This week’s guest, Emily Chang, has held a lot of positions and titles at a long list of high-profile enterprises. Find out why she considers her experience in all of these roles to serve the same ultimate purpose— and how you can apply her mindset to your own work.
Authenticity - Powering Brands and Leadership (ft. Emily Chang)
How changing the way you think about your work can change your entire career
OPENING QUOTE:
“People will often say, ‘Oh, you're so busy, I didn't want to bother you.’ But if I'm not helping you, if I'm not helping you break down barriers or find resources or support you in a big client meeting, do you realize I have no job? That literally is my entire job. So no, I'm not busy. In fact, I invite you to make me busy.”
-Emily Chang
GUEST BIO:
Emily Chang began her career in Procter & Gamble, then Apple where she led Retail Marketing across APAC as the brand entered China. She then became Chief Commercial Officer of Intercontinental Hotels Group, Greater China, where she was responsible for all commercial functions, across 320 hotels, six hotel brands, three loyalty programs, and a sales & marketing team of 5,200. Emily then became CMO of Starbucks, China where she led customer engagement and development of their digital ecosystem. Today, Emily is the CEO of McCann Worldwide in China, leading a team of 400 launching McCann’s new China presence.
LINKS
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[3:30] - “Flex to Your People”
How great leaders become what their people need
Emily speaks of a leader named Tia who made a point of not forcing her people to wrap themselves around her methods. Instead, she flexed to her people— seeing their strengths, exploiting those strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses along the way.
[14:12] - The Importance of Bookends
How you say hello and goodbye matter
At Apple, Emily helped hone the ‘bookend’ approach to customer interactions— “Welcome warmly, and send them off with a fond farewell.” These experiences come through a human who looks you in the face and makes eye contact and a smile— and the power of that impact can’t be overstated.
[18:10] - Update Your Hypotheses
On changing your mind as a habit
With the many positions she’s held, Emily has had the experience of coming into different organizations with a list of assumptions about a company or team. But as she’s learned more in her first months, she finds that those assumptions get edited, updated, or crossed out entirely. And she’s fine with that. Comfort with having our minds changed is the foundation of a growth mindset.
[33:53] - The Three Characteristics of Great Leaders
What all transformative leaders share in common.
According to Emily, all great leaders share three things in common. First, they are caringly assertive. They’re empathetic without being doormats. Second, they’re visible. They’re there for their people, not locked away in some tower elsewhere. Finally, they’re authentic. They’re comfortable being vulnerable, and they’re intentional about the way they present those vulnerabilities.
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CREDITS:
Emily Chang:
People will often say, "Oh, you're so busy, I didn't want to bother with you." But if I'm not helping you, if I'm not helping you break down barriers or find resources or support you in a big client meeting, do you realize I have no job? That literally is my entire job. So no, I'm not busy. In fact, I invite you to make me busy.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to Perspectives from the top. I'm Chris Roebuck, global keynote speaker with unique leadership experience from military, business and government, bestselling author and your guide to greater success. Together, we'll discover powerful insights from the world's leading thinkers, doers, and trailblazers. The must know trends, thought provoking revelations and practical actions you can use immediately. This is your exclusive and personal shop of insight and inspiration to help you get to the top.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to you and all of our perspective's from the top community. We are now in 42 countries across the world and growing. So it's great to share the insights of such successful people with you to help you get to where you want to be. Today's guest is Emily Chang. Emily began her career in Procter & Gamble, then in Apple, where she led Retail Marketing across APAC, as the brand entered China before then becoming Chief Commercial Officer of Intercontinental Hotels Group, Greater China, where she was responsible for all commercial functions, across 320 hotels, six hotel brands, three loyalty programs, and a sales in marketing team of 5,200. Emily then became Chief Marketing Officer of Starbucks, China, where she led customer engagement and development of the digital ecosystem. And she's now CEO of McCann Worldwide, the marketing agency for China leading a team of 400 launching McCann's new China presence.
Chris Roebuck:
But Emily also found time to write a great book, The Spare Room, which looks at how we optimize our social legacy by identifying what we offer in resources, experience and capability, and what inspires us. It's woven around Emily's own legacy of caring for 17 disadvantaged children in her spare room over 22 years, as well as eye opening stories of others in different walks of life.
Chris Roebuck:
Emily welcome. One of the things that our listeners love to hear about is who's inspired guests to be as successful as they are to get to where they've got to. It's often a boss, a teacher, a family member. Was there somebody like that who inspired you at the beginning of your journey?
Emily Chang:
I love this question, Chris. And frankly it helps me reflect and realize how grateful I am because so many names just flooded my mind. I'll pick one. I'll tell you about Tia, Tia Jordan. I worked for her when I was at Proctor and Gamble and we worked at the Walmart Retail business. So we are based in Arkansas partnering with Walmart while still working for Proctor and Gamble. And the thing about Tia that was so interesting is her background is in sales, my background was more in brand management. So sales has a way with people and more and more I realized work is all about people. So I had the opportunity to learn so much from her in how she managed large scale teams.
Emily Chang:
And specifically the thing that comes to mind is the way that Tia flexed to her people versus had her people wrapped themselves around her. She had a way to see your strengths and absolutely leverage, I would argue at times, exploit them ruthlessly, but she would also recognize your opportunities and minimize them. She wouldn't coach, "Hey, this isn't good enough. This is what I'm seeing in you, I need you to turn it around." I would just see her flex around people so that she was able bring people together in a way that they were able to show their best and minimize their worst on a daily basis.
Chris Roebuck:
That's really interesting, that concept of the leader flexing to the team, which is something we'll pick up on later around the servant leadership. So you did that 11 years at Proctor and Gamble, developing the brand sales. And it seems like that 11 years was to some degree, the foundation for things to come, because it was about people, but also innovative approaches to the market. So there was that, and you were responsible for P&L. So there was that dual people and P&L and how do we make them both work well to produce the results?
Emily Chang:
Absolutely. I think a lot of people will think about Proctor and Gamble as the training ground for marketing. It is. And brand management is more than marketing. It's about general management. And ultimately I think having a starting place where people and P&L come side by side make you realize that they're completely intertwined. At P and G you don't get to be a diva. You can't be great at driving business results, but not attract people to want to be on your team. You simply won't be successful. You can't be the one that absolutely loves people, but doesn't deliver on the business because again, your work plan, your KPIs, everything is so clear, not only to set expectations, but to help you on that journey to set you up for success.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, I think that's that really powerful thing that it's, you can actually deliver success through intimidation or inspiration. And the intimidation of approach, the pressure to meet targets and all the rest of it. The threats, "If you don't meet targets, this is what's going to happen," will only work for a certain amount of time. But what is even more counterproductive about it from all the figures is that if there's anybody that's going to drive away first, it's your talented people. And I think your comments about Proctor and Gamble is that if you get the people side right, you will attract the best people, the talented people who then deliver the PNL for you.
Emily Chang:
I think that's exactly right. I think there's this idea of followership companies like maybe, maybe GE or Proctor and Gamble. When you have a chance to build your own mini team within the broader company, what happens is the cream rises to the top. You can quickly start seeing who people want to work for and people raising their hands and saying, "Maybe I don't love the idea of working on deodorant, but I love that person and I would like a chance to work on her team." That speaks volumes to a person as a leader. And I think that kind of recognition not only helps the organization identify the great leaders who can drive P&L also support their people, but it also gives confidence to leaders at a relatively early age to say, "Oh, I'm being recognized for both of these things."
Chris Roebuck:
That point there is very, very powerful because I think particularly for people who are C-suite and listening, if you want to work out where the great leaders are in your organization, look at where the talent is saying it wants to go.
Emily Chang:
Yes, absolutely.
Chris Roebuck:
I think that's the most powerful indicator, "Where do the best people want to go? Who do those best people want to work for?" Because those are the people who are the potential board members of the future.
Emily Chang:
Agreed, agreed. I think looking at results are great, looking at where people want to go are great. I'll tell you a very soft measure that I just identified the other day. We love celebrating birthdays. So one of the practices I started years ago is I always put everybody director and above their birthdays into my calendar, so I cannot forget. And it gives me a chance to kind of go into the big chat group and kind of just say, "Hey, happy birthday. It's Chris's birthday, everyone." And allow everyone else to celebrate in their own way. One thing I observed, we've had a major transformation at McCann World's Group this year in China, and we've hired 11 out of 14 new leaders in the last maybe year and a half.
Emily Chang:
One of these leaders had a birthday the other day and I sent a text. Not only did everybody already know it, which shows a degree of care that people want to know her birthday because they want to find a reason to celebrate her. But she was buried in cake and gifts and love. I mean, it was such a physical manifestation of her team's adoration of her, I thought, "This is probably a really good soft metric is just to see how people are treated on their birthdays."
Chris Roebuck:
That's that's true. She would've been very happy unless of course she was on a diet. In which case the cake would've probably been a severe temptation. So you spent your time at Proctor and Gamble and then moved to Apple as it entered the China market as Head of Retail Marketing. And I believe you were the first Apple executive for retail in China, basically building a new market for the brand, building a new team. So unlike a P and G, which was an existing organization, legacy, et cetera, et cetera, Apple was pretty much a blank sheet of paper. Did you find that was an inspiring opportunity? And give our listeners a little bit of an insight into how did you build a team, build the presence from the ground up?
Emily Chang:
Well, I came from such a different corporate culture. P and G is a carefully calibrated place, as we said. It's designed and structured to maximize success for the masses, right? It's an amazing starting place, which is why I spent 11 years there and was happy to spend more, frankly, if I did not have this amazing Apple carrot at dangled in front of me. Apple was the polar opposite. It was wide open space, particularly in China, no KPIs, no specific work plan. So naturally ambitions far exceed resources. And I think to your question, "How do you start?" Well, I think we start with the ambition. If we know it's going to exceed our resource, let's start with a vision of what we would like to accomplish. "What does amazing look like?" I'll give an example. In retail, we look at NPS, Net Promoter Score. It's a way to track how satisfied customers are with their retail experience.
Emily Chang:
And I'll say China's NPS was notoriously low in the beginning. And everybody just kind of said, "China's different." And man, I've worked half my career in the US, half my career in China. And I would say lots of people will wave their flags for their markets saying, "This is different." Lots of people globally will wave their flag and say, "There's a lot more in common than there is different," while the truth as always is somewhere in between. And I think when it comes to something like NPS, well, humans are humans, they will reward retail experiences when they feel recognized, valued, honored from the beginning to the end of their store experience. And before they enter the store now, well beyond and now online and offline in an integrated way. Well, I think we weren't satisfied with this idea that, "Oh, no, we will give China a bye on the NPS because it's so tough, there's so many people."
Emily Chang:
We said, "No, if we are doing it right, we can grow NPS. We can grow Net Promoter Score because people will love coming to our store. So let's work from the desired outcome backwards and say, if that's our ambition, let's say we want to go from being the bottom NPS market in the world to, we want to be one the best." Sounds absurd, but surely not when we think about what we desire to do with the Apple retail experience. So then we started to lay out, "What has to be true, what is not good enough today? What are the changes that we need to get from A to B," and over time with a number of small and large initiatives with help from Global, and a lot of sleeves rolled up in the market. We were able to actually deliver the top NPS in the world two years later.
Chris Roebuck:
That's amazing. And for listeners, this is the key point. It goes to the fact that we are all human beings and if you look at what experience you are trying to give your customer or your team or your supplier, or even your boss, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the other person, looking at what they want. And the other beautiful point you brought out was the... And it's been picked up. It was picked up by Jamie Price of Advisor Group in US on the financial services side. That fundamentally, if you create an environment where you have possibility thinking and you aren't restricted by, "Oh, we're just going to do 5% on last year." And you just say to people, "What do you think we really could achieve?" Then you'll achieve great things. And that sound is exactly like what you were doing at Apple.
Emily Chang:
Well, I think when we start with the ambition, we define a stretching goal, "This is how we want customers to feel." Well, what's the first thing that you need to put your attention on to get customers to feel a certain way? It's our own people. How do we want our people to feel? Because if they feel valued and respected, like they have the best job in the world, then they're going to bring that to the floor every day and then the customers who engage with them, it's contagious.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah. It's interesting. I've spoken to many, many audiences around the world from all sorts of different sectors from aircraft to construction, to retail, to financial services, to military. But the one thing that comes out in the retail audience is there is a fundamental understanding that to some degree, our employees are our first customers, which interestingly doesn't seem to be present in anybody else's mindset. So you are confirming that is the retail perspective. If your employees are not inspired, their interaction with customers is not going to be inspiring.
Emily Chang:
Right. Well, we talk so much about our brand, it's positioning, what do we want to stand for? We curate the packaging within an inch of its life, don't we? And how it's supposed to look, the color, the paint on the logo, ultimately what brings a brand to life? The person who's wearing the shirt with your brand on it, who says, "Thank you for coming into the store. How can I help you?" At Apple, we talk about, "Welcoming warmly, and then sending off with a fond farewell." The bookends of every experience are critical and those bookends don't come necessarily in your app, on a TV commercial, on a billboard. They come through the human who looks you in the face and makes eye contact and gives you a warm, authentic smile.
Chris Roebuck:
That's I think fascinating because what I would say from the leadership perspective to listeners is, "Think about that concept of bookend for the retail salesperson interacting with the customer, but also think about that concept of the bookend for you as a leader, when you are interacting with your people, what are the bookends that you have when you interact with individuals or indeed anybody else, your peers in other parts of the organization?" So after your success at Apple, you moved onto International Hotels Group as Chief Commercial Officer, and then we are back into the legacy world. 270 hotels, the organization needed revitalization and renewal. So the blank sheet that you had at Apple was a joyous inspiration, but with the legacy at International Hotels Group, it was probably more a little bit more of a battle to overcome preexisting mindsets.
Chris Roebuck:
That sector is also slightly male dominated as well. So how did you sort of gain credibility with what was potentially a skeptical audience? You come from Apple, not from another hotel, you were a woman in a male dominated world. So how did you get that credibility? Because when we discussed before you improved employee satisfaction by 40%, and the challenge with that is the driver employee satisfaction is not what you do as chief commercial officer, but it's what their boss does with them on a day to day basis. So give them at least some insight into how you approach this challenge.
Emily Chang:
I mean, the best thing about employees is they have mouths and strong opinions, and they're very happy to tell you what they're unhappy about.
Chris Roebuck:
Always.
Emily Chang:
And they're very happy to tell you what they like. So frankly, the easiest thing to do is to listen. And I had a huge gift in this. And I think when we approach new roles, frankly, when we approach every day with humility, it serves us and our organization well, because my boss who, the CEO who hired me said, "I'd like you to come in as a VP first, just come look, this is not a test. Just come in as a VP underneath the current CCO and just learn for a couple months, listen. And then when you get promoted, then I want you to take action. Go visit the hotels, understand what the portfolio hotels looks like, talk to general managers and talk to your peers."
Emily Chang:
And I think if you can swallow that pride and take a lower title, and I've done that more than once it serves you really well, because is you can come in a little quieter and it gives you the chance to listen without everyone looking at you like, "You're the new big boss. You got 30 days, what's your 90 day plan, right?" And listening, you can very quickly start to ascertain, "Where are the pain points? Where are people happy?" And this is what I do. I have a hypothesis journal when I start a new job. I start writing my hypotheses. "This is my hypothesis. This is going well, this is not going well. This might be something to consider changing, this might not be something to consider changing." And every Friday doesn't matter how late, even if there's a dinner or a social occasion, I'll come back to my hypothesis journal after each week and interrogate it.
Emily Chang:
And I find I'll update hypotheses. "This one is not valid. Oh, this one might be, but it might be a different reason." And after the first three months, this hypothesis journal is all crossed out and written and edited, but what's wonderful. And I like doing this in paper form is you can kind of see where you started to where you went. And that journey itself is educational. So my long answer to the first question is, go in and listen. Be humble and recognize especially, if it is an established organization or if the existing leadership team has been working together for a long time, don't come in and tell people what to do. Listen, ask questions and start to slowly formulate your own hypotheses.
Chris Roebuck:
And also what was interesting when we talked before, was because you'd come from a different background to most of the people in IHG and to some degree, a sort of more figures based data, analytical background, you started digging into the data in a way that nobody had done previously in IHG, which helped you gain credibility. Give the listener some insight into how the ability to identify really critical data that other people might be missing is really important.
Emily Chang:
Yeah. So, after you listen and you can't do that forever, you have your hypotheses. Well, you're the new person going into an established leadership team who are generally of the entirely of the opposite gender, much older, they'd worked their way through the ranks. To go in and say, "Hey guys, here's my hypothesis." You're going to earn no credibility at all. The best thing to do is to go in and look at the data. "Is there data that validates my hypothesis? Is there data that demonstrates we're missing something?" And then I actually started to realize by digging into the data, the data was not as ideal as it could be. We have a function called revenue management, which is a really important and fascinating function for those like me who love finance. My MBA was in finance and strategy. So revenue management is all about dynamic pricing and optimization to maximize your revenue at any given not year, not month, not week hour, that's how hospitality works.
Emily Chang:
But I also recognize because we're in a managed operating system, we are responsible for our P&L as well as the P&L of hundreds of hotel owners. So if you are in revenue management, you're fighting day to day fires, you're to convince one hotel owner or one on property revenue management director of something, you're trying to manage a cluster, you're trying to optimize in a region. How can you sit back and ingest the quantity of the data that helps you look around the corner and make bigger decisions and better decisions for the future? You can't be in the here and now in the weeds and look out into the future and take predictive action. And so the first thing we did was we looked at the data and data helped us make some decisions and bring people on board. So it wasn't me coming in saying, "I have a hypothesis."
Emily Chang:
It also wasn't me coming in and saying, "Hey, here's this data that none of you fools saw," of course not. It was, "Hey guys, I found this data. It's interesting, it appears to me that we might be missing something. How do you see the data?" And it's a question, and it's not meant to be condescending. It truly is, "I might not be looking at it right." It's meant to be, "Let's look at it together." And then people started to realize, "Hey, indeed, there seems to be an issue. One of the issues is the data's not as accurate as it could be, so how do we improve the quality of what we're looking at?" And we started to do that together. The second thing is then once we have higher integrity data, "What do we do with it? What does this tell us? And what does it inform in terms of our strategy moving forward?"
Emily Chang:
So I think the structure of an organization is very important. We ultimately separated revenue operations, which is the revenue management teams working directly with the hotels and revenue strategy, which also built up a business intelligence unit that helped us see the big picture.
Chris Roebuck:
That's such a powerful point because it goes back not just to the organizational level, but also to the personal level. It's about, "Yes, you are dealing on a day to day basis with the operational, which does need to be done, but the chances are, if you haven't taken a step back and looked at the big picture for some time, that big picture has probably moved on significantly since you last looked at it and you may be missing something, be it an opportunity or a problem." And it is having the ability to flip on a regular basis between your operational and your big picture.
Emily Chang:
Yes. Yes. And I would say one other thing, in companies or organizations or industries that are up or out and Proctor and Gamble's one of those, right? In many ways, this structure works really well. But in other ways, when you've been in one organizational construct or one industry for a very long time, you do risk falling into a fixed mindset. It's the wagon wheels that go over the dirt road in the same place, and it's a rut and suddenly you don't even know you're in a rut and you can't get out. I think I'm not any smarter than anybody who had been there. And I was actually coming in, not knowing as much operationally about how things really worked, but what I did have the benefit of was really just fresh eyes. I wasn't stuck in historical patterns, I wasn't accustomed to an old model, which may have been outdated or worse, which I think was the case irrelevant.
Emily Chang:
So looking at something with fresh eyes doesn't say, "I'm any smarter." It doesn't say, "I'm looking at data any differently than you did." It simply says, "But what is this data actually telling us? Does it really mean we're just on a decline or does it mean that there's something wrong with the model, the way that we're interpreting it and designing. And if we shift the way we're looking at, for instance, segmentation, we might be able to turn this around very quickly." And in fact, that's exactly what happened.
Chris Roebuck:
The whole concept of looking at things with fresh eyes, is so important. And certainly as we discuss my career has been vaguely like yours in the sense that it's gone from one particular sectors from the military into small and medium sized organizations, into London Underground Subway, into global banking, into healthcare. And it is so true that if you make those career moves, because you have come from such a different perspective, it means that you can look at what's going on in the new environment and potentially pick up opportunities or problems that those who have been in there for years miss. But you are right. The secret is to help them see what you are seeing rather than telling them they're wrong.
Emily Chang:
I think there's a lesson here for people who love the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. There are some great books written about him, that he was a genius, yes. And he also was involved in so many disconnected pieces of work. Simply making connections that others did not connect, allowed him to unveil new insights. And I think when we change industries, that is also the case, but the second piece of that is, it requires a high level of discomfort index is kind of what I call it. We have to love being uncomfortable, we have to thrive on and get a thrill out of being in that space where, "I don't exactly know, but I have a sense and I love plunging in and trying to figure it out."
Emily Chang:
If those things resonate with you, connecting dots that were previous unconnected and a high degree of discomfort index, you're probably set up to have a career like Chris and me, because you'll love moving from industry to industry where you're equally learning a lot of new things, but you're just by definition adding value because you're coming in with a different experience set than most people around you.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah. And I would say people might describe it as, "Going with the flow," but it is going for those interesting opportunities that inspire you. But then flipping it back to the individual who's in an organization and likes being in an organization and maybe doesn't like having those sort of changes. I would say one of the key points if you are listening and you are like that, is but whatever you do, as well as looking inside, always look outside regularly to what is happening with competitors, what is happening in the wider sector so that you can get that broader perspective that will help you be even better.
Emily Chang:
Yeah. That's great advice. And maybe even outside of the sector or into other markets. For instance, sometimes you'll see digital innovation leapfrog in China. And in hospitality in particular, we started to see some integration of channels, which then require the re-segmentation. Well, there's no reason we wouldn't expect that same level of disruption in the market elsewhere. It'll just come later. So one of the things we took on upon ourselves was, "How do we start educating the other markets? Because what we're experiencing now is coming." Yeah.
Chris Roebuck:
I think that's really good advice because as the fact that X is a new development in construction doesn't mean that it is only applicable to construction. It might even be applicable to airlines in terms of what that thing might be. So, yeah, I think it's always about having an open mind and just looking out there for interesting things. And actually, what I might do to listen is there's a great website in terms of new ideas and new things, which I look at regularly, which is called springwise.com, which pulls together innovations from all over the world. From medical, just mind blowing. I'll put that link into the show notes because I just find it mind blowing what human brains across this world can think of when they are confronted with a challenge.
Chris Roebuck:
It is just unbelievable. So did you then moved on to Starbucks where you became a Chief Marketing Officer and that wasn't just 270 hotels, that was 4,000 stores with a turnover of $3 billion. So you did some really innovative work on engagement. And I think most people probably think, "Starbucks is quite a transactional organization. You walk in the door, cafe latte, please, cafe latte, walk out end of story." But you made it much more than that. Tell our listeners what you did.
Emily Chang:
Well, I think Howard Schultz had an amazing vision. He was known for a saying, "We are not a coffee company serving people. We're a people company that happens to serve coffee." It goes back to the first point we made, which is it's all about people. It's about the experience, the third place, how we make people feel. And for me, my opportunity coming in as a CMO was integrating the marketing function, the consumer intelligence function, the categories, which is the bread and butter, where we make the money with coffee, tea, et cetera, and digital ventures, which is a combination of all digital things. E-commerce, payments, loyalty program, our app and all of our digital partnerships.
Emily Chang:
That was really exciting to me. I think we've talked about this entrepreneurial mindset and even in big companies, you can find these incredible opportunities where you have the resource, but it's either pretty raw material or the sky's the limit depending on what you want to do with it. And I'm very grateful for this opportunity. Starbucks is a relatively decentralized company in many ways. So in China, you're able to accelerate your digital flywheel with Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, those partnerships can really pay some major dividends if you can think about the kind of customer experience you want to create, you can unlock that very quickly with a partnership and just start running with one brand experience.
Emily Chang:
I think it's not transactional. It's very much branded, it's very much about people and creating this experience. It's got to be what we call OMO, Online Meets Offline. The offline experience, that third place is still critical. And how does the online experience match that? And I think that's what I learned a lot at IHG. "When you walk into a hotel, how much do we think about the scent that you smell that's iconic to that hotel brand? How about the carpet? How about the VIP quick check-in? All of those details are thought about to the Nth degree, but what about the online experience? Does the app give you that same level of care and branded experience? Forget the app. How about the third party? The online travel agency. "If I book through booking.com, do I still that brand experience?"
Emily Chang:
And I think IHG brought to mind how important it is to create that brand thread from online to offline and Starbucks gave us the opportunity in many ways to create it. Because while we did have a very established outstanding app, there were new digital products we were creating that I was looking after that gave us a chance to create that from scratch. And when you don't have some of that grandfathered in stuff that you were talking about, it's like you're a kid in a candy store. It's a lot of fun.
Chris Roebuck:
That's a really powerful point about the experience and the experiences that you just don't forget. One of the hotel experiences I will never forget is in Oman place called, Salalah on the coast of Oman over the Indian ocean. Rotana Hotel built in the Arab style. I walked into a double height reception hall in the Arab style, and they had fresh frankincense burners in the middle of reception. And as I walked in the door, I smelt fresh burning frankincense. And the frankincense they have that is where the best frankincense comes from. And that central experience in terms of the scene, the smell and the welcome is something I'll never forget. And that's what we are looking for as an experience for customers, yes?
Emily Chang:
That's right. That's right. It is a thoughtful experience, calculating every touchpoint and not only, "How do I design it," but, "How do I design it distinctively?" So when I smell that, you could put me blindfolded if I walk into an Intercontinental Hotel, I know I'm there. If you take away the tactile, I'll still know I'm in a hotel, Indigo Hotel because of the way everything is laid out and how intimately every boutique hotel reflects the neighborhood story. I think when design is cared for like that, the brand speaks for itself. And it's memorable, just the way you were just remembering the hotel in Oman Chris.
Chris Roebuck:
And then so you've done P and G, Apple, IHG, Starbucks. So by now you are a really experienced and successful leader. And over that journey, you've seen great leaders around you and you've seen some not so great leaders. So what do you think are some of the things that the good leader should be doing on a day to day basis to get the best out of people and to focus that on to what delivers success for the organization? And the other thing is, so I think we talked about brand, do leaders need to think that they have their own brand and how they present that is effectively how their people will respond?
Emily Chang:
Great. Let me start with the first question. Three things come to mind in terms of defining characteristics of great leaders. The first one is this phrase, "Caringly assertive." I think great leaders are caring, but they're not doormats. I think great leaders are assertive. They inspire confidence in their people because they're clear, ideally data-based, and they know what they want to go after. So they have high expectations, but they deliver them in a caring way. And they're there having their people's back to make sure they're supporting them to deliver against those goals. I think the second idea is visible. Maybe that's not something that lots of books write about, but it occurs to me that the strongest leaders are visible. They're not distant ideas where you get a letter from the CEO once a year, people know what they look like. I was just talking to my friend Marisa Thalberg she's the CMO at Lowe's.
Emily Chang:
And what's amazing is I was telling her, "I just want to say, congratulations. You've done some great marketing work." And something that really touches me is when I see posts on LinkedIn, the people in the hardware stores are thrilled to see you. You're a female a again in a male's world and you're a role model. Because I've been in retail, I've been in hospitality. In the service industry, when you win the hearts of the people who are every day representing your brand and they're thrilled to see you. To me, that is a KPI in and of itself. So being visible, investing the time in the store and not just doing the obligatory hand, wave, spending time with the store leaders, to understand their pain points, helping them feel heard and respected. They're the ones making the money, they're the ones bringing our brand to life. I think that visibility is really important.
Emily Chang:
And the third one is authenticity. Brené Brown brought the word vulnerability into our dialogue on a day to day basis in the professional world. I think authenticity requires a degree of vulnerability. You have to be willing to let people see a little bit of who you are. And then with authenticity, I think it comes down to intentionality. "How do I want to be seen? How am I going to intentionally, let people see who I am? Am I just going to let my tongue run loose and be completely unfiltered?" Of course not, not as a leader, "I'm going to be intentional, I'm going to pick moments." Here are some examples, "What am I wearing? What do I say? What do I reward? What's in my calendar?" The one thing that never lies about my priorities is my calendar, because that's where I've chosen to put my time.
Emily Chang:
"Am I putting in my calendar time to walk around? Do I have teams in different cities? Am I going to each of the cities and spending time with those folks so they all feel like they're part of the family?" So I guess caringly assertive, visible, and authentic, would be the three descriptors. And that leads actually directly to the second question, which is, "Do you become your own brand?" I think yes. Yes, because designing a brand proposition is... The brand is obviously visible. It requires unbelievable design, thoughtfulness and intentionality. If I want Starbucks to stand for something, I need to think about where the logo is, how it comes to life. Where's the green, what's the color of it. What do you smell when you open the store? The fact that everybody will ask your name and write it on a cup that has become such a distinctive part of the Starbucks experience.
Emily Chang:
As a leader, "Ah, there's a direct analogy there." I am still very intent on handwriting notes for years and years and in fact in Guangzhou back when things were so, so inexpensive in China, I bought stationary and I decided to design my own. What I didn't realize was of course there's a scale benefit and I thought, "Oh yeah, 10,000 pieces sounds right." I bought 10,000 pieces Chris, of the stationary that I designed. We are now in 2022 and I am still using that stationary, but I write on it and what's so cool is there are some folks who've joined me from previous companies and when they set up their desk now at McCann, they still put those letters up and it's still the same stationary. So I think branding yourself as a leader comes down to consistency and the things that you care about, you have to intentionally make known and seen over and over, again in an authentic way, because if we're fake, anyone can smell that a mile away.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, the people completely underestimate the subconscious' ability. The neurosciences, the subconscious is able to read nonverbal signals, that show inauthentic behavior. So the words that the conscious brain is hearing are not matched by the nonverbal signals that the subconscious is picking up. And we immediately say to ourselves, "No, no, there's something not right here. This doesn't add up." But then you mentioned McCann. So this is another renewal and growth role for you. So you've got a new executive team, you're building engagement, give our listeners an overview of what you are doing. And in particular, that great work you are doing on... I keep using the word employee engagement, which is an HR term, and to be honest, forget employee engagement in what employee engagement means is getting people to want to give you their best. That's what it's about a at its most simple. And how are you doing that in McCann?
Emily Chang:
Well, it is a major change agenda. And I think as we've been kind of taking this journey through my career, I'd say, what I loved about apple was I think I mentioned a few minutes ago, when your ambition outsizes your resource, what are we going to do to make this happen? I loved at IHG the change management, and frankly, we've all looked at these media reports that are saying, "Four agencies, the ad agency is dead." And then I was at Starbucks, and my whole role as I was talking about was online and all offline integration. It's all about creating this integrated approach. And it's hard enough as a client, it's even harder to find an agency who can do this. And so you bundle all of the last 10 years together and you kind of say, "This is the dream job. I get to put my money where my mouth is. I get to drive, change management and go create that agency partner that I always looked for."
Emily Chang:
And, and so to your point, this now is incredibly distilled. If you love people, man, is this job fun? Because my P&L is so straightforward. It's people in real estate. That's all I got. So if I love people, I find the right people, I pour into them, I develop them, I unleash them, that's where the success comes. And if that's what I love to do, then it is indeed the perfect job. And you're right. Employee engagement is absolutely everything. And you're right, that is kind of somehow an HR phrase for me. My first reaction, when you said it was fun, it's about creating a sense of belonging. It's about creating this space that people are thinking, "I can't wait to get to work. This is going to be great." And if you get to wake up and feel like you're thriving at work and not just surviving or plodding along then, that's when I'm doing my job.
Chris Roebuck:
That's so true. And above all, your point about unleashing the potential that people have. And I look back at my career and I'm sure that you do at yours. And one of the deep frustrations is that as you go through organizations, you can see so many people who have so much potential that is not being unleashed because their leaders are not giving them that opportunity.
Emily Chang:
That's completely on us. And that's 100% of our job. One of the things I spend a lot of times explaining is people will often say, "Oh, you're so busy, I didn't want to bother with you." But if I'm not helping you, if I'm not helping you break down barriers or find resources or support you in a big client meeting, do you realize I have no job like that? That literally is my entire job. So no, I'm not busy. In fact, I invite you to make me busy. Bring me to so many things, engage me, ask me for help to the point where I have to say, "No," and I'll never see it as your weakness or that you can't handle it yourself, I'll see it as you're being smart and leveraging the resources around you because in this job, that's all I need to do.
Emily Chang:
And we mentioned bookends before, and you kind of flagged that note. I think that's so important here. One of the things I realized is this is interesting because I don't come from an agency background. There's not as much training as I'm used to. There's not as much investment in our people. And at first it kind of befuddled me because I thought, "We're only people. Why aren't we pouring into them?" Well, we're in a billable hours situation. So suddenly I realized, "Oh well we have to recognize so much that is important. We need to rise above the billable hours situation and still make it a priority. Intentionally carve out space for people to learn, to feel cared for, to bond with each other. We shouldn't underestimate that and we have to make space for it."
Emily Chang:
So from a bookend standpoint, the first thing we did and I have an amazing head of HR who agrees and has partnered with me every step of the ways we created a newcomer welcome. In many companies, this is standard, right? But to really invest and bring our entire leadership team once a month to meet every newcomer, what could be more important than to let them know what we look like, get to know our personalities a little bit, have a chance to ask those questions on the very first day.
Chris Roebuck:
Really there are potentially a lot of listeners out there who work in a billable hours environment. And from my experience, those billable hours environments, be it advertising, be it legal or other professional services firms. If you are a leader in that environment, you need to look very carefully at whether the billable hours structure is inhibiting your ability to get your people to be the best and give their best. I think it's a challenge in that environment as you alluded to.
Emily Chang:
I think the other thing in that environment that I look at is people will sometimes joke, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe Emily's working on this or going to that pitch. She's the most expensive person here." Let's reframe it, "I'm actually free, I'm overhead." So the more you use my resource, the more efficient your numbers are going to be for your team. And I think that's important, that comes down to, you mentioned earlier servant leadership. I literally get to be a servant leader every day because I'm part of, we don't call it back office here. We call it the enabling team. We're the ET. We are here to enable everyone else, the finance, the HR, the Admin and my team. And everything that we do is in service to the people that we support.
Chris Roebuck:
Which is the way an organization will perform in its best. So after you left IHG, you wrote your book, The Spare Room, which is a fascinating and a very personal account linked to social purpose and social legacy. And that obviously feeds into your work that you've done creating a legacy for organizations and people. Tell our listeners about why you wrote the book and what do you think the message is from the book for individuals and wider society and what you've just mentioned, the servant leadership concept.
Emily Chang:
Yeah. So the idea of social legacy is I was trying to challenge myself to not use the word, the overused, "Higher," level word of purpose. What is social legacy? What do we want to achieve? Legacy simply means I'm leaving something better than I found it. And social defines the space in which I want to make that impact. So I truly believe everybody is positioned to articulate and deliver against their own social legacy. So it's a simple model. On one hand, you've got your offer, the unique combination of what you have to offer. Your experiences, your passions, your skillset, the other half is the offense, which is the thing that you want to go after, that you think, "I can do this. I can do this better, I can make this better." The intersection between those two things, imagine a Venn diagram is your social legacy. And the reason I like this model so much, twofold.
Emily Chang:
One, instead of me trying to convince you about the cause that I think is important and everyone trying to convince each other and attend each other's fundraisers, look, you find your social legacy, then you find other people who have the same passion and now you have a tribe and that's very amplifying in its power. I think the second thing that really impacted me as I was writing the book is this has very much enabled me to be a better leader. We talked out authenticity, visibility as a leader. I think once you know what your social legacy is, "Is it congruent? Is it congruent in your personal life, in your professional life? Are you the same person with your family and with your coworkers?" And if you are, that's fantastic. If you feel like you want to be, I think articulating your social legacy helps you get that level of kind of surgical position in what matters to me.
Emily Chang:
Because then I can say, "This is what I am at work, and this is what I am at home." It clarifies your priorities very, very quickly. It allows me to live with that intentionality. And I think as a leader, people see me more holistically and more consistently going back to your brand question. And that's what could down to what I'd say is authentic leadership.
Chris Roebuck:
So it's that intersection of where your excellent capabilities effectively meet what you want to achieve in your life, yes? And-
Emily Chang:
So well said. Yeah.
Chris Roebuck:
... Yes, it's, "Does your natural skill plus your experience plus where you want to go and what you want to achieve, do they work together to make that legacy happen? And are there people out there who want to achieve that same thing?" But your point was really interesting about your legacy at work and your legacy in your personal life. And I think that goes to the point that certainly after COVID more people are now thinking that those things should be congruent, you should not be a different person at work to the person you are out of work.
Emily Chang:
Yes. I think this was something that took me a long time to realize. We've always cared for children, vulnerable, marginalized, abused children in our spare room since, since 1999. So my husband and I have had 17 kids in our spare room over the last 22 years. And that's why the book is called The Spare Room. And in the beginning I was thinking, "What is everyone else's spare room?" It's sort of like, "Could we make this a movement that everybody starts embracing this idea that I've got a spare room?" But very quickly, I started to realize to your point, that's only half of the model. That is the thing you have to offer, but where are you directing it? And so when I really doubled down and writing the book, I realize that intersection, my social legacy, isn't just a spare room. One of the young people who lived in our spare room helped me coin my social legacy.
Emily Chang:
He is a gentleman from South Korea and he told me about this word [foreign 00:49:03] and he said, "It is like comfort for the spirit," which goes back to this idea of employee engagement. It's about fun, it's about feeling a total sense of belonging. "I can just relax and be myself," so that is my social legacy. I want to create comfort for the spirit, Chris. So when you walk in my house, you take a deep breath and you're like, "Wow. I feel like I'm home. I'm just going to go in the fridge and get something, okay?" Because that's how you feel in my home. And at work, the same thing. I have a relatively new leader who's come in to lead one of our agencies. Yesterday, she came into my office and she went, "Oh, every time I come in here, I just take a deep breath. It's like a living room." It is designed. There's no formal desk, it is designed like a living room so we can sit side by side on a couch versus sitting face to face with a big piece of hard furniture between us.
Emily Chang:
And that is also intentional. It's about creating comfort for the spirit because once you feel that, "Ha," then you have more of a chance to open up and create a foundational relationship built on trust and mutual respect
Chris Roebuck:
And time and time again, in all of the interviews with all of the leaders, from all of the different backgrounds, one word keeps coming out time and time again, "Trust." Emily that's amazing. Thank you so much. Just finally then, I was going to ask you the final question, which I ask everybody, which is what is one thing that you would recommend that a leader should do to be a better leader and a colleague to be a better colleague? But just remind me what were the three that you said we should have authenticity, visibility and-
Emily Chang:
Caringly assertive-
Chris Roebuck:
... Caringly assertive.
Emily Chang:
... is my description.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah. So there you go. To all our listeners, be caringly assertive, be visible. And when I say visible, so, I don't mean if you are the chief executive, your team sees you. I mean, if you are the chief executive, everybody not only sees you, but you talk to them and have a genuine leadership conversation. And now I've completely forgotten the third one, which was assertive visibility and authenticity, that's it?
Emily Chang:
Yes.
Chris Roebuck:
So listeners, those are the three things you have to do as a result of what Emily has said today. And just think about it from the practical perspective that doesn't cost your organization any money. It doesn't require a course to do it and you can do it tomorrow. So Emily, thank you so much for such a really insightful time and giving our listeners not only insights, but ideas for action. Thank you very much.
Emily Chang:
Thank you so much, Chris.
Chris Roebuck:
Emily's amazing career with Proctor and Gamble, Apple, International Hotel Groups, Starbucks, and now McCann shows that it's possible to be successful in completely different sectors if you have the ability to focus effectively on what really needs to be done and to get people behind it. It's interesting that this is exactly the point that Jamie made in his interview based on his varied career as well. Certainly Emily's three key suggestions of being caringly assertive, being visible and having authenticity that shows you a human being as a leader is critical. But I don't think that the last two are necessarily exclusive to leaders. All of us should be doing these things with our colleagues. Emily repeated the importance of servant leadership, both for leaders with their teams and for C-suite and support functions. If everybody listening can take away Emily's three steps plus the serve to lead and the enabling team concept, then I think that will be very powerful.
Chris Roebuck:
How I think about how you can use some of Emily's ideas to help you get to you want to be, and don't forget that in a week, I will give you a more in depth view of the key takeaways from Emily, my insights and three ideas for actions in my reflections on the top. Now, if you've used any of these insights that you've got from previous perspectives from the top guests, and they've helped you, I'd love to hear your success stories. Also don't forget to up on the website so you don't miss any of the great future guests over the next year.
Chris Roebuck:
Thanks for tuning in, check out the show notes from today's episodes at perspectivesfromthetop.com where you can not only enjoy additional resources from today's show, but all previous ones. If you haven't already, subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your favorite podcast, so you don't miss any. And if you really enjoyed the show, please give us a five star rating and review. Have a question or comment? Let's discuss it. Message me on LinkedIn. Perspectives from the Top is produced in collaboration with Detroit Podcast Studios. So have a successful week, use today's new learnings and actions and remember it's onwards and upwards. See you next time on Perspectives from the Top.