The workplace is evolving, and with it, the challenges of recruiting and retaining top talent have become a critical focus for businesses across industries. Dr. Frank Niles, Principal Business Psychologist at BSM Partners and a seasoned expert in business transformation and leader development, explores the intersection of workplace culture, generational differences, and leadership strategies in this episode. With compelling data on the high costs of turnover, Dr. Niles explains how prioritizing autonomy, competence, and connection can transform tenuous working environments into high-performing, collaborative teams.

Helpful Links

Gen Z and the Future of Work: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gen-z-future-work-bsm-partners-hr3pc/

When Leadership Fails: Identifying and Fixing Team Dysfunction: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-leadership-fails-identifying-fixing-team-dysfunction-pphbc/

When Leadership Fails: Identifying and Fixing Team Dysfunction: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-leadership-fails-identifying-fixing-team-dysfunction-9brvc/

Navigating Uncertain Times: Leadership Lessons from TV Meteorologists: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/navigating-uncertain-times-leadership-lessons-from-tv-meteorologists-nmttf/

One Rule Every Leader Should Follow (And The Rest of Us, Too): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-rule-every-leader-should-follow-rest-us-too-bsm-partners-iwnmc/

BSM Partners’ Core Values And Why Identifying Core Values is Crucial for Any Company’s Success: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bsm-partners-core-values-why-identifying-crucial-any-companys-1w1ic/

4 Ways Gen Z is Influencing the Pet Food Industry: https://www.petfoodindustry-digital.com/petfoodindustry/library/item/october_2024/4225994/

Why Companies Are Firing Gen Z Employees—And What Both Can Do About It: https://www.petfoodindustry-digital.com/petfoodindustry/library/item/december_2024/4241564/

Learn more about Dr. Frank Niles’ work with BSM Partners: https://bsmpartners.net/team/frank-niles

Connect with Frank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankniles/

Show Notes

00:00 - Welcome and Introduction

02:45 - Business Meets Psychology: Meet Dr. Frank Niles

05:25 - The Power of Culture

09:39 - The Surprising Costs of High Turnover

12:01 - Why This Matters in Manufacturing

14:01 - Retail & Veterinary Insights

17:25 - The Cascading Effects of Not Investing in Your People

19:51 - Generational Shifts Pose Challenges... and Opportunities

23:44 - Changing the Way We Work

25:13 - Strategies for Finding and Keeping Top Talent

27:20 - Hard Skills vs Soft Skills

30:32 - Advice for Business Leaders

32:42 - Our Three Fundamental Needs

37:39 - Advice for Job-Seeking Professionals

42:40 - How Dr. Niles Keeps Up with Trends

45:29 - Where Dr. Niles Gets His Inspiration

50:40 - Final Thoughts

51:30 - Conclusion and Farewell

Issues like lack of motivation, difficulty managing workloads, and an aversion to constructive feedback are leaving business leaders frustrated, with many rethinking how, or if, they'll even continue hiring recent graduates in 2025.

But there's much, much more to this story. While companies are grappling with unmet expectations, there is a ton of data out there about how a more people centric approach can work wonders for developing and retaining top talent. Take this statistic from the Society for Human Resources Management: employees who feel aligned and supported in their first 90 days of a new job are 10 times more likely to stay. That is a game changer in today's competitive job market in which finding and keeping top talent, maybe harder than ever.

These are statistics shared by Dr. Frank Niles, a business psychologist and principal of business transformation and leader development at BSM partners. And today he's joining us as we dive into one of the most pressing topics for businesses across industries, talent recruitment, and retention. And this really touches everyone, whether you're an employer, an employee, a business leader, or just starting your career—we all got to work, so why not use the knowledge we have available to us to improve the way we work, the way we lead, and the way we live in harmony.

Welcome to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. I'm your host, Jordan Tyler.

So, Frank, super thrilled to have you here today to talk through a topic I know is near and dear to you, but also about the really interesting experiences you've had throughout your life leading up to this moment. So, just to start off, let's hear a little bit about your background, what you do at BSM Partners, and how that ties into the topic we're going to discuss today.

Frank Niles: Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me on Jordan. Always a pleasure. So I am the principal of the Business Transformation and Leader Development practice here at BSM Partners. So we do all things related to people and culture, helping clients develop not only their people, but also people's strategies. We do a lot of work in the space of helping, certainly at the executive level, at the C suite level, kind of culture transformation journeys—so whether it's an intact team, but oftentimes it's when a new team forms, or through M&A, merger and acquisition, a new executive leadership team forms—we support them on that integration journey.

So my background, I have a doctorate in political psychology, and so I was a professor for, I don't know, 15 or 18 years, was recruited to Walmart where I led some large global initiatives. You know, a lot of great experience there. And I've been with BSM three years, somewhere around there. So every day is different. It's never ending and good times, fun times, as you know, since you travel with me sometimes.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. I was just going to say I've had the pleasure of kind of seeing you work and in these areas firsthand. And it's really cool how you take your psychology expertise, your background there and apply it practically with teams, you know, based on what they really need to be focused on. So you have models that you can share for for X and for Y and for Z, and I just think it's really cool how you tie it all together, but keep it all kind of rooted in psychology.

Frank Niles: We're psychological beings, right? We have a need to connect with ourselves and we have a need to connect with other people. And that's where sometimes the friction and the tension in the workplace comes in.

So, as a business psychologist, I help teams and leaders figure out how to navigate, you know, different personalities, different goals, different motivations and really help them build healthy—I think that's the foundation—healthy, high performing collaborative team. So super passionate about that, doing that work and really excited to talk about one of the big challenges right now facing the pet industry, but other industries as well that kind of blend both retail, as well as manufacturing, so.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, and before we move on to the big topic at hand today, which is how to recruit and retain top talent, I wanted to get your take on something first. So, we talk about culture in the workplace all the time, but what does culture really mean and how does it impact your talent strategy?

Frank Niles: Yeah, that's a great question. And there's probably been no less than, you know, 5,000 books written on that subject. A lot of ink has been bled on pages as well as typed. What is culture? A really simple explanation. You think about, you're part of a family, you've gone to school. It's like the vibe there, right? One individual says it's how we do things here.

So, one of the things that I like to really emphasize the clients is culture is really best thought of as a set of behaviors. So we have a purpose, we have a mission, and then we have to agree how we're going to work with each other. And so those become kind of implicit norms and expectations.

Yeah, sure. We can put them on a wall, right? But that's where a lot of companies go wrong as they do a lot of work on the front end around, “Hey, what kind of culture do we want to have? What's most important to us?” Create all kinds of fancy posters and everything and then never talk about it again. And so, culture really is best looked at through the lens of behaviors. How do I need to treat you so you can be maximally effective? How do we treat customers? What are the kind of the expectations that then become the norms of how we operate? Again, back to the, how we do things around here.

So again, I like the family analogy. Every family's got its own culture. Some are more loosey goosey, others are more hierarchical, and there's pluses and minuses of both. So that's really what culture is about. And so, when we talk about transforming culture, it's really about aligning on what direction are we going and then what are the behaviors, the how that's going to enable us to get there. So, goals may change, but culture should rarely change. We can tweak it if it gets out of alignment, but a well-established, healthy, customer centric culture becomes a really profound competitive advantage. Sadly, a lot of companies don't, smaller companies don't focus on the culture as much as they should.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, well, and you're absolutely right. You have to live it, right? Not only have to develop it with intention, but you have to carry it out with intention every single day. And that's when it gets tricky. I would imagine for smaller companies, for sure.

Frank Niles: Yeah, a great example that I can share with you real quickly—so, if you know anything about Walmart, their mission is to save people money so they can live better. So, every decision that you make at Walmart is through the lens of how can we help customers save money so they can live better. One of the ways that you do that is by being very frugal in everything that you do, particularly in the home office.

You know, Judith McKenna, who used to be the president of Walmart International says, “We don't have the cash registers. It's the stores that have the cash registers.” So, we kind of are a cost center. So how does that inform what you do? When I moved from academics to Walmart, we took out our own trash. You didn't have other people take out that you took out your trash so that we didn't have to pay for support folks like that. I had an admin that would literally re-bend paperclips so they were functional again. That might be a little extreme, but I use that as an example, that Walmart as a culture first organization, customer’s at the center of everything that you do. So, every purchasing decision, every decision about how you show up at work, is filtered through that lens. That's the power of culture, and arguably, as a Fortune 100, it's worked pretty well for them.

Jordan Tyler: So, how does that apply to finding, hiring, and retaining top talent? Like, what does the process of talent acquisition and retention look like? And why is it important specifically for the pet industry?

Frank Niles: Yeah, that's a super good question. And it's often not top of mind for clients or for brands, but it should be because while we don't have a lot of specific data for the pet industry as a standalone industry. If we want to kind of benchmark against manufacturing in general, and then also retail, what we know is that in the manufacturing industry, there's about 40 percent annual turnover. Annual turnover. When you consider that for an entry level role, to replace that head count, takes about 50 percent of their annual salary. Now you have a mid-level employee or a high-level employee, it can be up to 200 percent of their salary to go out and recruit, interview, to compensate. So, all of that.

So, it is incumbent upon organizations within the pet industry and manufacturing space I'm really focusing on right here to really be attentive to building a culture that people want to work at and that people want to stay. Because there's a host of other issues. When talent leaves, what happens? They leave knowledge. It can also lead to declining morale among other employees who stay. Because the reality is in a bad culture, the employees who leave tend to be your best employees. Because they have other options. And then you're stuck with not very high performing employees, and that's just bad for your business.

Jordan Tyler: That is an alarming statistic. And the costs that come with it, you know, the direct cost and the indirect cost. I didn't even think about all of those factors, but huge!

Frank Niles: Huge, huge. I mean, pulling people out of the business to do interviews, just paying if you're using a third-party recruiter that, I mean, there's just a lot of direct costs involved, but it's the indirect costs that really impact a business, a loss of top talent.

Jordan Tyler: I would imagine too that in manufacturing downtime would be another loss.

Frank Niles: 100% yes. Yes. Yeah, the downtime. A couple of years ago, we had a client in the manufacturing space, in the pet as well as human food space, and in one of their factories, they were almost pushing like 70 percent turnover. Big time problem—to your point, it would shut down lines.

So, we went in there and did a diagnostic and talked with employees, line employees, line managers, as well as executives. Well, lo and behold, you know, as in many companies, if you're a really good individual contributor, what happens? You get promoted to be a boss and then all of a sudden you find yourself leading people. Well, that's very different than leading a manufacturing process.

And so, what we identified very early on, that it wasn't because they weren't paying enough—they were. It wasn't because their employees are slackers—they weren't. It was that managers had no training on how to lead people.

And, you know, we know, and you probably know from your just personal experience, employees leave leaders. They don't leave companies. And so, what we did is we created a leadership development program that was scaled out across all of their different facilities. And I coached some of the most senior leaders and substantially reduced employee turnover all by investing in leadership development for frontline managers. Because that's where the culture is lived, right? You can talk about it, the CEO can talk about it, but if the frontline managers don't live it out, there's a big disconnect. And again, you will hemorrhage your most talented employees.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like there's a lot at risk, particularly for the manufacturing sector when you think about all those added potential losses.

Frank Niles: That's right.

Jordan Tyler: Did you want to speak to the retail industry or the veterinary industry at all? I know that we've talked about doing a follow-on episode that's more vet-focused. So, I didn't know if we wanted to touch on that a little here or not.

Frank Niles: We can touch on a little bit. We have some real exciting work that we're doing, we're starting to do in partnership in the vet space. So, I don't want to give that away, but I'll give you some teasers. How about that?

Jordan Tyler: Perfect.

Frank Niles: Retail space, same thing. If you've ever worked in a retail space, whether it's a restaurant or whether it's a retail store, turnover tends to be very high.

And so again, I don't always like going back to Walmart, but they're a really good shining example of this. Lowe's is as well. Lowe's has a very robust frontline manager program. Back to Walmart, they have what's now called a leadership academy and it focuses exclusively on stores.

You know, we talk about micro- versus macro-culture. Every team, every organization has a micro-culture. The goal is to ensure that that's aligned with the cultural expectations of the larger organization.

So, I think some of the larger retailers have really recognized this and put a lot of focus on front end employees. So, a number of retailers provide like a college grant program. They provide them with mentorship. So, all these kinds of things that create kind of a stickiness between the organization and the employee.

The vet space is truly unique and really facing difficult times. Recent research from Joe Hill in the UK points out that—we see similar trends here—is that veterinarians have four times the suicide rate as other caregivers and professionals. And it's not because they're naturally more inclined to suicide. It's that burnout is so high and the demands are so high on veterinarians, especially with the corporatization of veterinary practices, that there's going to be a real push to address well-being in the workplace.

Again, we also see similar challenges is that you get promoted to lead a veterinary practice and you don't have any manager training. They don't do that in vet schools. So, you know, we're in conversation with the vet school right now about providing manager training to their vet students. The challenge is, you're so focused on becoming a technically proficient doctor that, you know, manager training is a bit like teaching, you know, a toddler how to drive a car. It's a little premature, but it's not because there's certain skills that you can learn that are going to benefit you even if you don't lead people. Like what? Self-care, self-awareness, mindfulness, self-compassion, communication skills, all those quote unquote “soft skills” that actually make or break an employee.

So, we know that a lot of that professionals are leaving the profession. I don't have the exact stats here, but it's quite alarming. And when that happens, you're losing talent, you know, for our furry friends and scaling friends.

Jordan Tyler: Totally. Yeah, really interesting points there. And I'm excited to chat later once you get some of these exciting things off the ground. Bringing things back to this question of recruiting and retaining top talent, what's at risk if a company doesn't prioritize this as part and parcel to their strategy? I feel like we touched on this a little bit already, but is there anything you would add to that point?

Frank Niles: Oh, my Lord. Huge. I mean, it's a bit like if you are—yeah, we'll use a boat analogy. You've got everybody in there rowing, you're going in one direction, and then all of a sudden you get a new captain, you get a new somebody, and it creates discord in there. Those who are the strongest and most capable, they don't want to be doing this. They want to be going in this direction. Those are the ones that jump ship. And all of a sudden, you're left with 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 fewer rowers. What is that going to do? It's going to stop the boat.

And so, it's critically important, even for small firms—even more for small firms—because they can't absorb losses as much as larger ones. And we see this in the startup space, startups, you know, I mean, particularly if they're investor-funded, VC-funded, you know, it's like five-year churn and burn, get it done. And so they tend not to invest a lot in their people, but even in a small startup, the churn—that's what we call it, churn—the turnover of talent can really impact its ability to go to market. And so, like I said before, direct costs are high. Rehiring top talent is really difficult. Direct costs are high. It costs a lot, but all those indirect costs—impact on morale, customer satisfaction. Now we'll say you don't have enough people to service customers, productivity loss. Now you don't have somebody, thinking back to, you know, a vet practice, now you don't have a vet tech or a nurse being able to draw blood and do all the things that they do. And now you're having to pick up the load as the veterinarian.

So, there's just a ton of different costs associated with that, the loss of talent. Sadly, so many companies don't focus a lot of attention on: how do we keep our top talent? Because they have a certain set of expectations that others don't have, and that's really the question, which I think we're going to go there.

Jordan Tyler: We are going to go there in just a little bit, first, I kind of want to bring it back and talk about some of the challenges. So, we know the stakes are high, right? If you can't hire high performing talent and if you can't keep them, then it's going to hurt your business. But what are some challenges that recruiters and companies might be facing in this space?

Like, Gen Z has a different set of expectations now as they approach work. They expect to be in a value-aligned organization. So, for them, about 70 percent look at, before they even apply, does this company have a mission statement? Do they live it? Do they give back to the community? What is the culture like?

The other thing is that they value and they prioritize—well-being and work life balance. You know, that causes a lot of existing business leaders a lot of consternation because, of course, they are going to call them lazy because they're not going to work the way that, you know, those of us who are older would work in the past.

And so adjusting to the new generations—one is their skill set, which is really substantial. And I mean, as digital natives, you know, they can rapidly adapt to that, but they also have technology expectations that maybe older workers don't have. But also recognizing that work doesn't necessarily define their identity as much as work defined our identity. And you know, you often hear commentators talk, you know, like the sky is falling. Every time a new generation goes into the workforce, there's going to be some friction between existing generations and new generations. It always works out.

I'm excited now because, what's interesting, you have really two streams moving in the same direction. You have Gen Z entering into the workforce, but then you also have artificial intelligence entering the workforce. And so being able to leverage their skills. I had this conversation the other day with a college student, like electrical engineer, computer science, one of these super smart kids. And he's at a large public university and he said, “You know, what we're learning in class right now is going to be obsolete in three years. We don't need to know how to code. What we need to know is how to write the most effective queries.” And it was just like this mind-blowing moment. In that moment, I learned so much from, you know, a 21-year-old student. And it really inspires me to ask even better questions. That's really what it's going to be.

So I'm just using that as an example, is that the future of work is going to look very different than currently how we work, both impacted by new talent, younger talent, as well as technology.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, I love you bringing up technology because I think it's such a pioneering factor changing the way that we work. But I also appreciate you tying it back to the whole culture piece too, right? It's like we're all people at the end of the day, and the behaviors that we employ and expect at work might not look the same through each of our individual lenses, but we have to find a way to work through those differences in a way that honors us as people, but also drives the business strategy.

Frank Niles: I mean, I'm around, you know, a lot of college age people through kind of the outdoor activities that I'm in, and I am blown away by how smart and how driven they are. The way that they approach work is just different.

So I like to think of it in terms of, I mean, as leaders, we create the conditions for people to flourish. That's what we do. How can we create the conditions, the culture, so we can get the most out of this younger generation while at the same time honoring what their personal commitments are to their own well-being? And I think that's something we can learn from them.

I mean, you know that all of this work on burnout is driven by a lack of boundaries that we have with work because those of us in our middle age, we were taught that that's the way that you get ahead. We now know that there might be other ways you can get ahead in a way that drives results, but also doesn't drive us into an early grave.

Jordan Tyler: That's a really good way to put it. So, we've talked about the challenges employers are facing with talent acquisition and retention. Let's move on now to approaches they can take or strategies they can use to find the talent they need, and then we'll circle back and talk about how to obtain that talent as well.

Frank Niles: Yeah. So, finding talent is quintessentially the hardest thing. That's the reason why job fairs are really important. That's the reason why LinkedIn is very important. For smaller firms, considering using a recruiter, I mean, you'll have to look at the ROI on it, but they're really tapped into networks. And so, as BSM Partners in the pet industry, we kind of use a combination, right? For more entry level roles, we'll often use a recruiter; for more seasoned level, you know, higher level roles, we’ll engage our networks as leaders in the firm. Because we know folks, right? We know people!

So, from a recruiting perspective, it needs to begin even before the outreach, meaning really getting crystal clear on what is the profile that you need. And a lot of companies kind of shirk on that because it takes time, and we all know that. We're going to hire Susie, but in a year, Susie might be doing something different than what she was hired for. And so, identifying a profile, knowing that it could change, but then also really recruiting and hiring around those behaviors.

Is the person going to be a good culture fit? Because you can have the smartest person, but if they don't fit with the culture, then again, they're going to be rowing one direction and you're wanting to row the other direction. And so, in our work that we do, lack of culture fit probably has the greatest impact on employee performance and employee longevity. Because you can learn on the job, but if you're not resilient, if you're not caring, if you're not aligned with what the cultural expectations are of the company, then you're not going to be a good fit.

Jordan Tyler: Right. So, you need to consider the, you know, technical qualifications and the hard skills for sure. But don't overlook the soft skills!

Frank Niles: The soft skills. You know, it's kind of the what and the how. The soft skills are the thing that make or break an employee. I mean, assuming that they're up to the test to even do the work, but it's the soft skills.

It's the ability to bounce back from failure, making a mistake. Having the intellectual and emotional agility needed to operate in a very fluid environment. The ability to stick with something until the very end. The ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes, to have empathy. To understand that we look at the world through our own individual lenses, to be deeply curious. A learner. All of those kinds of things is what, certainly we here at BSM, that's how we hire, but the very best companies hire that way as well.

We spend a lot of time developing competency models for clients and kind of behavioral, in a sense, profiles of what the ideal employee would look like. And then we assess it beforehand.

Jordan Tyler: That's interesting. And as we're talking about this, there are so many factors, that much is clear, that go into talent recruitment and retention already, but then you add in the factor of specifically the pet industry, but also a variety of other industries with the introduction of technology and an AI like you mentioned earlier. We're seeing a lot of industries today rapidly accelerating, right?

The pet industry is constantly evolving. There's new products and innovations coming out all the time, sometimes even before the research is there to support it. So, just making sure you can be agile and adaptable and set that foundation of culture really strong in the beginning. I can see how that would really go a long way for a business and in this kind of environment.

Frank Niles: That's a good point. And then the question becomes, how do you propagate it? How do you keep that culture going, knowing that there is going to inevitably be some turnover and all that, how do you keep it going? You keep it going by having a consistent tone at the top, 100%. If the C-suite is not aligned on what the behaviors are, then everybody's going to be getting weird messages, right? They're going to go off and do their own thing.

But then second of all, you need to evaluate and reward. The performance management system. So, in your annual reviews, mid-year reviews, quarterly reviews, hopefully more frequent reviews than just annual, you not only want to evaluate performance on key objectives, but you also want to look at how they do the work. And you absolutely have to have a cultural evaluation, a behavior evaluation, self-evaluation and manager evaluation of that employee. Because again, they might be a really talented, technically proficient individual, but if nobody wants to work with them, they become a liability.

Jordan Tyler: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Frank Niles: Mm hmm.

Jordan Tyler: Really great insights there on some actionable strategies. Do you have any other advice for companies that are looking to improve their efforts around talent acquisition and retention?

Frank Niles: Yeah, there's a few things. And again, looking at it through the lens of Gen Z, to a certain extent, because in my judgment, Gen Z isn't as unique as sometimes we make it out to be. They just amplify what many of us really want. I think society as a whole is moving in a direction. Gen Z is a reflection of how we are evolving as a society. And for better or worse, I'll leave that up to the listener—I tend to think it's for the better.

With COVID, we're now regularly talking about well-being and mental health and work life integration, which is a better phrase than work life balance because you can't balance everything. It's about: how do we integrate our personal lives with our professional lives? We used to not talk about that sort of stuff, right? Now we're talking about it all the time. And so how do you recruit and retain? Prospective employees are looking for markers for these things.

They want to know how do you treat your employees, right? If we sign up and come into your company, how are you going to treat me? Obviously fair compensation—let's just assume that you're paying fair compensation. So, setting that aside, which, again, is a big assumption, but let's assume that you're paying a fair wage—above a fair wage, that's the place to compete. It's, are you providing opportunities for growth? Do you have clear accountability structures? Is there transparency about what you need to do to promote? Are there ample opportunities to learn?

Included, real popular for the younger generation, they really covet kind of one-on-one interactions, even though they've grown up in the digital world. Is there a mentoring program? Are there all of these sorts of things that you can operationalize that yes, they require some investment, but not ongoing salary investment, right?

And so, you know, human beings—I've talked about this before—human beings have, you know, kind of three fundamental needs. So, for your listeners, if you're having a challenge recruiting, but more perhaps importantly retaining your talent, look at it through this lens. There's three fundamental human needs that we know through psychology.

One is for autonomy, the need to make self-initiated decisions. It just feels good when we are asked for our opinion, or we have the opportunity to grab the ball and run, assuming that you have the skills to do that. That's one of the things that distinguishes top talent from average talent. Top talent is willing to take a risk, grab the ball and run with it, knowing that they might stumble at some point. So-so talent kind of waits to be told what to do.

And so just focusing on the best talent, the top talent, which drives the largest amount of value for your company, is do you provide opportunities for them to have some measure of control over their own work product and work pace? Obviously in a manufacturing environment, there's limited opportunities for that, but heck we're creative folks. We can think of ways to let people feel ownership over something that they do.

The second need that we have is for competence, the experience of getting better at doing something that's meaningful to us. So, are your people in the proper roles? Are they being challenged to grow and develop, to become the extraordinary people that they're hardwired to be? I mean, you think about this, Jordan, you know, if you've learned an instrument or you've learned how to, I don't know, snowboard or learn some new kind of skill, at first it's kind of bumpy and all the rest, but then you start getting better and better. And all of a sudden, you're getting better and it's also a feedback loop and that you're getting more and more psyched about it and motivated to continue the hard work. That means we have to know our talent to stretch them, but not so far that they get demoralized.

And so we have that fundamental need for autonomy, having some control over our own life; competence, getting better at something that's meaningful to us; and then very lastly, connection, giving and receiving support. That's one of the reasons why I'm a big believer in employee resource groups, because those are great opportunities to not only receive support, but to give support. And so, for listeners here to your podcast, I would, you know, if they're having a challenge with performance issues on their team, holding on to their best talent, use those three components as a diagnostic.

Are you micromanaging? If you are, nobody's going to stay because it doesn't feel good. We're not hardwired for that. Do your people feel like they're growing and getting better at doing something, developing some sort of skill? And then lastly, are you creating opportunities for deep human connection? So, I'm starting to write and speak about moving kind of beyond belonging—belonging is super important because it creates conditions for connection to occur, but we're hardwired to connect with other people to receive and give support.

So those three things, you know, it's a pretty simple formula, incredibly difficult and challenging to operationalize, certainly within a manufacturing or retail space. Where you've got to be on deadlines, you know, right?

Jordan Tyler: Yeah.

Frank Niles: But we're creative folks! Your listeners can figure out how to do it.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. I love that model. I love hearing you talk about it. And I love how applicable it is across different industries. And what I love about it is it really brings the humanity back into the question, right? It's focusing on the people aspect, which is, you know, people and culture—that's kind of what we see the old moniker as “human resources,” now it's “people and culture,” really, really centering in on those aspects.

Frank Niles: That's right. Yeah. I love that you say that—you're following the trends because that's exactly right. We're increasingly moving away from calling HR managers “HR managers.” Now they're “strategic partners,” “business partners,” CHROs, chief human resource officers, are increasingly becoming “chief people and culture officers.”

And I really like that because, we need to move away—and now I'm putting a stick in, or you know, flag in the sand—of like, we need to move away from thinking of our talent as a resource and start thinking them as human beings that sign up to do amazing work and we're there to empower them and to remove roadblocks and support them on their journey to their extraordinariness, if that's a word. And in the process, what do they do? They help us build extraordinary companies.

Jordan Tyler: Really love that message. And I'm wondering, so what happens when we turn these ideas on their head? So we've shared advice for companies looking to optimize these strategies, but what advice would you give to, let's say, someone who's looking for that next opportunity. Like, what would you task them with doing, whether it's researching a company, fine tuning your soft skills, anything like that to be a more attractive candidate?

Frank Niles: Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a couple of different aspects and this. You know, I was recently out in Silicon Valley talking to an innovation group and afterwards a woman asked me, and who leads an accelerator, she said, “What does it take to become a really effective public speaker?” I was speaking to this large group.

And the easy ones—so hopefully I'm not being too impractical, but I think a lot of times we just want simple fixes to the, to a question like you just asked. And so yeah, I could have said, “Well, go take a Dale Carnegie course, or better yet, pay me a bunch of money to coach you on how to become a better speaker.” But what I shared with her is what I absolutely and fundamentally believe, and that is: discovering who you are. What is most important to you, who do you want to become, how do you want to be known?

So, for many, many years, when I was first starting out as a public speaker, I was modeling myself after other people. “I need to learn this skill. I need to become like this speaker.” And it was totally inauthentic to me. And so, sitting down and really thinking about what is most important to me. Who am I as a human being? What energizes me?

And so, I have a little activity that I do with clients and I call it, you know, discovering your passion thread. And you can call it purpose thread, whatever you want to call it, but it's really thinking about, looking over your lifespan—even if you're young, you can still do this—and thinking about those places where you're most alive and, most importantly, have the greatest impact. Thinking about them and then identifying them, then looking at the common denominator.

When I did that activity for myself, and now write about it and use it with clients, it became really obvious that for me, professionally, I'm motivated and energized by three things: adventure, discovery, and helping other people. So now, to your question, what should I be looking at? For me, you could pay me, you know, $5 million, but if it entailed creating spreadsheets or doing process optimization, you can keep your money because that's not going to be energizing, it's going to be depleting to me.

And so I think one of the first things that people need to think about is what makes you come alive and where you have the greatest impact. And when those two things can co-exist, man, now you're in the magic zone, right? So back to the question, what should you be looking at? Some place that fits, obviously, your skill set, and if you're mid-career, that may mean you need to learn some new skills, particularly in the AI-digital space. There's ample opportunities to learn. YouTube is now what? The most-used search engine currently?

Jordan Tyler: Yeah.

Frank Niles: There's a jillion videos out there. Or better yet, mentor a Gen Zer and then get reverse mentoring from them. That's a good way to do it. And again, assuming that compensation looks right—so that salary, total rewards meaning 401k, what could their bonus structure looks like, all that—okay, that's got to be fair and equitable, if not a little above market. But then start looking at what is the culture, talk to folks, go on Glassdoor, look at what people are saying about what it's like to work at, you know, X, Y, and Z. So you would really get a feel for it.

And then, importantly, you know, kind of fine tune your resume to connect with that company. Just don't send out generic resumes. You know, look at, does this company's values tend to align with my values? That's really important. And if you get into the interview process, ask those kinds of questions. Ask, you know, things like, what is most energizing about your job? You know, to the interviewer, just an example, what is it about your job that maybe isn't so energizing? Just to get a feeling of, do people like to work there? And the people that do like to work there, would these be people I would want to go out and have drinks with or have a meal with?

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, that's a pretty good litmus test.

Frank Niles: It is a good litmus test!

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, I think all those are really, really great tips that people can implement and I thank you for sharing those.

Frank Niles: Yeah, you're welcome.

Jordan Tyler: So, it's clear that we're at something of an inflection point in the ways that we work and how that impacts culture, recruitment, and retention, and all the other things we talked about today. But I'm really curious about how you stay current on trends in the workplace, especially given it's shifting so much as it is today.

Frank Niles: Yeah. Every day, I do it in the morning, but every day you need to be reading the news. And it's super easy, you know, you have, what do they call it, Google Alerts, and you know, curate articles for you. So that's one is just understanding what the markets are doing, not only markets and business and your own industry, but also politics because politics affects business and vice versa. So really becoming a student of reality, as I would say, and the future.

Secondly is embedding yourself in a network surrounding yourself with deeply curious people in the industry, as well as outside the industry, and let me just pause there real quick for a moment. Since a large percentage of folks are going to be listening to this podcast are probably in pet or vet, it's really important to step out of your industries so you can learn what other industries have done to transform, to stay relevant, to innovate. In social science, we have a phrase that: “To truly know you have to be above, not in.” And so there's great value in studying and analyzing other industries and not even industries, but disciplines, you know, it just broadens our awareness of the possibility of where we can go. Right? So that's one is being a student, surrounding yourself with really smart, passionate people that are willing to share their expertise with you and that you can bounce ideas off of.

And then getting in the trenches. As you know, being a scholar dies hard. So, I'm much more interested in creating new knowledge than just consuming existing knowledge. So, you know, we're, as you know, we're definitely in the trenches here creating the future, not only forecasting the future. So, I spend a lot of time thinking about and writing about what could the future look like, certainly in the people and culture space. So, I think it's moving beyond being a consumer of information but also a creator of information.

You may have heard me say this before. When I hear people, book after book after book, articles, articles, and they have no original thought, that tells me they have no original thought. And so, I find it much more interesting, I think we find it much more interesting here in our firm, to be the ones driving the conversation, but that takes creativity. That takes time. And it takes being surrounded with really smart people that know a lot more than you do in certain things.

Jordan Tyler: Yes. Hashtag consilience…

Frank Niles: Consilience! That's right. Yep. Mm hmm.

Jordan Tyler: So, consilience is very much a part of our culture at BSM Partners and one of our core company values. And really, consilience is all about bringing together people from different backgrounds and experiences and disciplines to work together, share their knowledge, and, you know, accomplish something that's bigger, greater than the sum of its parts, and I think that value is something that can certainly be applied to the conversation we've had today, particularly about culture and creating space for these interactions that might not happen organically or otherwise.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself there, but Frank, obviously you are a great resource for trends, for thought leadership, and just for keeping a finger on the pulse of this topic and kind of where we go from here. But I think it would be interesting to explore where you, you know, as the expert, get your inspiration from.

Do you have any favorite authors or role models or types of people that really inspire you?

Frank Niles: This is going to sound maybe kind of cheesy, but I get my inspiration from people doing extraordinary things when they have been counted out. You know, I was kicked out of elementary school because I was considered like kind of the goof off, right? Maybe not dumb, but that I wasn't suited for school. Certainly not a private school, that's where I was kicked out. Barely graduated high school. I was a pretty good athlete, but barely graduated high school. But I now recognize it wasn't because I was dumb. It's that I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know who I was and I didn't apply myself.

And so from there I became a Los Angeles County paramedic. And then from there I go on and, you know, become a rock climber and represent brands and stuff like that. And then go get a doctorate and become, you know, a university professor and then leave and go to Walmart and do crazy stuff around the world and fun stuff. And then now as a consultant, all of those have in common adventure, discovery, helping other people.

So when you're asking, who do I read? Wide range. So, if you want to read up on an interesting perspective and a powerful perspective on culture, look at Ben Horowitz's work. If you want to develop more of the human side of your leadership capabilities, now, obviously Brené Brown is almost at the level of cliche now, but her books on vulnerability are really good. Kristen Neff at the University of Texas, all of her work on self-compassion is good.

Subscribe to a business magazine—so, I'm an avid reader of Harvard Business Review—as well as consume literature. We know that research shows that if you consume literature or you engage in creative arts, be it singing or anything like that, it actually increases your empathy because you're having to imagine what would it be like to be another person. So, you know, sign up to take classes just like do all of that kind of stuff. That's what I think energizes me and inspires me. I'm deeply inspired by stories of people that kind of beat the odds and when others said, “No, you're not going to amount to anything,” and then they amount to something, and they stay humble and kind. That's pretty inspiring to me.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. That would be a cool kind of series to, to have you sit down with some of these people that you've kind of, you know, watched overcome great obstacles.

Frank Niles: I think I'd be a great one. Make it happen, Jordan.

Jordan Tyler: Haha. Well, it's on the record now, so we have to do it.

Frank Niles: I think I'd be a great one. Yeah. We have clients and you hear their personal stories. Of, you know, being treated as a less than and ending up going on to becoming CEOs and CHROs and, you know, they beat the odds. But every single one of them that kind of beat the odd, it was because other people believed in them and they were in their corner.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, that is inspiring. So, as we kind of wrap up today, we could probably talk about this all day, but what do you think we missed? Do you have any final thoughts or messages that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Frank Niles: Yeah, no, I love to visit and talk about people and culture, you know, because that really is what moves a company forward. You know, not to use the old, tired phrase, but you know, culture eats strategy. You can have the best strategy, you can have the best product, but if you have kind of a not a very effective culture to support what you're creating, you're not going to be successful as a company.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, it's cannibalizing.

Frank Niles: It is. It is.

Jordan Tyler: Super interesting. Well, thank you so much for your time. This was a really great conversation, and I think our listeners, you know, be it industry professionals, I think it's going to be interesting for pet parents as well, just because, you know, most pet parents are in the workforce as well. So.

Frank Niles: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what's kind of cool about this conversation is it, it applies to our lives. Because as you said at the very beginning, bringing it back in the human element, it's because we're all stinking humans who have strengths, have anxieties, have weirdness about us, have worries. I mean, welcome to the human race. But somehow we're just all getting through and having a grand time doing it and creating amazing products.

Jordan Tyler: I love that. I think that's a great note to end on. So really appreciate all the great insights you shared and for anyone who'd like to learn more about this topic from Dr. Niles, we've linked several of his recent articles in the show notes for this episode. So those cover everything from Gen Z and the workforce, strategies for building high performing teams, and of course, how to recruit and retain top talent effectively. So definitely go check those out if you are curious.

It's clear that talent, recruitment and retention are more than just buzzwords. They're truly the foundation of any successful organization. Dr. Frank Niles has given us much to think about, including invaluable insights on how culture, leadership, and a focus on the human element can create workplaces that not only attract top talent, but inspire and retain them from understanding the business risks of high turnover to the unique expectations of Gen Z in the workplace.

We hope these practical strategies can empower businesses to thrive in today's competitive landscape. Dr. Niles emphasis on aligning culture with behaviors and fostering spaces where we can feed our need for autonomy, competence, and connection serves as a roadmap for leaders looking to build high performing teams, and his advice reminds us that while businesses are fueled by strategy and innovation, It really is the people behind the scenes who make success possible.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Barking Mad. If you want to learn more about us or BSM Partners, please visit www.bsmpartners.com. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite leading podcast platform and share it with a friend to stay current on the latest pet industry trends and conversations.

I'd like to thank Dr. Frank Niles one last time for joining us today, as well as the dedicated team behind this podcast: Ada-Miette Thomas, Neeley Bowden, Kait Wright, Cady Wolf, and Dr. Katy Miller. An extra thank you to Lee Ann Hagerty and Michael Johnson in support of this episode. Thanks for tuning in, and see you next time!