Kathleen Peterson

115: Kathleen Peterson: I actually flew off the handle

Intro Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader Legion, today I’m so excited because I have somebody who has a wealth of information and something I even have a passion for, and really we’re going to have insights that we can actually share with so many. Kathleen Peterson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, fifth born of ten, second girl all siblings were close in age but no twins. Kathleen’s three older siblings were boys so she was sort of brought up by wolves learning early on to hold her own with men. When she was five, which was in 1957, the family moved from Boston to New Hampshire where her father had taken a job with a start-up. Her father was a self-made man literally rising from a messenger boy to a senior executive and member of the board of directors.

Kathleen inherited a lot of her business savvy from him and patience from her stay-at-home mom. With 10 kids, if you wanted extras that was up to you, so Kathleen had her first job at leap age 11. She was a mother’s helper for a neighbor with six children. Kathleen had a lot of jobs, she worked in a movie theater, several retail stores, cocktail waitress, bartender, chambermaid, office worker, and technical illustrator. In 1979, she began what would be her real career when she went to work for her husband in the telecommunications business. That led to her understanding of technology as a support tool to meet objectives. 

She witnessed firsthand the misconception that technology alone is the solution which was the seed of what she does now. Kathleen is currently celebrating her 30th year in business as founder and chief vision officer of Powerhouse Consulting, a management consulting firm that specializes in operationalizing the customer experience. She works with many growing quality focused organizations looking to achieve excellence when it comes to delivering the customer experience across all access channels. She has a very strong practice in health care right now working with many systems to elevate their contact center environments to the level of strategic asset by optimizing in the key areas like people processing technology. Kathleen lives in Bedford, New Hampshire and she’s been there since 1957. She lives in a house next door to her childhood home. She also has two sisters, two brothers, a niece and a nephew living on the same compound. She’s been married since 1979 to David her husband and partner in Powerhouse, he leaves the voice and data side of the practice. She has two sons, and one grandson. Kathleen Peterson are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

Kathleen Peterson:     I am ready. Absolutely Jim. 

Jim Rembach:     I’m glad to have you. Now I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better.

Kathleen Peterson:     Our current passion today is working in the health care industry. It’s the most changing industry on the planet I believe from every aspect, from the provider side from the patient side and from the leadership side.  When we look at what it takes to be successful in this, what we really have identified as the number-one success factor is leadership. It’s the leadership at the executive level being able to understand and sustain their strategic objectives. But it’s really whatever the strategic objective is it’s the change management that’s causing either the success or the failure. And the ability to communicate why something is happening, why we centralize, why we have to gain efficiencies, why the brand is going to benefit from this. So being able to really take the change through the providers and stand tall in your decisions. 

We have to really guide our executive teams to not abdicate their responsibility of making these massive changes effective and make them work because we know how important they are from an efficiency perspective. But efficiency is only efficient if everybody is on board and engaged in what the objectives are. I had a conversation yesterday with a client who brought to our attention from a call center that went live in December the feedback they were getting from the physicians was, well, it’s not working, it’s not working has no meaning. I mean it’s not working could be—I couldn’t find a place to park, the elevator was broken that not anything anybody can fix we need to know what about it isn’t working. And that people will accept an assessment of its not working and then bring it to somebody else is ludicrous because if someone says to you it’s not working you have to say, “What about it that’s not working?” I can’t fix it’s not working. But when an executive-level has abdicated their leadership responsibilities and allowed peer-to-peer that’s where them and us comes from, and the contact center and the provider community or the practice community in the case of what I was just referencing when those two parties look at what they do as a handoff we need to move them towards—this is hand in hand, the contact center and the practice environment when the contact center is supporting that that’s a hand in hand activity not a handoff and the executive level needs to be the party that brings it together and says, “You know, if it’s not working let’s talk about what about it’s not working and how we’re going to fix it because this is the future and this is the way it’s going to be.” And we’re in this sort of wonderful moment, at least I feel privileged to be in it, because we’re party to this massive change. When you look at healthcare you’ve got minute clinics you’ve got all these are urgent care environments you’ve got all kinds of options that are challenging the status quo of what we know. So, when the changes come to support the new models it has to be supported from a leadership perspective or honestly no matter how good your technology no matter how wonderful your management it’s not going to work it’s going to be a constant source of irritation without proper leadership. 

Jim Rembach:     Thanks for sharing that story. As you were talking a lot of things started going through my head and one of the things about the fast leaders show for me which has been such a tremendous life impacting type of experiences. I get to hear all these different stories and hear these different perspectives I start seeing common themes and threads and it’s just really—when you were talking I started thinking about what I hear a lot of folks sharing in regards to vision and as well as communicating intent. And for me it seems like the more that people make their message and their focus and the things that they say repetitive and simple it kind of helps lead through that change process but you can’t waver,

Kathleen Peterson:     No you can’t waver and that’s where the strength of leadership comes in and just be consistent and inclusive. When people are making statements their pain statements. If the user community has a statement it’s just not working they’re in some sort of pain. The good news about physicians, particularly in healthcare, physicians are scientists so when—I volunteered yesterday to sit down with musicians because I know from past experience when I say to them where’s—we all appreciate evidence based reasoning so what’s the evidence for this? When you get into a dialogue they actually talk themselves out of the problem. 

So the challenge is having the confidence to address that, and you use the word vision that’s why I’m the chief vision officer because my job in a lot of our engagements is to clarify the vision. And when I say vision clarity I’m talking about actual operational plan for what that vision statement actually means. Because the reason we have cynicism around vision is because it is not experienced in the operation of the enterprise. To make vision really significant we need an operational plan to support that vision.

Okay, that’s a very important point right there. Kind of help me understand that a little bit better when you start—so for me I think that—when I see vision I’m not connected to it. So, how do you actually enable that connection to take place?

Jim Rembach:     The process that we use is we build for our clients what we call a straight tactical map. So, it’s your strategy which vision is the seed of your strategy. And we identify the tactical elements. It starts with a very simple plan. It starts with—here’s the vision, what are your financial perspectives? What are your growth objectives? What are your efficiency objectives? The next lane is define the customer experience? Because everyone says, 90 plus percent of people say the customer experience is their primary objective as part of their strategy. And what happens is we get in rooms, I get in rooms with senior-level executives and I say to them give me a top three strategies, it’s always customer experience is one of them, so let’s pick that one. What do you want for your customer experience? And almost universally, and I’m sure you already know, what they want, they wanted to be great. If you’re an e-commerce they want you to be surprised and delighted. And then you say to them, well, those are nice words but what do they mean?

Kathleen Peterson:     I was in a room with a group of a CEO and his team and when I asked them what that meant there was silence, and it was uncomfortable silence. And finally the CEO said, “I am embarrassed that none of us at this table can answer that question.” And I said, “It’s okay, that’s why we’re here, we’re going to help you do that. “ And we extract from them through a conversation as a consumer what do you want? What makes you feel like you’re getting what you need? So, when they say to us, “well we want a quick answer, we want an informed rep, we want them to recognize and know us so we can get those. Once we get those nuggets we then say, “Okay, are we all clear here? This is who we want to be? Growth and efficiency how are we going to get there? Here are the experience elements. Then we go through a process of saying, “Here are the processes and technologies that are required to achieve that. Here’s the human capital that’s required to achieve that, here’s the information capital required to achieve that, and here’s the culture or organizational model that’s going to help you get there. So, we take their vision and we operationalize it through a strategy we call vision clarity. It operationalizes, I have to say it’s a magical outcome. 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, when you were explaining that I started thinking about executives being so far removed from that actual patient or member or customer interaction that oftentimes what they say they want from an experience perspective has the potential of not being aligned with what the customer, a member or a patient actually wants. I mean, did you find at times there is that disjointed or disconnected or unrealistic expectations?

Kathleen Peterson:     Well, I think sometimes you have to assist them in defining what, based on their vision, what that patient experience should be? I haven’t found that the gap is very large. The biggest gap is in understanding that when you build a plan or you build out your vision that you come to the realization of what your operational infrastructure has led to. When you look at health care as an example what we find is all of a sudden someone wakes up one day and they go, “Wow, I have a hundred locations across my ten hospitals who have deployed on automatic call distribution of call center technology.” What the heck is everybody doing? So, then they start looking at, “Oh my goodness, billing centralized, so that’s over here, oh finance centralized that’s over here, oh my goodness we had a centralization of appointments in our southern tier, oh, we have another call center over here that’s doing that they’re all making independent agree arrangements with the vendors they’re all taxing the heck out of IT because there’s no strategic model for them to follow from an infrastructure perspective and the consequence desire as anyone in contact centers know they wind up focusing only on the challenges. 

What’s wrong with it? We got too many calls in queue, we don’t have enough people, we have so many applications we have to have open that have timeouts and resets that are causing pain, if we could even just get dual monitors would be better off. So, what we’re finding is that enterprises have begun to recognize they need, at the executive level to have some influence and persuasion over these environments because they’re costing them a fortune, they’re not yielding the outcome. In fact, in many cases they’re damaging the brand. And that’s why it usually gets to the executive level because now complaints have come in now and it’s really because when you lack an operational plan for your strategy the interpretation of that is deluded as it goes through the enterprise. And when business units who appear to be despair but are actually operating on the same platforms you want those platforms at the executive level they want to look at every performance report looking the same. 

We had a client with, I think 11 hospitals, and we did this assessment. We went to all these contact centers and we just had one slide with all the varied performance, the dashboard reporting and it was complete chaos. So the executives could never know what their investment strategy should be for these organizations. So the executive has in some ways abdicated their responsibility for operations because I think traditionally in the siloed model of business that was the approach, we’re beyond that now. The senior level really needs to champion these centralizations champion the objectives that surround those and hence champion the contact center being properly provisioned and managed. 

Jim Rembach:     Well, the reality is that they have a fiduciary responsibility and if they’re not doing those things they’re not executing on their fiduciary responsibility. When you start talking about all this change and reorg and transformation, there’s a lot of passion associated with that and on the Fast Leader show we look at quotes to help us, to guide us give us vision all of those things. Is there a quote or two that you can share if you like? 

Kathleen Peterson:     My favorite quote comes from Madame de Staël, who is a French-Swiss writer in the late 1700s, the quote I have relied on for decades is: “The human mind always makes progress but it is a progress in spirals. “I mean Napoleon banned her, exiled her from Paris. First out of Paris she had to be taken at least miles away because he said she was teaching people to think who had never thought before. Then he had her exiled from France so she was very much a thought leader in her time, in those turbulent times. I’ve always appreciated that because the world is iterative. Change is iterative. When people look at projects and engagements and they want to know—give me the five things that we have to do—I don’t know them yet. We have to appreciate the iterative nature of the world we live in and recognize that progress is almost always in spirals. For me, recognizing that helps not get caught up when you are challenged. We’re all challenged. I look at those kind of challenge as opportunity, I know that’s sort of a classic thing to say, challenges are opportunities. For me they’re mostly communication opportunities. 

Jim Rembach:     That’s a great point and a great quote I really appreciate your sharing that. And when you start thinking about—reading your bio and thinking about your upbringing, your childhood, and how it really seems like your family is still close-knit, it’s quite amazing. During your career, your life, I know that you’ve had a lot of humps that really made you who you are today. Is there a story that you can share that kind of gives us a view into that? 

Kathleen Peterson:     I can. I was very blessed to have this happen to me 30 years ago because at the beginning of my company we did a lot of post-sale implementation of telecommunications services and a lot of them were for the phone company. At that time in Boston, I think New England telephone had already become 9X but we were engaged, probably a very early outsourcer, because my husband and I had on what was before divestiture called an interconnect company so we were actually selling systems. We sell that company in 1986 and then David and I went into two different consulting practices I had my own he went to work for somebody else. But we were engaged by 9X, we were doing three projects at the same time, major hospital in Boston with a 10,000 line replacement, a major university in Boston with two campuses which was a 20,000 line replacement in the entire city of Boston which was I can’t even remember how many months. 

But if you think about the timing that was when we were going from truly the big old phones when people would say, “Hey Jim, pick up line one, and you’d press the big flashing button on the phone and you’d pick up line one. It had gigantic 25 pair cables coming all copper, you know the things could be a weapon if you threw one of those phones at someone it would definitely cause pain if it hit so we were going from analog technology essentially to digital. Interestingly enough there was also a similar intense transition particularly in the healthcare world going the secretary answers the call the doctor picks up the line, now we’re telling them that’s going to be history you’re going to have to transfer that call there are no more in intercoms it’s all digital, there was a of anxiety in that. One of the functions we have is the trainer. 

One night at the end of the day I got a call from the project manager at the university we had a group of trainers on campus that day that training location was going to be taken down, move to a different location and she called me and told me that she expected my trainers to break the room down, take the phones, carry them across the campus back to their location. And I said, “Because now we don’t touch equipment we’re not insured to touch equipment, we’re not hired to touch equipment. I don’t think I said it very nicely, I was young, I was tired, I thought we’ve been helping you so much now I have the—poor me, and she just caught me at the wrong moment and I actually  blew up the handle but I was a right fighter. So she then ask that I be removed from the project and that caused all kinds of you drama. I will have to say at that time, and I’m not sure that companies would do this today, my client stood behind me a hundred percent. They said, nope, you know she’s absolutely right they don’t touch equipment, they can’t touch equipment and plus we’re not going to remove her from the project. We’ll make her go away for a couple of weeks but we’re not going to take her off. So, as that was happening it was horrible blow to my ego because I thought, “Oh, I’m so right, who does she think she is?”

I had been at that time very interested in Tony Robbins. I had bought his—actually received his book for my sister-in-law in 1988, Unlimited Powers, I had been reading that book and I always sort of went back to it. And then I taped program, so while this is happening on one side I’m listening to all these tapes about communicating others, I got to tape seven it doesn’t work. So I call up Tony Robbins, this is before the Internet I mean there was a time before the Internet, so I call them up and I tell them about the tape and I they going to send me a new one and I said to them, what else do you people offer? Because she has—well, we have—they call it at that time a certification program. It was a two-week long seminar with Tony Robbins in Hawaii. It was $5,000—I mean $5,000 is still a lot of money but then it was a ridiculous amount of money but I was in a state I can remember to this day going right out to the driveway and talking to David and saying, “Look, it’s $5,000 dollars even talking about it now I still can remember how intensely exhausted I think I was. And he just said, hey, go. What the heck? You sort of have two weeks off from Harvard so you might as well just go. So, I said, “Okay, I’m going to go.” And I went and I’m going to tell you that period of time taught me that it’s not being right is pretty close to useless if can’t effectively communicate it. So the ability to look at what that other person needs and how your rapport skills are going to enhance your message that’s one side. But I think the bigger side of it for me was it’s first what you’re telling yourself so the whole communication thing is really –do you have enough evidence to support this belief. 

So I can think and sit and think this woman is an idiot. What evidence are you using for that? The fact that she’s stressed out because she has a test that has to be done. I’m stressed out because I don’t want—it put me in the path that I attended after that a lot. One of Tony Robbins other quotes, Is repetition is the mother of skill.  So I kept going to these—I think that was the last two week event here ever did but I kept attending events of his, and in fact was by the late nineties staffing events for them being a staff I could attend again for nothing and do the fire walk and do all the crazy things, but if you take the crazy things out of it the yield is you will always not only perform better when you communicate better you will manage your own state of mind.

Jim Rembach:     A lot head nodding going on here for those that can I actually see the video, I think people have this false perception that once they gain a particular piece of knowledge is going to change their outcome. And one of the things that you talked about which is really the one of the most important points and all that is that you didn’t stop you kept going so that you can actually change your own behavior.

Kathleen Peterson:     Exactly. 

Jim Rembach:     You got to practice it. 

Kathleen Peterson:     It needed changing. I was an attention hunt being the fifth of ten you’re in the middle of a calamity. So the only way you’re going to get—it didn’t matter whether it’s positive or negative just attention. Though I had undo a lot of my reactionary response conditions that had just—as I said I was very fortunate to have that happened at the beginning of my career because it established a real genuine obsession with being able to effectively get the message across. Because being smart is, again it’s as stupid as being right if you can’t communicate it.

Jim Rembach:     I love that. Okay, so now I know you got a lot of things going on and you’re a machine you just keep going and going. But when you think about all that you have going on, what’s one of your goals?

Kathleen Peterson:     My goals have pretty much always remained the same and it’s really contribution. I feel like contribution is something that is a privilege to be able to enjoy. Our organization—we feel passionately that we are not just a consultant we are advisors we are support people we help move help define and move a very real objective forward and bring to it the associated personal challenges that come with change. We’re very good at the optimization side, the technical side the training development all those things we can do that. But again even though that’s all the right stuff to do if it’s not properly implemented, if the messaging is inaccurate because a lot of people advertise—you know, it’s like they’ll advertise internally—oh, this is going to be fantastic well that remains to be seen. So, for me contribution has always been the fuel that keeps me going. And I have to also say I’ve always thought I’ve been blessed. For me workers was introduced as something fun I guess it was getting out of the house and having my own money but I’ve always had an expectation that work should be a pleasure and contribution for me is a basic human need. 

Jim Rembach:     And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions so move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more. 

Jim Rembach:     Alright, here we go Fast Leader Legion, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Kathleen, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help some onward and upward faster. Kathleen Peterson are you ready to hold down?

Kathleen Peterson:     I hope so.

Jim Rembach:     Alright. So, what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Kathleen Peterson:     Well, you know, I don’t want to seem arrogant but I’m thinking nothing. Really because I’m a—improvement is a natural by-product of learning. And I have a passion for learning and that is—leading follows learning. 

Jim Rembach:     What is the best leadership advice you have ever received? 

Kathleen Peterson:     I got it from my father he said, “Never lose your sense of humor.”

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Kathleen Peterson:     Telling it like it is.

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Kathleen Peterson:     Nurturing my emotional intelligence and a healthy work-life balance.

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book and it could be for any genre that you’d recommend to our listeners?

Kathleen Peterson:     I have this book in my office to this day it’s called, The Corporate Mystic by Gay Hendricks and Kate Ludemann, fabulous.

Jim Rembach:     Okay Fast Leader Legion, you can find links to that another bonus information from today show by going fastleader.net/KathleenPeterson. 

Okay, Kathleen, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25. And you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Kathleen Peterson:     Well, I want to tell you—I was 25 in 1977. My gut instinct is I would take back the Microsoft Software program and beat Bill Gates to the punch, that’s probably not what you mean. But as a time traveler, I wouldn’t want to go back to 25 but if I did I’d be better to my knees. I just got told the other day after the knee replacement so you know that and maybe the skill of being a better communicator earlier. 

Jim Rembach:     Kathleen it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? I can be reached at

kpeterson@powerhouse1.com. Our website is www.powerhouse1.com. And my book—Backstage at the Customer Experience—is available on Amazon.

Kathleen Peterson:     Kathleen Peterson, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Jim Rembach:     Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links, from every show, special offers, and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

END OF AUDIO