Diane Hare  
It's all about your early adopters. It's finding those people inside the enterprise that are champions, that are enthusiasts, that are influencers. You find them, you give them the tools, you celebrate them, you give them the resources, and let them be the change makers.

Jeff Ma  
Hello and welcome to love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business we want to tackle topics that most business leaders tend to shy away from. We believe that humanity love should be at the center of every successful business. I am your host, as always, Jeff Ma and I'm here to have conversations and hear stories with real people about real business, real life. My guest today is passionate about empowering leaders to build organizations that find balance between people and profit and takes a holistic approach to problem solving. Diane hare, founder and CEO at BizLove, is an entrepreneur, former Big Four management consultant, board member for Nano, nuclear and MBA, graduate with nearly a decade of Fortune 500 experience at Ernest and Young, specializing in purpose driven enterprise transformation. Diane has big business experience with an entrepreneurial edge, a visionary leader, Diane sees business as a powerful vehicle for sustainable change. She believes that to make impact in the world at a large scale, people and profit need to be part of the conversation. I love that finding the harmony and balance between business and love, or profit and people, is what sits at the foundation of her strategic consultancy she calls BizLove. So I'd like to welcome Diane hare to the show. How are you? Diane,

Diane Hare  
I'm very good. Jeff, thank you for that introduction. It's always humbling when you hear your own introduction. Read to you.

Jeff Ma  
 It's very uncomfortable at times, yes, but it's important. It's important. People need to know what you've done, there's an obvious energy here. Biz, love, love as a business strategy. There's some keywords that we you and I both revolve around, resonate on. So I'm excited, I'm excited to connect, but I like to start all of my interviews with a simple question about you personally, and it's around your passion. What is your passion? Diane and where does it come from?

Diane Hare  
Wow. All right, I would say transformation is really the crux of my passion. Biz and love is the way that I do it. But watching people evolve and change and reach their highest potential is really what the work is all about, both in not only professionally, but personally. I'm a big champion for transformation in the way that I think about it is, it's, it's only sustainable if you transform from within.

Jeff Ma  
I love it, diving in. I mean, already, I can't help it. But like Bizlove a lot of what you talk about is putting people like into the solutions. Like talking about putting people in solutions kind of together and also more around, as I mentioned in your introduction, just like bridging kind of people in profit. And so this is something that, if people have followed us, like, Love as a business strategy kind of going back. This is all like language we've, like, used along the way. So when you shared that, I was like, blown away that we could, like, kind of meet in the sea of, like, different thoughts and in this world. So I want to hear from you, though, like, I only know the cliffs notes. So, like, what, what is, what is biz love to you, or what is it exactly? And and kind of elaborate on that a little bit for me.

Diane Hare  
Yeah, so biz is short for business, and it stands for you, what you would consider metrics, capital markets, shareholders, high growth and love is the avoidance of fear. So it's when there's no fear, and you're operating from a place of abundance, and you're operating in you're making decisions for the collective good of all. That's what love stands for in our biz, love. So when those two come together and you work with them as principles that are typically polarized, especially in the Western corporate America, you can look at things and solve problems in a different way that not only deliver short term gains, but long term impact. And that's really you'll see a lot of these polarities playing at this love, and that's on purpose. That's how the world works. That's how business works, and that's why we create solutions that find that balance. As well

Jeff Ma  
speaking my language. I love everything I hear. I'm curious, you know, coming through like, you know, various different corporate environments and coming into entrepreneurship. But just from, from your experience, can you like, how did you come across biz, love, like, how did you come from? I mean, I know from my line of work. This is not a default way of operating. This is not something that's widespread yet. So how did you come through what you've gone through and still come out the other end? Kind of preaching this stuff, working on this stuff, helping others with this stuff. Like, where did, where does your story, like, your origin story come from? Yeah.

Speaker 1  
Oh, man. So there's a professional side of my origin story that I can tell you, but the personal side is just as powerful, and I think this is true for leaders who lead big enterprises. It's like I said, transformation from within is what makes you capable to lead, and that comes from your personal and professional life. So I'll start with my personal life. I came up as a competitive athlete. I played Division One soccer. I was always ambitious and always used to tell my parents I grew up in Poughkeepsie, but I would tell them, I'm going to be a big businesswoman in New York City one day from like, a very young age, I just had this vision that I would do that. So when I graduated, I the first place I went to was Manhattan. I am definitely one of those people who works their way up. I never really got a proper kind of job offer from Ernst and Young I came in as a contract worker. I figured out a way to come through the back door to pay my rent in New York City, I bartended for two years, so I was always hungry and always knew I was capable of something bigger, but I don't have the pedigree that most consultants from Big Four have, and so as I was coming through the ranks, and I went to get my MBA, And then I landed a job in EY strategy practice, which is like the most emerging kind of like top tier consulting practice at EY. At the time, I remember making it there and then looking around and being like, so this is what this is all about. This is all we have to offer. I was a little disappointed in the way we approached client projects, enterprise transformations. We were working with the fortune 100 for Fortune 500 the top, most impressive companies in the world, and the way we were approaching them was just very short sighted, only half the equation. I didn't see how we could truly drive impact. I founded, there's a startup within EY called EY Sinek. It was created with Simon Sinek, who is a thought leader, and most of the people that listen to you probably know him, Jeff, because you are also very aligned with his thinking and books. We we created a tiger team within EY strategy called EY Sinek, and we took purpose. Ey did a contract with Simon. We took the why. We called it purpose, and we created commercial offerings that was purpose driven transformation, which was really my first taste in New Age solutions, ways that you could do enterprise transformation differently. And that's where, that's where I really found a true love for consulting. It wasn't the traditional way. It was the, what I call New Age way of thinking about problem solving, putting people in profit at the same priority level, using love, using purpose, this bigger cause, to really think about how to solve business problems. And so I think a combination of my personal career and like upbringing, of just always thinking there's a better way, always finding a back door, it's both why I'm an entrepreneur, but it's also why I was able to, like, climb quickly in the corporate ladder, to get the experience, to feel like I could do this on a big stage. So that's, that's the backstory, Jeff.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. And you mentioned, I guess, I guess picking this up from what you called, I guess, New Age kind of way of thinking. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Like, I know you kind of defined it loosely here with these concepts of putting people in profit and alignment, things like that. But is there? Is there, like, a, is this, like, a well known definition in the circles that you run in? I guess I haven't really heard it, and I'd love to know more about it.

Speaker 1  
I wouldn't consider it a popular term in enterprise consulting. I think people use it like loosely, but it's not something that my industry hears a lot. I think because we're young, because we're ambitious, and because we're doing things differently. And so it's a quick way to cut to the chase. We're not your like old white haired consultancy, right? Everyone that works for Bizlove is young, emerging, trailblazing. And so not only is our innovation with our IP new it's also our spirit. It's also the way that we staff projects. So I call it New Age as a shortcut too. We're different. Is

Jeff Ma  
it strictly? Do you think it's something that's strictly tied to, like youth and generational or is it something more around? Is there something more than that? Yeah,

Diane Hare  
it's a good question, because you're right that we're all going to get older, including me, and you can't really call it New Age if you're not young. But I think the the spirit of creator and curiosity that you know entrepreneurs have this like stomach of optimism, and I won't stop at anything that's a childlike wonder and way of looking at the world. I think that spirit is in biz love we get cut into mission critical projects with deadlines that make no sense, that the turnaround time feels impossible, and time and time again we're put in these situations, like our backs up against the wall, and instead of it feeling like crippling or paralyzing, it's our team is they rise to the occasion. And it's it's just that's like fighter spirit that we carry

Jeff Ma  
is, is, like, tell me a little bit about, you know, I know a thing or two about trying to, like, be a part of a business that's succeeding, and trying to help others with culture, help others with and then, for me, at least, there's, like, your own culture that you have to continue working on it. And sometimes it's to others, it seems like a no brainer. It seems like, oh, just kind of like, do all the things in the same way. But it's like, it's weird when you're working in culture yourself, because everyone's so hyper conscious within your organization of culture that it's almost a gift to work at a different layer. Do you experience that as well in BizLove?

Diane Hare  
Yes. Like, eat our own dog food. Yes,

Jeff Ma  
I haven't heard of it that way before, but yes,

Diane Hare  
I can. Yes, we, I definitely understand, Jeff, what you mean. Like, if we're going to preach and show clients how to do it and we are not living it, who are we? I think what's difficult about the way we're set up is worse we're a high growth startup. That's the way to look at we're a five and a half year old consultancy. We serve multinationals. So it's like building things from scratch to delivering scalable, enterprise wide, global solutions, and you're doing both in a day, so you're going from tactics to high strategy in a matter of a call, and you gotta laugh. I mean, it keeps you humble, and I think it's it's also why we're effective in launching new programs. So even though there are big enterprises, when they they are looking to do something transformative or trailblazing, that spirit of knowing how to build a bootstrapped premier consultancy is the same spirit it takes to build an enterprise wide program. It's the basics all the way up to like, global solutions and but you could laugh like to see our schedules and the way we operate at Bizove every day, it's the smallest thing to the biggest thing, and in a matter of 30 minutes,

Jeff Ma  
I feel like I may relate a little bit, but But it's always different. Can we talk a little bit of like the nitty gritty, like talking about actual, like boots on the ground work here, when we talk about biz love, or just you in general, when you, when you consult or work with businesses around again, bridging the biz and the love as you've defined it. What does that work look like? What is the actual, you know, bread and butter of of of your of your work? Yeah,

Diane Hare  
it's a great question. So it took a long time to really define when we're in our let's call it love, or in our our biz. And the reality is, it's not siloed, it's interconnected. It's it's embedded. You could look at it as everything we do is integrated. So, and I think it's important, it's a lesson I've learned that traditionally, when you meet a culture organization, you can relate to this Jeff, and it's siloed to HR. Yeah, and they say culture is an HR problem, and you're like, No, culture is a collective problem, right? It is the responsibility of all of us to nurture, build, take care of culture. It's not an HR problem. 

Jeff Ma  
Whenever people say culture is an HR problem, I usually respond, it sounds like your HR might be a culture problem.

Diane Hare  
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's and you see them transforming. It's getting better. But I would say just like us. Love is not something we silo solution for. It is there's ways we get to it. So storytelling, we do storytelling, and we do strategy at my company. So storytelling is all about, how do we get to the intangibles of the human experience? Because in moments of great change and transformation, people are impacted. Any way you cut it, any way you slice it, they are being impacted. We use storytelling to build a story that is contextual, that gives decisions they make sense to talk about why we're here, who we are, what we do, right? Go back to the basics, so people really have this identity in the organization to connect to. That's the what we would consider love during transformation. The other thing that's in the love camp is leadership. Leaders during big moments of change when their career is on the line and it's a like career changing initiative, they are they have a lot on their shoulders, and they are not only responsible for delivering results, they're responsible for leading their teams, and sometimes they're not staffed. They don't have the resources, they don't have the boss above them to support them. We're very much the person behind the leader in their corner, not only enabling their team, but enabling them. And I think that's really important, and things that consultants typically don't do, but we actually create tailored solutions for the leader so that they can have a platform as much as we do it for the enterprise and the team. So that's the love side. Strategy is and biz is all about KPIs delivering on milestones, roadmaps, playbooks, it's all of the consulting tools, techniques that you would see in a traditional house. But we're doing it step by step, locked arm. So there'll be a consulting strategist and a storyteller working side by side, taking one Source Truth, one source content or business strategy, and bringing it to life. And so in that way, we're not copywriters, we're storytellers, and it's very different. And the strategist is always intentional and moving with clarity, which is also very important. And so that is really the the combination during moments of chaos and change, we can drive this uniting clarity across, and it makes a difference. So hopefully that gave you a sense that's, that's very quick version. 

Jeff Ma  
 I love that. I think that I think that that makes a lot of sense, and that storytelling concept really resonates with me. I think it's needed for sure, when it comes to, like, really having change be impactful and carried through, I think my head goes to my head always does this, but it goes to kind of like the problem areas, the worst case scenarios, the other like outliers and stuff. But I can't help but think about a lot of change initiatives, put a lot of care in, with good intent, into planning and logistics and communication, even all these things that you know, kind of check the box and make sure everyone's aligned. Everyone has, you know, the why, and even the storytelling at times. But what I've also seen is that there's like this behavioral element around it, where we can all agree to things, that we can all kind of be on board. But then there's like the way it actually kind of exists in practice, as a way, like leaders, like treat the change, or treat each other through the chain just ways that behaviors as humans basically come across through our mindsets and, like, our attitudes, how we communicate with each other. These elements, it leads to different outcomes, such as, sometimes teams might feel like, oh, like, well, this is just still, like, with all this clarity, it's still like a kind of corporate mandate that I don't really believe in. And like, it leads to all these, like, adoption issues. It leads to all these kind of, like fragmentation. It's not all the time, but I've seen it enough to know that, like, there's something around behavior that's important as an important equation. Part of the equation is that something that's factored in kind of the biz love approach in one of those areas, or is that something you've seen as well?

Diane Hare  
Yeah, so behavior is interesting, because you see a lot of companies coming out with behavior tools. They could be like change habits, like you'll get a pulse emails telling you to do a tip every. Day to try to, like, change, a change of behavior in a micro dose, and they'll gamify it, and they'll try to get you interested and adopt that way. I think that that only works for a small population of people. I don't think everyone. It doesn't work on me. It wouldn't work on me. The way that I behavior change is through connection. So I have to connect to either my leader or the enterprise via the identity, the storytelling we share, and I need to self select that this matters to me. This is an aligned mission. I'm here using my precious life for a reason, and I believe it's in its best interest to be at this company, building that shared fabric across the enterprise is how I think people self select in which is a big behavior change. Because when you make the choice, it's not pushed on you, but it's it's you're kind of enticing them and inspiring them and empowering them to make the choice. Sometimes, during big enterprise transformation, you see people leave, and I don't always think that's a bad thing. It depends on who it is, but the the tactical behavior change is for a type of person, but there's this other side that is self select, and that's the side we really focus on.

Jeff Ma  
Feels like, I guess, to kind of summarize what I'm hearing is that people, you got to make people care, or you got to make people want it, or have their own reason or case for wanting to change, right, right? So that's a huge challenge at times, right? Like, I guess, is that something like, do you come in to these things often saying, You know what, we're only going to get X percent of these people to actually care and like, like, you're expecting the others to like, be like, kind of D, like demotivators or like in the way, or detractors from what we're doing. Like, what does that look like when we I mean, again, I may be speaking from my own bias to personal experience, but like changing, like getting people to like, want something differently, inherently care more about something can be a different like larger challenge of its own, or a completely sometimes you just can't get people on board, or at least it feels that way. What's your what's your perspective or approach on that? Yeah,

Diane Hare  
so when I worked with Simon, he taught me a really important principle, and it was all you need is your early adopters to hit a tipping point. So those non Sayers, those non believers, don't waste your resources on them. They will come when they come. It's all about your early adopters. It's finding those people inside the enterprise that are champions, that are enthusiasts, that are influencers. You find them, you give them the tools, you celebrate them, you give them the resources, and let them be the change makers. As a consultancy, you're already an external coming in, and you could be seen as foreign, so it's really important that you actually identify the folks inside the organization, and you don't worry about the people who are not coming on board. You actually ignore them, and you only focus on your early adopters.

Jeff Ma  
I like that answer quite a bit. I think, I think this, it's easy to get I think, as a human, I think the human reaction is to care a lot about the people who are kind of naysaying. It's hard for us to sleep at night with all the naysayers totally kind of ring their heads. So that's a powerful kind of like reminder agree with the approach, maybe easier said than done, but it's also important to keep that in mind like that. Yeah. So when it comes to, I guess at the end of the day, some proof points, or, I guess when you talk about aligning people and profit, you know, I guess the old age way of working is kind of that those two things are either at odds with each other or kind of like, if you you know, it's like, they're very disconnected, so as you, as you connect them the New Age kind of way of working, like, what are your kind of proof points around that? What are your case studies and examples of where people and profit aligned is the solution? Is the right way to go?

Diane Hare  
Yeah, one of the things that we created that I was really proud of, was we created a culture dashboard, but it was measured by business KPIs. So we had these four behaviors. It was for one of our oldest clients that we rolled out, and they were they were called behaviors. They weren't your traditional soft values, they were more hard hitting in the sense that they were like, focused on the market, focused on the customer, which gave us this leverage point that I really liked, because it was easier to find business impact. So we we defined the four behaviors, and then we went and we found business KPIs that are proof points. Living that behavior, and at the end of the day, we had a really holistic kind of pulse on, we say we live these behaviors, but do they actually make impact at the end of the day on the business? And being able to show the CEO something fresh, something different, something holistic that he just really hasn't seen measurement on was really fulfilling, and it was very well adopted. And I don't see a lot of culture folks doing that right, because sometimes the values are like, Be nice to everyone, or treat everyone like you want to be treated. But that doesn't help the business performance connect. So I now take a different approach to culture when I'm defining call it values or behaviors. I make sure they're balanced. I make sure that they you can find the impact for employees, but you can also find the impact for customers, because I know at the end of the day, if we can measure that, it will actually be adopted at the executive leadership level, and then we can inspire those from the bottom up to join. And I think that is important for culture change. It has to feel balanced. Has to feel tangible. Otherwise, only half of the only half the employees, will actually live the behavior like you've seen it, Jeff, it's they'll ask, What's this for? This is wasted resources. Why are we doing this? It's so soft, it's so emotional, so and it's also super specific to each to each client. Culture is unique. It is. It's like a soul, like it has its own own vibration, own way of working, own way of moving through the world. I see a lot of consultants using similar frameworks or similar words, and they carry it over to the next client. And it's like you have to take an artist view to culture. Everything is unique, precise. You have to start from square one. You can't come in with your own authorship. It's all about extracting and sourcing something new. And I think that's an artistry that's not usually found in consultants. It's usually found in writers or a different a different talent, and that's why storytellers are at the table with us, because we tap into them when it's time to do that work.

Jeff Ma  
Very, very cool. What would you say with with with every culture being so different? What would you say is the one thing they all have in common the most, despite being so different, so so unique, when you walk into an organization, what can you expect to understand about their culture already?

Diane Hare  
I can expect that they have both an equal healthy dose of both love and fear coexisting in their enterprise, they're both always present, and it's all about which one is winning over what you know, it's, I mean, like in the human experience, love and fear is always around us. Like, which one are you choosing today? Same thing in enterprises.

Jeff Ma  
Wow, nice. I think that was like, that was like, I don't have a better word for that's like, a very epic answer. It feels like, dude, like, feels like it was like, out of a movie script or something. So I

Diane Hare  
really thank you. I like that. Appreciate that. Jeff,

Jeff Ma  
so it's been Wow. Time has already flown by. So here we are. I really, really enjoyed the conversation. I feel like your perspective has been incredibly valuable for me, and I know to the listener as well, because this is something that I already believed in very much obviously coming this conversation, but to hear how you've evolved it and how you've grown it and kind of found your like approach has been super awesome to see, and I've so much more learned. So appreciate you coming on the show and sharing all of this. It's been, it's been awesome.

Diane Hare  
Time flew Jeff, thank you so much for having me. Is

Jeff Ma  
there anything you want to share? I mean, we talked about biz love kind of the whole time, but is there anything you want to kind of share for the listener, specifically, if you want, if they want to, like, reach, you, contact you understand more.

Diane Hare  
I would say, if you want to reach out, we have a way to send notes on biz, love com, so you can find me there. I'm also on LinkedIn, and I'm very active. I check my messages every day. So if you want to send me a note there, that would be great. And yeah, I would say, I mean, if people are watching this and listening to you, Jeff, they're already on the right path. And I know we're used to this because we've done it for a while, but if you're new to caring about culture, I would say, try to build a business case around culture, because that is really the way that you're going to find leverage, resources, deployment, power. A lot of times, executives, they don't have the luxury of worrying about culture, because they've got so many KPIs and shareholders and people. On their backs, and it's not their fault, but they need the people below them to bring up the topic of culture and care about it, because it's not that they don't care, it's they don't have enough time in the day to worry about it. So if you build a business case for culture, and you look at it differently, and you find the balance between biz and love, you will find the path of least resistance when it comes to this topic, and it's only going to change if you power it. So I would say, go for it. It's super fulfilling, and you will actually be super proud of the work that you achieve, because it will change. It will change.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. We will end with that very powerful statement. I mean that is, that is, I just can't stop agreeing with you. I guess I'm running out of like ways to express how much I agree with everything you say this entire episode. So thank you for ending with that to our listeners. We appreciate you as always. Thanks for continuing to listen and follow check out lovers, business strategy, the book if you haven't, and tell your friends, I say that every week, but seriously, tell a friend this week. Go and go and tell a friend. So with that, I will see everybody next week and hope everyone has a great week. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai