The ZIZO Effect

Leadership Through Trust and Connection with Chris Kohl

• ZIZO Technologies Inc. • Season 2 • Episode 5

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Welcome to Season 2 of The ZIZO Effect!
This season, we're diving into the diverse perspectives of agents, managers, and executives from call centers, exploring the unique insights and lessons they've learned. 

Episode Overview:
In this episode, we sit down with Christopher Kohl, a retired executive with extensive experience in the banking and collections industries. Chris brings decades of leadership experience and deep insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by today's organizations. Get ready for an insightful discussion on how leadership styles and workplace cultures have evolved. 

Discover how large organizations can foster a culture of inclusivity and adaptability, and learn actionable strategies to enhance communication across various levels of management. If you're curious about leadership dynamics and corporate culture, this conversation is filled with practical strategies and real-world examples. 

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Workplace Culture in Call Centers 
00:11:14 - Evolving Workplace Communication and Culture 
00:20:07 - Effective Communication in Leadership 
00:23:48 - Leadership, Team Dynamics, and Mental Health 
00:31:44 - Work-Life Integration and Mental Health 
00:35:23 - Remote Work Culture and Goals 
00:38:48 - Improving Operations Through Data Analysis 
00:47:20 - Importance of Mentorship in Leadership 

Guest Information:
Chris Kohl - Retired Executive from the banking and collections industries. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn. 

Engage with Us:
Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and comment to join the conversation. Check out our other episodes and follow us on our social media pages: 


Don't miss this engaging episode filled with invaluable insights, expert advice, and practical takeaways. Tune in now to The ZIZO Effect - It's Game Time! 

Jimmy Chebat:

Welcome to he Zizzo Effect podcast. This season we're getting unique perspectives from every level of call center organizations, from agents to managers and the C-suite. Today, we're excited to have a special guest, christopher Cole, a retired executive from the banking industry. Christopher brings decades of leadership experience and deep insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by today's organizations. We're thrilled to hear what he has to share. So get ready, it's game time. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Zizzo Effect podcast. I am your host, jimmy Shabbat, and today we have a special guest, our guest Christopher Cole. He has an extensive background in the banking industry and collections and we're going to allow Chris to give us a little bit of introduction about himself. But, chris, first of all, thank you for joining us on the Zizzo Effect podcast today.

Chris Kohl:

Hi, J, you're more than welcome. Glad to be here. I'm a native of New Jersey, wasn't raised there, spent the better part of my, I guess younger native of New Jersey, wasn't raised there, spent the better part of my I guess younger years in northern Jersey. My parents had a summer place on the Jersey Shore. Eventually we moved down there and made that an all year round until I got married and I moved to a place called Titton Falls, new Jersey Beautiful. And I moved to a place called Titton Falls, new Jersey, and I stayed there until I was actually recruited by an organization here in Delaware. And so in 1996, I relocated to Wilmington, delaware, and I've been here ever since. Awesome, chris, you have kids. Yes, I have two girls. They're older girls so they don't live at home with me, but yeah, I do Well, wonderful.

Jimmy Chebat:

What are some of the hobbies? What are the things that you enjoy doing on a personal level?

Chris Kohl:

So on a personal level, I'm an avid car enthusiast. I like working on cars, but with today's vehicles you can't really work on them too much. Yeah, they're all digital.

Jimmy Chebat:

All electronic yeah, no mechanical stuff.

Chris Kohl:

I do have a 2013.

Jimmy Chebat:

Camaro SS. Are you still working on that? Are you able to work on that still, that car I really just drive.

Chris Kohl:

I got it as a replacement for my 1968 Chevrolet that used to drag race in English Town, new Jersey, and I actually sold that car in 2010. So I had that car for a number of years and did a lot of work on it myself and also had work done at garages.

Jimmy Chebat:

Awesome, Well, a car enthusiast. Do you have a favorite car?

Chris Kohl:

I would say I like the Corvette, I like the Camaro.

Jimmy Chebat:

Newer models or more of the classic? No, I really like the Corvette. I like the Camaro. Newer models or more of the classic? No, I really like the classics.

Chris Kohl:

I'm a big fan of watching Mecham Auctions. Every time I look at it I probably spend $200,000 in my head.

Jimmy Chebat:

Why don't you tell our audience a little bit about your background, your business background, and what you do, and take us through your career journey?

Chris Kohl:

So I would go back to graduation day from college and I'm a graduate of Monmouth University and I graduated with a marketing degree. But as things normally go, I wound up working for Hertz Leasing and I was on the insurance end of it doing collections for accident damage and while I was working with Hertz I pursued an MBA in management. And so I stayed with Hertz for probably a good I'd say maybe 9, 10 years, maybe 11 years, and went through a couple of mergers with Hedgeski Leasing put those businesses together, went through a couple of mergers with pesky leasing put those businesses together. I was part of a six-man merger team to that, which was really very interesting. And from there I wound up going to work for city bank because pesky relocated to redding, pennsylvania, I just got married, moved to tenton falls and I decided that I didn't want to relocate at that point. So I started a career in banking at Citibank, in collections, and I stayed with Citibank probably another 10 years. But throughout that portion of my career I was in collections but it was also fraud prevention which was really very interesting.

Chris Kohl:

And throughout my career I've kind of moved into operations, into strategy, into projects, going back and forth to the different areas. So from Citibank. I wound up being recruited by First USA Bank and I came down to Delaware with them and I was running their fraud operation. And then all of a sudden Bank One came along and merged with Bank One and continued for operation. But at the time I was also working with a consulting company, logica and Carnegie Group, and they wanted me to go to work for them. But they had an exclusivity agreement that they had a break with First USA and Bank One if I did that. So I decided, well, it was worth a shot and I did it and it was pretty interesting for a couple of years.

Jimmy Chebat:

Were you in the collections department there as well.

Chris Kohl:

No, I was actually in marketing and sales. So I got involved, basically going out, and they used me as a subject matter expert. So we went into Ford Motor Company as an example, marriott Hotels, delta Airlines and other large organizations to basically develop for them a plug and play software that they could use for logistics. So the Carnegie Group actually created a lot of the logistics that they used in Desert Storm where they moved munitions and food and everything else to support the war effort, and they took that application, they applied it to business. I stayed with them a couple of years and then I went back into banking and I went to work for Chase and I was with Chase for about two years in collections. I was actually in a strategy position of developing products for collections, so settlement products, consumer credit counseling products, internal repayment program products. And then Bank One merged with Chase and so that I became Chase Bank One, again in a collection capacity.

Chris Kohl:

In a collection capacity and throughout that portion of my career, which lasted 20 years, I was involved in several different initiatives. That also included strategy startup operations. I was involved in collection agencies, credit counseling agencies, debt settlement firms. I also worked with some international organizations and my staff was really throughout the world that I had worked with. How big was the staff that you worked with? My fraud staff was probably about 300 folks and then as I got into these other operations it was more I would say assistant vice presidents and higher. So for that I probably had direct reports of maybe five to seven people, gotcha, but then the agencies that I reports of maybe five to seven people, gotcha, but then the agencies that I managed could have had several hundred people.

Jimmy Chebat:

When you and I met you and I met we were introduced and we were talking specifically about Zizo and looking at the performance management using gamification, and we had extensive conversations about the culture of collections and the workforce, and it's one of the topics that we've been asking and talking about throughout the season two of the Zizofact podcast. We're trying to get insights from every level from the agent level, the managers and the executives. From your perspectives, how do you define workforce culture or workplace culture and what does it mean to you?

Chris Kohl:

So I think, when you define workforce culture or workplace culture and what does it mean to you, so I think when you say you know workplace culture, one thing I would say is that it really is adapting the culture of an organization. So when you work for a very large organization such as Citibank or Chase, there's a very defined culture in those organizations. So, for example, I could say at Citibank you heard the expression ready aim fire. At Citibank it was more ready fire aim. That's the way things got done. When I got to bank one, it was just ready fire and you cleaned up the 20% that didn't go well after 80% was implemented percent that didn't go well.

Jimmy Chebat:

Half the 80 percent was implemented. So is that a culture that is defined by the organization? I would assume that's probably not what they defined it as. Or is it something that was inherited, based on kind of the reality of how things operated?

Chris Kohl:

Well, again, trying to use those examples of how things operated. Well, again trying to use those examples. So Citi never wanted to be the first to implement something, and so that's where you got to. We want to get the market. We may not be the first With Bank One they were and First USA they wanted to be out to the floor. They felt they would invest in everything. So it was a little bit difficult to manage in that type of environment because people would get offended if you told them that it wasn't the right thing to do. But yet they wanted you to be honest and speak your mind. So it was really a balance to survive in an organization like that.

Jimmy Chebat:

Let's transition into kind of the frontline workers and the culture there. In a lot of these enterprise-sized companies, the frontline workers represent a pretty big chunk of the workforce and one of the things we're curious about, especially from the executive level, is how does the workplace culture differ from the top to the bottom and how does the communication cascade down through the ranks?

Chris Kohl:

So again, I think it depends on the organization. I think when you look at most of the organizations, they have what's called a span of control, and that span of control they believe is what's effective to be able to manage the people that you have under you and to communicate what needs to be communicated. So oftentimes you would have a staff meeting with your boss and sometimes his boss would attend and then periodically there would be either a monthly or a quarterly meeting with executive leadership and you would be invited to participate in those meetings, and then you were instructed to cascade the information that came out of those meetings down to your staff.

Jimmy Chebat:

Was workplace culture important in terms of? From your experience only and of course we understand that from company to company it's going to differ but from your experiences, how important did leadership consider culture to be as part of the overall organizational objectives?

Chris Kohl:

I would say from my career at Citibank to my career at Chase there was a significant change. I say that because the world had changed quite a bit. There was a lot less acceptance of practices that may have taken place in offices before whether it be sports pools, telling jokes, anything like that To where now we had to be more acceptable and open to everybody's viewpoints and we really couldn't discriminate and we had to actually try to make sure that we had a very diverse workforce and a lot of the culture was driven on. How can you expand your position in the world if you don't involve diverse cultures to help you do that?

Jimmy Chebat:

And does leadership. I mean you come from generations. You've seen multiple generations come through your experiences. You were in the business for what? 40 years, if I'm not mistaken. Is that correct, at least, at least Okay. So I mean four decades, different generations of workforce and societal changes. Right, acceptance, diversity, inclusiveness, but also the sensitivity you had mentioned it. There's certain jokes that you couldn't tell anymore. Having sports pools was probably widely acceptable and part of the culture. With respect to performance and culture. What are some of the unique shifts that you've seen over that 40 plus years of experience?

Chris Kohl:

Individuals that would come from other large financial institutions sometimes would have a difficult time adopting to the culture of the new organization. I can tell you that, for an example, when you think about going back over that 40 plus years, you used to have smoking in the office. You wore suits and ties every day, right, and jeans were a dress down treat on a Friday. As things progressed over time the ties came off, became more business casual, but you had to manage the attitude of the individuals as they dressed down. I can tell you an interesting fact and people often question is it really true? But I had the most complaints about my collection staff on dress down Fridays. On Dress Down Fridays, I really believe that when you had the tie around your neck it reminded you that you were in the office and not at home.

Jimmy Chebat:

That's a really good segue, because I also do agree with when you dress the part, you act the part, you play the part, and it helps kind of with the attitude of your role and your responsibilities. Working from home, which has become the norm post-COVID you really don't even have to get out of your pajamas to do your job, unless you're holding online meetings, which, in reality, all you need to do is wear a top right, you don't even have to wear bottoms. How do you feel? And were you part of that shift? Or had you already retired when things went remote? Oh, no, I was definitely part of that shift.

Chris Kohl:

Again, you see, how did things change Well, over the years. If you had a dental appointment or you had a doctor's appointment, we had somebody coming to the house. You were never really allowed to take off. You had to take personal time for that as we progressed over. Time management would say you're nice to the staff, if they have somebody coming into the house, let them work from home that day, just make sure it doesn't occur too frequently. And that was how they built the culture of being more, I guess, adaptive to the needs of individuals.

Chris Kohl:

Was this post-COVID or pre-COVID? It was pre-COVID, and so we had laptops and all that. But then when COVID hit, then they had to get to how do we communicate more effectively? Because we just can't have a phone conference call. We have to see faces, and that's what Zoom came about right. That's where Zoom came about right. And so you had a culture then of if you were attending a Zoom meeting, you were told no T-shirts with anything on them, no baseball caps. So even though you were at home, there was still somewhat of a dress code. Interesting.

Jimmy Chebat:

Henry, did you feel that played a role? I mean, it made an impact. Did people like it? Did they revolt against it? Did they complain about it?

Chris Kohl:

I think they were okay with it, but this is something that was very frustrating Within a large organization, even though the culture may be defined as XYZ. If you had another organization within your group that showed up at the meeting and they had on baseball caps the next thing you had well, why can't they wear them and why can't we?

Jimmy Chebat:

wear Modern times, modern challenges, right, right. I mean, there comes a lot of different challenges when you're dealing with the remote workforce, and one of those is distractions and disengagement. Did you see a difference and do you feel that difference was happening pre-COVID? And I want to kind of maybe talk a little bit. There's two different topics here A generational, a new generational workforce. And were they as engaged as prior generations, or was it more about the remote workforce and the distractions that happen when you're working from home?

Chris Kohl:

So there's a lot of commentary I think I can have on this particular topic, having had a staff that worked throughout the US, in India as well as in the Philippines.

Chris Kohl:

You had different time zones to be able to consider, and so people with families really had a hard time adopting to having meetings at times that may have interfered with your dinner time and feed the kids.

Chris Kohl:

So what happened is the folks in India would wind up working during the night and you had to pick the times that overlapped where you could have the staff fully participate. So that was one real challenge. The other challenge that people faced was they felt there was a disconnect between the time they spent with their employees. They wanted people to have more face time with them. I actually have been managing remotely for years, so, as I've always taught people that have been under me or people that have been my peers, I would say to them the way you walk into the office every day and you say good morning to the person that's next to you, pick up the phone in the morning, just call the other person and say good morning, ask them how they're doing. It doesn't have to be a long conversation, but if you make that connection every day, they feel like they're part of it.

Jimmy Chebat:

Can you do that with a large workforce, if you're managing a very large workforce, or are you doing it just on a case-by-case basis?

Chris Kohl:

So this would be if you had like seven to 10 direct reports. Now, if you're a manager and you have 15 people under you, well, maybe you have to have a staff meeting every day, every other day, just a 15 minute morning meeting just to get everybody on the same page. What happened yesterday? What are we going to do today? Any issues, let's go. So how big were the?

Jimmy Chebat:

teams that your managers managed. Now, you had, like, I think you had mentioned like a handful of direct reports, but below them, what were they responsible for?

Chris Kohl:

So it depended again, the individual. So, for example, my folks in credit counseling they really didn't have people, but some of them had 150 credit counseling agencies. They really didn't have people, but some of them had 150 credit counseling agencies to deal with. A collector had a one-on-one relationship with a collection agency and so they had to deal with everybody in that agency. So they would speak to the agency every day and they would get certain managers together every day and those that did that were more successful than the ones that really didn't communicate. So I guess what I'm saying is communication is vital for success. If the person doesn't feel like they're part of the team, they're not going to be productive and not going to engage in the culture of the organization.

Jimmy Chebat:

So great point. I think that's a that's a huge takeaway, that communication is key to the success of a company. But the form of communications have changed over the years. Right, it used to be all in person and, as you mentioned, as people kind of started to kind of spread out a little bit, phone was the primary form of communication before things like chat, teams, slack and then now Zoom and other forms of video conferencing. What form of communication do you feel the modern generation prefers in order to keep them engaged, and does that differ between the layers in the organization, managers and executive level?

Chris Kohl:

Even though an individual may think the only way they want to communicate is by text or email, oftentimes sole email or text communication creates issues because they may misinterpret what you're asking or what you're saying, they take a defensive position and again it impacts their productivity. So I've always taken a position of we can communicate by email and we can't communicate texting. But we are going to have a one hour one-on-one meeting every week and oftentimes we would have discussions for a half hour several times a week because they wanted to talk about stuff. So it actually came the opposite way, where I made the time for them to talk to me.

Jimmy Chebat:

Are you familiar with the formula in terms of communication and I don't have it in front of me but the importance of words in communication and then the importance of sort of three forms of communication words, body language and tone when, if you, if you and I are having a conversation in person, words actually matter the least. Your body language and your tone are going to matter the most. Right, and you start to lose the body language when you go to phone conversations and even when you go to text or chat, you even lose the tone. You can communicate some of the tone by using all caps, exclamation points, but for the most part you're relying primarily on words. And in your experience, what is the most important part of communication in the modern day, especially when you don't have that in person, like, how do you succeed in communicating effectively? Is it by ensuring that you have that face-to-face, even if it is through technology?

Chris Kohl:

I've always found that you can work with people in all parts of the country, all parts of the world, and if your communication is on the phone or it's in a meeting but you're not face-to-face, it could be one-on-one phone, a group meeting, it can be email. You never get the same response or the same, I guess, buy-in from someone until you actually see them and meet them. And one of the things I've always tried to do is, when you first talk to somebody, find out a little bit about them. So, for example, I knew this one person had a hobby they like to have aquariums and they had various fish tanks. So I was on a phone with the person one day and in the background I heard this gurgling and I said do you have a fish tank? And they said yeah, how did you know? I said I used to have fish tanks. From that point on, the relationship with that individual changed completely. You made a personal connection and they knew you were a human.

Jimmy Chebat:

That's another one of the topics that we have here is what do you consider a good leader and how important is that personal connection to being a good leader?

Chris Kohl:

I think it's critical and I would say this a good leader does not treat everyone the same. A good leader treats them all thoroughly, but when it comes to the amount of recognition they need, when it comes to how you communicate, they may have a need for improvement. That is going to vary individual by individual and generation by generation. Excellent point.

Jimmy Chebat:

Love that. How do you cultivate these qualities within your leadership team? How do you train that?

Chris Kohl:

I had a boss in collections. He always said your people are a shadow of the leader. So, even though you may think that the actions you take are meaningless, you'll find that the actions you take could have an impact on them. And I'll give you a couple of examples here. Working in New York, you had to start at a certain time and leave at a certain time because you had public transportation. You had to make that 545 train to go home. So there were no meetings that extended beyond 5 o'clock. And if they did, the organization made accommodations for you and allowed you to take a limousine, which was crazy. But they did.

Chris Kohl:

When you were, say, at a site, a collection site, to have meetings that went beyond five o'clock as long as it didn't go beyond six, was probably okay. When I came down to Delaware, I scheduled some meetings at five o'clock with my managers. I would say. A couple of times people started coming to my office saying hey, chris, what are you doing? People are getting really mad. I said they're managers. What are you talking about? They said, well, they have kids to pick up and if they don't get to the center by a certain time, they get charged more money. I said well, why didn't somebody tell me that? So here's an example of something that you think your expectation is X and it doesn't work because there's circumstances that you're unaware of.

Jimmy Chebat:

That's where your point of you can't treat everybody the same, but it also goes to when you're dealing with different teams. There's different dynamics. I read a book recently that stated that culture can maybe be defined by the organization, but it's really created at the team level. Each team works around their circumstances, around the variables, just like you mentioned in that example Moving from New York to Delaware different commutes, different commute times, different responsibilities, and you have to really learn about the individuals within that team in order to be able to properly lead them. I have a question how do you measure effectiveness of your leadership?

Chris Kohl:

Well, there were always people surveys or poll surveys and that's what the organization is used to, I guess, officially measure the individuals, and that actually got applied to your annual review.

Chris Kohl:

So if you had a high turnover rate, they would ask you why and they would look at those survey results. I can tell you that the other thing I always did during a performance appraisal I would always say to an individual even though we're talking about your performance, I want you to tell me about mine. And there was something that we called stop, start and continue, and it was what do you want me to start doing? What do you want me to stop doing and what do you want me to continue doing? And there's no repercussions towards you about it. I want to be a better person, I want to be a better manager, but if you don't communicate to me, I don't know what I'm not doing right to make this a better place to work. The other thing I always said is that we spend more than a third of our lives together and if we can't be happy together, we're not going to be happy in life. Excellent point.

Jimmy Chebat:

And are you asking this of your managers or are you requesting your managers ask this of their direct reports?

Chris Kohl:

I did it of my managers, or are you requesting your managers ask this of their direct reports? I did it on my managers. As I said, shadow of a leader. I encourage them to ask their people. Now I would also have they did this at the bank as well one down sessions or two down sessions where you would meet with people, two down from you, and you would ask them questions, and that was always a very interesting conversation to have. What are some of the questions so you would ask them. So what's going well for you with this organization? What do you like about what we do? What can this department do better.

Jimmy Chebat:

Do you find that just by asking that question, that people feel that you care and are more loyal to the organization and are more engaged with their jobs?

Chris Kohl:

I would say, as long as you are being sincere about it, you can always tell when a person is checking a box and that buys you nothing. But I think when you're sincere about something and then you build a trust where they can say something about your boss, but it never gets back to your boss and they expect you to help manage.

Jimmy Chebat:

That. It's a great point and something you know. We, as I stated earlier, you know, in in season two, we're trying to get insights from different layers of the organization, from from the bottom up agent, manager and executives and that is one of the key points that was made by the agent is ask me how I'm doing, ask me about the company, Tell me about your role and just that on a personal level, not even just about the job, but on a personal level. And being genuine, I think, is important. It's not something that you can fake, right? You have to truly be genuine in order for people to perceive it to be genuine.

Chris Kohl:

I mean, I would say, my last couple of years at Chase, I had a manager in Ohio. She had a child. Probably was, I would say, seventh grade range, maybe sixth, seventh, eighth grade, not sure exactly which, but she was really having a hard time attending school from home. The employee kept asking me for some time off and I gave it to her because she flexed her hours and she said I could put more hours in from seven to nine. If you give me this time off, fine, no issue. But eventually, over time, she wanted to tell me why Didn't have to, because even when a employee calls out sick, you can't ask them why they're sick. But she told me that her daughter had attempted to commit suicide. So now my role as a manager would say well, do you know what's available within your organization? We have, you know, like a helpl line, and I gave it to a doctor, a psychiatrist, that I actually had spoken with about someone else years ago. So she did look into it and this doctor was a huge help. But it took time.

Chris Kohl:

And then what happened is my boss's boss all of a sudden did not want to allow her to work from home five days a week because the company wanted people to come back into the office. When I tell you that this girl she worked on her own in Ohio. There was nobody there that did anything that she did. She's reported to me and when she was in the office I would see her sitting there by herself with people walking back and forth behind her. She never got involved in it and it got to the point where each drug got involved and told me I had to tell her that she had to come back into the office. Well, I did, and she says Chris, you know what I have to do. I says I know what you have to do. I encourage you to do it. And she got another job within the organization. She was able to work from home and she got more money.

Jimmy Chebat:

Sure, I mean, that takes a lot of trust to be able to confide in your leadership. And I think that's a big point. That you've been trying to make here is building that trust to be able to get the real information right. And, like you said, you can't ask that question, no. But if they feel that trust between that connection between their leadership, they'll share that with you and you'll be able to better manage them. But it brings us to another great point, which is mental health, and you had said earlier in the conversation. Society has changed, which has made a huge impact on the culture of the workplace. There's a statistic that 70% of employees say that their employer is responsible for their mental well-being, but only 25% feel supported by their companies. What do you feel the role of both the organization and leadership is on mental well-being and mental health?

Chris Kohl:

So that's a bit of a tough one. I'll tell you why. Going back to shadow of a leader, I used to send emails out at all times, day or night. I would think nothing to send an email at three o'clock in the morning. And I did it to my boss one time my boss's boss, I should say. They called me into his office. He said why are you sending me an email at three o'clock in the morning? Because that's when I got to.

Chris Kohl:

It said you do this with your people. Yeah, you understand what you're doing. You're telling them they have to be available to answer your emails any time, day or night. I know you send emails on other weekends. I don't like that. Fine. So I never sent them an email on a weekend. I sent everybody else emails on a weekend because it was critical.

Chris Kohl:

And so when you say mental health, I would say my experience has been I don't think they really cared. They said they cared, but I don't think they cared. And they say that because I was working sometimes 60, 70, 80 hours a week and they would tell me you're going to burn out, you're going to burn out, you're going to burn out. Obviously you haven't burnt out yet. It depends on the individual Individuals. A human being has the ability to do great things. And how do we refresh ourselves? We did it in different ways. Some people exercise, some people eat food, some people drink right, there's a combination of things that people do, but I think some people just can only tolerate the 9 to 5 or the 8 to 5, because their preference is not to work, not to live, to work, but to work, to live. And I may not have been a good example, so I had to make sure my people understood.

Jimmy Chebat:

My expectation of them was not to do what I did, but by sending that email at three in the morning. It's a non-verbal or it's a way of communicating without actually directly communicating that I expect you to be available Right, is the employer responsible for the mental health of their employees, or do you think that is the individual's responsibility for themselves?

Chris Kohl:

So I think it's a combination of the individual and their immediate manager, their supervisor, because it's the immediate supervisor or manager that needs to sense if there's something wrong. If I was putting in that many hours, it meant I needed more people. It's not going to give me more people, so how are you helping me Prioritize your work? I've done that, but now you ask me to do something else and you tell me it's due like this date. I can't do five things by the same date unless I put in the hours that I do so.

Jimmy Chebat:

You had mentioned earlier about work-life balance. I feel that there's been a shift. I think the generation before mine, people were defined by what they did. They normally held the same position for their entire careers, usually with the same company. My generation I'm with Gen X it's started to shift into, as you put it, a work-life balance. I don't live to work, I work to live and I feel there's been a new shift in work-life integration, especially now after COVID, where you're literally working from where you live and so that integration doesn't just span across your physical location but there's a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging with that. How do you feel have you seen from your experience kind of that transition and how do you feel that new kind of work-life integration plays a role into strategies from the organizations to try to build that healthy work-life integration?

Chris Kohl:

So the one thing that I would say is that individuals that work from home, especially if they're a brand new organization, they're going to have difficulty adopting to the culture. They're not going to learn as quickly as if you were in the office and if you had a question, the person just throw it in the other pod. You can ask the question, you get an answer right away. So your learning curve is going to take a lot longer. The personal development, your personal growth, is going to be much longer because you're not going to be able to, say, be manager for the day. As an example, like if I was going to be on vacation, I may say, hey, you're in charge today. How do you do that If they don't see what you do every day? I think, even though we have this work from home culture, 100% work from home is not optimal, but do you feel it has a permanent place in the future of work?

Chris Kohl:

Oh, I think definitely does, but not 100%, no, no. I think what's happened over time? As we've taken away the coat and the tie, we've taken away the large executive office with the couch and the credenza crystal glasses, and now we have Google-style layouts rows and rows of people sitting next to each other. That's rather annoying. So really it's better to work from home because you can get more done, be more productive, but it also depends on the individual. The individual that's not committed, that doesn't have a sense of belonging, that doesn't have goals, is not going to be very productive and they're going to slack off.

Jimmy Chebat:

It's a good transition there. With respect to goals, how important were goals to the culture that you tried to create in the organizations you worked for?

Chris Kohl:

I think, goals are guidelines. What happened in the organization is your goals of the organization trickles from the top down, so if the president wanted to do X, y, z, you had to figure out how you fit into that and how to define that goal. Not very many people are good at helping define those goals, so many managers would just say go put your goals in, download it so everybody can see your goals in there. Where I didn't take that approach? Because if you took that approach with goals when it came appraisal time, it'd be a very difficult appraisal to deliver because you couldn't measure it, there was no substance to it and you couldn't even get feedback throughout the year.

Chris Kohl:

The other thing I always said is goals were made to be changed. What you do in quarter one, the business is going to change and it's going to have to be adjusted in quarter two. If you don't adjust it, that goal at the end of the year is a meaningless goal. So you wind up at the end of the year with no goals, an appraisal that's not going to get you much of an increase, where the person who has good goals modifies those goals and constantly is going back to review those goals on how they're doing and talking to their manager about how they're doing, will do much better at the end of the year.

Jimmy Chebat:

It sounds to me like what you're talking about are higher level objectives, possibly for the quarter, for the month, but I want to zoom in a little bit and get into the day-to-day metrics and having those sort of goals performance goals, performance metrics. And then I want to ask about tying incentives to those and the importance of incentives to goals, and do you think that they matter?

Chris Kohl:

incentives to goals and do you think that they matter? So the agency that I managed in the Philippines. They were brought on as really a way to get supplemental staff or incremental staff hired quickly when needed. There was very little focus on performance, it was all about quality. And so all of a sudden, somebody got religion one day and said it's costing us $6 million a year to have this insurance policy. We're getting nothing for it. They said, chris, I want you to take this over. If they can't improve, I want you to get rid of them. And so now you had to find out well, does the individual know what they're supposed to do every day? What's the experience level that's there? What's the experience level of the managers? And started putting together basically spreadsheets and heat maps to show how much a person was collecting every day, how they were collecting every month, comparing that to their peers, how much they collected per hour. And once we started presenting this, all of a sudden their eyes opened up and we now had to teach collection technique.

Chris Kohl:

When you deal with collections, there's always one or two collection talk loss that a person is comfortable with. So one person may be comfortable with settlements only Another is comfortable just getting a payment, you have to have a toolbox that allows you to do a whole spectrum. And how do you do that? You have to set individual goals for each tool. So if they never did a settlement, give them a goal of one settlement for the month. When they get to one, make it two and gradually he'll get better at settlements. But if you never address that, there's always going to be a low collector getting minimum payments, called stabilization payments, which don't prevent the account from rolling back the current but just keeps them always in a delinquent state. And when you're dealing with an account that's always in a delinquent state, it's somewhat like a tennis match the ball goes back and forth. At some point in time it's going to be missed and the account's going to charge off. So you have to use the tools that are needed to bring the accounts current.

Chris Kohl:

And the other thing I would say is are they resolving the situation based on what that customer's issue is in that one call? Because I always said every call you have to treat it like it's your last. So you measured the quality of that call. Did they find out their new cards? Did they obtain a good payment? Not that they put a payment in somebody's mouth, just have them say okay, I'll make that payment, get off the phone. And so, by using these metrics, what we found is that the more seasoned staff they couldn't adapt and we had to replace them all and we brought in newer staff. They learned and got better, but then, as we've spoken before, they had to start with the managers, because the managers came from those ranks and if they don't know what they're doing and you compare them to the others, you're going to see there's one is at the bottom and everywhere else is going to gravitate towards the middle to the top. And again, you keep taking out that weaker link and you'll get to a better performing organization.

Jimmy Chebat:

It reminds me of two sayings. One is it's a lot easier to spend time building good habits than breaking bad ones, and the second is you know what gets measured gets done Right, it's done right. So if you're measuring it, you're going to be paying closer attention to it, and then you can train for it and you can coach for it and develop better processes for it. Chris, we are running out of time here and I want to make sure that we leave a little bit of time here. We have a game this is the Zizofact podcast All Things Gamify. So we've got to leave a little bit of room for a game that we play. But before I do that, I want to give you an opportunity here to ask me one or two questions. Is there anything that you want to know or you're curious about from either myself or from Zizzo?

Chris Kohl:

Yeah, so one question that I would have for you is and this is an observation actually, and this is an observation actually so, as we meet with different organizations, how do you know how you're going to present your demo with organization A versus organization B, because I have seen a change in the way you present sometimes.

Jimmy Chebat:

Excellent question and there are moments where I come in and, right off the cuff, go into my standardized demo. But I've learned from other demonstrations what the modern challenges are and what challenges seem to be most ubiquitous or shared by all. But the best way and the right way to do it is for me to do a discovery questionnaire first and to ask that specific question what are your challenges, what are your top three challenges and how are you currently addressing them? So that way the demonstration is designed around their challenges, not necessarily what I want to fix or what we offer in terms of a solution. What I want to fix or what we offer in terms of a solution, it's designed around is it attrition? Is it engagement? Is it business intelligence? Is it the data drown? So, yeah, it is constantly changing, but usually it's because either we've done some discovery questions prior, but every demonstration is geared usually towards the top challenges of the individuals in the organization. Okay, good question and good observation.

Chris Kohl:

Well, the reason I ask the question is because, as you're going through your presentation, I take some notes sometimes and there's certain things I pick up that, as I'm talking to an organization, there may be something.

Jimmy Chebat:

I want to ask them it's hard to make one solution fit all right. And you know, from Zizo's perspective, the platform was designed to be very flexible, right, and you know it starts, like you said, at the top what are the business objectives? And then reversing or reverse engineering that objective to try to identify the performance metrics or the behaviors or the efforts that you really want to push, or what needles you want to. You know increase, you know. So, whether it is engagement, whether it is retention, employee satisfaction, you know these are all things that we could address from different perspectives. So I'm going to invite Jill, one of our producers, here and to join us on this call and we're going to be playing a game and this is something that we do with every guest and just to kind of have something fun and engaging, and we are using trivia.

Chris Kohl:

What does NASA stand for? National Aeronautical Space? Who was the first president of the United States? George Washington, come on. In what year was the UN founded?

Jimmy Chebat:

1972.

Chris Kohl:

It's a wild guess, I thought it was the early 60s, Now 1945.

Jimmy Chebat:

Oh, wow.

Chris Kohl:

Who is the CEO of Tesla?

Jimmy Chebat:

Elon Musk yes.

Chris Kohl:

What type of animal is a penguin?

Jimmy Chebat:

Babel Reptile. It's not a reptile, a bird.

Chris Kohl:

What is the capital city of Canada?

Jimmy Chebat:

Quebec.

Chris Kohl:

What is the?

Jimmy Chebat:

strongest muscle in the human body? The heart? Is it the brain? Is that a muscle? That's not a muscle.

Chris Kohl:

It's the jaw who wrote the novel Pride and Prejudice.

Jimmy Chebat:

I know I should know this. I feel ignorant not knowing it. Who is it?

Chris Kohl:

Jane Austen. What is the fastest land animal?

Jimmy Chebat:

Leopard Cheetah I mean.

Chris Kohl:

Who painted Starry Night?

Jimmy Chebat:

Van Gogh.

Chris Kohl:

How many bones are there in the adult human body?

Jimmy Chebat:

106, 112, oh, 206, okay.

Chris Kohl:

What is the largest country in the world by area? Russia?

Jimmy Chebat:

What is the smallest country in the world? Jeez, oh, monaco the Vatican Awesome. Jeez, so oh, monaco the Vatican Awesome. Well, that was fun. Chris, I want to thank you again for joining us on the Zizofact podcast. Your insights were incredible. I think there's a lot of takeaways that people are going to be able to take from this podcast and this has been a fun time. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you got something out of it, and thank you for sharing your experience and your insights.

Chris Kohl:

I'll tell you you don't realize how many different experiences you have in these stuff. Really think about it. I can go on for days when stuff like that.

Jimmy Chebat:

You know what I was. I'm a big fan of the Montessori process, which you. I'm a big fan of the Montessori process which you know my kids went through it which is they put you in different you know age, three different age groups, and the objective is, as the youngest of the three age groups, you're learning from the other two, and then the middle is learning from the older group and then also teaching, and then you're mastering as the older, as the oldest group, you master what you do by teaching the younger too, and I encourage all of my, my employees and including you know I do this myself is to always try to have a mentor, a protege and a peer, that you can discuss different things, and I find that, being the mentor, you remind yourself of all of the important things that help you achieve success and to remind you to continue to do those. But, chris, and to all of our audience, thank you all for joining us today on the Zizzo Effect podcast. Until next time.

Jimmy Chebat:

Remember it's game time. What an incredible conversation with Christopher Cole. He brought to light just how critical trust is to effective leadership. Not only that, but he reminded us that, while everyone deserves equal treatment, recognizing each person's uniqueness is key. Chris emphasized that the best way to lead is by making real human connections, through genuine interactions and taking a sincere interest in your team's lives. Thanks for tuning in and we can't wait to bring you more great discussions. And remember it's game time.

People on this episode

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Andrew Reimers

Host
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Jimmy Chebat

Host