Management | Juan Serrano | TEDxLjubljana

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

In this talk, Juan Serrano talks about loyalty - or the lack of it - and he argues that it happens because we don't give people "reasons to stay." Serrano is a partner in the consulting company Transforma - The ISA Group, and a visiting lecturer at IEDC Bled. In his career, he has advised more than 50 companies around the world and taught in many business schools around the world. His work focuses primarily on creating added value and management.

Imagine please yourself in this picture:

you’re a Dad and this is your son, Joshua;
you’re holding his hand,

you’re walking with him,
you’re entering a concentration camp.

Joshua is 7 years old.

You’re trying to answer all his questions,
and at the same time

you're trying to figure out where you are,
and what’s going to happen to your family

and to you.

As you may know,
I’m describing a scene from the movie

“La Vita è Bella” by Roberto Benigni.

In that movie the father all of a sudden

has this idea of telling his son
that this is all part of a game,

a carefully prepared, a difficult game,
where nobody complains,

because if you do so, you lose points,

and whoever reaches 1,000 points first,
wins first prize,

which happens to be a tank:
a brand new tank, Joshua, a real one.

Finally, they arrive to their room,
which is a barracks, of course.

And this is the expression of the father,
standing at the threshold,

shocked by what he sees.

Suddenly he remembers
that he has someone to his right:

a little one, who still thinks
that this is all part of a game,

and who is also shocked.

Between this frame... and this one,
there are exactly 9 seconds.

I used a stopwatch. 9 seconds.

This is when the father finally reacts,
pulls himself together,

and comes out with:
“Come on, Joshua. What did I tell you?

They’ve taken care of every little detail
just to make it look real, haven’t they?

But if we reach 1,000 points first,
we take home the tank!"

Now, how do you do that?

There’s a lot of talk
about loyalty these days.

More precisely, about the lack of it.

Articles on how customer loyalty
has been wiped out by the economic crisis.

Some organizations saying
that employees are just not loyal anymore.

And it seems very logical, after all
that has happened in the economy.

But what has this
got to do with La Vita è Bella?

Bear with me for a few moments.
You’re about to find out.

Let’s imagine this time,
that you are the owner of a company

in a very competitive market.

How would you feel if you found out
that 60% of the clients that you lose

on a yearly basis declare to be satisfied?

The data I’m about to share with you
comes from a real insurance company.

After one of my classes
in a Business School, they came to me,

and intrigued me about their case,
at once.

The question I asked them, the question
you’re probably asking yourselves, was:

"If they’re satisfied,
then why do they leave?"

Their answer was,
"They leave because of price!"

I asked them for data,
did quite a lot of number crunching,

got back to them and said: "You’re right,
they leave because of price!

Actually 18% of them
leave because of price.

Why are the other ones leaving?,” I asked.

"Juan," they said, “there’s something
we didn’t tell you the first day.

Maybe we should have!

It’s this other Department in our company.

You see, they’re not as customer-centric
as we are: the 'Claims Department'.

These are the people you should talk to.”

I asked them for data again,

got back lots of numbers
related to claims and desertions,

and I went back to them and said,
after some number crunching:

“You are right!
They leave because of claims!

Actually 9% of them
leave because of claims.

Oh, by the way, most of the clients
you lose don’t even have any claims!”

You don’t have to be
in the Insurance Industry to realize

that these are the most desired clients,
the ones who have no claims.

They don’t leave
because of price or claims.

They leave - and I’m going to say it
with the utmost humility,

because I’m the first one who should
ask himself that question every week -

they leave because
we don’t give them reasons to stay!

And of course the question
I ask myself is:

“Juan, are you giving your people
good reasons to stay?”

Please think about this for a moment:

are we all giving our people
good reasons to stay?

And when I intentionally say “our people”
I’m not only talking about customers,

of course,
I’m talking about our employees too,

I’m talking about our spouses,
our friends.

The fact that you, my customer,
my employee, my spouse, my friend,

the fact that you don’t have
reasons to leave,

doesn’t necessarily mean
that you have reasons to stay.

It would be unforgivably “myopic”
on my side, to assume otherwise.

If I don’t give you reasons to stay
right now, it’s only a matter of time,

before someone else eventually gives you,
sometimes, very tempting reasons to leave.

And then it would be too late, for me,
to try to give you reasons to stay.

I say in my classes:

“El sentido hay que darlo
cuando todavía tiene sentido recibirlo.”

That is Spanish for:

"Meaning should be given
while it still makes sense to receive it."

Otherwise my credibility
doesn't deserve you.

I've always thought that whoever came up
with the idea of the movie La Vita è Bella

had to be very inspired
by the work of Frankl, Viktor Frankl.

Frankl was in my opinion
one of the most brilliant minds

the 20th century has given us.

After he had finished
his doctoral thesis in Medicine,

he was taken to a place called Auschwitz,

and in his best-known book,
“Man's Search for Meaning”,

he proves that the people who survived
the conditions of a concentration camp

were not the strongest people,
or the most intelligent ones,

or the ones who had more knowledge
about survival techniques.

The ones who survived, as Frankl shows,

were the ones who were able to find
meaning in their quest for survival,

meaning in persevering, in not giving up.

Maybe that meaning came
from someone who depended on you,

who was waiting for you outside the camp,
or maybe an unfinished project,

or maybe God.

Different people, of course,
find different meanings.

That's why, when Frankl quotes Nietzsche,
he says: "Whoever has a strong 'why'

will be able to endure almost any 'how'."

And inspired by this I’ve been saying
to audiences for the last 18 years

that whoever has a strong “why”
will also be able to find a “how.”

If you have kids, I guess I don't need
to explain what this means,

because you know very well
that when the "why" is good enough,

the “how” is just a matter of time!

And that's why when I teach those
who lead teams, I implore them:

"Don't give your employees so many 'hows.'
Please give them more 'whys'!"

And of course, the “reasons to”
that I mentioned earlier

are nothing but this: meaning.

Are we really facing
a lack of loyalty today?

I don’t think so;
what we’re facing is a lack of meaning.

They leave because
we don’t give them reasons to stay.

Of course giving meaning,
giving "reasons to," and demanding it,

are things
that have evolved over the years.

We are no longer in an Industrial Economy,
or even in a Service Economy any more.

Today we’re a 100% into
the Experience Economy.

On the one hand we cannot
fulfill the need for meaning

using obsolete methods from the past,

and on the other,
creating meaning through experiences

implies a whole different
mindset in organizations:

you cannot create
an experience without people!

Actually, a very specific kind of people.

People who may be tired,
but you don’t notice.

People - I’m thinking about a nurse
that I know, for instance -

who may be having a bad day,
but that’s last thing you'd think

when she says: “Good morning!” to you,
looking into your eyes,

making you feel that she really cares
about your day. And in fact, she does!

What you don’t know is that earlier
that morning she had been overwhelmed,

that just a few hours ago she froze
in the “threshold of a barracks,”

feeling sad, tired, helpless,
feeling like “life isn’t fair."

And it took her 9 seconds to cheer you up,

telling you that we are going to be
the first ones gathering 1,000 points,

that we are going to bring home the tank.

And she made you feel good,

if it is only because you could definitely
tell that somebody really cares.

Now, that’s the kind of people we need,
today, in the Experience Economy.

How is it possible that there are so many
organizations out there today

that do not see this, still?
And so many people?

Well, I actually found the answer to that,
in a lesson I learnt in the spring of 1994

from two mentors that I loved dearly.

One of them was Felix,
and the other one was a tree.

Yes, a tree. An olive tree, to be precise.

I lived in Southern California,
I loved the country, I loved my job,

and I had tears in my eyes, bitter tears,
when my wife and myself

had to leave our dream and go back home

to help a 5-generation-old
family business in Southern Spain,

that was in serious trouble at the time:
a radical restructuring was in order.

And the decision that I had to make
was to plant 66,000 olive trees!

Which was a very risky decision, among
other things because we had no water!

I made 22 attempts
to find just enough water

to help them survive
for the first 3 years.

And I went down 298 meters deep,
searching for it,

only to find water that was as salty,
literally, as the Mediterranean sea.

Very little money, no water,
and on top of that,

I had no idea how to plant olive trees,
not to mention 66,000!

I looked for advice from professors,
researchers and some very wise

local farmers too and some of the best
advice I got came from Felix.

He was this gentle, honest, local guy,
a genius with olive trees.

I mean, he knew more about olive trees
than anyone I’d ever met

and believe me I’d met lots of experts.

One day, he drove me
to a faraway olive grove

and he asked me
about the age of those trees.

By then I had learned enough
to know the answer

and I actually thought
it was a very easy question,

“Five, maybe four years old”, I said.

He looked at me in the eyes and said:
"Juan, these are more than 10 years old."

I couldn’t believe it!

“Yes, son, more than ten years old.
And that’s why I brought you here.

The way these trees were planted
is a mistake you should never make,

if you finally decide
to plant your trees."

When the soil is wet,

you can't make the hole in the traditional
way, drilling, to plant your tree.

If you do so, the drill,
as it goes down in wet soil,

creates a lateral pressure
on the sides of the hole.

Without realizing it,
you have just crafted an underground pot.

When months later, those sides are dry,
they become as hard as cement,

and they won’t let the young
and fragile tips of the roots expand.

The roots, then go in circles, within
the very limited space you’ve left them.

That’s when the tree decides
to stop growing its branches,

to match the volume of the roots.

Olive trees do respect
and maintain an equilibrium

between their aerial development -
branches and leaves -

and their underground foundations -
the root system.

In olive trees
“El vuelo equivale al suelo”:

what you see above ground is,
in volume, what lies underground.

When those trees -
in that kind of “underground pot” -

decide to stop growing,
it becomes a real tragedy.

And the worst part
is not just that they are only a fraction

of their true potential, of what otherwise
their natural development would be.

Even worse: they are not even aware they
are suffering from a condition of atrophy,

of underdevelopment, and they don’t do
anything to become all they could be,

simply because they just don’t know
that they could be all that.

They think that this is normal
and it’s not!

They think that this is who they are,
and it’s not true.

They are so much more.
They could be so much more.

These trees will never grow any further
and they will almost give no fruit.

This is what we call back home
“ingrown olive trees.”

Over the years, I’ve found out
this not only happens to olive trees;

it also happens to people,
“ingrown people,”

whose limited perspectives
don’t let them develop.

Anyone who has been to one of my courses

will tell you that I love telling people
about TED and I use it in my classes.

Well, this is the reason why I do that.

I’m strongly convinced that
sharing ideas that are worth spreading

is a great way of helping ingrown people
overcome that condition,

a condition that by definition, "ingrown,"
we may not even be aware that we have,

a condition that we may all have.

At least I wouldn’t dare
to count myself out, I know that for sure.

I also found out
that this happens in organizations,

whose limited system of beliefs
and assumptions make them think

that the effect is the cause,
and people are just no longer loyal.

Organizations whose roots, whose meaning,
whose “reasons to” are too superficial,

And yet they expect huge branches

filled with fruits of loyalty
from customers and employees;

organizations whose shallow “whys”
don’t provide much space for great “hows,”

whose meaning is ingrown,
reduced and constrained,

and yet, they complain that the branches
are not big enough

to give them the shade they need.

They don’t seem to realize
that people leave because

we don’t give them reasons to stay!

Viktor Frankl passed away 17 years ago,

but if I could write him a letter
in heaven, that letter would say:

"Dear Dr. Frankl:

17 years after your death,
man is still in search of meaning!

Actually customers are
very much in search of meaning,

meaningful relations
that give them reasons to stay.

And employees are also
very much in search of meaning,

meaningful roles that earn
their willingness to stay, too.

And you, Dr. Frankl,
you would be surprised

by how many people complain
that we are facing a lack of loyalty,

in these times of adversity
that we are going through.

You, who could give us a couple lessons,
or ten, on managing adversity,

you would tell us
that we are not facing a lack of loyalty:

what we’re facing is a lack of meaning.

The loyalty is there,
all we have to do is earn it,

but we won’t do so without
the “reasons to," without the meaning!

I’d like to leave you with a question,
a question worth spreading, in my opinion:

are we, your bosses, your suppliers,
your spouses, your friends,

are we so “ingrown”
in our own limited perspective,

that we complain about
your lack of loyalty when, truth be told,

maybe we have not given you
reasons to stay, in the first place?

Do we complain about
lack of loyalty from you,

when someone else
finally gives you reasons to leave,

and you at least considered those?

Is that the time when we finally
try to give you reasons to stay? Too late?

It doesn’t make any sense.
It doesn’t have to be that way!

I wish you all meaningful lives,
full of solid meaning,

full of solid roots, full of solid “whys,"

that will help you
find and develop your “hows."

I wish that you all reach “1,000 points,"

and take home that tank
with you, to someone.

Remember: you owe it to that someone.

I don’t know who that someone is,
but you do! Don’t let them down.

9 seconds can make
a whole lot of difference!

Give them the meaning they long for now,
while it still makes sense to receive it.

Thank you very much. Hvala!

(Applause)