on the pandemic. I’m ready to get past it, just like everybody else.

[00:09:07] But like, why did it take that to wake people up to the fact that more effort needs to be put here, resources, uh, et cetera, and the organization and cross collab, you know, cross collaboratively across an organization. Is it just cause it’s hard work and different groups need to come together or is it people weren’t really seeing the need for it or what’s your take on that?

[00:09:30] I’m curious.

[00:09:30] Kevin Budelmann: I mean, my feeling is that the. Because it’s an accelerate. We move from a state where it was kind of the proverbial frog in the water. That’s slowly getting warmer and starts to boil. I mean, you, don’t, what happens is that, you know, it’s hard to see changes when they’re slow moving and organizations that people resist change.

[00:09:48] I mean, I w I feel like in some respects, we’re sort of in the change business, which is to say helping organizations navigate these, these macro changes, or what is it, what is the impact on their organization? And so I think that. The extent to which the pandemic just had this sudden change. I think it was very general.

[00:10:06] Again, but some of these trends you could have, you could have predicted and kind of were already underway, but it just sort of, it forced the issue. Right. So, you know, Simon Sineck has been out and talking and talking about, start with why for some time. So it’s not like the purpose discussion was already kind of out there, but it was, I think it was, it was easy to see as kind of more a superfluous in some cases, you know, some people would say like, yeah, you know, that sounds cool.

[00:10:27] Or let’s, let’s talk about that when it comes to recruiting or like, we got to get those millennials in here or whatever it is, But I mean, you know, I think what’s happened now is that you have, you know, you’re having direct conflicts with key employees saying, you know, I don’t think I want to go back to the office or I would like to start working from some other.

[00:10:46] And, you know, I, I, and if you don’t accept my terms, Mr. Miss employer, I just find another nother employer. Who’s willing to accept those, those conditions. Then even some of the best employers in the world. I mean, it’s like, I think apple famously, it seemed, but I keep, I think they’ve made two or three announcements about everybody coming back to their.

[00:11:03] You know, beautiful campus that, you know, people are not necessarily wanting to do that. Some of their really important people. So I think everyone has started to, you know, it’s forcing an organization to be a little bit clear about why should you work for this organization, obviously there’s money. And, but getting over this, you know, the, the obstacle of, you know, thinking about purpose is, is it can be hard because in part, as I mentioned, I think that for a lot of organizations that were, I think, born out of, you know, let’s say the late stage kind of industrial area, Where you’re just, you know, there’s a lot of, sort of fast follower kind of models where it’s just like, you know, we don’t really have a purpose so much as we’re going to copy that company to do it slightly better.

[00:11:40] We hope, you know, that’s not much of a purpose, but ultimately in terms of trying to attract a really talented person who says like, look, join our, you know, get on board with our.

[00:11:50] Bill Staikos: I, uh, I worked for a bank at one point, uh, not too long ago where their new mantra was being customer obsessed. I’m like, I’ve heard this one before, but it almost to your point though, it kind of, it fell hollow on a lot of folks because the organization was not giving them the tools, the resources, the platforms, to be able to be customer obsessed.

[00:12:12] Much like an Amazon does in so many different ways. And, uh, it was tough for folks to say, okay, I want to be there. I hear you, but we’re not getting there because you can’t do X, Y, and Z. That same institution, by the way, is telling people to come back to the office or right. Or what I do wonder sometimes.

[00:12:30] And I see this a lot, purely more on the customer experience side. And I wonder if it’s sometimes due to. In a lot of places, your customer experience function could be different or not connected to your marketing function as well. Like there’s so much out there that is also confusing, I think, and people are just kind of like just working in their lanes.

[00:12:52] Are you seeing a shift there as well, and maybe that’s driven by the pandemic or otherwise, but you know, th and your work and the clients that you’re working with, are they trying to get to a place where. They can employ sort of service design or human centered design tools, uh, and a much more integrated and cross-functional way, or are they still in the, okay, we want to do this, but we want mark and do their job and, you know, see, actually do their job and finance do their job, et

[00:13:19] Kevin Budelmann: cetera.

[00:13:20] Yeah. I mean, I think everybody is in their own sort of state of evolution in a sense, right. I mean, it’s. One of the things that we overtly tried to do in an initial engagement with a new customer is trying to understand where they’re coming from. And there are all these signals in terms of how, you know, what, how do they describe their functions and departments?

[00:13:40] What terms did they use? And just even, you know, what do these ideas mean to them? Do they, have they thought of it? Do they have this mature practice or are they just learning about it on sort of, sort of more, a more basic. Um, which isn’t to say that we have it all figured out. I mean, I think all of us yourself included, right?

[00:13:55] We’re all, this is, uh, I think these are new topics, frankly. I think that I’ve often I started sorta developed kind of a philosophy that we sort of have drawn our departmental boundaries kind of in the wrong places and part, I think that, again, it’s an industrial paradigm. I think. You know, every organization has its silos, right?

[00:14:16] Where marketing is a silo and customer services, a silo and sales is a silo and operations is a silo. And, you know, it’s, it’s understandable why, and it, cause because I actually think that, you know, again, sort of the industrial mindset, it’s, it’s almost like you think about it as an assembly line, literally.

[00:14:32] Right? So you can move from one department to another. And of course, if you look at it through the lens of a customer, they don’t care which department. Half is, is, is making these things happen. They just have an experience and they have an impression. And so I think it’s reorienting, uh, an organization to start thinking this way.

[00:14:50] And I think it’s, while it’s very popular and has been for the last, nearly my whole career to talk about cross-functional teams. I think that the reality for most people in a, in a corporate environment is that the combination of. Shared calendaring and cross-functional teams means that everybody’s in meetings all the time.

[00:15:08] Right. Which I don’t know if that’s effective either. Right? I mean, so I think that the, you see the emergence of different kinds of disciplines. So I think the idea of talking about customer experience as an example is just, just saying that it’s having a department or having a person, a leader in that space.

[00:15:23] Is at least a planting a flag and say, this is an important thing to actually think about now what that actually means on the ground for an organization. And depending on its scale, um, can, can vary.

[00:15:34] Bill Staikos: So I’m seeing a lot more, I feel like we went from departmental silos to being, you know, PR product led organizations.

[00:15:45] Right. That kind of feels like it’s the new, big kind of term, the ones that are getting it more. And maybe taking it from product to something new is really being much more journey driven and even organizing that way. Do you see something different? Like when you like the clients that you’re working with that are just completely enlightened by this stuff, how are they organized for success?

[00:16:07] Cause I’m always fascinated by how do you go from purpose? To an actual product or service to employees actually knowing what they’re supposed to do and deliver that with excellence every day and wanting to right. Cause they’re connected to that purpose and then the customer even there. And that may lead into my next question a little bit, but what kind of models are you seeing?

[00:16:30] The companies that are getting it right? What are they doing differently? Organizations.

[00:16:34] Kevin Budelmann: Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, it’s interesting. I had a colleague of mine who was actually head of the global design, uh, team at IBM and he was describing for me how, you know, part of his objective was to basically create design leadership at the GM level, within each of these sort of macro parts of the organization to kind of ride alongside the business lead to sort of evangelize these ideas.

[00:16:57] That’s why I think he saw his role as kind of an evangelist since. I think that there, there, there are different kinds of structures. I think that one of the indicators are whether or not people are investing in this in the first place, but I think that’s a lot of dialogue about, at least in the design world to talk about design ops is become increasingly this, this term does you’re right.

[00:17:15] Or just even having a customer experience group or a leader in that, in that space. I think there are different models. I, I, my belief is that a lot of it should be journey based. I, I think, I think. You mean the way we connect these ideas too, is to think about it as if you think about a brand or a value proposition as a kind of promise, you know, that you’re, you’re staking a claim in the marketplace about we’re, we’re gonna, we’re gonna represent this to our customers or our stakeholders, our employees, for that matter, the journey, the actual experience is the way you’re delivering on that promise.

[00:17:46] And in my mind, it’s like nearly everything your organization does, should be in service of delivering on that promise. Now how that happens under the. It can vary based on, you know, there are lots of, there are complexities. I, you know, I think about it as a systems design problem, in a sense, because there’s, you know, there, there are digital interactions that are physical interactions.

[00:18:06] There are personal interaction, some combination of these things. There are, there are new opportunities with new technology to create. Physical ones to become digital ones. There might be price reasons to do that. Also data mining reasons to do it. Sure. So it’s, it’s the, you know, there’s this continued flow, but I think, yeah, the, the journey, it’s a bit of a cliche, but I think it’s, it’s sort of an endless, you know, trying to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

[00:18:30] Right. I mean, this is the whole, you know, it’s like, there’s kind of a, you know, trying to get people to buy into the philosophy so you can actually get into the tip of practice.

[00:18:41] Bill Staikos: I like in my, where I am at Medallia a lot. There’s a lot of conversation among organizations about connecting that purpose right down and, you know, through brand, into the experience that’s being delivered.

[00:18:54] This is really hard work by the way. Like, it’s not, I mean, it’s not like, Hey, we’re going to do this. And in six months we’re going to get this mostly. What questions should. Folks be asking themselves to understand that connection and maybe even get to start doing the work. I feel like I’m a big believer in trying to understand, like, okay, not just what is a problem, but what are the right questions that we should be asking ourselves as a business?

[00:19:20] Like, what are some of the things that maybe you’re bringing to the conversation with clients and asking them that they should start to be thinking about and answering as an organization to be able to start to connect those things through.

[00:19:33] Kevin Budelmann: Yeah, I think, I mean, it sounds, it’s interesting because I think, I mean, the starting place is always this question of like the you’re looking at the customer first and it could be in customer centered in the first place or user centered.

[00:19:44] And I mean, I think for people who have been in this practice for a long time, It seems obvious. But as I say, I mean, I just literally had an experience not too long ago with an executive. And I was, it was funny there I was on one of their jet, you know, corporate jet things are flying around and I just kind of made this you, so you gotta look at the customer and you, and you get my count type, flip it around you basically, it was like a light bulb for him.

[00:20:05] Like he just literally had never really thought of, so in a way that’s basic, but then, you know, it goes from there. I think there are lots of tenants, like. You know, one of them that we sort of subscribed to is the idea of, uh, that organizations need to absorb complexity. I think that one of the, again, the industrial paradigms that we’ve all become accustomed to, whether it’s through six Sigma and the quality movement, is it sort of even like the outsourcing movement, like where basically you stick to your core competency, you outsource all the other complexity.

[00:20:35] Well what’s happened is that I think that there’s, there’s an argument that can be made that. Better. And often that means simpler experiences for the customer. The organization has to deliberately take on more complexity, which, you know, it’s almost like, you know, for, for a lot of organizations that they’re designed to repel that almost like a disease, right.

[00:20:57] Then they don’t want to take on any more complexity. It just means costs. And they’re always trying to whittle down costs, but in order to create that better experience, there has to be a deliberate kind of an understanding and a belief. That they needed to take on additional things in order to make it easier for that customer.

[00:21:13] So, as an example, so I think that there are, there are sort of lenses that you can look at these things to try to think about the customer experience. We had. We, we wrote a piece not long ago on, you know, like 25 lenses for a customer experience, as an example, just as a way to look at this journey and for a variety of different ways, looking at it in terms of inputs and outputs, looking at it as a, as a story.

[00:21:36] Looking at it, as it, as, you know, time increments, interactions along the way, what are the incremental steps versus the, you know, the small pictures versus the big pictures. So, you know, there’s a lot to be done as you well know in this space, but so much of it is like getting people on board by sort of conceptually, what are we actually trying to achieve here in terms of the, you know, and again, it’s like, we want it to be meaningful.

[00:21:58] We have to engage these people in order to engage them. And there’s a lot in our minds, but with those words, I mean, you have to, you’d have to know who’s on the other side of the table, which kind of implies user research and customer research. So yeah,

[00:22:11] Bill Staikos: I do think sometimes, I mean, and this is really hard to do still, even because the technology doesn’t exist to be able to do it on some level, but connecting the employee journey and the customer journey.

[00:22:24] To understand the impact and the flow. That way you can do that with data on some level, right? Like what are the behaviors that drive, you know, better journeys in sort of in the moment, et cetera. But I think we’re probably like a couple of years off and like truly being able to connect the two and understand the impact of these.

[00:22:41] I want to take it down maybe into service design, and just kind of keep on kind of going down a layer, share a little bit. Sure. Characterize service design differently than other design work, perhaps just there may be listeners that aren’t familiar with what the term. Sure. And why is it important? The context of customer experience or even perhaps, you know, like big CX right.

[00:23:01] As we

[00:23:01] Kevin Budelmann: call it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s, um, and I’m sure you could, you could fill in also a lot of these bikes I’m sure. But I think that the, you know, in my experience that there’s. Because so many of these disciplines are emerging still and kind of being defined on the fly and that we’re still, well, we’ll be reading a book that it’s being written right now, probably next year.

[00:23:21] Right. So, I mean, and I think it’s because there, there are new things, there’s a lot of new ideas emerging, but as a result, there’s not always an agreement, even on terms. I believe. So one of the basics is even, you know, customer versus user, right. User language comes more from usually from the design world.

[00:23:39] And it’s a bit more of a. There’s an implication about usability and, you know, sort of user centeredness. And that’s in that sense that, whereas obviously customer has this implication about the business objective and profitability, let’s say, and of course, you know, I, and I’ve worked with organizations who see the CEO must these, these two things is sort of almost like internally their enemies, right?

[00:24:00] Like the people are advocating for the users. Aren’t, you know, they don’t like the marketing people and vice versa. And if obviously the organizations who can make these things work together are the ones who are going to succeed. So, anyway, to answer your question more directly, I think the term service design again, design is in my experience has been more common in.

[00:24:21] Um, it’s, it’s pretty well understood that in fact, I was just talking to a client of ours who’s um, based in Europe and the, you know, part of the question for the, the PR project advocate was saying, how can I, I can’t find any service designers in north America. So try to hire in Northern America.

[00:24:34] Interesting. And I said it’s because when people don’t use that term here, that’s probably a part of my answer. Right? I mean, people use other words, they talk about user experience or they. You know, customer experience. Yeah. But of course, I don’t mean to trivialize the fact that those terms there, that also imply that people are coming from very different worlds sometimes.

[00:24:53] Right. I mean, they might be coming from the hospitality world and customer service world and have nothing to do with design at all. Correct. And then other people are looking at it from kind of a user, you know, so it’s kind of top down, bottom up in a sense, but so, you know, so I think. I think people can debate about the difference between let’s say service design versus customer experience.

[00:25:13] I mean, it’s kind of like service design is an activity to work on that journey customer experience as a philosophy of looking at the whole umbrella, um, they very much overlap and people would debate just like people would debate me even the difference between. User experience and customer experience, but like at what point is the customer or user or the user or customer at some point we’re, you know, we’re, we’re kind of splitting hairs in my view.

[00:25:35] Anyway, I

[00:25:36] Bill Staikos: agree. I think that we generally have, and we, I mean, towards the top of the show, we talked a little bit about this, but like, we’ve put a lot of complexity and I don’t know who started this or like where it started, but there was so much complexity and I think your point around. Getting like agreeing on the language and the terms that we’re going to use as an organization have always started there first.

[00:25:58] Like let’s like, how do you think, what do you think customer experience means? Let’s start defining that and putting structure around that. And then what are the, you know, what are the different tools that we’re going to use to be able to get there? Right. And then what does that mean for different teams even as well?

[00:26:13] I think getting that common language is super important. I just don’t and I’m going to be critical of, maybe I shouldn’t do this. Of big CX. Like we don’t do that well enough and you’re right. Like there’s always that this practice is evolving and continues to evolve. Maybe that’s part of it, but I really do think that creating your own lexicon for your company, whatever that makes sense.

[00:26:37] Right. And then applying the different tools and whatever those make sense as you’re trying to accomplish a goal for that user, for that customer, for that business or employee, I think is a really, it’s an excellent point. Um, so like, I’m really curious of, of people, like who do you admire in your space and why, who do you look up to?

[00:26:59] Because like, you’re, you’re an adjunct, you you’ve run your own business. Obviously. You’ve got great content out there and we’ll talk about where to go. Folks can go find it, et cetera, but like who do you look up to in this

[00:27:10] Kevin Budelmann: space? You know, it’s interesting. I, you know, I think the longer I do it, the more the people I look up to are not in this space in a sense.

[00:27:17] I mean, which isn’t to say, I don’t admire people. I mean, I’m like everyone probably I’m skimming through all the business books and all of the latest, you know, everybody is coming in, you know, I’ve got a stack here of service design books just to like wrap my head around how that’s being discussed. And of course, you know, what happens is that, you know, Th the terms are, um, I guess maybe, maybe my bias or my belief that there’s so many of these concepts overlapping.

[00:27:41] I mean, every, every book has its own version of how to do research. And so, yeah, so I, you know, I had my it’s easier for me to admire, you know, the kind of the, the cannons and the business world anyway, you know, Drucker and Warren Buffett and, you know, or even, you know, working temporary jobs or on bask or even more recently, it’s like a Bob Iger from Disney, but yeah.

[00:28:00] You know, and then of course there are lots of, you know, peers and authors and people in this space. But, you know, as I, I look at, you know, I even kind of drills back even to my first experience at Herman Miller, the one of the early leaders of a guy named max Dupree wrote a book called leadership is an art and talks about how the purpose of a leader is to define reality and say, thank you, which I think is, so to me, the extent to which we attempt.

[00:28:25] Bring it up a level of leadership to our clients. I’m an I’m interested in, in the practice, don’t get me wrong, but I also feel like, I think, you know, the, the longer I go in my career, you know, it’s this bigger picture that can help. And if you can help shape that. Sort of, you know, as, as, as max was saying sort of defined reality, it’s a way to kind of move things forward in a different way.

[00:28:44] So presenting a point of view to get there. I mean, there’s a lot obviously to do when it comes down to the, from the practitioner level. Sure. But that’s going to continue to evolve and there’s, you know, it’s, it’s also, you know, it’s also sometimes feels like every idea, you know, New idea. It’s just kind of borrowed from a previous version of it that was 20 years ago.

[00:29:03] So I would just say there’s, aren’t new ideas. It’s just that it’s just, it’s an evolving school of thought. And as people develop new ways of thinking about sort of, you know, a new context,

[00:29:12] Bill Staikos: I love defined reality and say, thank you. That really feels like it just really encapsulates like servant leadership on some level too.

[00:29:19] Right? Exactly. Where do you go for inspiration?

[00:29:24] Kevin Budelmann: Well, again, I, you know, I, I’m a big, I mean, I’m a big fan of all, all the usual kind of suspects, probably Simon Sineck or Dan pink or Scott Galloway, people like this. But I, you know, for me, I guess for personally, I, I get increasingly intrigued by, you know, people, you know, it’s amazing how fluid we can get.

[00:29:43] We have access how fluidly we can get access to. Uh, podcasters and so on and, you know, things like this, right? So somebody like a Sam Harris because of his sort of clarity, clarity of thought, and sort of the focus on, you know, incentives and outcomes and things that, I mean, I find that to be a really fascinating or even a Yuval Noah Harari, I think his name is he.

[00:30:08] And he’s a, he’s a historian essentially. Right. But I guess for me, again, the extent to which, you know, either kind of circling back to the top is I think about planning that the macro changes, he’s one of the most articulate people talking about the really seismic changes that are affecting us as a culture and what businesses are dealing with, whether we sort of, you know, they’re almost tectonic level changes that I think aren’t easily identifiable, but are, but if you start to recognize them, they start to, you can see how they kind of are.

[00:30:36] Impacts on nearly every organization today. I’m sure you’ve had the same kind of experience, you know, it’s like, it’s, if we can get down to the root of the problem, you know, it’s a little bit easier to break loose. And in terms of, um, helping to reorient organizations,

[00:30:50] Bill Staikos: you mentioned Scott. I actually had Scott Galloway as my brand professor at stern.

[00:30:55] All my MBA. Yeah. He doesn’t return my emails anymore. That’s okay. I don’t take any. Yeah, it’s a bigger, bigger deal. I guess much my Fairdale, Kevin, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today. Talking to us just about the connectivity between purpose and down, down to the experience.

[00:31:11] And I think it’s just a topic that a lot of folks are struggling with today. So, uh, hopefully,

[00:31:17] Kevin Budelmann: yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity to speak

[00:31:19] Bill Staikos: with you. The pleasure’s all mine and ours and look, Hey, where can people find you if they want to get in touch or learn more about what your.

[00:31:27] Kevin Budelmann: Sure. Well, I mean the easiest spot is, is my, my firm people design.com.

[00:31:31] I’m in a number of other places, but that’s, that’s this that’s the best starting place. You can find our book and consulting and all the rest of the things we do

[00:31:37] Bill Staikos: that. Right. Cool. Very cool. Thanks again. All right, everybody. Great, great show. We’re out. Thanks for

[00:31:43] Kevin Budelmann: listening to be customer led with bill staikos.

[00:31:47] We are grateful to our audience. To their time, be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes. Leave us feedback on how we’re doing or tell us what you want to hear more about until next time we’re out.