Name: The Hidden Disconnect in Workplace Culture
Uploaded: 2025-04-10T18:16:04.276Z
Duration: 59 min 36 s
Description: The Hidden Disconnect in Workplace Culture

Transcript for "The Hidden Disconnect in Workplace Culture": Well, wait a minute. Here we go. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our virtual event. We do not do webinars here at Icology. We do virtual events. And let me get my notes here pulled up so we are ready to go. My name is Chuck Gose, founder of Icology. It is a privilege to host this conversation with all of you today, the hidden disconnect in workplace culture. And I wanna thank my former colleagues at FirstUp for supporting this event today. In a bit, I will be joined by two incredible voices and friends of mine in the space, Anne Mellinger and Allison Nellick. But I was gonna start with some introductions, and I see that all of you have already started doing some of that. So if you haven't yet, pop into the chat, tell us your name, where you're joining from, and this is an additional assignment for those of you who, maybe already jumped in. Do you have a favorite company value past or present that maybe it's a company you worked at, maybe it's a company you wanna work at, but what is a company value that has stood out to you that meant a lot to each of you? So while those are all coming in, again, love seeing all the names. We've got Saint Louis, Cali, Charlotte, Sioux Falls. We'll be in Sioux Falls later this year. Chicago, Nashville, Boston. I'll be in Nashville next week. Stephanie Carty. I wanna tell you all a little bit about Icology for those who are not familiar. So what is Icology? Who is Icology? It began about ten years ago as a podcast. It was something I built to lift voices in the world of internal comms. It was a bit of a passion project. Now you flash forward almost ten years. September of this year will be its ten year anniversary. I'm finally giving it 100% of my time and attention and building this into what I believe it can be. So if internal comms is a passion of yours, psychology is your community. This is what we're about. So whether you're a team of one, a team of many, maybe work for a small company, a large company, you will absolutely find connection and inspiration inside psychology. So join us at joinpsychology.com. So I wanna go in. Oh, I've seen a lot of integrities. Aaron, Heidi, really? Integrity? Emily Swick, keep it real. Stay curious. Let's see. What else we got in here? We got a lot of other people. Let's see. Piedmont. Making a positive difference in every life we touch. Great one. Love that. Okay. Keep those coming in. We're gonna keep talking here about about events. So one one of the things that's important to us in psychology is we follow a lot of the same rules that we as internal communicators should follow, which is tell your employees first before you tell the rest of the world. And so what we do in psychology is every month, we have what we call campfires. You might call them a roundtable, where we talk about topics. So we talked about company values last month in psychology, and then we wanna bring this topic to all of you. So it's important we we hold that true to the community. And because psychology is all about elevating employee experience pros and internal comms out there, that's why we think this topic around company values is so important, specifically, the disconnect between what companies say their values are versus what employees experience in the value. So we're gonna be digging in to some of that. But we're gonna warm up with a quick guessing game here where I'm gonna show you a company value, and you tell me if you know what that company is. So let me get this pulled up for all of you. Okay. This is our first value. Maybe you know what? I might throw out a couple prizes here for anybody who gets these right. No Googling, please. No Googling, please. What company has the value? Be on the offense always. Stephanie Carty, that is a good guess. Adidas. Kelsey, good guess. Reebok, those are not it. Emily Swick, first one at with Nike. Slow down. Stop guessing. Emily Swick, Nike. Yes. Let me reveal the answer. That is Nike, one of their values. Facebook, no. Not the Toronto Maple Leafs. No. Not apparently, they're having trouble with offense. Kristen Bowser. Yep. Don't wait to guess. You should've just gonna say Nike. Alright. Next one. Let's get everybody ready. The store is the brand. Macy's, Amazon, Nordstrom, nope. Apple, nope. Walmart, nope. Abercrombie, nope. Starbucks, nope. Target, nope. Good guesses. Good guesses. This is a very unique brand store. Walmart, wet man, you guys are naming all the retailers, but I'm gonna reveal this one. Trader Joe's. Oh, Whole Foods is close, Andrea. You're close. Trader Joe's, the store is the brand. And, actually, did somebody get that, Erica? Maybe. I don't know. That was a close one. Maybe you entered hit enter before I said it, but Trader Joe's, the store is the brand. Now if anyone knows this next one, I'm gonna be really impressed, but it is great value. If a customer is upset, we failed, period. We learn, and we fix it. Alright. Chris Palermo is saying she got it before I said it. Okay. Emily, you get the prize for Trader Joe's. Customer is upset. We failed, period. We learn, and we fix it. See, this is interesting to me to see all the guesses people are throwing in with something like this. The companies that are known for customer service, Delta, Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton, Costco, these are all great guesses. Getting to see this is why this chat is so great. Hilton. Yes. All these no. I don't I don't know that maybe you're gonna get this one. Qualtrics is their value. I just think that's such an amazing value to have as an organization to put so much behind not just how you treat customers, but just being aware of where they are in this journey. So, yes, Amy. I agree. Interesting. Thank you for playing along there. I'll go back and and send those of you who, guessed correctly couple of those prizes. Let me stop sharing and bring me back full screen yet again. So this is why this is important. I learned this from our next guest that I'm gonna bring up in Mellinger. Sixty Percent of employees either don't know their company's values or don't connect with them at all. So it's more likely six out of 10 aren't gonna connect with them. That's from the MIT Sloan review. Anne and I did not make that number up, but it speaks to this disconnect. It speaks to this gap that exists between what's written down in a boardroom, in a handbook, on a wall versus the values that are actually lived. So today, we're gonna explore that disconnect, why it happens, what it looks like, and what we as communicators and culture builders can do about it. So joining us today, again, two brilliant leaders who spent years in the trenches. I will not disclose how many years in the trenches of culture and communication. Anne Mellinger and Allison Nelic. First, Anne Mellinger, please join us on stage. I'm gonna give Anne a nice round of applause, everybody, for joining us here. I wanna mention that Anne Mellinger is one of the OGs of iCology, so thank you, Anne, for always supporting everything that iCology does out there. So you are with BINC. You're the CEO of BINC, but a lot of people might not know BINC, but yet they kinda do. So introduce yourself and tell everyone about BINC. Well, thank you, Chuck, for the opportunity. First of all, my face hurts because I'm just looking at all the names in the chat and seeing so many familiar faces. Literally, I can't smile anymore. Seeing so many familiar names and picturing all your faces. This is so much fun. And, yes, Brilliant Inc recently rebranded to Bink. We took our identity and shrunk it down. We took a lot of the work that we did and narrowed our focus onto the work that we really feel is most important and most impactful. And, certainly, so much of that work is centered around helping companies build their culture. And to me, the foundation of culture is core values. So this is definitely, like, the topic I could talk about all day, with two of my favorite people. So thrilled to be here. Now you shrunk down Brilliant Inc, the name, but not the impact. That's right. That's right. Having it there. If anything, we expanded it. That's right. Absolutely. I love that. So we've talked about some of these missteps that companies make with values, and you've worked with a lot of organizations out there on values and culture when it comes to defining them. So what are some of the most common missteps companies make right from the start when they're either establishing values or defining them for employees? It's a it's a great question. I mean, I think probably the the first one that sounds so silly and so basic is that a lot of companies think they have core values and they actually don't. Or they think they understand what they are and they don't. So a lot of times when we're working with organizations, the very first thing that we do is really work with them to understand what do we mean by core values. And what we mean by core values are just what they sound like, core. They have to be truly core to who you are, central to who you are. They have to be differentiated and really reflect who you are as an organization. And, you know, that the the stat that you mentioned and the fact that, like, so many companies have integrity as one of their values, it's like, is that is that really core to who you are? Does that really make you different? Is that really why comp employees chose to come work for your company because you have integrity? I don't know any company that can make it today in 2025 that doesn't have integrity. It's it's it's starting to become like table stakes. So that's really, like, one of the very first things. Exactly. Stephanie took the words out of my mouth. It's table stakes. And so it maybe it is something like integrity, though, and that that people remember that was mentioned early on as far as one that's important to people. But why would one value resonate with an employee group? Maybe it's like some of the ones that I highlighted, the ones from Nike, Trader Joe's, and Qualtrics. What is it about what makes one value resonant with an employee group and maybe one that maybe feels a bit too generic or forgettable out there. Yeah. I mean, I think so much of it is it has to be grounded in your employee's reality. Right? So a lot of times, companies will come to us, and they'll be like, we wanna hire you to help develop our core values. And we right off the bat, we say, no. No. No. No. No. We don't develop core values. We uncover core values. They are there. They have to already be within the fabric, the DNA, whatever, of your organization, and we need to help uncover them. So that's why it's so important to get in probably people's listed their favorite ones because it really resonated with them. It felt like it matched their reality of working in that organization. So that's something that's super important. You've gotta talk to your people, hear about what actually makes sense to them, and then present it using words and language that matches the identity of your organization. Right? Like, one of the examples I love is Atlassian. I think it's it's fun to talk about the ones that do terrible with their core values, but Atlassian is an example of one company that does it really well. And one of their values is open company, no BS. And I love the fact that they have a curse word in their core values. That just tells you right off the bat who you're dealing with. Right? Not a lot of companies are gonna have that, but if that's your vibe and that's who you are, then that that's gonna stick with your people. Yeah. I think it's going back to one that where a company changed one of the values was Google used to have the value of don't be evil, which stood out to them. Right? It made them very unique, thereby implying that other companies are evil. But then they got rid of that value. So does that then mean that you can be evil? Hopefully not. But you mentioned you do a lot of this work with different companies out there across different industries, including one that's gonna be joining us later today. Yeah. So without naming names, share some of those real world examples unless you can name names of how you've helped companies bring those values to life, or maybe they realize that their values were more than just the words out there. Yeah. I mean, I think, again, once we've sort of gotten to the point of, like, really honing in on what's core to who you are, let's get some of these other things off the table. And just to just to go back to, like, integrity, that's not to say it's not important. It just may not be your core value. It may go in your employee handbook. It may be part of, like, the rules and regulations for working there is, like, we we practice with integrity, but that's not a core value. So really the very the most important foundational thing is figure out what you mean by a core value and then you've got to pull that through. A core value is like a a we statement, right? Like we believe this, we do that. The next step is you've got to break it down into an individual employee behavior. So that's really, like, the the key success factor is take those values, break them down into tangible behaviors that I as an individual employee can actually practice every day. And then if you really wanna take it a step further and, like, drive it home, measure your employees on demonstrating those behaviors, build it into your performance management, build it into your compensation, and that is, like, chef's kiss. Like, values, behaviors, competencies, compensation, that's, like, the gold standard. Mhmm. I like this one that Stephanie mentioned in the chat. So we had one in a past company that was boundarylessness. Which I applaud because that's clearly very unique. When you're inventing language and words around a value, that makes it unique. That's true. And and so with leaders right? Like, that's a big part of the two. Part of the queue. I mean Yeah. The number is really important. I I remember when we had our our internal psychology chat, we were talking about, like, the ideal number. That is so important. Some companies have ten, eleven, 12 values, and it becomes a little overwhelming for employees to actually understand and connect. Whereas, you know, if you switch to, like, three to five, that's really where, you know, you can get the gold. I'd be curious for those going to the chat. We're getting some mixed reviews around boundarylessness. Maybe it's about the not having boundaries at work. I'm not quite sure because we all know there needs to be boundaries. But I would love to see in the chat, just go on and tell us, like, how the company you're at now or your most recent employer, how many values did they have? And And I'm gonna come back and look at that a little bit later. I wanna next and talk about your advice to leaders and communicators. These are the people that are attending today, the people that really care about this conversation around values. How do you coach them on the gap between maybe what leaders or what communicators are saying out there versus what employees are experiencing out there. So what's your advice to them on helping build that connection for employees? Yeah. I mean, I think with values with so much of of what we do and say, we say it has to start from the bottom up. Values is actually an area where it really does need to start at the top because you really have to have that leadership belief and alignment in order to because if your leaders are not walking the walk when it comes to values, then there's no point. Then that's when they really do just become words on a wall. And so it's super important to make sure, and that's that can be a challenging thing for us as communicators to do, but it is super important for us to say before anything else, great. You want to look at our values, you want to refresh our values, you want to relaunch our values, whatever. Sounds great. It is not a communications campaign. Like, if, like, just if if anything we can get through, it's it is not a communications campaign. It has to be we've gotta sit down at a table with senior leaders and really get clear on what is important to you and what does that look like in actual employee behavior. And and, actually, when we do do this work with companies, a lot of times, we actually do start with behavior and then back into the values. We'll sit down with leaders and say, give me an example of somebody that just, like, knocked it out of the park, that just was a superhero in the organization. What is it that they did? And then let's actually start to capture those stories and backtrack out into the values. So that's that is, like, rule number one is get leadership aligned. Number two, it's not a campaign. It's something that has to be embedded into the organization and sustained over time, which means communications and communicators can do a lot. We also have to walk down the hall and get partnered up with our our friends in HR because it really has to come in through both. You know, I mentioned compensation, performance management, onboarding, recruiting. Maybe the values have to live throughout the entire employee life cycle. Yeah. Ben is here in the chat dropping chat bombs, with behavior as the manifestation of values. I think at most companies, the values reveal themselves. Let's go back and look. It's not that the number is the most important thing, but I think it's telling about the focus. Like, there's four. What Kristen Bowser, Dayton Children's Hospital trying to get from six to five. 12, way too many. I'm gonna I'm gonna bring up an impromptu question, Anne. Great. Lauren here is commenting since getting acquired, we're try still trying to discover ours. Mhmm. That's an interesting exercise. Let's actually save that let's save that one for later. Let's come back later and talk about because I think that's an interesting one. Yeah. To bring up. But I did wanna mention, for anyone who does have questions for Anne or our next guest, I advise you, please do not throw it into the chat. Throw it into the q and a so we can come back to it later. As you can see, the chat goes flying by. We don't wanna miss it. So if you have a great question for Anne or our next guest, please go into the q and a and leave that. Anne, we're gonna say goodbye to you for now. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. We're gonna have you come back up a little bit later. And I'm next going to bring up Alison Nellick. Who I have to take a deep breath before I say her title because it's, like, the longest title in the world. It is executive director and global head of internal communications and executive communications at MSCI. Allison, thank you for joining us for this event today. Thank you, Chuck. I'm happy to be here. What is it like, Allison, being in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest title? Something I definitely pat myself on the back for every day. That's what my my family's most proud of me for, for sure. Good. Good. Good. Well, we're we're proud of you as well. For those that aren't familiar with MSCI, talk to us a little bit about them and also your your team at MSCI. Now you've built your team there. So we are a financial services company. MSCI, the MS actually stands for Morgan Stanley, and in 02/2007, we IPO ed from them. We are probably one of the most important companies on Wall Street you've never heard of, as our CEO likes to say. We are working trying to change that. But, you know, if a lot of you go into your 04/2001 k's and check out some of those, funds and markets and ETFs that you are tracking, I would bet money you are most likely tracking an MSCI index. So we provide a lot of the index data and solutions investors need to make better investment decisions. We have now about 7,000 employees, maybe a little less than that. And I say now because when I first started there about seven years ago, there were a little over 3,000. So we are a growth company, and we are very global. We're in about 23 different countries and I think about 35 different offices. So my team were small and scrappy, very impactful. You know them very well, actually. So there's three of us in total. As some of you may have seen, we are expanding to include a fourth over across the pond in London, hopefully, one day soon. But, yeah, like I said, very small but very impactful scrappy team. I wanted to call it a really good pun you mentioned early on, Allison, about betting money on MSCI being involved. I just I I wanna make sure we called that out. But you're right. I did it. I've have over the years gotten to know the team there quite well. I got to work with you closely when you launched your first up platform way back in the day. It feels like forever ago, and the team and the company has only grown since then, obviously, attributed to the great work, that you have built there at MSCI. You'd mentioned about MSCI being such a global company, truly spread around the world, and you have such a wide range of roles and functions amongst those 7,000 people. So you've got all these different roles and functions, all these different countries. How do you make your values relevant and real for all of them sort of no matter where they are in the world, no matter what they're doing? Actually, yeah, it's a it's a very good question. You know, I know we've been calling them core values, but at MSCI, we call them our cultural values, because we see them come through to life through our culture. And our culture is one that we have, you know, our values across the top that really set who we are as a company across the world, but then we also let our local cultures thrive. And that's a very important part of making sure that, you know, people feel connected to the company in their own ways. But the one thing that we do and we do consistently across the board since we relaunched our cultural values about two years ago now is bringing them to life through examples. Having consistent internal communications that are whether it's a strategy update, a milestone, a product launch, anything. Really finding a way to tie it back to specific values and how that's an example of us living our values. And so do you see where communications should every internal comms tie back to value in some way, shape, or form, or are there outliers where maybe a comms doesn't need to apply? Like, you have to force it at times. Yeah. You know, I don't think we ever force anything. There are definitely areas where we can amplify it more than others, where it's like an easy way to do so. I would say if I if you gave me a task to go back and say, every piece of content you posted on on our platform in the past month, can you attribute a value to it? I probably could. I probably could. Because it's it's it's a collection of everything that we're doing on a day to day basis and us living our values in order to achieve our success. And this is something we talked about inside Ecology last month, about it's a bit of a cliche to talk about saying, oh, your culture is not just, you know, the posters on the wall. But there is still some value in having your values on display, both whether it's in print form or somewhere else. So how have you worked, though, with your whether it's HR or other departments to get employees to know the values, but also then internalize those values, again, across such a variety of business units and geographies out there. What are some of the things you've done to help make that happen? Yeah. So one of the things that we did, right, values are words. They're words on paper. So our company went above and beyond and delivered eight values, which would have never been my advice, and definitely, I know not Anne's advice. And I agree it's a little bit much for us to remember. So one of my first tasks was, well, how are we gonna get people to start recognizing these words and what we mean by them? And we did a full blown exercise in developing, iconography for these, values that very much reflect our overall MSCI brand look and feel. So when we are speaking about these certain values, we also then use the icon with it so people have a visual representation. And sometimes maybe it's just the icon. Maybe sometimes you don't even need the words, and just kind of seeing that lighthouse or the chess piece that we've used in in our value for taking smart risks helps kind of bring that to life. And, you know, one of my favorite things that we did at the end of last year, we do our annual employee video where we scroll through my MSCI, we take all sorts of fun pictures, but we really create an employee celebration video that's all about what MSCI's success was, some of the great moments that we've had, and really feature the work of our employees over the past year. And this year, we made the whole video tell a story using our values. And so we were able to showcase all the different kind of activities, milestones, achievements, maybe even some of those tough times that we had by grouping them by our values. So really then people being able to sit back and say, I was a part of that, and therefore, I was living that value. And we do have support, and I see in the chat, from Stephanie Carty saying that the the poster on the wall is how she remembered GE's values from the start. Don't discount just that visibility and reminders. I would love to hear from others in the chat. The example you gave, Allison, of the icons and making that very clear and making those icons symbolic, you mentioned the lighthouse and the chess piece, and there must be six others out there. I'm curious if anybody else at your companies, if you've taken a similar approach, by using icons. And I'm just curious. Go into the chat and let us know, even maybe to outline what visuals you used as a as a part of that. I wanna talk about a little bit trickier topic, Allison, where it's easy and fun to talk about values when things are going great, when sales are rolling in and people are sticking around and this maybe the stock price is going well, which you all know about. But then what about when times maybe aren't so great, like, maybe now for a lot of organizations where things are really tough, whether it's a reorganization, whether it's some sort of in crisis unique to yours or or the entire country is going through one in some regards or some kind of rapid change that a business have to deal with. Has that happened at MSCI where you've had to really anchor some of your comms back to the values during more challenging times? Absolutely. You know, like you said, I think we're all going through it now. And, you know, I can even see my company mobilizing, just from pushes and how do we create you know, what is the the typical setting? How do you take a crisis, not let it go to waste and seize the opportunity with it? And, you know, just seeing the innovation happen right there with one of our values being relentlessly innovate, in order of how do we develop timely, insightful research that people can use about how the tariffs are impacting the global economy and financial markets. Alright. So seeing them come to life just in in those moments is key. But also, when I think about some of the communications that I've recently put out or are planning to put out from executive leadership in the coming weeks, you know, these are the moments where we need to underscore who we are and how we need to behave and what we need to focus on in order to maintain our success. Right? If we all start scrambling and running around and putting our values by the wayside, you know, that kind of defeats the purpose of the values and why they're there. They're there to guide us towards our success. So while it's maybe easier to say, hey, we achieved this success because we were living our values, It's in times like these where the values become more important than ever. And reiterating that through messaging that comes right at the very top, I think is one of the most important impactful things you can do in moments like these. Yeah. I think that this this is the time when I think values really show up. It's easy to talk about when things are going well. I believe it's called the ostrich effect, which is when things aren't going so well, especially leaders, I'm gonna point fingers at them, like to bury their heads a bit on this and maybe not communicate as much when, in fact, this is the time to communicate more. Because you know there's so much uncertainty out there in people's minds, now is the time to fill that vacuum that might be coming into place with honest messaging, authentic messaging, encouraging messaging to employees, acknowledging that maybe times are a bit tough for a variety of reasons, whether you agree with those reasons or not. And And it sounds like you've had a lot of success. Again, you're getting a lot of love in the chat about the icons and people supporting those out there, which I'm not surprised by. Has there been anything you've done that you're like, oh, this is really gonna tie in our values, but it just didn't quite hit the way you wanted to. Like, people just didn't quite respond the way you thought they might. And what and what did you learn from that? You know, I think it was launching them and then just kind of leaving them. You know, it goes back it goes back to Anne a little bit. This is not a campaign. So we didn't want, when we launched it, to make it seem like, okay, now we're gonna do a bunch of kitschy stuff to maybe have values everywhere. And people just remember words but not maybe feel it. And finding ways to really truly integrate them across the firm. But I think that also left a gap for us in terms of people remembering what they were. So we've we've quickly found ways to embed them into a lot of consistent communication. So, for example, our CEO, he always does a beyond the numbers each quarter, so a business update where he's not gonna replay everything that we put out during our earnings call, but really take us a one dive deeper. Never does he go and put out a note without mentioning our values and calling out certain aspects of what those values are. So he's going back to saying, this all happened or, you know, because of we were living our values or, you know, with some of the challenges that we're seeing ahead, this is the time we need to relentlessly innovate more than ever. So, really making sure, like, you can see how committed that we are to these values, and and that kind of has helped bring them back out front again. And and we've gotten a lot of qualitative feedback that, you know, we've done a nice job of really integrating those values into a lot of our executive communications. Alright. I'm I'm gonna go off script on this one, Allison, because I did it to Anne. I figured it's fair to do it with you. I wanna find out from you what is your favorite MSCI value, and how have you brought that into your team? How does it show up in your comms team and MSCI? My favorite one is think and act like owners, which is you know, I think sometimes when you hear that value, the first thing you get from a public company is, oh, those must be for the stockholders, and that's not true. It's that we all own a piece of the pie, and we all have the keys to this house. And if we wanna keep this house successful and thriving, we all play our part in it. And, you know, Tori on my team and I were actually just having a conversation about this this morning that, you know, if we pretty much just kept functioning as a team doing our day to day for the next couple of years, nobody would probably complain. You know, we do a pretty good job of getting the news out, keeping people updated. Systems are running smoothly. But that means that it's time to check back in, rethink what's working, what can we do better, and reapply it. And we wanna make it know, better and more optimized than we ever thought possible. And so we don't just do that because it's failing. We're doing it because, you know what? It's time to think and act like owners. And, you know, we own this place as much as everybody else does, so we can do better. So let's do better. And and Tori is in the chat validating this. She is saying that this conversation is true. So so we know that this happened. And I think that it's one of those things where if we as communicators, if aren't living those values, if we're not bringing into those in the team, then how are we expecting others to also be a part and doing the same? So, thank you, Allison, for sharing that, everyone. Go into the go into the we haven't had any GIFs yet in the chat. Go in there and throw a GIF and, thank Allison for joining us. And now we'll bring Anne back on. Anne, you're welcome to join, the conversation. I was gonna mention that somebody I think it was the first one that mentioned that Aaron in the chat thought about how they linked their values to recognition awards, and it sounds like that is a very common thing because that's such an easy win. It's easy. Yeah. I was gonna say. Low hanging fruit. I like that there's a banana gift right there when I said it. Slow hanging fruit. Like, that's a that's an easy one. We did it at bank as well, and and almost every client that we work with on values, it's like, that's that's an easy one. Do it. Okay. I'm gonna ask a completely loaded question to both of you, and I'm gonna let Anne go first so that Allison's got a little more time to think about it. K. But, Anne, I'm gonna put you on the spot for this one. This came up in our psychology campfire discussion about values. Who owns them in the organization, or who should own the values? Yeah. I mean, if I had to pick one person or, you know, group that had to own it, I would say it's leadership, like, for the reason that I said before. But I always think of it as, like, the trifecta of leadership, communications, and HR. I think it really does have to be kind of a a a shared ownership, but values, unlike a lot of other things, it has to be owned by leadership because they've gotta be walking the walk and talking the talk. But I love that the spiciness that's happening in the chat. I mean, yes. Preach. I love it. Everyone should own the values, but the risk with that of saying that everyone owns it means that no one's gonna take responsibility. That's what can sometimes happen. If you say it's everyone's job, then no one's actually gonna stand up and doing, and it has to be leadership to stand up and walk the walk, talk the talk. Okay. Allison, what about at MSCI? Either or in your past experiences, who owns them or who should own them? Yeah. So I think there's two words that come to mind here. Right? Responsibility and accountability. So I think everyone is responsible for living the values. Right? So everybody who's putting everyone in the chat, I I agree with you there that everybody has some responsibility for it. But at the end of the day, there has to be a certain group that is accountable for them, and I think those are the groups that are responsible for defining the employee experience. So I think that's leadership. I think it's comms. I think it's HR. I even think there's workplace technology in there. Just kind of deciding some of the experiences that they have at the firm. And when I say leadership, senior leadership has their own accountability, but I also think it's your local office leaders, you know, and sometimes maybe managers a few steps down that have huge teams. You know? Sometimes the senior leaders can feel so far separated. But I would think that those are the people that are truly accountable for owning the values. I feel like we copped out on that answer a little bit. I know what you're saying. I thought it was great. It's a good answer. It's a good answer, but it's it's the I don't know. I'm gonna go into the chat. I wanna go into the chat on this one Because Carrie Knudson has an interesting comment, and the chat keeps going, so I'm having trouble keeping up. It's always good it's good to always look for the voice of the customer and have them feel like they are also contributing to these values. So my next question to both of you and, Allison, I'll pick on you first and you can follow-up. How could or should your core value show up to non employees? How do these how are these on display or known to customers, to recruits, to possible employees? Like, how how do these values play a role there? Yeah. One of my favorite initiatives that we have, and, you know, maybe Tory should have done this webinar, is an initiative that Tory leads with our employer brand team, called three questions with. And we work very closely with HR and some of our our business partners to figure out, you know, what recruiting needs we have, different people with different areas of specialties. And we go out and we interview them. We ask them three questions. And we make them, you know, we so we do a video interview, and a lot of it is also bringing out our values, but also talking about maybe a certain role that they have or working in a certain area of the firm, what we're trying to recruit for. So not only are we promoting these videos internally, but they were promoting them on LinkedIn. They are on our careers page. We turn them into written communications of a of an employee story. So it's kind of bringing all of our values to life through this employee storytelling, but it's going further than our just internal employees. And I've been known to call Tory out in person to have her participate. I've never had the opportunity to do it virtually. So, Tory, if you wanna raise your hand, we can actually bring you on stage if you want. But I'm gonna move along to Anne. And and Anne, so how do you surface these, or how have you seen these serve or let's let's go with bink. Let's go with your your rebrand and all that. How do you surface your your values out to prospects, future hires, extra audiences? Absolutely. I mean, our values are very much a reflection of how we engage with our customers and with our clients, things like, staying curious, leading, you know, leading with our example. You know, we always try to make sure that we're contributing to the conversation. We put out, you know, white papers and resources to the community. We don't have them gated. We want our insights to be available to, like, just contribute to the dialogue. That's something really important. And I think, you know, a lot of this is somewhat generational. We haven't talked about generations yet. But that is definitely something that, you know, Allison oh, good. I'm so excited. Tory's coming. And I was I think Allison, Allison, you know, mentioned this about, like, recruiting and employer brand, and it's true. I mean, more and more millennials and certainly Gen z, when they're looking when employees are looking for a place to work, I guarantee Allison's got a job post right now, They're looking. What are the values of that organization? Do I actually wanna go work there? Because will they align with me and who I am and what I believe? So it is really important, and I think it's important from a customer perspective too. We're seeing that right now with, like, all the, you know, DEI backlash. Everyone knows the difference between Target and Costco right now and their perspectives on DEI, and that's, like, that's huge. Now whether or not you're actually making buying decisions about that, that goes back to your own personal values. But I think more and more, people, especially younger generations, are making decisions based on if their personal values align with the company's core values. And I tried to tell y'all that our college is a little bit different and we we we figure things out as we go and we do this. We were not prepared for Tory to come on, but what a great joy it is to have Tory join us. Tory, I can't I can't see you, but welcome to Thanks. This event. So, yeah, talk more about the project that Allison shared with us. Yeah. So this was, like, a little bit of, like, my baby for for a minute there where we basically said we need to partner with this employer brand team to represent, you know, again, these roles and our culture and our company, but also how are we gonna make this, like, a double dip situation? Right? How do we best use our resources, to make sure we're getting budgets are tight. How are we making sure that we're getting the most out of what work that we're doing? So it became that internal piece that also served the external, folks, like Allison mentioned on our career sites and on our LinkedIn. So we kinda sprinkle this everywhere. And I like to use it as an opportunity to, like, internally position it where just get to know your colleagues. We're we have the kind of culture where if you were to message someone and say, hey. Can I get fifteen minutes of your time about, you know, whatever topic or I'm trying to figure out if I'm explaining this the right way? People are very open. They like to know what their colleagues are doing, what's going on. So I like the idea that maybe this can also foster conversations, get to know one another. Oh, I find your role really interesting. Maybe I'm adjacent to that role, or maybe I'm just interested in what work you do because I liked the the last three questions with, and I found it to be interesting. So a little bit of a connector internally. And then like Allison mentioned, we feed some of our other employer brand needs and and connectors with careers and recruitment. Love it. And I think this is a great example where those those campaigns, the values launch is not a campaign, but but living out those values and employee stories are a campaign. If you've done something like that, go into the chat and tell us about if you came up with a clever name. Obviously, that's something for people to steal. I don't know if, they are on today, but I'll give credit to Laurie Stewart from this who is at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, which rivals Allison for title length, they have a whole series called behind the badge. And it was a big part of their platform launch was showcasing who their employees were. Yes. Thank you, Matt, for the Brutus gift in there. They would she would love that. But showcasing even down to the therapy dogs that they have at the medical center because they are considered employees doing their behind the badge story. So always feel like you can take those a little bit further than maybe your traditional leadership stories and showcase the fun. You know, one of the I used to do employee profile stories back in the day, and I would ask very simple questions like, you know, what what was your first concert? I've probably done that with some of you if we've been in events. And it's always very interesting to see, like, the most, like, uptight person talk about that there was some Grateful Dead show in their twenties, and do you sort of get some insight into who they are? Or is it Star Wars or Star Trek? If you wanna start a fight amongst people, just asking simple questions like that can create camaraderie and fun for everyone. So if you've done stories like that, please go into the chat. Tory, you're welcome to stick around if you want or if you wanna you wanna take a shot. Steal the thunder. I'm gonna let you guys take the stage. Tory Tory, you know we've got plenty of thunder. We're never run out of thunder. So we've got plenty of thunder, but I'll I'll let you decide if you wanna stick around. I'll I'll be here in the background if you need me. Give me a shout out. I'm listening in. Alright. Thanks, Tory. One question I have for both of you. I'll actually let you fight it out of who gets to go first on this one. How do communicators avoid turning values into noise? There's so much noise out there, and this is something on I'm gonna do a little plug for a new podcast that I launched with Jenny Field called frequency. And an episode that's dropping next week, we're talking about information fatigue amongst employees? Not overload. Not overload. Fatigue. There's so much information out there. How do we avoid turning this into just more noise? Do you wanna go first, Allison? Sure. So, you know, the way I position my team, if I was gonna describe them in one word, I'd say we're storytellers. We're here to tell the MSCI story, not to have people come to us and say, we need to push out information on this. We need to push out information on this, and, you know, etcetera, etcetera. We're constantly looking at what is this big narrative, this big story that we're telling about MSCI, and what are those moments in time that is making that story come to life? The values are one of that those elements. And I would say we have never done, besides when we first launched them, a values communication. Values are integrated. They are part of the story, part of the consistent story line, part of the plot. Right? One of the main characters of the story can sometimes be values, but we've never just done communications about value, except for when we refresh them, which I also find could be a hard thing to do. And I think that goes to one of the questions that's in the chat, which we can get to later about, are they you know, are values a here and now, or are they aspirational? And I think they're both. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think I mean, I I I have the pleasure of working with Allison and her team, and I know they do a really great job of this, of always really making sure that we're not just pushing out information, that it does tie back to something. And I think that's really the key, is looking at almost every communication that you do. Elizabeth said it perfectly in the chat. Like, every everything that you're talking about anyway, tying it back to values versus saying values, values, values, and then all the other things. So I think that that's really that's the smart approach for sure. I wanna I wanna answer a very important question that came in the chat. Ben, just dropping some knowledge bombs in here. Which Breakfast Club character were you in high school? So I think it's a great profile question. For people that were maybe watch Breakfast Club, I obviously did. I was Brian Johnson right down the path for those that's Anthony Michael Hall's character, the kind of the nerdy kid in there. I was Brian Johnson. Great question, Ben. I'm not gonna put Anne and Allison. I'm not gonna put you on the spot with your Breakfast Club character. I think I was him too, so I don't know. Let me go check the the q and a and see what we have in here. Let's see. We've got, oh, somebody was Ally Sheedy. That's good. We've finished oh, there we go. Okay. Here we go. This is from Emily. Perspective on where you find that the values are no longer allied. I'll I can't I'm having trouble reading today. Let me let's start this over again. Curious for the panel's perspective on situations where you find that the values are no longer aligned with the direction of the business or when the real underlying core values are having a negative effect on the culture. That's some pretty systemic operating system level challenges. Anne, what's what advice do you have there? Yeah. It's it's a it's a great question, and I think but it is an important question for organizations to ask themselves. You've gotta be willing to look in the mirror every couple of years and really ask yourself, are these still the right core values? And in particular, if things have changed, if you've gone through significant merger or acquisition or reorg or any sort of change like that, it's really important to take that really hard look in the mirror and ask that question. And I think, you know, ask questions like, is there a disconnect between where we're going and what we say that we want? You know, is there a disconnect? Or what are our engagement scores showing us? A lot of times, very low engagement scores can be a sign that it's time to look at your values and refresh and really think about who we are and where we're going today. So, I mean, I think it's important. We like to say that values are not something that should change all the time, but, certainly, they're worth looking at every three to five years and absolutely more frequently if there's a big change in the business. You've gotta be willing to do that. I'm gonna I'm gonna stop there. I actually wanna spend something on this with you, Allison. And, hopefully, this is where you were going or else I just rudely interrupted you. But when Anne talked about mergers and acquisitions, MSCI has gone through a lot of those. How have the how have your values guided Mhmm. Bringing in those new organizations, or has there been some friction with that? It's a good question, and the answer is both. But the gap values definitely guide the way we even treat the new employees we're bringing on. So I think we've been through seven acquisitions since I've been here, four in one year alone. So everybody can imagine what I was doing for that entire year. You know, but one of our core values is about client centricity. Right? And so we needed to function and get them onboarded and integrated into our company in a way these were bolt on acquisitions. We wanted to retain these people. This was not we're just buying their IP and pushing people out. Right? So on day one when they are here, we need to make sure that they can do their jobs and still deliver the same product, services, and experience to clients that they were previous acquisition. And that takes a ton of commitment and effort from us in the background to make sure that they have the the space and the ability to do that. And that on day one, their emails are working, that clients have a number where they can contact them, which seems like sometimes some of the most simple things in the world, but in the background are actually really difficult. I'm gonna go to one more question, that was submitted. And, Anna, I'm I'm teeing this up for you because I know you have a a strong point of view on this around, should values reflect current behaviors or is there an aspirational element to values? And I'm gonna let you get on your soapbox on this, but let me add one more element. There's another one I'm gonna bring in around talent and recruitment maybe having a little more of an aspirational side to it, or should they, should they not? Go, Anne. Yeah. I think it has to be it's it's actually a really fine balance. It's it's very difficult to find that sweet spot. I think that the best values are a representation of your reality. I said that at the beginning. Right? We don't we don't create values for our clients. We uncover them. So it does have to be grounded in your your reality. That said, you also want your values to sort of, like, inspire you to grow and stretch and move forward as an organization. So if they're values that are kinda stale and like, yeah, duh, they're a given, then it's not gonna actually stretch the organization or propel the organization forward. So it does need to have that bit of aspiration. I often like to say it's like an eight an eighty twenty. Right? 80% grounded in reality with that 20% aspiration. But I know Allison has a perspective on this too. I'm curious what you think. Yeah. It's a it's very similar, and I've seen it in our company as well. Right? As a company that's constantly looking to grow and transform, you know, I think when I got here, we're going under a transformation. A couple years later, we're under a transformation. We're transforming now. So, there's always kind of an aspirational element to what we need people to do in order to drive that growth. Right? And the values need to kind of push people in that direction and not just keep them grinding in the same old same old. So as, you know, a company like ours that's always kind of metamorphizing a bit a bit or evolving a bit, you know, we need to have underlying values to guide them on, like, okay. You may be good at this one, but we're not so great here. So we need to start doing more of this to achieve the growth and transformation we're looking for. Let's see if there's another one that came in. Otherwise, I've got a follow-up. I like the the one about values, vision, and mission. Go for it. Earlier. Yeah. You know, Ben brought Ben brought up the point that sometimes having values, vision, and mission, it's, like, too much. And I agree. However, I do think it's important. The way I think about vision, mission, and values is, like, it's sort of like the why, the where, and the how. Right? Like, the why we exist is really our our mission. The, you know, where we're going is our vision, and the how we're gonna get there is our value. So I do see value in having all three, but I also think you have to be super reflective and thoughtful about what they actually do mean and take the time to really think about, is our mission actually answering the question, what does the world lose if our company doesn't exist? That's a really hard question to answer, and, like, that's your mission. The game you played at the beginning, Chuck, with, like, identify the company by the values, you play the same game with mission and vision. It's a blast because 90% of the mission and vision out there, you have no idea what company they are. And so I think it it can be too much if it's not done well or right. But I don't know, Allison, if you if you have a different perspective. No. Definitely a line which you've helped me with some of this work as my company is going through some of this right now. And, you know, I think you said it right that the values are the how. We all need to act in this way and keep these things in mind to in order to to get where we're going and achieve our mission and fulfill our our vision. I think sometimes that's where internal communications comes in to break down the values, the vision, the mission. And maybe it's the vision and the mission. We don't even call them that. Like you said, why is a lot more clear than mission. So sometimes I think it's just the positioning, the way we're gonna communicate, the way we're gonna talk about these things that can maybe make it more clear on what all of these corporate elements are. Right? Is it so this just sort of came to me as we were we've been talking through this. I will admit, I'm always someone who struggled with that. Thank you, Ben, for bringing that in around what's our mission, what's our vision, what's our values. And to me, it seems like your mission is sort of the why you're here. Mhmm. The vision is where we're going, and the values is how we're gonna get there. Exactly. Exactly. Simon Sinek why it just took me twenty five years It's it's for it to figure it out in a new way. It's a complicated concept, but Simon Sinek has a has a I don't even actually think it's a TED talk, but Simon Sinek talks about it that way. And, like, so many companies focus on what. And, like, you didn't even say what just now, Chuck. You said why, where, and how. And yet so many companies are just like, here's what we do. Here's what we do. Here's what we do. And it's actually missing the point if you're not talking about why, where, and how. So I should be charged more like Simon Sinek? Is that what you're saying? I think yeah. Pretty simple. Yes. Pretty much. Love it. Love it. Love it. Let me go back to I think we've answered the questions to make sure we got to those. We're we're we've got about three or four minutes left. Let's see. Let me go through these other questions here and make sure we've got them. I think we've answered this one, but how do you hold leadership accountable to we talked about who owns the values, and they're a part of it. But how do you hold leaders accountable when maybe some leaders feel like they're above it? They don't have to abide by those things. I think I think this is something, I'll I'll give Allison a compliment on this because I think this is something that Allison does really well. As communicators, there's often there's only so much we can do. Right? Like, there's so much that we know. We know what needs to happen. We know what how how to do this right. And at the end of the day, there's only so much we can do. And so sometimes if you can't do it the ideal dream way that you want to, you have to find other ways to help leaders get to where you need them to be. And so sometimes that takes a little bit of creativity, a little bit of, like, Jedi mind tricks of really making leaders feel like they are a part of it. I think that is something that's really important. You can't just tell them you've gotta do this. You've gotta do this. Sometimes you have to actually create a dialogue and a conversation to bring leaders into it so they feel like they're a part of it. That's something that I've seen Allison do really well in her organization. Thank you. Yeah. And, I, you know, I think she said it exactly right. Like, sometimes at the end of the day, there's only so much you can do. And the leaders who feel more accountable and and feel that you know, understand the importance of this, probably the leaders that are gonna be more successful. So Well, we are right coming up on time. Let me check the chats. So if we have anything else in there. Yes. Heidi says thank you. I speak the language of gratitude. And so, Allison and Anne, I wanna thank you so much for joining us, today for this conversation. Also, Anne, for leading this the campfire session last month in, psychology when we did that. Yeah. Going through we've seen golf claps in there. Go throw some gifts in there. Words are fine. Throw some gifts. Get some visuals in there. That makes fun. The master's one is very appropriate for Master's Thursday. Timed well. Yeah. Timed well. And I think this sums up for me that we know that values have to be felt, not framed. They have to be a part of who you are as an organization and how they can either enhance and build your culture and strengthen it, much like we saw those the lines that I showed early on. Or is that part of the cultural erosion that happens over time inside organizations? I think that's the role we as communicators could play. We can help define them inside the organization and and minimize that erosion that takes place. So, So, again, thank you, Allison. Thank oh, and our surprise guest, Tory, for joining that we weren't even prepared for. It lived not laminated. That's a good one, Anne. I should have put thrown that in there. That's another good one. But thank you, Allison. Thank you, Anne, for joining us today. All of you will get a replay of this if you wanna go back and watch, anybody that unfortunately didn't attend. Yes. They missed being a part of the lively chat, but they will also get a recording of this that they can go back and and enjoy. And, along with that replay, I wanna say thank you all for being a part of this conversation. If you are looking for a community, if you're looking for something to join, you're a team of one, a team of many, small, large, please check out ecology. Go to joinecology.com. Check us out. If you're not ready to join, but you wanna be like, I'll sign up for the newsletter. Go and sign up for the newsletter. And I will say this for those of you. If you're in between opportunities, now is the time to find community. And so in iCology, we have a membership called Gift of Grace, which lets you join for free. So just because you're in between opportunities doesn't mean you get you can't participate. We want anyone who cares about the world of internal comms to be a part of iCology and be a part of this movement. So go to joinpsychology.com. Click join. We trust you if you join our gift of grace membership. We trust, that you're in between opportunities and looking for community. So please join us there. Thank you, Allison. Thank you, Anne. Thank you, First Stop, for supporting us, and thank you all of you for joining us today. We appreciate it. Thanks, John. Bye.