NOEL: Hello and welcome to the Meetings Done Right podcast from Table XI. This is a 12-episode podcast that is in conjunction with the Table XI Inclusion Meeting Card Deck, which you can find out more about at MeetingsDoneRight.co. Every episode of this podcast has a theme. Many of the episodes are about specific cards in the Inclusion Deck but this one is more generally around building an intentional culture at your company. And we have a special guest Nancy Pautsch. Nancy, would you like to introduce yourself?

NANCY: Hi, Noel. Thanks for having me. Sure. My name is Nancy Pautsch and I am the Chief Evangelist of Stakeholder Value, that translates to President, at Envision IT.

NOEL: Great. We are here to talk a little bit about building an intentional communication culture within your company. What does that mean to you? What kinds of things do you try to do where you are?

NANCY: When people ask who we are, we are a group of curious and compassionate people growing a soulful company. We actually operate as a conscious business which is intentional in itself. Intention is a big part of a conscious culture and a conscious business. So, we're pretty mindful. We're very clear on our purpose which is enriching the lives of our stakeholders, and everything we do really is an intention to support that purpose, if that helps. And certainly, communication is key to that mindful communication comes into play in so many parts of our business certainly with our clients, with each other, in all parts of our business to be effective, to be a successful business, certainly profitable as well as purposeful.

ASHLEY: I love it. And Nancy, that's sort of how we met through conscious capitalism. Tell our listeners a little bit more about that organization, if you would.

NANCY: Conscious Capitalism is a movement and it's really just a movement grassroots from like-minded, I guess, leaders and businesses that are for-profit businesses and there's non-profits part of it, too, but that operate their businesses in a conscious manner. So, certain unabashed capitalist but really practicing going about business in a conscious meaningful matter. And really conscious capitalism, the intention is to business elevating humanity. And unfortunately, I think over the years, capitalism in some realms have certainly gotten a bad rap, deservedly so. And so, many of us in the movement really believe business can be a force for good when practiced consciously, mindfully, and with care. And so, yes, we met there. So, it's really like-minded, I guess you'd say, leaders that are lifelong learners, looking to grow and interested in really making sure that their businesses are working for good. It was founded by John Mackey who's the CEO of Whole Foods and Raj Sisodia who's a professor at Babson College as well as a speaker and author. He's co-authored certainly the book Conscious Capitalism with John Mackey as well as a book with other co-authors called Firms of Endearment. Those were big inspiration for me actually and many of the leaders here, my peers here at Envision. Firms of Endearment, great book, I recommend it. I recommend it highly. 

NOEL: What kinds of things do you do in your company culture specifically towards communication, specifically towards how you interact with each other in meetings that are things that were done intentionally with purpose? 

NANCY: Around meetings, one of the things, a couple of the things that we focus on really the tenets that we follow as a business are communicating our purpose, our why, why we're here and making sure that folks understand and can expand upon how they're contributing to that mission and that purpose. Everyone is intentionally aware of their value and their contributions and acknowledged for them certainly. Also, they're aware of our stakeholder orientation which is certainly each other, Envisioners, our clients, our business partners, and our communities. And as conscious leaders, we do a lot of self work to make sure we're continuing to try to be an example. And I say that doesn't mean perfection by any stretch and that also means showing a lot of our imperfections which are abundant, and then to lead that conscious culture and foster a conscious culture. So, so much of that, I guess you'd say when you're talking about our communication is really mindful communication and making sure that as much as we can, I think fostering that conscious culture kind of lays the groundwork and the foundation for mindful, constructive, and productive communication. And I know with the Inclusion Cards, that's just so important. We naturally and consciously, it's kind of interesting because it's natural. But then we also foster it and focus on inclusion, certainly diversity, and equality, the DEI, because it's the right thing to do. And inclusion being so part of that with our communication is so important because we want everyone's contributions. They're all valuable. We need everyone to participate and feel, I don't know that it's always comfortable. Sometimes, it's uncomfortable but support everyone even in their discomfort to contribute because that's how, I think, we innovate is sharing ideas. When your company is comprised of people with diverse experience, diverse backgrounds, if those aren't shared and their ideas aren't shared, that's doing a disservice to everyone. Certainly that person, their peers, the company, and then everyone we serve beyond our company. So, I guess, I would say fostering a conscious culture is so important to laying the groundwork for inclusive communication, and productive and constructive and caring communication, if that makes sense.

ASHLEY: Nancy, did Envision IT begin as a conscious capitalism company or is that something that you brought in after it was founded? 

NANCY: Envision IT has been around for more than, I guess, about 19 years now, 18, 19 years. I joined along with Bill Crahen. We joined the Founder, Beau Smithback, at the end of 2013. It was a very good company at the time, certainly doing so many good things. Bill and I joined. I joined in the present role, Bill as our CTO. Beau is our Founder and CEO. 

We met Beau just in passing. Actually, it's kind of funny. We met Beau doing a favor actually for someone else. Actually doing some good and Beau was doing a favor for someone else. We met happenstance. It's kind of interesting because a few of us here, let me backtrack a little bit. A few of us here at Envision are what we call PE refugees or private equity refugees. We're old dogs in the industry. A lot of, I should say, experience, had a lot of many years in the technology industry. And oftentimes in the technology industry, you're very familiar, Ashley and Noel too, you may be too, but is very common. People build up their companies to sell them. And oftentimes, it's sold to PE or Venture Capital, what have you. And then oftentimes, the culture can change significantly and I've certainly experienced that in my career. So, going through and actually experiencing that suffering kind of led me to the book Firms of Endearment. I was a bit on a personal growth journey just experiencing kind of all those hardships. I kind of went on this personal growth journey as well. And then happenstance got introduced to the book Firms of Endearment which kind of opened my eyes to saying, "Ha! You really can have a conscious business and an enriched life." I mean, you can have a whole life. And a fulfilling, enriching, meaningful career can actually contribute significantly to that whole life. So, I was kind of in the midst of that and then meeting Beau and gave Beau the book Firms of Endearment. So, that's kind of what I want to be a part of and help build. And he said, "That's what I'd like Envision to be. Let's do this." And so, Bill and I joined and then we really continued our learning journey around conscious businesses and the tenets of conscious capitalism and then operationalized them here at Envision. So, it was very intentional. And I guess you'd say we really formalized it and was full on intention when we joined. We really did our work, self work, research and then really looked at the business and did things very, very differently than most companies in our swimlane of technology. In fact, we turned it on its head. And those tenets of conscious business operationalized throughout our business model. So it kind of feeds the good. Everything kind of perpetuates the goodness which is almost, like I said, on its head to the traditional business model of companies in our swimlane of the technology industry.

NOEL: What are some of the things that you specifically do to operationalize this, like on a day to day basis?

NANCY: We've operationalized it as certainly on what we focus on, as far as services and product. It ranges all the way from our focus, meaning optimization of many of the core systems and businesses today with a focus on the end user and the end user experience. All companies I know of ultimately are made up of people and people we think are the most important part of any organization in any company. And so, even just our focus of optimization starting with the end user experience and then certainly considering high priority as well security and flexibility for the business, just even our focus of our services offerings and where we focus our time is one, certainly how we care for Envisioners, how we invest into their experience both at work and outside of work. We're really trying to contribute to their whole lives. We have many examples of that. And that includes also our compensation models. It's just soup to nuts, everything is focused on our purpose of enriching the lives of our stakeholders, and the experience that we all have here making that as rich as possible and mindful. So much of that too is providing meaningful work. I don't think many folks these days, at least many that I've had the privilege of knowing, are just going to work for a paycheck. That's not the deal anymore. I think people want to participate and contribute with meaning. And that's one thing we can provide hopefully is that opportunity.

NOEL: One of the things then is how does that sort of respect for your employees manifest itself in the way that your employees communicate both like in meetings and sort of just in general? What are some of the things you do to foster good communication? And what are some of the things that you observe in your company that makes you think you're doing a good job?

NANCY: [Laughs] Well, we can always do better, I will tell you that's one thing. We're pretty self-critical.

NOEL: Right. But is there something that you're proud of? You look at people interact and you go, "Yep, this is what we want." 

NANCY: I tell you. I think that's one that we recently were in the running for Inc. Magazine's Best Places to Work. And one of the things that came back from all of our surveys was the most common word that people, that Envisioners use to describe Envision and what they feel from leadership in the organization, the most common word was caring. And we see that among Envisioners. We see that among Envisioners. It's just that we communicate with such care. Part of our conscious culture is really helping people to become emotionally intelligent. And we work with folks in so many different ways but so much of that is self-awareness, and then other awareness, because you really need to be more self-aware to understand. If your intention is to be a caring colleague, you darn well have to be aware of your interactions. So, self-awareness is so important. Then like I said, other awareness because you can imply something and someone else can infer something from it. I mean, it's a two way. Sometimes, you imply; sometimes, you can say something very innocent to yourself but someone else might infer because of their experience. So, it's kind of that. And it's absolutely not walking on eggshells by any stretch; it's just being self aware and other aware.

So, Noel, to your point around communication, I think we work really hard to say, "Oh my gosh, I know I have a lot of energy." So boy, people keep the coffee away from me in the morning because they're like, "Woof! We never run out of coffee, too." Caffeine. Zing! There she goes! So, self aware that in meetings, for example, Noel, to your question, in meetings, I have to be really conscious. My enthusiasm sometimes gets a little much. So, I have to be really conscious of sitting back and tempering that. I was listening to Mark, and I think one of the podcasts with Mark and Katie when you guys were talking about the Inclusion Cards, and I related so much to Joe what he was saying in that sometimes I think many conscious leaders and leaders in the technology industry that are also conscious leaders are often inspirational. They're inspiring. And so, that's a good thing. So, you really have to kind of balance that because you want to continue to inspire. But there's a balance of certainly not taking over and your idea just because of your title-schmidle, being the best one by default.

I really liked when Mark was talking about having only three opinion cards and really working to ask many questions. I think myself, our entire ELT here, all leaders here have to really focus on that to ask more questions. But I had mentioned we're all here naturally curious. So, I think that's also inherent in us as individuals because we're interested in other people's input. For me anyway, I really need to temper my enthusiasm sometimes. And maybe it's not just tempering my enthusiasm, my communication of my enthusiasm. [Laughs] I certainly need to be aware of my facial expressions too because they can say a lot. I'm usually quite animated. And so, I need to just really be that self-awareness. 

But Noel, with everyone, we need to ask questions and delve into the whys behind the why. I think that's really important too. With our meetings, one of the things we try to do is -- and again, I think the Inclusion Cards, I'm really excited about them because they're, I want to say, like light reminders, meaning fun certainly, but not critical reminders sometimes of our own behaviors. And I think that's really important. I think we're at a stage where these would be really fun for us because we've done quite a bit of self-awareness work. So they're like, "Oh yeah, that's right. So and so go down the rat hole," or, "So and so beat the dead horse." But one of them that really gets to me is the present, being present. One of the things that I think is important is that the present. 

I know one of your questions that you'd mentioned, I don’t know if you want to ask me now or later or whatever, but one of the questions was 'what are your best meetings', 'what are your worst meetings'. I don't know that I have ever had a catastrophic meeting. I think over time, you kind of notice some broad strokes. And one of the things that I've noticed in meetings throughout my career that is probably the most disheartening is when people aren't present because I think that likely unintentionally implies that the meeting, the content of the meeting, or the other people in the meeting just don't matter. And I think what's so meaningful to people is significance, being seen, heard, and know that they matter. So when you're not present in a meeting, you're not invested. I think that's one of the most disheartening things is sending a message that either what someone is saying or the intent of the meeting just might not matter. And so, the 'be present ' reminder I think is really important. But one thing that we try to do with meetings is talk about the 'why' for the meeting, to be really clear about the intention of the meeting, and what we're trying to accomplish. And then even the why behind the why, like, "This matters because, because…" And oftentimes, there is a domino effect. And so, frivolous meetings just hopefully don't happen too often, if they happen at all. And then when they do, we really try to understand, "OK, how do we come to this point where we're having this meeting?" 

So, I think intention around everything and the why behind the why and making sure that the meetings are relevant and people want to come to them because they want to contribute. They want to either help solve the problem or accomplish the goal and learn each other's contributions and build off them. Because I think they're excited. Oftentimes, Envisioners are excited to get together to solve the problem or create something because they know one Envisioner might have some really great stuff that they can build off of.

NOEL: Nancy, do you want to say something else about what a really good meeting or a really good meeting story looks like?

NANCY: Yeah. I think a really good meeting is when people are clear on what we want to accomplish in the meeting and then we walk away with even more than that. When people come to the meeting, present, invested in the purpose of the meeting, and anxious to not only contribute but listen to each other. And where it's a safe space, so crazy ideas what might be perceived to one person that's offering it, "Gosh, this might be a crazy idea," but they feel supported and in a safe environment where they can share that crazy idea. Some of them might be, "OK, let's park that. That's a little off..." I don't know how to rein that in to make it applicable. But let's keep in mind and not be concerned with any kind of negative judgment or harsh criticism but rather, let's get together and share and build something great from it. Sometimes, by the way, tangents can come up and those aren't always a bad thing. We can park them and revisit later because they actually might be applicable to another important subject. So, I think there's always kind of a multiple sides to things that come up in a meeting. It's really just honing them for productivity, time management, and effectiveness. But I think, yeah, probably the best meeting is when people come invested into the idea or the purpose of the meeting, and each other, and into the outcome. Oftentimes, we come to meetings like that, better than we could have ever imagined. And then, more things might stem from that. And it's kind of a perpetuation of good. I think those are the best meetings. 

ASHLEY: I like it. I was listening to Paypal's Director of Innovation who's a gentleman by the name of Michael Todasco, and he's really interesting. He was talking about the efforts that they make around innovation including opening up ideation to the whole company. And so, as the Director of Innovation, he rewards people just for the number of ideas that they put forward. And he had a lot of questions in this group about like what do you do with the bad ideas, how do you prevent people from taking advantage of that reward system and just submitting crappy ideas. I thought the whole thing was so interesting because the idea behind innovation is to bring things forward. And we can be much less concerned about the quality of ideas at the forefront, or rather at the first, we can whittle them down once we have them. To your point, they need to come out and you can sort of sift them and deal with them. But real innovation, from my perspective, often happens in these like, "Listen, I have what could be a terrible idea or an awesome idea. I don't really know. I'm just going to say it." 

NANCY: And I agree. I think that's really important. And that's where a conscious culture were so -- again, I think that's one of the foundations which is a place where people can share ideas that might think this could be a bad idea. But in a trusting environment, safe environment, someone might say, "You know, I get why you might think that. But hey, it's not really. Let's look at it this way. Here's my perspective." You have people with those diverse perspectives. And by the way, empathy for someone else's perspective, that's important, as well. I think many of our perspectives are based off our experience. And so, if you have folks with diverse experience, diverse backgrounds, you're going to have different perspectives. And to have that genuine care and respect for someone's perspective, I think is really important. And empathy is a big part of that. But as you were talking about the Director of Innovation at PayPal, I think that's interesting. Here at Envision, people bring ideas - good, bad - when they see something that could be addressed. They're instinctively motivated. And Envisioners  typically instinctively motivated, naturally curious, and certainly well-intended, wanting to help, and from that comes ideas - good, bad. And again, the good out of the gate, wow. That's an obviously great idea. Again, careful of attaching that judgment 'bad idea', not necessarily that it's bad. Maybe from your perspective, it is. But to someone else, it isn't. And as we build from it, it could be the source of something incredible.

ASHLEY: Yeah. 

NANCY: I'd like to understand little bit more about his perspective and how they do that. We frankly, it's a natural event here just I think because of Envisioners in our culture.

ASHLEY: Outstanding. Nancy, thank you so much for joining us. We have really enjoyed hearing about Envision IT and Conscious Capitalism. And we're so excited to hear what you think of using the cards once they're in action.

NANCY: I am so excited for them. From what I understand of them, it just brings a light hearted self-awareness and other awareness reminders that keeps us on track but does so in a way that makes it fun and constructive. And thank you, Table XI, for introducing them. You guys are bringing such important contributions to the business world. I was telling Noel we're pretty excited about the Sticky Note game, too. So, it looks great.

ASHLEY: I think I have mine coming up maybe this week, actually.

NANCY: Oh, we couldn't be happier about the things that Table XI bring to the table and sharing for the greater good. 

ASHLEY: Awesome. 

NOEL: Thanks for being with us, Nancy. 

NANCY: Thanks, Noel. Thanks, Ashley.

NOEL: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Meetings Done Right podcast. If you would like to learn more about the Inclusion Meeting Cards, order a set of your own. To find out about other episodes of this podcast, go to MeetingsDoneRight.co. You can also find out more about this podcast by searching for Meetings Done Right wherever you listen to podcasts. Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts will help people find the show. 

The Inclusion Meeting Cards and the Meetings Done Right podcast are produced by Table XI. Table XI is one of Inc. Magazine's Best Workplaces and a top-rated custom software development company on Clutch.co. Learn more about Table XI at TableXI.com. 

Meetings Done Right is hosted by Ashley Quinto Powell and Noel Rappin, and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening.