Season 2, Ep. 11 | ‘Bridjr’ To More Human-Designed Experiences: Part 1 Transcript

​More Elephant Intro

[00:00:38] Jason Rudman: My guest today founded her company with the belief that empathy sits firmly at the heart of any decision as organizations determine how to deliver the right experience in a digital age. She's set out to bring more of the best of humanity to business while making it her mission to help leaders achieve their vision and have huge impact, and that it is her team's humanity and depth of understanding that differentiates them in a world increasingly reliant on machines and algorithms.

It is with joy that we welcome Anita Ghosh, founder of CEO of Bridjr, spelled, B-R-I-D-J-R, to the podcast.

[00:01:19] Anita Ghosh: I love that you included the spelling. Thank you for that.

[00:01:22] Jason Rudman: It's incredibly important. 

[00:01:23] Anita Ghosh: Yes, it's incredibly important. I really appreciate that. There's a reason for.

[00:01:29] Jason Rudman: So let's start there. We included the spelling. What's the reason behind the spelling?

[00:01:33] Anita Ghosh: All right. Let's talk about the meaning of Bridjr. At the highest level, I really believe our whole experience as humans has so many parallels to our experience in organizations.

When we think about our growth and achieving our fullest potential, and for us, at the end of the day, the journey of life and growth is going to be about crossing edges from who we were to who we want to become. And that's going to mean also finding the bridges to getting there in a personal context, a leadership development context.

This is the purpose of life. This is why we're here—to cross those edges, build those bridges, that journey—and this is the j part of Bridjr, is what we believe is the whole purpose.

And the more that we can embrace that, a journey, a cyclical, continual journey that unlocks the best of us versus a destination where we stop, we will have more joy and success in life and we will feel alive in what we're doing. 

And what I love about this is, this is true for organizations and what we talk about a lot in organizations is, in pursuit of efficiency, productivity and scalability, we have, in the most insidious and unintentional way, taken out the possibility for continual growth, iteration and creativity.

And human intelligence has driven every great innovation in history, and it's where we need to refocus. Okay, that was a long answer, but thank you for asking about the spelling of the J.

 [00:03:08] Jason Rudman: So, anybody listening is already going to be fired up by what you just said [but] what bridges did you have to build or cross in order to get here?

We like to call them More Elephant moments but more elephant moments or bridge, bridges to the more elephant moment. How did you realize that your journey as a founder was the journey that you were meant to be on?

[00:03:32] Anita Ghosh: Such a deep…and I just really appreciate the question. And there's layers to this question.

Maybe the first honest, and perhaps surprising, answer is I didn't have a moment of clarity that I wanted to be a founder.

And I'll tell you something—since I've started Bridjr—we've happened to do a lot of work with organizations that support business owners and entrepreneurs. So we've talked to probably hundreds, if not thousands. And that's a thing that I've learned. 

And I know that's so counterintuitive to often what we hear as the mainstream narrative; that people had a big vision and they went after it and, no matter what, there was an unrelenting focus on that big vision, perfect vision they had.

That really wasn't it for me. I think the bridge for me, that I'm still on, that I took the first step in walking in my life was just listening and I mean that in the deepest sense. Listening to the world. Listening to the people around me. Listening from a business perspective to the market outside of the four walls of my office, the four walls of the tower that I sat in, and most importantly, listening to myself.

And there's something that happens, particularly in North American culture, but I think it's a symptom of the time. Again, in our pursuit of excellence, we've been taught a particular way of what the path is to achieve it. You define a plan.

We’ve all been there. What do you want to be in five years? What's your personal development plan? Define it. What are the steps to getting there? What are gonna be the milestones? 

And absolutely, I believe in plans, but the behaviors around that plan, the sort of inflexibility, this rigidity that any deviation from the plan is bad, is a fallacy. And in fact, it has everyone at a human level and an organizational level, living small.

So, the first bridge that I crossed and I'm still crossing, is just listening and being open. And the more you listen, the more input and data you will collect and it will just intuitively expand your view.

And, the quick story on how that led to Bridjr is I was sitting in my last job before I started Bridjr, in a meeting that will feel familiar to many of us. 

We were sitting in the standard boardroom. As a woman, I was the only woman in the room, two people of color in the room. And, we were having a conversation that we had had at least five hundred times before. Perhaps the flavor of the day on that conversation was slightly different but, if we were being honest with ourselves, we weren't making any progress. We were running on the treadmill and going nowhere.

And I had a moment in that meeting where, it was like a flash forward to my life five or ten years from that moment, and I just had this feeling like, this cannot be my life five or ten years from now. I don't want to be sitting in a boardroom like this, running on the treadmill, going nowhere, when I know there's so much good work to be done…that I have so much more to offer.

And I think the journey of being on the bridge for years prior to that, just listening in that moment, culminated something in me that it was the opening to think about other possibilities of what I could do in the world. 

[00:07:03] Jason Rudman: The way you described the five to ten, the ghost of Christmas Future. Dickens.

It's almost like you envisioned your five-to-ten year development plan right there.

You mentioned about the ‘thinking small’ within the typical five-to-ten year development plan and then you you had this vision of what it was going be like if you stayed true to what everybody had expected in an environment that even then was not diverse, right? You were the only woman, two people of color.

And, as we learn more about Bridjr and its connection to design thinking and journey orchestration, it is ultimately grounding yourself in many different perspectives and lots of different lived experiences to understand the needs of those that you're going to solve for. And, you are in an environment where you couldn't be you or didn't feel that you could flourish and be the true you.

[00:07:58] Anita Ghosh: Yeah. And in that particular organization, it's interesting. I don't have a binary or black and white view of all large organizations operating in a particular way that's bad. And I know that there's been, you know, lots of commentary on that.

Sure. Are there consistent patterns within patriarchal power structures that do harm? Yes. I don't think anyone is denying that and I think all of the good work around how we reimagine what these structures could be are true.

I also think, and I really believe this to be true, that in my experience, in my career, and with the clients we work with, most people want to do the right thing. They're motivated by doing good in the world.

The systems and the structures that have been put in place that started with a kernel of a good intent around productivity or efficiency or reusability have unintentionally taken away what we call the human intelligence and this is what we need in organizations, particularly in this time.

So, even in that moment where I felt like this is not where I belong, I also felt like the people around the table were not bad. They were great people. In fact, I'm still friends with many of those people.

And I think that this is part of the cognitive dissonance that has people living small because, you know, if it was just all bad, then it would be easier to step away, right?

But, there's a complexity in whatever context you're finding yourself in. So, building the capacity of self-awareness, to be able to sit with those things and contemplate it and reflect on it and find your own meaning in that is increasingly difficult in a simple, fast and easy world, right?

This is like, we throw those terms around and it has somehow become, I don't know…like infused into our DNA. So often, when we work with clients, we're like, let's just slow down the simple, fast and easy and unlock the beauty of critical thinking, creativity, diversity of thought, and create space for that because I promise you, if you do that, you will unlock more potential and more success in this organization and you as an individual than being simple, fast, and easy. There's a time and place for that.

[00:10:10] Jason Rudman: Right. So, before you got to Bridjr, you were on a journey that I think many people are listening, would say, ‘Hey, I'm on that journey right now as why I'm an intrapreneur. I'm working at a company. Maybe it's a little easier to get things done than you described. And then within that journey, you're a woman of color. And so there are fewer of you to be seen and to celebrate in that journey. How did you get on that path? So even before Bridjr, you were on this path to doing and accomplishing something?

[00:10:49] Anita Ghosh: Ugh. Ah, you're killing you with these questions.

[00:10:51] Jason Rudman: Well, I think that's important because again part of the purpose of this podcast is to inspire people to take a well-informed leap sometimes, right?

To listen intently to your point. It's More Elephant—we've got one mouth, two ears. Let's listen more to what is true for us and what we can do to have impact in the world.

So that's why understanding the journey before Bridjr is really important.

[00:11:21] Anita Ghosh: It really is important. This question that you asked me is, it's deeply personal and not in a way that I don't want to share, but it's been a deep personal journey of growth, right?

How do you, as a woman in this world, as a person of color in this world, find your way and excel without losing yourself, right?

And there are, you know, if I'm honest, two journeys. There was a journey of me finding “success” in my career and excelling that had me selling my soul and I didn't know that was happening. And I share this with people. There's a very insidious thing that can happen sometimes, and this is not every organization. I'm speaking to my experience.

I would say there are common patterns in some of these big structures. You know—you come in and you start your career and if you're good, you have lots of ambition and usually your talent and your ambition will be rewarded with more work and more opportunities. And that feels like the right next step because at that time, what you're seeking is progress because that's what our culture teaches us, right?

That that's what you're seeking. You're trying to climb the ladder, get to the top of the pyramid, and if you are a woman or a person of color or any person for that matter, there are probably a series of sacrifices that you've had to make to get to just where you're starting. And so the easy payback, or the payback that feels meaningful in that moment, is the progress.

The next step on the ladder, let me get to the next rung. So I traverse that path for many years in my career. And there are very good parts of that. There would be no Bridjr if not for that journey, right? I have so much gratitude for that. There isn't a day where I don't appreciate what I have had in so many organizations that I worked in.

But, the thing that happens that we don't realize is that when we're in pursuit of getting to the next rung on the ladder, we give up the things that actually make our soul sing, the things that have real purpose and meaning to us. We stop asking ourselves the question, what is it that I want to do? What in every job that I do, every project that I've done, what made me feel alive? Where are my talents best used?

And we fall into a trap of then following the plan that's been laid out for us because that seems to be the most direct path to getting to the pyramid. And we all know this. We all have friends and colleagues that.. may even be ourselves. We've done that and we're unhappy and we're dissatisfied.

And the really tragic thing that I see is the longer that you play that game, the harder and more overwhelming it feels to step off that track because now you've made not five sacrifices, ten sacrifices, I can't even imagine to begin like probably hundreds of sacrifices in hope that you're going to unlock that thing— when I get to that echelon or that pinnacle of something, I will then feel it. And the reality is you will not.

[00:14:34] Jason Rudman: Right. I was with a group of much younger professionals and they were asking me, you know, what I'd learned.

And what I love about what you just said is it crystallizes for me something that like you, I think we have to go through these motions, I learned it. I'm glad that I did. And that is this: Be the director and producer of your play, not an actor in someone else's.

[00:14:56] Anita Ghosh: Ugh. I love it. You, you shared this with me and every time, I'm just like, yes,  spot on

[00:15:01] Jason Rudman: It is so hard to do. Right? It is so hard to ultimately be the director and producer of the play.

[00:15:06] Anita Ghosh: Yeah. This is what we're talking about. I think one of the opportunities that organizations have to really just reimagine how does people development work in an organization?

And many organizations have put in great effort and time into mapping out journeys, pathways to advancement, right? If you do this role and this role and this role. What if we actually started from a place of allowing someone to talk about what makes them feel purpose-driven alive, having their talents most utilized and started to infuse some of that data and input. I'm sure productivity would be off the charts.

The struggle that organizations have around culture would be significantly less if you allowed people to do the purpose-driven work they want to do within your organization. And it's just asking a few more questions and thinking about those questions as ways to collect more input and data.

And to answer your question about my journey as a woman of color, I talked about the unintentional path, the shift for me. That probably started about a decade ago. And then certainly about seven years ago, after my Mom passed, which was a big, big impact in how I started to think about the world, is then taking an intentional path.

So I started asking the tough questions. You know, the questions that we all face when we put our head down on the pillow at the end of a hard day, or at the end of a presentation that you've worked months on l, and it didn't go well. Someone did something that was disrespectful or not supportive, or maybe there was just simply an opposing thought. And you have that thing in your gut that just doesn't feel right.

And our natural human response in those moments is to like, just quell that. Soften it and like power through. I hear this language a lot. I'm just gonna power through. And, I believe so deeply that all of those things, those moments, those whispers are there for a reason. You're meant to listen to them on  a spiritual level,

I believe that these are the lifelines that are pointing you to where you need to pay more attention. Our tendency is to fixate on the thing that we're attached to. Like, I went into that presentation, I was looking for this feedback. This is the response I get. I'm gonna get too attached to that.

Zoom out a bit! What else did you notice? What did you notice about the people in the room? What did you notice about yourself? What did you notice about what got co-created right in that interaction?

So yeah, intentional. And for me, that's been a big shift. There would be no Bridjr without intentional living, starting to pay attention, starting to listen, starting to notice. And using all of that data to widen my aperture and my decision matrix. Oh, okay. Now that I understand this, I have different choices than the choices that I thought I had before.

[00:18:03] Jason Rudman: The moment when you decided to step away, and you mentioned briefly, you know, the loss of your Mom and how that reframed and caused you to recalibrate on what was ultimately important to you… talk about that.Is that you wake up one day and you're like, this is the day? Is it a series of moments? And then what did you do? Was Bridjr already formed? How did that reveal itself?

[00:18:27] Anita Ghosh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a moment. I mean, both things are true. I think I was on a journey of listening and giving myself the grace to sit with the big questions and then there was a moment.

So my Mom passed in 2017 and my Dad passed when I was quite young. My Dad had ALS—brutal, just heartbreaking illness and my mom passed from cancer. And, when my Mom passed, I found myself in this situation where I'm an adult orphan. I have no family in Canada. And as I reflected on my life, because my parents had been ill for a lot of their adult lives, I was very much playing the caregiver role through much of my life, right?

And, you know, a lot of my generation are now facing aging parents or death. And I faced that decades earlier. So, when my Mom passed—this is going to sound really, really, strange and weird and maybe off-putting to many people—it was obviously deeply painful and I was shattered in so many ways and because I had been doing the self work, I understood that there was an opportunity for me to reimagine my life.

And literally, with my Mom and Dad, not here, no one to take care of anymore, it was an opportunity for me to take care of myself, right? And, that, I think, was part of the journey of me that led to me stepping away.

So, my Mom passes, I start a new job. I'm in that job for some time. On her one year anniversary. I'd booked a trip for me to just like check out, be with her. She loved the water.

And so, I'd booked this amazing writing retreat in California with Liz Gilbert and Cheryl Gray. If you know them, you'll know how epic that was. If you don't know them, please check them out. And then, Hawaii. So, I'm in Hawaii by myself on this introspective beautiful holiday and it's the U.S Senate hearings from a number of years ago. And this particular senator had been, accusations made about him abusing women in the worst kinds of ways. And the woman who's come forward with this accusation is on what felt like trial, right?

And so, for whatever reason, I'm sitting in Maui in my hotel room, I should be on the beach and I'm like glued to the television. I literally can't stop watching this woman, a hero. And this woman, by the way, has gone on—this thing that happened to her with this senator is when she was a teenager at sixteen, she's gone on to get her PhD in psychology. She's a psychologist, like a brilliant woman. And she's getting ripped apart around her recollection of what happened. She is brilliantly speaking to how the brain works and how the trauma of certain experiences can be deeply embedded in the brain and remembered and other things, cannot.

And I just, I don't know, I was in awe of her courage, but beyond her courage, I felt like she was embodied in what I felt like was her purpose in that moment.

This was bigger than her, right? And I was sitting there watching her, I'm like, oh, I could see how her entire life journey from the age of sixteen, when this terrible thing happened to her, led her to this moment. And, it literally was in that moment that I thought, I know there's something more for me. Like it's time to be brave, girl. And it was on this trip. This is like, I think back to this moment, and I think it's wild that I did this. I made the decision to voluntarily leave my job.

[00:22:24] Jason Rudman: Hmm.

[00:22:24] Anita Ghosh: I literally like sent in the email resignation with no plan, by the way. There was no Bridjr at the moment. There was no thinking.

[00:22:32] Jason Rudman: There was no bridge.

[00:22:33] Anita Ghosh: There was no bridge. 

[00:22:34] Jason Rudman: There was no bridge to anywhere. Well, no, you had a ticket, you did have a return ticket back to Canada.

[00:22:40] Anita Ghosh: Well, funny enough I did, but after the resignation, I ended up extending my stay, long story, story for another day. 

So, it's amazing the power of this, a great example of representation. I don't think she was setting out to be a role model, but she, in her example, unlocked something in me. To be brave. She probably doesn't know, I should write her a letter actually, as…

[00:23:03] Jason Rudman: You should. 

[00:23:04] Anita Ghosh: Yeah. And that was the beginning of the end of that chapter.

[00:23:07] Jason Rudman: Wow. Wow. I know, I know lots about you, but I don't know that I knew that. 

That is such a remarkable…thank you for sharing that. Really. We probably could spend another hour talking about that and how that revealed all the layers. Maybe we'll invite you back again just to talk about that.

So, you extend your stay for a little while. You come back and you don't have a plan, but you have to then formulate this in what that moment has encouraged me to be brave, step off of this platform, which by the way, when you were talking about plateaus to me, the word that came to mind is we seek validation. It's a whole validating path because if you keep doing lather, rinse, repeat, and it keeps getting rewarded on some level, you feel validated that you're making all of the right decisions.

[00:23:58] Anita Ghosh: It is such a good point. Can we just with one moment?

[00:24:01] Jason Rudman: We can. Yeah.

[00:24:02] Anita Ghosh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is one of the things that we give up, right?

So, when we're climbing the ladder and we're in sort of that game, in that system, the external validation not only means so much, it actually holds all the power. We don't realize it and we've all been there. You're hustling to get the sponsorship, you're working on massaging, the right proof points for different stakeholders who hold the power on your future. And the reverse side of that, the flip side of that is, we begin to lose our own capacity to trust ourselves in this experience.

It’s a very insidious thing that happens. You don't realize it's happening because you think you're doing all the right things. There's a process and, within that process, sure you need sponsorship and you need votes. And that all feels logical and intuitive, but we're not just logical and intuitive beings, right?

There is a whole soul and spirit within us all. And so, I'm just a huge advocate of people coming back to trusting themselves. If you've been through hard things, you've learned things about yourself that will build self trust. It's just we choose to ignore it. The more that you trust yourself, the more empowered you'll feel, the more freedom you'll have.

[00:25:20] Jason Rudman: A truism to never let anyone dim your light, We're dropping in knowledge today.

You're doing most of it, I'm just coming behind. I remember a boss on their way out of an organization that I was in, took me aside and said, you have the capacity for brilliance. You will only go so far in this organization because you are too direct for people and they can't deal with that.

[00:26:00] Anita Ghosh: Wow.

[00:27:52] Jason Rudman: And he was very clear. You landed [it] in the right way. So it's not how you landed, it's the fact that you're too direct and you call it out. And that's too much for them. I stayed for another two and a half years before I realized that he was correct.

[00:28:13] Anita Ghosh: So when you heard that feedback, what was your reaction to that? How have you made sense of that? I'm so curious about this.

[00:26:07] Jason Rudman: Yeah, well, So as somebody who's British, I get frequently, you're quite stern. And so for me it was, I did the thing he told me not to do, which was actually to work on the delivery.

I figured if I could smooth out the delivery a little, then I could still get away with the directness of it.

I think also part of it is a reflection of how I actually think we should be more direct and to have comfort in saying, I need you to go in that direction, or, that's good, here's how we move it to great. And I think sometimes as leaders, we feel that we're not able to even have that conversation for the fear of offending somebody by telling or showing them how to be more accountable.

[00:26:55] Anita Ghosh: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:57] Jason Rudman: I think the one place that we also,  you started to go down this path as well. I think it's very easy to give direction to others. The hardest thing is to give direction to yourself.

[00:27:14] Anita Ghosh: Yes. It's so true. Yeah.

[00:27:15] Jason Rudman: And so for me, you asked what I learned in that moment. It took a little bit of time, but it was about giving direction to myself. It was saying that in that moment, surround yourself with people that are betting on you. That's incredibly important to me. It took me a while to learn that because again, I think you're in structures where you play the game, right? 

As we've talked, right, there is a process, there is a way in order to be ‘quote unquote’ successful, and you have to play that game.

[00:27:45] Anita Ghosh: Yep. You do have to play that game when you're in those structures and you can't lose your way. This is the work, right? Sure.

[00:27:54] Jason Rudman: But it is so easy to, right.

[00:27:56] Anita Ghosh: So easy to. There's no space to hold your way. It's so easy to, and I say with so much compassion, including to myself, I look at the version of Anita all those years, you know in my career and I was doing the best that I could in that time with the knowledge and capacity I had. And so, getting to an Anita that is intentional about my life and my business, how we show up with clients, how we walk in the world is a practice, it is a practice.

It has required a lot of learning, a lot of study, commitment and a discipline, you know, on the hardest of days to recenter and come back to that.

[00:28:38] Jason Rudman: Let's talk about it. So how would you describe Bridjr?? What does it seek to do? And it has this unique ability to impact organizations by and finish the sentence…

[00:28:53] Anita Ghosh: Mm. So I spoke earlier about the journey of bridging, and every growth journey is a journey of crossing many bridges. 

At the heart of Bridjr, what we're trying to do is make technology and business a force for good in the world by bridging tech and business with the human experience. How we do that is disrupting what we believe are the self-limiting patterns within organizations that knock organizations out of doing that.

No organization sets out to do harm in the world. No organization sets out to leave people behind but I think what we've lost the plot on is as tech has driven all sorts of innovation and human behavior and human needs are changing faster than we've ever experienced before, so must business, right?

And so, the tension that we often see in organizations is there's like lots of external ambition— purchasing this technology, building this thing, re-imagining brand.

And, I'll often ask what's happening internally around your change in transformation. A really quick diagnostic, if I sit with a senior leader, is to look at their plan and the relative weighting of external investment on innovation and transformation to internal investment.

And a formula that we know is true, it's proven out on all of our work, is your internal transformation must be greater than or equal to your external transformation in order for you to succeed.

[00:30:27] Jason Rudman: I’ve got to believe the internal transformation, though is that's the hard part, right, because you're talking people?

[00:30:33] Anita Ghosh: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:33] Jason Rudman: and their ability to commit to understand and translate change.

You're talking about process—so much easier if you're building it from the ground up than if you're dealing with what I like to call calcified pipes of a process, upon process, upon process. It feels much easier to put the latest version of technology on something as opposed to go fix or go transform what's actually underlying it.

So talk us through how Bridjr assesses that internal external conundrum that you just described. What does that conversation feel like?

[00:31:09] Anita Ghosh: There's a top down and bottom up way to start and I want to make that clear. Let me just step back for a second.

Look, I was a leader working in an organization that had big goals and was spending lots of money. So, you know, I have walked in the shoes of the people that we work with. I have so much compassion and deep understanding for how hard it is, right?

If you're a leader accountable for some form of change in your organization, the reality is there is probably at least fifty percent of your job that doesn't sit in your job description, that's around driving change, whatever your title at the end of the day. At this time, every leader is a change leader. There are a set of core accountabilities, tasks every day, that are going to be required for you to be successful. So how you master both the art and science of change is really critical to success.

And the tragic part is, for many leaders, it doesn't even sit in their job description, but it's the thing that probably keeps them up at night. It's the thing that has them working three hours overtime every day, right? So one, it's hard. 

Two, the nature of that external ambition around transformation that I described earlier, is driven by tech. And that's a good thing, right? I'm a technologist at heart—in many years of my career was tech transformation. It has us pursuing solutions outside of ourselves. And so if you're a leader trying to make change happen, you're usually sitting in the middle of a really complex web of point solutions. Let me stitch together this data thing that the team is working on with that AI solution. Oh wait, we've got that CRM provider and somehow you are supposed to figure out how to bring it all together.

And the reality is that work in and of itself requires a level of architecture, which is what we do at Bridjr, right? How do you stitch it all together within a systems view so that it actually works?

And, the fundamental truth that I share with all clients, and this is where we spend a lot of time, is helping people understand what is obvious but gets lost. There is no return on investment on any of your technology unless there is human adoption. Human adoption is what unlocks the ROI in technology. 

So what does that mean? Human adoption means, in very simple terms, the thing that you're building, that you're spending money, that you're putting out into the world, the person it serves, whether that's an internal person or an external customer or member, they have to love it. They have to love it enough to use it and use it again. That's actually what makes you money.

[00:33:49] Jason Rudman: I like to add they have to use it without you assigning them bags of homework.

[00:33:56] Anita Ghosh: Yes. 

[00:33:57] Jason Rudman: I mean, so it's one thing to use it. I think many companies assign their customers, members, clients homework.

[00:34:06] Anita Ghosh: Yeah. And I mean, this is the value of empathy research, user experience and design thinking being embedded within your business process and your tech process. 

I want to come back to the question that you asked me, because I talked a little bit about how we start. So, sometimes it's a bottom up and sometimes it's a top down. The top down is we really believe that organizations simply need a new operating system. You talked about it being hard. It's hard because we make it hard. We make it hard because the old operating system doesn't serve us anymore. We have to accept and acknowledge that we are working at a time right now where the level of complexity and the pace of change is unprecedented,. And that's also in flux with the opportunity around innovation.

New creation is higher and bigger than we've ever seen before. So old metrics, old ways of defining value often are no longer relevant. and we're leaving value on the table because we're simply not asking the question when we pursue these new things, what new value does that create and how do we embed this back into our model?

So these are examples of strategic questions that can be solved through a new operating system. That's the high level that we do. We can come into an organization and do that assessment actually quite quickly because we find the core capabilities that are required and we often will just start bottom up. So, it's like meeting a client and a leader where they're at.

And that was one of my big pain points and frustrations when I was a leader trying to do this work— the copy and paste approach of we have a model, we have a framework, force fitted into what you're doing just simply doesn't work. You know, you play the game for sixteen weeks or whatever the duration of the project, and then you're left with something that you can't actually bring to life in the reality of how your system operates. And so we're always looking for what is the most natural, present bridge and what's going to have the greatest impact. So, you know, the bottom up approach might be everything from sitting with a leader and recognizing that in pursuit of their tech roadmap, they've lost sight of the human touch. And so, we may have a conversation about moments that matter and journeys. And often what we'll find, this is actually really fascinating. If you think about the business case for digital going back as far as ten years, it was all about let's build digital capabilities often to drive self-serve, which will create efficiency and productivity. 

Why?—because it will then enable us to reinvest in human touch advice capabilities, deepening the client relationship. And, in an insidious way, what's happened in the pursuit of short-term buy solutions, tech, when I look at plans, we left behind the original intent, right?

So we'll talk about that with clients. So we see what's getting enabled and then now what's happening in terms of human connection. And while we talk about digital and technology being important to optimizing the customer experience, and it is, there's also this wide recognition that there's this huge opportunity to deepen relationships. But, when you digitize and self-serve everything, you can't build a relationship with your employee or your customer. You can't. That requires human connection.

[00:37:37] Jason Rudman: You see that reality. You know, for those of you listening who know that I've spent my entire career in financial services. You actually see this, right? 

You see that in the five x difference between deposit accounts that are originated in a physical location versus a digital location, right? And the ability to deepen in that physical space is just, it's proven, by and large, to be much easier. That relationship is much more valuable than one that is solely created digitally.

[00:38:10] Anita Ghosh: What we know to be true through all of the projects we've done. You know, we've talked to thousands of humans in different contexts. In this hyperconnected world, what people are deeply seeking is deeper human connection. That's it. And, the reason this remains a blind spot for most organizations, even though it's intuitive, is because it's back to metrics. Most organizations are measuring things within the context of their transaction. That might be a website interface, an app, perhaps it's a branch transaction. This is not how humans think about their experience with you, right?

When somebody walks into a branch to get something done, it's because something in their life is happening, maybe a loan, maybe they need to pay bills. Maybe they're trying to set their kid set up with a savings account. And the way that we've gone about trying to understand customers and build metrics around it is around one very small sliver of the role you play in their life.

And so this is where empathy research really matters, like zooming out and trying to understand what's the context within which your product or service lives. When you understand that, that will then unlock the opportunity for you to innovate and what we know to be true, again, against like so many industries, it's about human connection.

At the end of the day, the only way that you're going to learn that is to actually invest time in having conversations in different ways and different methods to understand that context. It's making what's invisible to you right now through your reports and your transactional data visible. 

You know, for the spiritual folks out there, I sometimes call it like opening the third eye of the organization. It's super important. That's what's going to unlock the differentiation. That's what's going to make you relevant. That's what's going to be felt by your employees, by your team members, by your customers. They will feel that when you know them that way.

[00:40:15] Jason Rudman: Is this as straightforward then as putting design thinking or human-centered design and member journey orchestration to work? It can't possibly be that straightforward. Can it?

[00:40:26] Anita Ghosh: You'd be surprised how simple it can be.

[00:40:29 Jason Rudman: That was my leading question to you too.

[00:40:32] Anita Ghosh: Yeah. Yeah. Coming back to what you said, right, like, change is hard. People stuff is hard. It's hard because we make it hard. It's hard because we use methods and approaches that don't actually enable us to listen. It's hard because I see it over and over again. 

We use quantitative metrics or studies to validate our own thinking versus using methods that enable us to be curious and learn new things. All of these solutions are available to us. We just have to choose to use them. 

One of the things that we have mission around, it's business strategy for us, is not only operating in those ways good for humanity, which is important, it's better for business. And we've got so many case studies that prove this out.

Human human-centered design, having a more human touch in your business, investing in listening to and understanding the human needs and solving for designing your solution around the human need, not just the functional need  You're solving for the emotional need within the experience, the latent need, and of course, the functional need.

Things like simple, fast, and easy will conclusively drive better business results. I can give you an example. We worked with a client, and this will be familiar to many, who was tasked with, I'm gonna use all the jargon, because the jargon of the brief we got modernizing, right? The sales function within their organization that had historically been trained to be hunters, right?

They go out there, they find the prospect, they close the deal, they bring them on the books. And so, after decades of that model, what this organization had was a pretty good sales machine that was getting people through the door, but they weren't deepening the relationship.

They had untapped potential and the profitability was hurting over time. They didn't have good market share of those clients, even though they were in the door. And so what this organization was tasked with was how do we take our business model that's proven and start making them gatherers. There was so much involved in that, right?

Because you've trained a sales force over decades to operate in a particular way around closing the sale. And that conversation has historically been driven by selling benefits of products and features. This is the playbook we all know. That's not the way to deepen a relationship.

So, you know, with that particular client, we used a model that I built probably the second year in business, just observing clients. It is a behavioral sales model. It's backed up by all the science, it's simply six behaviors to building connection. And it starts with listening.

The model's called Lean In and it's an acronym for the six behaviors. And the first two behaviors are about listening and empathizing. The work we did there was actually research with their clients to first understand the service that they're buying.

What are we listening for—what's the thing that's unspoken, the human thing that they're grappling with, that they're considering?

It's what you can't see. You're hitting them with products and features, but they're sitting with a different decision. And then through that, it gives you the cues to the bridges to building empathy, right?

So, we played out our process and built the Lean In process for them, which is basically a new sales process, right down to what are the scripts, what are the things that you're saying? How do you activate and scale the behavior of listening?

We looked at their current sales material and their marketing team had built this beautiful deck, which was quite good; did a great job of talking about the product and the market.

And. I think it was like a fifty page slide deck and slide forty-eight of the deck, now let's hear from you client, right? 

Forty eight slides of here's what we know, what's going on in the market, here's our product, here are the features, here are the tiers, here are the products. And now at slide forty eight, I want to hear from you. And no surprise they were having huge abandonment, right?

This is like a complex advisory product. And so what we've done is like just flip the script there. You actually need to not do eighty percent of the talking and then do the handshake on slide forty eight. You need to start with more listening, knowing what to listen for, which is the work that we do.

Then, capturing the input that you're getting as new data, which helps you fortify the sales conversation and make it more relevant and build in the behavior of empathy. So we built up that process for them and this particular project led us to the recognition of, we submitted it into a competition in Canada, led us to the recognition of being one of the fifty most innovative companies in Canada because we proved out that being human is actually better for business. This organization saw one hundred and eighty percent lift in sales in six months.

[00:45:31] Jason Rudman: That's remarkable.

[00:45:33] Anita Ghosh: It's remarkable, but it's also intuitive. 

[00:45:35] Jason Rudman: simple. It's so simple, right? Listen, whenever we connect, I mean this sincerely. I leave better for our conversation. So I'm reflecting in the moment on my own leadership journey and how I've been telling myself to talk less and listen more.

Do I think I'm a good listener? Yes. I do. Do I also think that I like to run marathons at sprint speed, both physically and metaphorically I do, right? And so that works in certain scenarios and in, you know, a few recent scenarios, it has not worked as well, right? So in this moment, just a really healthy reminder that it is so intuitive and it starts with listening. Just listening and taking a moment to make sure that, to your point, if you're driving change, you've got to make sure everybody understands what you're driving towards.

So, listening for the cues; if people don't actually understand what it is we're aiming for, why we're aiming for it, what we're trying to achieve. I'm just reminded in the moment that, you know.

[00:46:40] Jason Rudman: Always comes back to being More Elephant.

[00:46:42] Anita Ghosh: It really does. 

[00:46:43] Jason Rudman: So what are you most proud of?

[00:46:48] Anita Ghosh: Oh, you're coming with the questions today. I love it. The things that I'm most proud of are the things that are invisible to the world, and I sometimes wrestle with this.

I'm most proud of my personal growth, the hard work that I've done to be a version of myself that I'm proud of that's in alignment with how I want to walk in the world. That's given me hard-earned capacity to be brave and do things.

You know, I've had a couple of months of a lot of travel doing remarkable things in my career, which, if you had asked me five years ago when I started Bridjr, none of these things were even on my radar. 

Forget about unimaginable, that they were not within any realm of what I could imagine for myself. So I've had these moments of like, wow, I can't believe what my life has become.

Underneath all of what's happening in my business and the opportunities that are coming is just, I have so much respect and grace for myself for doing the hard work, right? Being willing to grow, you know, I worked in large structures most of my life. I'm a new business owner. I'm a new entrepreneur. I had to learn how to do that. I'm still learning. I don't think it ever stops. And there's the functional parts of owning a business and there's so much to learn.

But for me, there's been just a more deep and complex learning around how I have to show up as a human. So when I worked in organizations, for example. one of the things that I still miss about large systems is the energy that gets created by having lots of people around you; perhaps that's actually changed now even for people who are in large organizations.

[00:48:51] Jason Rudman: I think it is. You know, it has changed because so much of the dialogue, Anita, is on a video screen.

[00:48:56] Anita Ghosh: Right? Yeah. And there's more remote teams and geographically dispersed teams. I started my business and COVID hit six months after I started, so it got real, fast. I started to become very self-aware that a big thing that energized me is the presence of people and the external validation that you get that you're on the right track, simply doesn't exist in this world. Not at the time, I was like a solopreneur, right?

Also, you know, context of COVID and now where we are. this is back to self-trust. What do I need to create? What conditions need to be true for me to be able to self generate that energy, the positive momentum. That's been something that's been strengthening, that makes me more brave and then reach for more opportunities. We're working in industries that I've never worked in before, right? We swing our bat and compete against the big guys and win again.

If you'd asked me five years ago, I wouldn't think that was imaginable. All. So yeah, I'm proud of taking care of myself and growing.

There's lots to talk about on the business side. You know, when I started Bridjr, there were a few promises I made to myself.. One was sitting with what felt like the reckoning of I somehow sold my soul in a way that I didn't understand, right? Like, feeling like I needed to adapt. And shapeshift for different teams and different leaders and different contexts took out the authenticity of who I am.

And so when I started Bridjr, I was like, I'm going to be authentic, I'm going to be real, which for me means I show up as my whole self.

I'm pretty warm and I know that warmth can sometimes be seen as a feminine trait and, in some contexts, that can be seen as weakness. And I'm like, oh, I'm gonna disprove that because I come with a lot of smarts and I come with a lot of warmth. All of that is wrapped in up in my humanity and capacity to see and connect dots. And that's why we show up.

as human and warm and caring and all of the other things, brilliant and smart, all the capabilities as a team..

[00:51:23] Jason Rudman: So no more code switching.

[00:51:25] Anita Ghosh: You know, there's a time and place, right? There's something about understanding the context and I look at it always through the lens of empathy and compassion, right? Understanding the context gives you a deeper understanding of how you need to show up within it. Don't sell yourself out though.

[00:51:39] Jason Rudman: Right.

[00:51:41] Anita Ghosh: These things can coexist. You can adapt to the context and still be authentically you.

[00:51:46] Jason Rudman: Be yourself. Everyone else has taken.

[00:51:50] Anita Ghosh: Yes, exactly.

[00:51:52] Jason Rudman: I think again, the seasoned of us get asked, what have you learned? A few of my other ones, which I think you've hit on right, is get uncomfortable, learn, be curious if you're not, there is no comfort in the change zone and there's no change in the comfort.

[00:52:07] Anita Ghosh: So true.

[00:52:07]Jason Rudman: So this is part one of two.

[00:52:11] Anita Ghosh: Have we decided?

[00:52:12] Jason Rudman: We have decided, we have decided this is part one of two, because part two has to be about the work, right? So for now...

[00:52:20] Anita Ghosh: We talk about empathy, the empathy, flywheel, all the stuff.

[00:52:25] Jason Rudman: We've got to talk about all of the empathy flywheel. So we're going to dot, dot, dot this conversation here.

For anybody listening to part one, how do they find out more about Bridjr and the incomparable Anita Ghosh?

[00:52:39] Anita Ghosh: Oh, thank you. What a wonderful invitation. I love people just reaching out to me and maybe that's the entrepreneur in me. So you can find me on LinkedIn, Anita. Gosh, Bridjr will tag you in the post, and you can go to Bridjr.com also. And you'll find my email address there. Yeah, A Ghosh at Bridjr.com. A-G-H-O-S-H at Bridjr, B-R-I-D-J r.com.

Reach out and real Anita, that being me, will respond.

[00:53:16] Jason Rudman: All right. So until next time, because we're going to talk about the work of the work next time. This is a perfect setup to how you pour every part of you into the work that you do, the friends that you make, that just happen to hire Bridjr to do great work.

[00:53:36] Anita Ghosh: Ugh. I love that.

[00:53:37] Jason Rudman: Awesome. We will get part two up and running.

[00:53:42] Anita Ghosh: Amazing.

[00:53:42] Jason Rudman: Until next time.

[00:53:43] Anita Ghosh: Until next time. Thank you, Jason. Looking forward to it.

[00:53:46] Jason Rudman: Thank you. 

​More Elephant Outro