… There’s a lot happening politically and socially that has nothing to do with business. We must be empathetic to the social causes that are important to our employees and communities. Some brands take a stand but then cave when faced with pushback. This shows it wasn’t done from a genuine standpoint. We need to ensure that when we take a stand, we believe it to be important, even if we face criticism. We may realize we went too far or didn’t go far enough, but immediately retreating isn’t empathetic to the causes we find important.
I I had the pleasure to talk to Tiffani Bova. Tiffani is a globally recognized customer growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce, renowned for her expertise in driving business success through a people-centered approach. With a diverse background spanning over two decades, she has demonstrated her leadership prowess in revenue-producing divisions across a wide range of organizations, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.
As a Research Fellow at Gartner, Tiffani’s forward-thinking insights have played a pivotal role in propelling the growth and market share expansion of industry giants such as Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, SAP, AT&T, Dell, and Amazon-AWS. Her cutting-edge strategies have been instrumental in helping these companies navigate the ever-evolving business landscape.
Tiffani is also a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, with her book “Growth IQ” garnering widespread acclaim. Her latest publication, “The Experience Mindset: Changing the Way You Think About Growth,” was released on June 6 by Portfolio and has already become a bestseller. This book draws upon exclusive research derived from three comprehensive Salesforce studies involving thousands of employees and C-suite executives worldwide. The findings, coupled with Tiffani’s extensive executive conversations and industry research, shed light on the paramount importance of prioritizing both the employee experience (EX) and the customer experience (CX) simultaneously, from a top-down perspective.
Highlighting the profound impact of an intensified focus on EX, Tiffani shares remarkable case studies from prominent companies such as IBM, Ritz-Carlton, Best Buy, and Airbnb. Through these real-world examples, she offers invaluable insights into the urgent questions that leaders must address today. Tiffani explores topics like ownership of the employee experience within an organization, guiding people-centered turnarounds akin to Best Buy’s success story, balancing CX and EX priorities, the role of people, processes, technology, and culture in enhancing both EX and CX, and immediate steps to cultivate an experience mindset.
In today’s fiercely competitive marketplace, Tiffani underscores the indispensability of investing in people. The Experience Mindset challenges leaders to rethink growth strategies and equips them with the knowledge to deliver what employees and customers crave most — a harmonious blend of CX and EX, beginning with the C-suite.
Tiffani’s influence extends beyond her written work. She hosts the popular podcast “What’s Next! with Tiffani Bova,” where she engages in thought-provoking discussions with industry leaders, paving the way for future business innovations.
Yitzi: Tiffani, it’s a joy to meet you. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn about your origin story. Could you share the story of how you grew up, your childhood, and how you eventually reached this position?
Tiffani: Interestingly enough, I was born and raised in Hawaii. I think that really surprises people. They’re not used to meeting someone who was actually born and raised in Hawaii. They might have visited or moved to Hawaii, but that’s my origin story. It’s where it all began, you know? I didn’t come to the mainland, which is the continental U.S., full-time until I was almost 30. I came here with the intention of working in technology. As many would guess, there aren’t many tech companies in Hawaii. It’s more focused on hospitality and the military. Those are the big job providers in the state. So, I started my journey selling software and hardware and then moved on to more complex tech solutions in 1996. It’s been nearly 30 years since I’ve been involved in the tech industry, and I’ve witnessed so much change. I’ve experienced it from both sides — as an individual contributor and as a leader in tech companies. After that, I spent a decade as a research fellow and analyst at a company called Gartner. That’s when I really started to understand how to influence thought and develop a unique perspective, which I could then share on a larger scale. It wasn’t a skill I naturally possessed, so I had to learn it. Then, about seven years ago, Salesforce came along and offered me the opportunity to continue doing what I was doing for my previous employer, but this time for them and their clients. It’s been an incredible journey, and honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, maybe I’d listen to my own advice and trust the process a little bit more. But overall, that’s how I ended up here.
Yitzi: You can explain a little bit about what you do and your day-to-day. How do you help your clients and Salesforce?
Tiffani: Yeah, so I’m an individual contributor. I don’t have any internal responsibilities like managing a P&L or having people report to me. I’m mostly focused on our customers, advising them on improving sales, marketing, and customer service. I help them leverage technology to build a more resilient company and become customer-centric. It’s not about selling to our customers but rather enabling them to use our technology to benefit their own customers. Their success is our success. I meet with companies and leaders from around the world to guide them in these areas. Every day is different, meeting new leaders, hearing new challenges. However, regardless of location or company size or industry, everyone faces similar challenges and opportunities.
Yitzi: You’re publishing a book this week. Can you share the premise of the book and how it came about?
Tiffani: Sure, back in 2018, I wrote a book called Growth IQ, which discussed the ten paths to growth. The first path was customer experience — treating customers better to enhance loyalty and increase spending. I presented a framework for systematic growth improvement. However, I overlooked the role employees play in each growth path. Innovation requires engaged employees, and selling more to existing customers depends on equipping employees with the necessary tools. I realized I missed this aspect in Growth IQ, dedicating only a small section to employees. When I joined Salesforce, I noticed the correlation between it being a great place to work and its success as an innovative and rapidly growing enterprise software company. I wanted to prove the connection. After two years of research, I found that happy employees lead to happy customers and greater growth rates. I realized I had significantly overlooked this in Growth IQ, so I felt it deserved attention. The pandemic highlighted the importance of employees, with phenomena like the great resignation and quiet quitting stemming from a lack of attention to employee well-being. The new book, The Experience Mindset, aims to educate executives about being intentional in their focus on employees, similar to their efforts with customers. If executives can take a moment to reflect on whether they’ve invested as much in employees as they have in customers, it will lead to improvement. Currently, the focus is heavily skewed towards customers, with employees expected to figure things out. We need to become better and smarter in prioritizing employee well-being. The Experience Mindset explores this as the 11th growth path, emphasizing the importance of people as the foundation of a healthy, resilient, and growing company.
Yitzi: So, can you unpack that? When you talk about employee experience, are you talking about the person’s benefits? Is that compensation? Is it the office experience? What do you mean by that?
Tiffani: it’s a great question. A little caveat here, in full transparency, I’m not an HR expert. It’s not my lane. It’s just not where I’ve spent my time or my career. So, my focus is at that intersection when an employee interacts with a customer. I call it “the moment that matters”. That’s where I’m talking about employee experience. And so, sometimes compensation and flexible work arrangements, like hybrid work, are important. Recruitment, diversity, equity, and inclusion are all critically important as well, but they fall outside the scope of my research and the book.
My real focus is on that moment that matters. Do employees have what they need when they are answering a customer service call, responding to an email, or going on a sales call? Or when they are implementing something or fixing something while out in a service truck? That moment when an employee interacts with a customer in any way, and you could argue that even website design, user interface, packaging, and product design all impact the customer experience, right? So it’s not just about human connection; it extends to products and services too. The research showed that 88% of customers believe that the experience they have with a company is as important as the products and services they sell. So it’s about that experience layer. When I say employee experience, it encompasses systems and tools, technology, processes, training, and enablement. Do employees know how to do their tasks? Are they familiar with the software they need to use for their job? Are the processes easy to follow, or do they involve unnecessary manual steps that could be automated? It’s really about giving time back, reducing effort for the employees, and providing them with access to what they need. So when a customer requires assistance, they can fulfill it quickly and efficiently.
Yitzi: How has your definition of good leadership evolved over time? And what does it mean to be a good leader today?
Tiffani: I don’t think the definition of a good leader has ever changed. What has changed is people’s understanding of those aspects of being a good leader. For example, transparency and authenticity have always been great attributes for a leader, right? But it’s only when you see the lack of those qualities in action, like when a leader fires everyone via a zoom call during COVID, that you realize it’s not very empathetic to your staff. So people say we need to be more empathetic leaders. But you should have always been an empathetic leader. When you witness examples of such behavior from leaders, it just highlights what’s important.
Being a good people leader has always been important, but sometimes it takes a backseat because leaders feel they have to be focused on costs and profitability. They prioritize being operational leaders and think that if people leave, they can easily replace them. Or they make poor decisions at the leadership level, which then leads to bad behavior among individual contributors. Scandals or toxic work environments often start at the top. So leadership hasn’t necessarily changed, except that it’s harder to hide behind bad behavior due to technology, social media, and the internet. Communication is faster, and people are aware of what’s going on.
I want to emphasize that I’m not saying nothing has changed. The speed of business, the availability of technology, and the competitive landscape have all changed. But at its core, leadership is about people. It’s about inspiring them to follow what you believe is best for the business, and creating a connection between your words and actions so that they show up every day. It’s about being their true selves, not putting on a front. In the past, you could hide behind certain leadership styles, but leaders who have embraced a more authentic approach have shown that it leads to better performance.
Yitzi: Here’s our final question. You mentioned being an empathetic leader. Can you share five examples of what it means to be an empathetic leader?
Tiffani:
- One area that many leaders miss today, and maybe this is part of being an empathetic leader, is having a personal connection with your people. For example, if leaders just manage from their four walls and spreadsheets, they don’t really know what’s going on in the business. Do they leave their office, either physically or via Zoom or a phone call, and reach out to employees, asking, “Hey, how’s it going?” An empathetic leader asks their people if they are okay and if there’s anything they could be doing differently or better. And not just their direct reports, but even individual contributors. They ask and listen with an empathetic ear, realizing, “Wow, I didn’t know that was happening. How can I make it better?” Tom Peters wrote about this in his book “In Search of Excellence” in the early 1980s, calling it management by wandering around. Do you physically wander around and walk through the manufacturing plant or call center? That’s how you know how your decisions are impacting people.
- Better communication. You don’t just go on Zoom and tell everybody what we’re going to be doing without giving them an opportunity to understand why. Being more transparent in how you make decisions and even expressing the difficulties involved. Maybe even being more vulnerable in your communication allows people to feel comfortable reciprocating. You know, I think that’s a way to show empathetic leadership.
- Recognizing that people are feeling burnt out. There’s a lot of that happening. And it goes back to why I wrote “Experience Mindset.” Employees have to work harder with a lot less. As headcounts reduce, the people left behind have to do more. Do leaders understand that if their people are burnt out, they need some relief? Are they providing something for mental health and well-being? Are they giving them a day off or flexibility in where they work? Are they offering benefits that provide flexibility? These kinds of things.
- Practice empathetic leadership is to do what you say and say what you do. This builds a high level of trust between employer and employee. During the pandemic, we saw trust erode even further because many leaders didn’t trust their employees to do their job if they weren’t in the office. This lack of trust isn’t empathetic to the realities of working from home, dealing with family responsibilities, taking care of elderly parents, or having a sick family member. Many people are still facing these challenges as they may not be able to return to their previous jobs.
- Lastly, and not in any particular order, there’s a lot happening politically and socially that has nothing to do with business. We must be empathetic to the social causes that are important to our employees and communities. Some brands take a stand but then cave when faced with pushback. This shows it wasn’t done from a genuine standpoint. We need to ensure that when we take a stand, we believe it to be important, even if we face criticism. We may realize we went too far or didn’t go far enough, but immediately retreating isn’t empathetic to the causes we find important.
Yitzi: How can our readers buy your book and continue to follow your work?
Tiffani: The book is available now so you can find it at your favorite retailer, on Audible as an audiobook, as an ebook on Kindle, or as a hardcover. Whichever format you prefer, you can also follow me on social media. I’m very active on Twitter @Tiffani_Bova, LinkedIn @Tiffani Bova, Instagram @TiffaniBova, and Facebook @Tiffani Bova. I have a podcast called “What’s Next with Tiffani Bova,” where I’ve had amazing guests like Ariana Huffington and others. So, those are the ways to keep in touch with me.
Yitzi: Thank you so much for these brilliant insights. I feel blessed to have met you, and I wish you continued success in all your work and with the book.
Tiffani: Thank you so much.