How to Lead Humans in the Age of AI | CEO, Kern & Partners Russell Kern

Natasha Nuytten: Welcome back to Human Side Up the podcast where we dive deep into the stories behind extraordinary leadership journeys. I'm your host, Natasha Newton, and today we are exploring the question that keeps many executives up at night, which is how do you actually develop the managers in the middle who really are the ones who make or break an organization success?

Natasha Nuytten: My guest today is Russell m Kern. He is the founder and CEO of Kern and Partners, which is a leadership development consultancy that's really transforming how global enterprises think about human and AI collaboration and what he would call high value teaming, but Russell's path to becoming a trusted advisor to organizations like Caterpillar and SAP and American Express.

Natasha Nuytten: Has been anything but usual, which is right up my alley. So what I find fascinating about Russell's story isn't just the wonderful trajectory from teenage entrepreneurs selling jelly beans to leading a 400 person national agency, but his own experiences with resilient and human connection that ultimately have laid the foundation for his own leadership methodology, which is the Kern methodology named after him, which is no.

Natasha Nuytten: Empower, reflect, and nurture. Um, but it's really anything but a typical sort of corporate approach, which I love it. It's based in neuroscience, it's AI augmented, and it's really specifically designed to unlock what Russell would call your magnificent middle managers. So today's conversation, I'm excited to share with you.

Natasha Nuytten: It's very atypical. There's a lot of practical nuggets in here, and I'm excited to have you along for this conversation. So. Welcome to Human.

Natasha Nuytten: You Being Here. Thank you. And we start our podcast with a question of all of our guests, which is, what are one or two things, maybe three. It's up to you, um, about yourself, traits, characteristics about yourself that are true. They're pretty core to who you are that we might not see on your resume or your very impressive bio.

Natasha Nuytten: And when did you start to own them as true about yourself? 

Russell Kern: So I've been a learner since I was seven years old. Um, had dyslexia as a kid and had difficulty reading and I didn't know it. That my parents would take me to the bookstore and say, you can buy any book that you want as long as you read it. And the books that I bought were all about horses.

Russell Kern: And so I've, I've been a lover of horses since I've been a very young kid. I was reading, reading, um, the Encyclopedia Horse Gear very young, and my whole life has always been about learning because my parents said the greatest gift you could have is to have a deep desire for consistent learning. So that, that is core to who I am, and it's always been my key to success throughout my entire career, um, of, of throughout my entire career.

Russell Kern: We'll leave it at that. So that's one thing about me. I think the second thing is I'm a gardener. I love to garden and I think gardening has so many metaphors in business because it's so much about. Letting the magnificence of a person blossom. So a little seed and nurturing it and giving it the conditions necessary and having it come up and tend to it and grow it.

Russell Kern: 'cause I believe everybody is magnificent. That's my, one of my big mantras. But they require the right conditions and the right gardener around to have that fully blossomed. So those would be the two things that I think are, are. That speak to who I am. Yeah. And then I just have a deep passion, help everybody thrive to use their knowledge to thrive.

Russell Kern: The world is abundant and, um, understanding that we're naturally evolved from our neuroscience and have some natural responses that are uncontrolled, but our ability to succeed and the abundance the world offers is really just up to us and our actions. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love it. I already have 47 different questions, uh, about the things.

Natasha Nuytten: So this is gonna be, this is gonna be great for me. Anyway, I get to dig into that, um, awesome juicy brain of yours. The first one I want to, I kind of wanna address all three of those wonderful descriptions. Um, the first is you mentioned in, in being a learner. It is often, at least in my experience, I work with a lot of young people early in my career, helping them through challenges.

Natasha Nuytten: I worked in schools for a little while. Um, and so it's interesting to me that, um, you found learning so early, even though, uh, you struggled with this or maybe you didn't struggle with dyslexia. You didn't use that word. I put that on you. I'm sorry. Yeah, 

Russell Kern: so I, so I did, I did struggle with dyslexia and I didn't know, I, I, my parents just allowed me to learn what I was passionate about because they, they might have known my dyslexia, but I couldn't read.

Russell Kern: Fiction. I could only read nonfiction. My brain couldn't put the story, like I couldn't read comic books. None of that made any sense to me. But if you tell me how to clean a hoof or brush a horse or how to fix an electrical box that sits right there for me, you could get there. Those, those things I could do very easily when I was younger.

Natasha Nuytten: That's so interesting because so much of your career then became about storytelling, right? 

Russell Kern: And yes. Well, it, so the people around me were the storytellers. I learned how to run the business that contained storytellers. Ah, so I am not a copywriter. I am not. I'm a good speaker. I can tell you my stories. I'm a pretty good teacher, but.

Russell Kern: I built, I learned how to run a business of creative artists. And that was reading how to, right, how to run a service business, how to run a consulting business. So there's that learning how to, yeah, that carried all the way through into my, through my whole life. 

Natasha Nuytten: Oh, that's fantastic. Um, having grown up myself in the Midwest, um, and now back here after many years and being gone, my grandmother was also a gardener.

Natasha Nuytten: And when I say garden, um, I mean like. Acres. And acres. And acres. It was a small farm. 

Russell Kern: He was, she was a, he was a small farmer. Yes. Yes. She was a 

Natasha Nuytten: small farmer. Um, and so I do appreciate that it does take the, the nurturing Right. And, you know, to, for her to have figured out how to grow an orange tree in South Dakota, um, was so amazing to me because.

Natasha Nuytten: It shouldn't have been able to blossom there and to thrive and be amazing. And yet she was able to do that type of thing. Right. Yeah. And so I think it, to your point, um, being able to nurture humans right. In the, in that same way, I think there's, there's definitely a, a thread there of, um, 

Russell Kern: so, so let's, we can build on that.

Russell Kern: Sure. Your grandmother knew how to protect that orange tree in the dead of winter in South Dakota. To wait until spring and to find a way to uncover it and allow it to blossom. The challenge managers have is learning these skills because many a manager, whether they're recruiting, whether they're responsible in HR department where they run a team, they generally rise because they're good individual contributors.

Russell Kern: Yes. But they haven't really spent the time to become great gardeners and know how to protect from political. Um, uh, icebergs and, you know, and, and, and fallouts and all the rest of that, like a gardener would do or your grandmother would do. Yeah. So these, this skill of, of managing people, and it's such a weird word.

Russell Kern: It's not you're, you're nurturing, you're growing, your developing, you're caring, you're authentically having compassion for every person. That allows teams and individuals to grow, just like your grandmother helped the orange tree to grow. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. But I do think that there's a, there's a shift in that thinking, right?

Natasha Nuytten: I think that's how we're thinking of it now, and that may have been how really great leaders in the past have thought about it, but it wasn't the sort of. Common consensus. I think to your point, managing versus nurturing. For a long time in, in the industrial age, we really did think about like how do we manage people to behave like machines, right?

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. To get production out of them. 

Russell Kern: So this point, I fully agree. In the seventies, sixties, seventies and eighties, we assumed people were machines. We managed to productivity and performance without the human compassion. Yeah. We assume they were just a cog in a wheel. We could drop 'em in and drop 'em out and put 'em in.

Russell Kern: I, if we're gonna use that management from that time, yes, I agree. That's how the management was. But 

Natasha Nuytten: I completely, there was a 

Russell Kern: lack of human compassion. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yes, yes. But I completely agree with you. This is the new, this is and, and I, I love it. I think it's, it's one of the things that has been, I think coming.

Natasha Nuytten: For a little while, right? That people are getting louder about it. But it's also one of the things that I find so delightful about. Um, I'm a, I'm a Gen Xer. Um, and what I find so delightful about those generations that are coming after me is that they're sort of not putting up with the same things that myself or those who are older in the workplace than me did put up with.

Natasha Nuytten: Right? They wanna have recognition as a human being. They want to be valued, and so do we. We were just willing to, we didn't know we could ask for that. 

Russell Kern: Well, right. Yes. So the, so the, so the norms are changing Yeah. Over the decades. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. That's great. There 

Russell Kern: were norms where we, that was the norm of the culture and of the society.

Russell Kern: And as generations change, the norms started to change. And they're still changing and they're gonna change pretty radically. Yeah. And I think leaders are struggling to adapt to the norms as we move to this next revolution. That is not an industrial revolution. It's a, and it's not even a technology. It's a, it's a incredibly information rich, um, era.

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Russell Kern: That, and, you know, we will have companion knowledge partners with us, which changes everything. And, and, and I think part of it is, is. Is what the generation wants really the right thing for the business or for themselves. Right. And you can't argue, well, if you make it right for the person, you make it right for the business.

Russell Kern: I've seen both sides of that coin. I 

Natasha Nuytten: think you're right. I've seen 

Russell Kern: self-interest or I've seen self-care for the greater whole of the organization and for who all they serve. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Russell Kern: So it it could be both good and bad. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, there is, there's so much there. I wanna, I wanna dig into that, but before we do, I'd love for, for folks who I don't know, somehow don't know.

Natasha Nuytten: Uh, your story, could you give us a little bit of how you went from, you know, learning about horses Sure. To now working with these organizations? 

Russell Kern: Sure. So I grew up in a family of physicians. I spent my childhood in hospitals with my father. When it was time for college, my a brothers knew I liked he'll go be a vet.

Russell Kern: I didn't know anything in that time. And so you just did it and you apply. You didn't have any of the things you apply for college now you just did it. Um, I then lived with a vet and said, wait a minute here. There's gotta be another way to make a living. Because I lived, I lived in Tulare, California with a vet, and I realized, okay, the concept and reality weren't there.

Russell Kern: I've always had a love of, with my father, we read New York Times and mail order ads and so I had an interest always in making money and then in direct mail, um, and out of college I got a chance to have an interview with an ad agency. Uh, in Westwood. And so I won that internship 'cause I ran a jellybean company and separated myself from all my peers.

Russell Kern: And then as soon as I got in, um, I saw a lot of people getting fired. 'cause in the medical business you don't know what fire it is. But I also just learned what everything there was about direct mail, direct response at, in that era, which was probably 19, early eighties. Okay? So I became the direct mail expert, the direct response expert.

Russell Kern: Um, I didn't like working with bosses and in just a couple years I started my own agency with a partner and we were blending at that time, brand and response. And that little agency grew from two guys in a little teeny office over a long period of time, almost 40 years to 400 people nationwide offices.

Russell Kern: Um, I sold the business in 2008 to Omnicom, and we continued to grow. At a certain time, you'll go through your employee lifecycle. And it was time, time for me to pass the reins. I had grown the business. We were servicing large Fortune 500 clients, the biggest in the nation, but I wasn't done working. And so it took me a while to set back over the time period to say, well, what can you do to help others enjoy your work and blend all of the work that you did?

Russell Kern: All that creativity and ideation that's in the marketing world with what's coming forward. And so. That brought me to where I am now, which is the blending of human and AI collaboration for creativity, problem solving, innovation, and driving business growth. And so the journey, the, so it was a long journey of, of marketing and then the second chapter we'll call it, of how do you blend your authentic truth with a new trend.

Russell Kern: Make it happen for teams and enterprises, given the gaps of knowledge that exist. That's how I got to here. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's how you got to here with a lot of twists and turns, I would imagine in between. 

Russell Kern: Oh, there were many. A twist and turn. I would say the most important thing with all the twists and turn is just blind persistence.

Russell Kern: Yeah. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Talk to me. 

Russell Kern: Walk. Walk. Sorry. What happens from persistence? It 

Natasha Nuytten: does it just go, I have the description of a, um. I'm half Belgian, half Jamaican. And when people ask me about how that plays out in my world, I was like, you know, I'm a Clydesdale. I will just keep working and I'm pretty sure it's all gonna be fine.

Natasha Nuytten: Like, that is how those things, those things kind of come together. So I can appreciate that persistence. Um, talk to me a little bit about, you know, at, at going from two to 400. You know, I mean, obviously from a business perspective that's. Generating massive, massive revenue with your organization and being very successful there.

Natasha Nuytten: Um, but starting with two and scaling to 400, that is a very different kind of leadership role. Oh, yeah. Um, when and where along the way did you say, Hey, I'm really good at this, or, I'm actually not good at this. I need to figure some things out. Like what was the, what was the process for you? Sure. 

Russell Kern: So there are very clear markers as you go.

Russell Kern: As two people. You're a solepreneur. At 10 people, there's a learning journey. There's a learning step twenty five fifty, a hundred two, and 400. At around 50 75, the business was stalled and just kept getting stalled over and over again, and I was very fortunate, somewhere around that time to run into what now is one of my best friends and mentors, but he was a competitor.

Russell Kern: And we were at a trade show and he had sold his agency and I was trying to sell my agency and he said, you know, maybe you'll let me be your mentor. It's gonna be a five year journey, but let me show you how that maybe you could repeat some of the things and do it. So it was that place at approximately, we'll just call it the 7,500 person mark.

Russell Kern: I was 15 years maybe into the business, maybe 20, somewhere in that period of time. Then I worked with him for five years and he taught me all the things I didn't know. I didn't get an MBAI left college and an entrepreneur and just read and did that. I didn't know what standard operating procedures were.

Russell Kern: I didn't know what standard, you know, HR processes would be. I didn't know how to control my own emotions 'cause all I did was imitate my father who was a A doctor and realized, well, that doesn't know. So there's this blossoming of accepting coaching and mentoring. Which was a result of being stalled and also of just great fortune and luck to someone to take me in and say, okay, we're gonna start to mentor you and teach you what you need to do, and know how to really run a business and scale it.

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, 

Russell Kern: because once you're trying to get past a hundred, you have to learn the new set of skills for scaling. Now you're not a corporation that goes regardless. So it's a, that middle market is a very special leadership scale. Now, I love selling. I love leading people. I love creating, but I still had plenty of weak spots that I had to work on, and I still do.

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I, I love that it is a journey and you know, I think interestingly, you know, you were seeing earlier, and I know you've said quite a bit for others who have listened to other things that you've talked about is, you know, we do often, uh, promote people into management who are just amazing individual contributors, and we don't them up well.

Natasha Nuytten: Right. We teach them to manage, we teach them to manage the work versus growing teams to teams, the work and, you know, developing, developing a, a unit that can be very successful. Um, and so I'm curious, in that process, um, as you were learning those things from your own mentor, how did you start to then infuse some of what you learned?

Natasha Nuytten: The rest of your organization and working with your middle managers, um, magnificent. Middle, as you like to call it. 

Russell Kern: My magnificent, 

Natasha Nuytten: my magnificent middle. Yes. I love that. Um, how did you start to make that transition? Because it is, I'm, I'm saying this because it is very easy as a quote unquote leader, right?

Natasha Nuytten: If you're at the sort of top of the org chart, however, your, your organization works. You can embrace a lot of philosophy, you can have a lot of thoughts about what leadership is, but to actually make sure that that is infused into the fabric of the organization, it means you have to invest in that other group of humans who are the ones doing so much of the day-to-day development.

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. So I'm curious how you learned and, and how you took that on in your organization. 

Russell Kern: So to me. How do you, how do you make culture show up and deliver a, the new cul a new culture, right.

Russell Kern: You the leader have to live it and, uh, be willing to say is I failed at culture, I want. Um, so it started with us writing what our culture would be, what our values and behaviors would be, because culture is the behavior you do every day. That's what culture is, right? We do these behaviors every day for these reasons, 'cause these are our values.

Russell Kern: Um, so that took a while for me to write and develop and then start to share with a small team and a bigger team. I was also incredibly fortunate to have A-C-F-O-C-O-O who. Was so much wiser than I that was able to support when I was out doing my sales thing and he was in supporting the culture and best behavior.

Russell Kern: And then we spent a lot of time just the leadership team working on our culture. We would, we did working genius self-assessment. We did Clifton string, we did a lot of things to break through our, um. Personal barriers so that we could get to know each other and have high trust. And then we always had some simple mantras.

Russell Kern: Client comes first. If this is not about the client, I don't know what we're talking about. And the other thing was, it happens outside of the office. If we're not outside of the office, what are we doing here? And so as you act those behaviors, they then slowly, these simple mantras go from the executive team to their seconds.

Russell Kern: Then go to the thirds. And I think the other thing that we accepted was that coaching of a team is a, is a skill that has acquired and practiced, and therefore we created Kern Culture College, Kern College, where we gave time to teach the skill and practice. Most businesses don't. Believe in practice. Yeah, safe practice.

Russell Kern: Every sports team has practice, but every business thinks everyone's showing up. What? Being great pitchers, hitchers, and Catters, and who needs practice time, we're just gonna win the World Series. And so we tried to break some of those fundamentals bit by bit. Now it's a little harder 'cause you're always under pressure, but that's how we built Poul over time and it takes.

Russell Kern: Two or three years to actually create a new culture. Right. It's not a light switch. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. And you really have to want it because it is 

Russell Kern: you, the leader has to want it and do it and live it because the people will know when you're talking bs. 

Natasha Nuytten: Right. Well, and it's, it's a time commitment. It's an financial investment.

Natasha Nuytten: It, I mean, you can't just say you want that to be the thing. No. You have to do the thing and it means you make different business choices. So to the point you were making earlier, right? Like some of these things that folks want, and I, I would love to get your, have you expound on this a little bit. There are some demands, right?

Natasha Nuytten: That, that people are beginning to make of their organizations and, and you don't have to speak specifically like return to office or whatever, but all of these things are happening around us, right? And there seems to be a little bit of tension and friction, um, between what works and what doesn't and what people need.

Natasha Nuytten: And I think it's very interesting because. You have to want it. And there needs to be this balance between what's good for the humans in our organization and what's good for our organization. And I think it can, there can be a miss there because if you're not, if you're not in a leadership role, you sometimes don't have the big picture of like, well, we still have to deliver against this thing.

Natasha Nuytten: Right? Like we still, we still have to do, get this over the finish line. And yet. It can also happen that if you're in leadership, that's the only thing you're thinking about and you're forgetting about the humans. And so I'd love to talk about that sort of messy middle of, um, how we get leaders and on, on sort of both the C-suite level and the middle management level to kind of come together on the, we need to see the people and we have to deliver that thing.

Russell Kern: So let's pick the two perspectives. I'm a C-Suite executive, and my personal success is a direct result of the company's success, and I know from my history and experience that the highest likelihood of company success is when people are together. Collaborating face-to-face, working on problem because it's a very efficient time proven way.

Russell Kern: Humans work in tribe, in culture, hunting, whatever it is, humans are designed to work together. That's how we evolve and survive. So you have a leadership that says, I've got a my own personal, now you have a group of middle managers that are going. I got personal too. I got kids I wanna raise, I want some, I have different values.

Russell Kern: If the company succeeds, I'm not certain I'm gonna succeed at the lever. They succeed. And so now you have the blend of, well, what is the middle manager? And then their team's personal self motivations. And until those actually merge as one, you will constantly have the tension of selfishness. And I don't mean it from a.

Russell Kern: A mean way, but we are self moed individuals, right? That is in our brains now. When a company has deep purpose that people believe in, let's take SpaceX. They are trying to get to Mars for new civilization. The engineers who work their seven days a week work there because they believe in the purpose. So if your purpose, whatever type of company or your distributor and you're getting things to help save lives and the people working there don't understand your purpose, then you have the struggle between why do I have to be here and is it really as important as your purpose over my purpose?

Russell Kern: So I think it's an an open conversation. Is there any perfect answer? No. Is there, there's a certain amount of maturity and faith and trust, which both goes both ways. I trust that when I'm in the office, even though it's a pain to travel and all the rest of that, the business does a little better. That helps the business to thrive in me to thrive.

Russell Kern: And leaders say is, you know what? There's a certain amount of adult respect that they, they, it's not, we're not getting a hundred percent, we're in they in their office. Let's stop kidding ourselves. Let's give them a latitude and then maybe we'll have better engagement, lower turnover, you know, higher retention, better retraction rates.

Russell Kern: And so I think there's a balance in there. But sometimes when you're trying to create a dramatic change, you have to have a dramatic rule, which is a full RTO. Yeah. And then you can maybe back off. Yeah. Maybe not more than you asked, but that's what I, that's how I approach the issue. 

Natasha Nuytten: No, it's, it's not more than I asked.

Natasha Nuytten: I think it is important that. Um, we remember that issues are complex, right? That 

Russell Kern: comp, these are com. We are complex individuals. We are not a component of a machine. That's it. There's nothing more complex than us. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's it. And I, I love, um, you know, you've, you've developed this per leadership method that I, I, I wanna talk about.

Natasha Nuytten: Um, and what I love about it is exactly what we were just talking about. That human beings are at, at the center of it. They're complex creatures. And you know, these. Three pound caloric monsters that we carry around in our head. Their, their job is to be efficient, and so they just do the path of least resistance.

Natasha Nuytten: They do what is known, and so we're asking people to. Change the way they think about leadership to change the way they manage their teams. Um, and I'm really curious when you think about like, you developed this entire system, right? Yeah. And with these organizations that you work with, what can you tell us about the why?

Natasha Nuytten: Um, it's important to do it when you're, you know, I mean, you look at an organization, you've worked with some of the biggest organizations in the country, right? And literally. They're making money hand over fist. Their problem is not profitability. So how do you then have a conversation about the value to the organization?

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. In shifting their thinking around people being good for the organization. Yes. Talk to me a little bit about that before we dive 

Russell Kern: in. So it's a challenge I face in this phase of the business development to try to say, why should you care about collaboration? Why should you care about team ideation and problem solving?

Russell Kern: You're making money. So the first piece is to try to show them the financial cost of low human collaboration. The quiet, I don't wanna say quitting, but the half ass efforts, the lack of proactive, um, contribution. The, oh, I'll sit around and wait until you tell me what to do. 'cause that's. I'm not involved.

Russell Kern: There's a cost, right? And I have a litany of research on the cost. So even though they're making profit, there's a cost and someone cares. So eventually someone will say they, well, they care about the cost. It's not an easy sell. The other aspect is there's a certain amount of impact on retention, engagement, and attraction.

Russell Kern: So those have costs. Yes. And to be able to say is if you wanna be an organization that is winning talent, 'cause talent, good talent's, hard to get these days, people are staying well then you need a culture that is attractive and people want to be able to thrive. So if you haven't created a culture of collaboration, then you might not have one of the check boxes of That's a great place to work.

Russell Kern: When you look at the hundred great places to work, companies that are, that are scored on, that they have some of the most profitable organizations and through growth, customer service, and through retention metrics. And so I do have a very difficult job. This is not I, oh, I've just been waiting for you, Russell, to help me solve my team collaboration problem.

Russell Kern: I have a, I have a job for them to feel the pain that is both emotional. Where they feel like I'm alone here. Where's the rest of my team with my idea? We're working on the margin of the business. We're not working on the big strategic issues. We're, we're in silos, but the business is changing. We can't be operating in that way.

Russell Kern: So that's what I try to have a conversation about. And then I also try to say is, this is not a light switch. I cannot teach them to change in a, in a three hour workshop. And if that's what you want, I'm the wrong guy. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Plus plus one. 

Russell Kern: Well, and and I think your point is we can start at the first principle of when you ask someone to do something new, you're asking the brain to use energy and it's an energy saving device.

Russell Kern: Yeah. And so then underneath that is, well, what is the motivation for that person to do something new? And how do they eventually create the habit? That is easier than the old habit, and therefore the new habit becomes a new behavior and a norm. So, I mean, I can go on layers, but then we just try to practice them like sports teams so they become good and it, and it goes from leadership norms, knowledge to technology, knowledge to self-empowerment, to then the reflection period.

Russell Kern: That's a very important part of my process is there must be a time of rest. A timeout for discussion of where have we gone, what have we done, what should we adapt? And then the last piece is the nurture. How do we act as gardeners to take the seedlings that have been brought to us and really let them flourish, hit the bottom line.

Russell Kern: So it's a journey I take 'em on and it takes time. 'cause we have these very complex organisms sitting up here. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. We really, really do. Um, so let me ask you a question. If I'm listening to this, and you, you sort of outlined like four sort of stages, four pillars, I call it the four pillars. If, let's walk through each one of those if I'm an organ and, and so listeners can say, okay, if, if my.

Natasha Nuytten: This is the one I identify with. This is where our organization is stuck or where I'm stuck. What would be one or two things about each of those pillars as a listener that you're like, okay, we need to be, you need to be thinking about one or two things here. Sure. 

Russell Kern: No, no problem. Pillars. I made so simple.

Russell Kern: They're my last name. Oh, nice. KERN. Oh. All right. The current pillars, and we can give you a current score of your human AI collaboration. And we don't even have to get in today. We're just gonna talk about human collaboration. So the first is know, if you don't know your own human intel, your emotional intelligence, and you don't know the motivations of your team, you're, you're not gonna get great collaboration.

Russell Kern: So the first thing in the know is, how well am I showing up? How well do I know how others are showing up? And have I taken the time, energy, and effort to gain that knowledge? There's that piece, if you're dealing with ai, there becomes that whole other piece of your basic foundations of your knowledge there.

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Russell Kern: The E is the empowerment. So that's the question of, well, I want everyone to collaborate, but have I empowered them? Do I keep inserting myself looking over their shoulder, asking, when are you gonna get this done? And therefore they don't feel trusted. Um, how much risk can they take without worrying?

Russell Kern: So there I ask, there is the, again, what are you really doing to give them their autonomy, their agency to feel the power of opportunity and growth. So that's the empower phase, and it has both the human dynamic and a technology perspective. The R is, do we really talk, do we take a time to reflect or always ru, are we always running?

Russell Kern: Only 8% of teams have the authentic conversation of the honest, difficult pieces of the business. 92%. Oh, we can talk about all the nice things. It's the 8%. And so in the reflection point, are you gonna talk about the hard conversations where we all could have done a little better as well as where we're all doing really well at?

Russell Kern: If you focus on the good, you get more good. You focus on the negative, you get more negative, but you need the reflection. And then the last point is, am I really giving the resources and time and support to nurture the beginning ideas that could impact the business? Or am I always cutting them short? So does leadership get burn, uh, distracted after 18 months?

Russell Kern: Oh, that was a good idea we're going on. It might have taken long. Oh, that's a good idea. I don't, you don't have any more resource for it. We got another priority. We're always changing. And so you can see so many of those are self-reflection questions of the leader in how they're running the team. And then they all come back to, well, how well am am I helping that person be all they can be?

Russell Kern: So that's the, those are the four pillars. That's great. Those are the, those are the areas and it. The net of it is when employees are engaged and feeling agency and excited, they deliver great customer experiences to each other and their customers. And there's this thing called the service profit chain, which ultimately shows they generate more profit and more sales and then it comes back again.

Russell Kern: And so that's where all of this ties back to is human Agency with joy. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I love that, um, that there is a, an element of service to one another as well, right? Because there, that has to be a part of the process. If yes, we're all gonna be rowing in the same direction, I need to be doing things that make it easier for you to row with me.

Natasha Nuytten: You know, I think that's so important. 

Russell Kern: A hundred percent. And so the question is, who do we serve? We serve each other. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, 

Russell Kern: we serve our shareholders, we serve our vendors, we serve our partners, we serve our customers. How well as we as a team are serving all of those. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. No, I really, I really appreciate that.

Natasha Nuytten: One of the other things, so, you know, within our organization, we think about, we have three mindsets and we, and so we, we do have a mission statement, but it's really more about our mindsets, values, and ways of being. And tying this back to the culture conversation and like to your point, how do we behave with each other, you know, during the day.

Natasha Nuytten: And in part of that, it's, it's leadership, growth and abundance are the three mindsets, but there is an element of all three of them that I think is, is really important here that I'd like to get your thoughts on. Um, because it is one thing for others to be. Pouring into you, right? That's that's a gift.

Natasha Nuytten: And that's absolutely amazing. And if an organization is taking the time and energy to do that, like that's gold, right? And there needs to be an ownership of your own work, not just at the leadership level, right? Like we've gotten very accustomed to saying, Hey, we need to hold leadership accountable. Well, you also, no matter where you are in the organization, you need to take ownership of your own process.

Natasha Nuytten: Just as much as you need to have the opportunity presented to you and I, I sometimes feel like that piece, there's a little bit of an entitlement culture that is happening that makes it really difficult sometimes for leaders to be like, we are doing these things for you now. I need you. It's reciprocal.

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. It's relational, right? Yes. 

Russell Kern: Yes. 

Natasha Nuytten: Okay. 

Russell Kern: Yeah, so, so this is where generational values come into expectation. I expected my mom and dad to take me here and there, and mom and dad didn't want me to feel da, da da, whatever we got to. But if you look at Patrick Lencioni's work and has booked the Five Dysfunctions of the team, the ultimate teams at See Succeed are, everyone is self accountable for their result and each other.

Russell Kern: And so this, well, it's leadership's job. It's leadership's job to teach me that is. That is separates the, those that thrive and those that fail to me. Yeah, because that means, you know what, you're not willing to put in any work. You're not willing to put in your own investment in yourself. And if you can't put in your own investment, where do you expect to go?

Russell Kern: Yeah. That so, okay. Stop complaining, right? Stop complaining about everybody. I agree. Take responsibility. Did you learn? Did you write? Did you read? Did you do something? Did you guide? You expect it'll be delivered? Uh, you know, it just, I don't believe it works that way. And that's the difference between high performers and just get a buys.

Russell Kern: Okay. I'm not a get a buy guy. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Russell Kern: And nor do I put up with it very well. I mean, our culture was No, no, sorry. And maybe we're not the right fit. Yeah. And so that sometimes comes up where leaders say, is. If you're wanting everything delivered on a silver pattern, I might not be the right company for you.

Russell Kern: Yeah, and that's okay. Also, yeah, it's okay to say we don't have a cultural value fit. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. It's hard. Lemme help 

Russell Kern: you find another organization because we are this type of organization and being honest about that because the worst thing a leader could do is let underperformers stay in their organization.

Russell Kern: That says everything says you don't really care. Right. The best thing can to do is keep filtering to the culture. So everybody's on a great team. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. And, and it's, it's such a difficult conversation. And, um, to make it about me for just a second, here, I am a firm believer in why not? Um, I am a firm believer in.

Natasha Nuytten: We bring so much more to the table than just, you know, what's on our resume. And I mean, our whole company is, is built around that. Like the service that we provide our partners is built around. There is more to the human being than what you see on their resume. And as part of that, you can't just hire only for potential, right?

Natasha Nuytten: But you, you need to hire for ability, but you also do. It is smart, I think to hire for that like little bit of a stretch, right? Like someone who can do the work, but also someone who is, has that in them where you see something in them that maybe they don't see in themselves. And that has, in my life at least been, um, a really interesting gift.

Natasha Nuytten: Like somebody being willing to let me fail, right? To try something is, is how I learned so many of the things that I learned and I have in my, in my life. Um. Believed more in someone else than they believed in themselves. And you do get to that point sometimes where you're like, listen man, you know, it, it, this isn't even just about a performance thing.

Natasha Nuytten: It's, it is about performance, but it's also about, I can't want this more for you than you want this for you. 

Russell Kern: Yeah. So I'll, I'll bill two points. That is the job of the manager, leader, manager, director. Is to inspire the greatness of the individual to come out. They can't make it, but they can inspire it.

Russell Kern: Dave Roberts of the Dodgers, that's his job to inspire the performance of his players. At Omnicom, our philosophy was hire for attitude, praying for skill because you can't create attitude. Yeah. You can always teach skill. Yeah. And so if you believe in someone and they might not have the skill, but they've demonstrated the drive, the passion, the opportunity, you've got a good egg to work with, 

Natasha Nuytten: but you do have to do the work.

Natasha Nuytten: Because then you can't just be like, Hey, we believe in you and we're just gonna let you figure it out. Right. 

Russell Kern: Well you, so there's two different ways we are gonna let you figure out means I throw you in the deep end. Right? That's a strategy I used is not the best strategy, but at least I'm gonna give you a guide path, a roadmap, but I can't do the work for you.

Russell Kern: Right? 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Russell Kern: And so the, ideally, when you're looking at those resumes, there's a history of self-motivation of self-starter of self. Something that doesn't. They might not have articulated it, but you can see it. And I don't know, I heard some research the other day that the ais are able to interpret better than the humans, these capabilities.

Russell Kern: And so I'm a hundred percent with you find the find the self-motivation that wanna learn. Because if someone can just do the job today and a year from now, you're gonna want something different. Yeah. If they're not growing. 'cause that job's not gonna stay constant, that's for sure. That's right. And you want, you wanna have succession in your organization, right?

Russell Kern: You want talent to lead. So at the very beginning, you're always trying to hire talent to grow. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Well, and technology is changing very fast. Right? And so things are different. Right. Um, so speaking of how people grow and develop, let's talk a little bit more about the neuroscience. Element of this. Sure.

Natasha Nuytten: And I, I love it. I'm a, a nerd about those kind of things, so I'm a big fan of the fact that this is incorporated into your work. I'm really curious about, from, from your vantage point, we think about the role that neuroscience plays, the way that we respond to recognition, fairness, trust, et cetera. What role does that then play in making.

Natasha Nuytten: This sort of development and inclusion, not just, uh, sort of moral choice, but more of a business imperative for us to think about the way that the brain works to get the best 

Russell Kern: out of people. Okay? So I'm gonna give it to you at the most primitive level. 'cause the truth is we're both primitive, incredibly primitive.

Russell Kern: We view everything first. Will this help me live or die? And living is, will it allow me to live a little better? Will I get social status? Will I ha be able to, um, grow? Will I get more wealth? Will something happen versus I'm going to die or be pushed away or whatever? 'cause we don't want the pain of the negative or the death.

Russell Kern: We want the growth. We do that evaluation in a nanosecond. Every input that you hear, see, or touch is first evaluated of, is this, is that a monster? Is that a dinosaur? Should I run away or am I okay? Believe it or not, that's happens. Once we see whatever it is, it imprints. When we go under the retail store and it says sale 40% on Coca-Cola.

Russell Kern: For some period of time that imprint is there and like it or not, your brain is then gonna move it up to another system and decide, you know what? I was kind of in the mood for Coke and I haven't had a long time and it's hot outside and it's a football game and it's a 40% off, and you know what's a good deal?

Russell Kern: Boom. It falls into the cart, right? You go into, for me, I go into Costco for the chicken, it's $5 and. Golf balls magically jump from the aisle into my cart. I don't know how that happens every time I was there for. So for learning and development and motivation, we have to ask ourselves how is whatever training or method helping individuals realize that A, this is for the, gonna give them positive endorphins.

Russell Kern: It could create oxytocin because there's a bonding experience through a moment of shared experience. And so if they understand the natural uncontrolled releases of our hormones, they can design their programs for that to happen. Um, that, those would be some of my, my riffing of the neuroscience of it all.

Russell Kern: Yeah. Um, also the last piece is the habit formation. If I want to have you. Have a habit of having effective meetings once a week with your team members and people are uncomfortable saying, coaching conversations. I have to have them practice and make it so the coaching habit is easier and let's scary, scary, and uses less energy than the non coaching habit.

Russell Kern: And so whether it be PJ Frog or Adam Grant Atomic Habits, you're thinking about your development as habit formation. Because once I have a habit, it requires less energy and our brain is all about using less energy. 

Natasha Nuytten: So in this new, oh, sorry. 

Russell Kern: That's all right. I was just gonna say, and this last piece that's in the circulation is, does AI make us smarter or dumber?

Russell Kern: That brings up the issue is on one hand, because the brain is lazy, AI can make you dumber. So we have to be cautious 'cause we learn through work. 'cause by forcing the pathway to get created. Eventually it gets a little thicker, the other one gets less and less and now it becomes easier for the neurons and the energy.

Russell Kern: So there's a whole neuroscience from a non neuroscientist. I'm just a geek. I'm not a PhD in neuroscience. 

Natasha Nuytten: No, I love it. I was actually going to ask you, um, as I was rudely interrupting your thought there around the a i piece, because we're talking about, you know, building these habits and asking people to perform differently or do different things and AI is playing such a.

Natasha Nuytten: Such an impactful role right now. Like we don't even have, we have no idea how this is going to impact all the stuff that we're doing. We just have to start to develop some habits and a perspective about it as a tool. Like, you know, I look at it and I think, okay, this is, you know, fire is a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing, right?

Natasha Nuytten: Yes. The internet is a good thing. It can also be a bad thing. And AI is that same thing. And so we have to learn from our mistakes. Um, and get out ahead of developing sort of a philosophy around this being a, uh, like our smartest intern, right? That's always gonna need some coaching, is always gonna need a little bit of some guardrails and some guidance.

Natasha Nuytten: There are some things we can let it do on its own, but we need to teach it. Um, and so I'm curious as, and so thinking about how the neuroscience happens along this new technology, um. I feel like that is one of those places when you talk about practice and we're practicing these habits. 

Russell Kern: Yes. So let me see if I can address the topic.

Russell Kern: AI allows our brain to use less energy, which is why college kids like, okay, they can generate an outcome and a result easily. But the research shows over and over again, they didn't really learn anything. So the, the neuroscience says, I don't wanna burn energy. Fine, I'll have AI help me. Fine. I generate it fine.

Russell Kern: Okay. That's the one piece of it. The second piece of the AI is the need to understand, just like fire requires heat and fuel and oxygen, AI is a machine, statistical machine that provides the currently. The best, uh, next word or pixel based upon what it's been trained on. And it has bias to try to provide an answer based upon its training and modeling and what you're asking it.

Russell Kern: And so if you don't understand what it isn't, isn't, then you can easily be misled or fall into a trap thinking it is the smartest intern in the room. That's fair. And so there's this piece of fundamental knowledge of what is a large language model, what is the programming, what is the bias? Why does there a regression to a mean, and its answers, it's just a big average machine.

Russell Kern: Um, but how can you use it to help your human intelligence be bigger? I, you know, there's this use of. Because our brains can't remember everything and they don't wanna use energy. Having AI say, what haven't I asked that I should, what perspective am I not considering? How might I see it from another way?

Russell Kern: What would the smartest, wisest philosophers in the world say about this that I should consider? That is where the, I think the tool has opportunity to allow agency human intelligence to flourish in new ways, not just answer. Now, will it do the lowest level works that we're doing? Data entry, that sort of thing?

Russell Kern: Absolutely no need for that. Now, the o now the opportunity for the workforce and the leaders is how do I redeploy that human talent for higher levels of creativity? Customer service, where I now have low levels doing. Low levels. Right. Right. I've, I've gotta think of that. And that's a big change for many, a leader of what they're struggling with now, what are the applications?

Russell Kern: Yeah. 

Natasha Nuytten: Well, it makes it, it makes what we've been talking about for the last hour even more important, right? Because we need humans to be better humans if technology's gonna be doing this thing. 

Russell Kern: Yeah. And so that comes all the way back to my premise, which is humans can't collaborate with each other. I don't care what technology you buy.

Russell Kern: If humans can't work as a team, if humans can't listen, if they can't talk authentically, if they can't have brave conversations, if they can't trust that you can get the work done without hovering over them. If a human can't recognize their own emotional response to someone else and be present, I don't care what you do.

Russell Kern: I just don't care. I don't care. The tech it you'll. You might eventually get somewhere, but it's gonna not be the best. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Russell Kern: And so I come back to the humanity of all of it and who you hire, how you hire, what you hire, how you love them, how you develop 'em, how you nurture them. That is what drives business success plus a lot of other stuff.

Russell Kern: But that's, it's at the people level. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's it. That's, that's it in a nutshell, right There. So, Russell, I have two, two last questions for you. One, is there anything I I should have asked you to your point just a few minutes ago that I haven't, or anything you wanna leave us with before we wrap up? 

Russell Kern: Yes. Yes.

Russell Kern: I, I would, I would like to say is for the last nearly five decades, my life has been about human collaboration and creativity. And then I'm excited to announce that my book Transformer Die, how to Build Teams at. Outthink, outperform and outpace the competition. The world of AI is getting released in October on Kindle and November and Sock copy, and that the Kern Human AI Collaboration Process, the KERN, is all there with tools and that, I hope your listeners will take a look at it and realize that the time and opportunity still sits at the humanity with the technology, not the technology ahead of the humanity.

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. And 

Russell Kern: that I appreciate being able to make that little plug and share 'cause it's a labor of love that's on its way out to be 

Natasha Nuytten: Absolutely. To the 

Russell Kern: world. 

Natasha Nuytten: Absolutely. It was the, my, my last question was how can we be helpful to you? So it sounds like we can all go. Get a pre-order of the book and, uh, 

Russell Kern: yeah, you could go to kern partners.com.

Russell Kern: You'll be able to go to, uh, russell m kern.com and, and pre-order the book. Perfect. Um, you could sign up for early chat. There's a special Kindle pricing if you sign up on it. So, awesome. Uh, I, I, my job is not to make money on the, my book. My job is to help the world see and help leaders see, because in the giving will be the getting.

Russell Kern: And, and there's too much humanity that has a, such an incredible opportunity ahead of us. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I agree. I 

Russell Kern: agree. Is there anything I could do for you? 

Natasha Nuytten: Well, that is very generous of you. I think you sharing your time with us today has been an awesome gift, so thank you for that. And um, yeah, I mean, just continuing to do the work that you're doing so the rest of us can do what we're doing is I think the best, the best opportunity.

Natasha Nuytten: So thank you very much for sharing your time with us. You're welcome and, uh, been my pleasure. Awesome. Alright, well thank you for joining us on another episode of Human Side Up. I hope that you learned from Russell the, just, just that nugget of just keep the humans in the middle of thing. Right. And that we are complex, not only our brains, but like situationally things are complex and so we need to be thoughtful about the decisions we're making.

Natasha Nuytten: Uh, when it involves people and our businesses. So thank you so much. I appreciate you being here. If you have comments for us or leave them below, if you are interested and want to learn more from Russell, please do get his book. I already have registered for it and uh, a pre-order and so I encourage you to do the same and, um, until the next time I see you, keep the human side up.