How to Align 69 Different Internal Entities to Achieve Great Customer Success

Transcript

[00:00:01] Steve MacDonald: Welcome, everyone, to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. Today, we’ve got a really interesting conversation, and you’re going to look at Gary Yorke, our guest, as a superhero—not only because you’re a huge Spider-Man fan and Laker fan, but because what you’ve been able to accomplish as the Executive Director of Customer Experience for the City of Toronto is pretty amazing.

[00:00:23] Steve MacDonald: Not only have you put together all kinds of systems and programs, but you brought together 69 different entities. I mean, in the private sector, the different departments and internal politics we’ve got to navigate to create a cohesive customer success and experience strategy don’t even compare to what you’ve had to deal with.

[00:00:47] Steve MacDonald: And I do say “politics” because you’re in the public sector, so that’s a big part of the job. But what I’d love to do before we get into this is have you expand a little bit more on your background—your public and private sector experience. Then we’ll dive right in.

[00:01:02] Gary Yorke: First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity and for allowing me to share my experience and insights on this platform. I think it’s really, really awesome, so I sincerely thank you for that.

[00:01:10] Gary Yorke: In terms of myself, I bring over 25–30 years of experience in customer experience and the user experience journey. My background spans contact centers, technology, people, processes, and policy.

[00:01:21] Gary Yorke: I’ve had many years of experience with Bell Canada—10-plus years—where I managed contact centers for the interior government, Fortune 500 companies, and others. I also oversaw managed service accounts for Fortune 500 organizations. After that, I transitioned to Toronto Community Housing, where I focused on facilities management and, most importantly, their contact center.

[00:01:42] Gary Yorke:  In my most recent role with the City of Toronto—over the past nine-plus years—I’ve managed the 3-1-1 organization and evolved it into the first customer experience division in the municipal space in North America. We’re the first of our kind in Canada, and I’m very proud of that achievement. This evolution was only possible because of the incredible work our team has done to raise the profile of 3-1-1 and to build public trust and confidence. It’s an organization that provides vital information—not just for the City of Toronto and its stakeholders, but for the residents, businesses, and visitors who come here every day.

[00:02:17] Gary Yorke: When we talked earlier about the value we bring, it comes down to passion, a commitment to serve, and—most importantly—data and transparency. From that perspective, I see myself as a kind of human 3M. I don’t necessarily make a product, but I’m here to make things better. Across my experiences in both the private and public sectors, I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to take on challenges and make organizations world-class.

[00:02:41] Gary Yorke: My hope, dream, and vision have always been to build world-class organizations—whether it’s within the City of Toronto or anywhere I move on to in the future. I believe in being best-in-class, but that starts with being the best person, the best leader, and creating the best culture to lead change.

[00:02:59] Steve MacDonald: There’s so much in there I want to unpack, but at the beginning, you talked about building trust and confidence in the City of Toronto. One of the biggest challenges these days is that trust—across the board, whether public sector, private sector, or other aspects of life—is in a nosedive.

[00:03:19] Steve MacDonald: In fact, I was just reading a recent study that showed 74% of people don’t believe the evidence shared by organizations to bolster trust. That’s huge. You’ve got that working against you—just like we all do. But I’d love for you to explain how you managed to bring together those 69 different entities to deliver a trusted public-sector customer experience. Let’s start there.

[00:04:05] Gary Yorke: Not an easy answer, but an excellent question. In terms of the entities, you have the mayor’s office. Then you have 24 counselors, and you have 44 divisions that you have to manage through. You have members of the public, then also you have your staff, colleagues, and what have you.

[00:04:20] Gary Yorke: And all of them have to have some semblance of trust and confidence. Your ability to be honest, to be consistent, and to utilize data—not your opinion, but facts. So, one of the things that we have to do as an organization is to have credibility. So, the first thing we wanted to do is—credibility comes with performance. Predictability creates trust and confidence. So, if we’re not predictable in terms of developing and being consistent with how we arise to that service level and embrace that service level ethos from a day-to-day, month-to-month, and week-to-week perspective, then not many people can trust us.

[00:04:52] Gary Yorke: So, the first thing we did was allow everyone to understand what their service levels were and to make sure that we’re putting models in place to achieve them and address any issues that hindered us. So, many years ago, I was first starting a 311, and I started in November, and there were several years in which that organization did not hit service level. By December, we were hitting service level, and it wasn’t because of the influx of money. It’s about process and understanding the science that comes along with it and the due diligence that’s required, and some managing.

[00:05:22] Gary Yorke: You have to be very diligent in understanding where people are, what they’re doing, how long they’re on the phone, so on and so forth, and if you have the correct information. So, in terms of trust and building that trust with the stakeholders, first of all, is meeting consistently a service level. So, we’re able to meet that service level, which has not been done in the city for a prolonged period.

[00:05:41] Gary Yorke: The second thing is really, at the end of the day, we’re the front-line representation of that City of Toronto. So, when I was in that position and the responsibility about making sure that we’re the front line managing the narrative, and, in some cases, accounts to look at their ward, their perspective from a particular lens. Within 311, we don’t have that privilege. We have to manage the city’s brand and everyone that comes along with it. Those 24 different boards—not the one ward. 24 different wards, and there’s all nuances and what have you. And sometimes the squeaky wheel wins, and that’s not fair. That’s not transparent in our particular environment.

[00:06:15] Gary Yorke: There are also privacy concerns that we have to take into account, which counselors are not privy to. So, there’s information that we received that we cannot share without the residents’ consent, and ensuring that we communicate that upfront with the residents is important in terms of building trust.

[00:06:30] Gary Yorke: And in terms of also building trust, it’s about that upfront messaging around respect. It comes both ways. We’re here to provide you with the best level of service that we can. But as a resident, as a person who’s engaging with the City of Toronto, we also expect certain behaviors from you. If we can meet ourselves in that common baseline, then we can communicate, and share perspectives and data in a very timely, respectful, professional manner.

[00:06:54] Gary Yorke: Also, just in terms of a business plan and being transparent about what our business plan is, what it consists of, what are the KPIs to generate successes, and making sure that when we meet with counselors and when we meet with committees and so forth, we’re very transparent with them in regards to how we’re performing.

[00:07:09] Gary Yorke: If we’re not performing, it’s not putting it under the rug. So, we’re taking accountability and showing the options that are required to make sure we address those issues or anomalies.

[00:07:18] Steve MacDonald: So, you slipped something in there really cool and calmly at the beginning. You said building trust is about establishing a benchmark on performance and then hitting that performance, and that you weren’t hitting the performance.

[00:07:30] Steve MacDonald: But within six months you were, and it wasn’t about throwing more money. It’s a problem, which is what we love to do. When there’s a problem we need to bring more resources. We need to do more things. But without expanding budget, without garnering additional funds, how did you go from underperformance in terms of customer support for the city to meeting those expectations?

[00:07:55] Gary Yorke: I think that’s a fantastic point, and it’s all about leadership. It’s about empowering your staff. Understanding, for example—and I’ll use that statement from Spider-Man—with great power comes great responsibility.

[00:08:05] Gary Yorke: So, in regard to our staff, we have the ability to really enhance someone’s day or ruin it based upon the information, the lack of timeliness and how we react to them. So, it’s about training. It’s about access to data. It’s about empowering our staff, not yelling at our staff. It’s about understanding the importance of one person who’s doing their job, doing to the best that they can and a positive impact to come along with that.

[00:08:26] Gary Yorke: It’s about sharing the positive stories. Even though we’re there to talk about assets, you know, potholes, and so on, we have saved lives through this situation. People have tried, unfortunately, suicide, and so on. We’ve been able to get people to those locations in a very timely fashion to address those issues before they hurt themselves.

[00:08:43] Gary Yorke: So, there are many things that the CSR actually is empowered to do that our management team, our supervisors, our managers, our directors are empowered to do and take responsibility for. It’s not a “me” conversation; it’s a “we” conversation. And enhancing that culture around that shared responsibility, around what comes with authority and power.

[00:09:03] Gary Yorke: There comes a lot of pride. So, I think the biggest thing that we could do is look at culture and how we empower staff, provide them with the right tools, the right support. More importantly, we’re not here to blame; we’re here to help them. If there are some challenges, we’re also here to coach.

[00:09:03] Gary Yorke: There comes a lot of pride. So, I think the biggest thing that we could do is look at culture and how we empower staff, and provide them with the right tools and support. More importantly, we’re not here to blame. We’re here to help them, and if there are some challenges, we’re also here to coach.

[00:09:17] Gary Yorke: For example, when there was some stress, we brought in CAMH to address some of those issues as well and empower our staff with the right tools to deal with not just the stressors that come along on the phone but also in their lives. Because in many cases, we talk about balance, but in many cases, we take our work issues home, and in this hybrid environment, our work is home.

[00:09:35] Gary Yorke: So, all that trickles down into those environments, and if we don’t provide our staff with the proper tools to address those things, the business is going to suffer. So, we’re human beings together in the long line.

[00:09:45] Steve MacDonald: You keep saying so much that I could do a whole podcast just on going deeper. So, my takeaway from what you said there is empowerment, and there have been plenty of studies that talk about the lack of trust between contact center management and the representatives or the agents themselves to do the right things. Don’t go off the script.

[00:10:06] Steve MacDonald: And what you’re saying is, no, there are situations where we’ll have to intuitively know what you need to do and be able to address this unique situation, the context that’s around it. So, empowering is one takeaway, but then that empowerment—you had their backs, right? You were supporting them.

[00:10:23] Steve MacDonald: They knew that this wasn’t a blame game. This was a “let’s make the decisions and hopefully they’re the right ones, let’s move forward, let’s learn if they aren’t.” You’re not gonna get in trouble for doing something proactive, being creative in your job, and addressing the needs of the public. Is that a good takeaway from what you were saying?

[00:10:42] Gary Yorke: I think it’s perfect. I think we have to be humanistic about it—that they’re not robots that have to follow a script from A to Z. We need people who can think on their feet, ad-lib, and support them when they’ve made a mistake or what have you, and we pivot. I would like to say that saying it’ll be like water and find the right path.

[00:10:57] Gary Yorke: Nothing is linear in this world, and we have to be able to adjust as leaders to accept that and support our staff through those particular journeys.

[00:11:04] Steve MacDonald: You know, there’s a notion that was on an episode that I did recently called psychological safety—having the safety to know that I’m empowered to make the right decision.

[00:11:15] Steve MacDonald: If it’s not the right decision, I’m not getting in trouble for it. I’m probably going to be given a pat on the back that you tried everything that you could. You tried to make the right decision. Let’s learn from this. That psychological safety opens up the floodgates for us to do things that we haven’t done before.

[00:11:31] Steve MacDonald: And it sounds like you were kind of in the non-performance era, and then six months later, it was the script. It was tight control. It was, “Here’s how we manage customer support.” And then the empowerment, the leverage, the opportunity, the psychological safety that you put into place. Is that a good articulation there, or what else is the difference that made that transition? Because everything you talked about didn’t take extra money.

[00:11:58] Gary Yorke: Well, exactly. It takes leadership. It takes passion. It takes a focus on your staff. I think you nailed it on the head in terms of psychological safety. That was an agenda that’s been in our business plan from day one: creating “Let’s Chat” sessions, open-door policies, and town halls where it’s always about the voice.

[00:12:15] Gary Yorke: I think it’s very important for staff to use their voice. As long as you use it with respect—and there could be some frustrations there—we don’t want to get it past a certain line because we’re still in a place of business. But having said that, if there’s something that you’re not comfortable with, you have concerns or questions, use your voice.

[00:12:30] Gary Yorke: It’s not a problem. Let’s hear about it, talk about it, and figure it out. I could be wrong—100%. I’m never always right. So, it’s an issue of getting perspective, pivoting, and doing what’s right for our team. Because we’re here as a team, and it’s funny when we talk about our team, one of those parameters of success is a team. We have Toronto Public Service Week, and it’s a celebration of public services. We have something called the Tournament of Champions within the City of Toronto. That’s something in which we have certain tasks that each division has to do: take pictures of executives, communicate, and so on. It’s healthy competition amongst divisions. We said there are 44 of them, and for the 9 years that I was at the City of Toronto, the least in terms of ranking that we were was number 3.

[00:13:13] Gary Yorke: In many cases, we’re number one and number two in a smaller division because some divisions are thousands of people. We’re about 300 people that are in our division. We’re still number one in the city of Toronto in terms of beating the tournament’s champions. That’s because of our pride.

[00:13:27] Gary Yorke: It’s about cohesiveness. It’s about our brand. It’s about confidence. It’s about trust, and then talking about trust in terms of the public. You look at CSATS, information, and so forth. So, I remember looking at the information we had before, I would say we’re at 85 percent, and I know the Toronto Star questioned that.

[00:13:43] Gary Yorke: They weren’t confident in that number, and I said, I’m very confident in that number, and they said they’re going to do their poll.

[00:13:49] Gary Yorke: And respectfully, after they did their poll, they came back and said we have 85%. I said awesome because I felt that was the right number. We deal in facts, and then interestingly enough, once we’ve digitized services and transformed the services, we’re now in the low to mid-nineties in terms of customer satisfaction. So, in terms of trust and confidence, those are pretty good indicators that we’re in the right street. Now, are there areas that we can improve? Absolutely. But I do believe that as an organization, as a front-end brand of the city of Toronto, that 301 entity and the customer experience division has done a very, very good job of building that trust and transforming from an inside-out kind of ethos to the outside-in and understanding what the resident needs, what the visitor needs, what the business needs versus what our divisions want to dictate to them.

[00:14:35] Steve MacDonald: Did you talk about the needs of these individual groups? In the private sector, there’s something known as customer obsession.

[00:14:41] Steve MacDonald: Amazon’s probably the biggest example of that. Just completely customer-obsessed organizations. Does that have a role in what we’re talking about here and your CSAT scores and the satisfaction levels and the achievements that you’ve made? Customer obsession in the public sector?

[00:15:01] Gary Yorke: You asked some good questions, and I would say that the difference between the private sector and the public sector is that obsession is mandated as part of a cultural commitment in the private sector. We’re judged, and paid by those KPIs that drive those customer experience initiatives.

[00:15:17] Gary Yorke: In the city, that’s still a little bit 44 different organizations. Different interpretations of the customer and that negotiation of that is still evolving. So, I think that some areas are more obsessed than others, but it will take some time for that to become a social norm or cultural norm within the city of Toronto.

[00:15:35] Steve MacDonald: So, I’m going to take a little bit of a right turn here, but we’ve talked a lot about public versus private. It’s obvious that, on the onset, there are very different scenarios and situations and contexts. What are the things from the public sector that you’ve learned that you think transition well over into the private sector—lessons that we can learn?

[00:15:56] Gary Yorke: A great, great, great question. I think in the last 3 to 5 years, the public sector has really focused more on engagement and truly listening to the voice of the customer in a different way, not because of products and solutions but, I think, because of COVID and things that we’ve had to manage through COVID.

[00:16:14] Gary Yorke: We talked about psychological safety before, but there are a lot of wellness challenges to come along within the organization, and one has to adapt to that. I think the private sector needs some work in that area. I think the public sector is leading that charge because the difference I see between the public and private sector is, that in the private sector, you have to earn your customer’s trust. You have to do marketing, and so forth. There are so many alternatives out there. In the public sector, your roads are your roads, there’s no other people that are going to do it to the municipal space, your garbage is your garbage, and your water is your water. So, you’re a captive audience.

[00:16:48] Gary Yorke: So, the other way that you gain proper service is about access to information and data being transparent. We talked about our staff having their voice, letting the residents have their voice, and demonstrating the changes that they’ve made. In some cases, the mayor’s office has done that as well, in terms of bringing through the budgetary process, and so forth.

[00:17:06] Gary Yorke: I see that the City of Toronto and other municipalities are empowering the public. Now adapting those to actual policies and so forth—that takes a bit of time. But I do think the public sector is doing a very good job of creating forms in which that voice is being heard and people feel that they matter.

[00:17:25] Steve MacDonald: You did a lot of work, didn’t you, in terms of CRM systems and forms? Giving the public the ability to have their voice heard and not heard from 44 or 69 different entities but heard as one voice. Can you explain a little bit more about what you did there?

[00:17:44] Gary Yorke: Absolutely. For example, with the CRM in the client relationship management tool, what we wanted to do was, in many cases, there was an evolution of the city in terms of how we provided service to the public.

[00:17:54] Gary Yorke: So, we went from a multi-channel perspective, where you did have a phone and would have encountered, but they were never integrated. So, you’d have to repeat or have a different experience depending on the channels of choice. Now, we’ve moved that to an omni-channel environment where there’s seamless integration.

[00:18:09] Gary Yorke: And the good thing about it is, in terms of service requests, for instance, 600 types of service requests now can be generated online, through your phone, through email, and so on. So, you can communicate and initiate that particular service request without calling an agent, getting the status of your choice.

[00:18:26] Gary Yorke: So, if you want to get emails, if you want to get calls, and so on. And then, on top of that, you can put a survey function now so we know—and that’s how we know about the 95%. After each interaction, you can choose if you want to provide surveys or not and respond to that survey through the channel of choice.

[00:18:42] Gary Yorke: So, we now have a survey functionality that’s been developed by our team. We have an online omni-channel environment that’s been developed by our team and a world-class solution. Not only do we have that, but complaints and compliments.

[00:18:53] Gary Yorke: So, what we’ve been able to do, in a phased approach through the customer experience division, what have you, is to create capabilities across the city of Toronto.

[00:19:01] Gary Yorke: In the past, we talked about that siloed approach where everyone felt or felt that they own the customer—someone on the toes, someone on the feet, someone on the nose, and so forth. And our division was to say, no, we don’t own the customer. The city manager owns the customer. The council and the mayor own the customer. We’re here to provide transparent service to that customer.

[00:19:20] Gary Yorke: So, regarding better service through the technology and processes, we have that CRM. Now we have the survey functionalities, several complaints, and compliments, making it easier instead of having 49 different ways of issuing a complaint through city language, which we may or may not know.

[00:19:35] Gary Yorke: It’s simple information. Simple ways of doing it through the omni-channel environment in which you create that complaint or compliment. Five percent happens to be compliments, and 95% happen to be complaints in certain areas. You can escalate, you’re informed, and that division is now held accountable for responding in a timely fashion, so there’s transparency and accountability, which, in turn, builds trust for the public as well.

[00:19:57] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, just the idea that I have easy access to the city or the departments—that hopefully if I have praise, that would be great, but if I have questions, it’s easy to get a hold of somebody in the way that I want to.

[00:20:12] Steve MacDonald: Right there, my level of satisfaction would go up versus the frustration of, who do I even talk to? And is it even going to matter? The fact that you can lodge a complaint or a ticket and that you would be acknowledged for it and asked, how do you want to be responded to? You’ve already well exceeded my expectations, right?

[00:20:33] Gary Yorke: Absolutely, and reduced escalations because there’s transparency and accountability that comes with this particular initiative. So, we’ve been able to show the value of that alone. There’s always been initial resistance because you’re worried that everyone’s going to flood the gates.

[00:20:46] Gary Yorke: And it’s like, no, those are already being used. We just weren’t responding proficiently or professionally. Now we are. 

[00:20:53] Steve MacDonald: So, I’m curious because you talked in our previous conversations about putting together scorecards so you could keep track of all these initiatives and your performance and everything—not just at the overall CSAT level.

[00:21:04] Steve MacDonald: But with 44 different internal departments, how do you create one scorecard that everybody’s going to agree on, that you’re going to judge? And you talked about departments being held accountable for response times and things like that. How do you do that kind of process? Because we have a problem doing that internally within the private sector.

[00:21:25] Gary Yorke: Part of the challenge is we’re now in the climate of accountability, and transparency. With service, data matters.

[00:21:33] Gary Yorke: So, we’ve talked about the 600 service request types that have been now digitized. So, what we’ve been able to do now is create a scorecard that’s available to counselors at this point through my time at the city to create a scorecard that shows the service catalog.

[00:21:48] Gary Yorke: So, 600 types of service requests. The service level that we’re supposed to attain in terms of 4 hours, 24 hours, and so on. How we’re delivering against that service level and the ward trends that are happening in Ward 1 versus 12, and so forth. So, you can pair wards as well in service requests.

[00:22:07] Gary Yorke: So, now our colleagues in terms of other divisions that are integrated with 311, such as Toronto Water, MLS, revenue services, so on and so forth. They get information that enhances their ability to manage their business. The city manager now has an understanding of these 600 types and what the transiting wants is across the city and so do the counselors. And the next eventual step would be to make that accessible to the public.

[00:22:30] Steve MacDonald: I imagine that that information is accessible internally so that you don’t want to be the laggard. You don’t want to be the department that is pulling the city down that is viewed by the mayor, viewed by the city manager, viewed by the other departments. Did that play a factor in raising the rising tide that lifts all boats?

[00:22:50] Gary Yorke: I think that positively or negatively plays a factor. Everyone’s always afraid of data in some way, shape, or form because it can be misrepresented. Now, through a proper governance structure, we communicate to the counselors through what’s called the service committee.

[00:23:04] Gary Yorke: You have to go to that particular committee. They ask questions about that service request, and so on and so forth

[00:23:09] Gary Yorke: Certain divisions have to communicate what the trends and nuances are, and show the actions or project plans or product plans, if required, to provide consistency of delivery of that service. And if not, we have to say why and what the challenges are, and then you have to be accountable.

[00:23:25] Gary Yorke: So, from that perspective, having a fair governance model kind of lessens some of the stress or concern and talks about how we know we’re not perfect, but we’re moving from good to great. And when we look at that data from an end-to-end perspective, the numbers are pretty good to begin with, and many of the divisions are, I would say, either in the high 70s or low 80s. So, overall, they’re delivering really good service.

[00:23:48] Gary Yorke: Now are there ways for improvement? Of course, and we’re going to ask the public, because it’s public money, to also tell us which of those areas are more important to them.

[00:23:56] Steve MacDonald: I love that. That’s feedback. That’s the involvement of the customer, the public, in the process.

[00:24:02] Steve MacDonald: We’ve talked about so much. My next question is about what haven’t we talked about in terms of the public versus private sector. You’ve played both roles that we can be taken away and learning here. What haven’t we covered yet? These things are important for us to be talking about.

[00:24:16] Gary Yorke: Well, I think for the public sector to evolve, it needs to have a little more trust in private sector entities such as vendors and so forth.

[00:24:26] Gary Yorke: Some vendors have the skill sets to transform organizations, businesses, and experiences, and I think moving forward if we’re going to evolve the way we want to for the resident and the public, we have to have strategic partners with these particular vendors that would help us accelerate that evolution transformation in a very reasonable state.

[00:24:51] Gary Yorke: So, I think that partnership instead of this divide that we have—public versus private—we should have intersections, and I believe that there’s some best practices and some skill sets and very smart individuals and business models that would help accelerate the city and other municipalities as well.

[00:25:06] Steve MacDonald: It makes good sense. The private sector is innovating all the time. They’re rewarded for their innovation. So that partnership just makes good sense. So, now I’m curious, all that you’ve accomplished here, what are you the most proud of that you’ve been able to do? 

[00:25:21] Gary Yorke: There are a couple of things. The first thing I would say is the evolution of the three and one organization to be number one in Canada.

[00:25:27] Gary Yorke: To transform with the CRM and create that omni channel environment and a positive culture, which we talked about the TPS and the challenge of champions and things. I think we underestimate the importance of culture and leadership. So, I think that is one of the things I’m extremely proud of, is that transformational journey. 

[00:25:43] Gary Yorke: The other thing I’m proud of, to be very honest with you is the ability to win the city manager’s customer service award twice.

[00:25:50] Gary Yorke: That’s pretty significant in that sense and that represents the evolution of work that we’ve done within the 301 organization. But also, to build that first customer experience division within Canada and that project comes along with that designing it from start.

[00:26:03] Gary Yorke: Understanding the nuances, understanding the importance of design and strategy, the importance of delivery, the importance of data, and importance of operationalization of those particular theories or outcomes and use a fact-based mechanism to drive effectiveness versus ROI. 

[00:26:18] Gary Yorke: So those are the things that I’m very, very proud of as a leader in regard to with my time at the city of Toronto. I’m looking forward to applying those learnings into another opportunity. 

[00:26:27] Steve MacDonald: What’s interesting is I hear you talk a lot about fact base and surveying and putting the public in charge. And on the other hand, I hear you talking at the very beginning about how important it was to basically establish that psychological safety and empower people. 

[00:26:47] Steve MacDonald: And then you brought up the first thing you said about what you were most proud of was culture that you’ve created in the leadership team, and I keep coming back to both of those are things that don’t cost money. That make huge difference. 

[00:26:59] Steve MacDonald: In fact, from the private sector side, I’ve talked to two CRO CMO chief marketing officer combinations on a podcast episode where they said 50%, 50 percent of the success of their organization, they attributed to company culture because it attracted the right people.

[00:27:19] Steve MacDonald: It gave the right people the means to perform, and they retained the right people, and the right employees turn into, whether it’s private or public, great experiences for the public. So those are my takeaways from our entire conversation. 

[00:27:34] Steve MacDonald: But I’d love to ask you the one last question is, if you were going to design a takeaway that you wanted all of us to have? One thing that we were going to take away from this conversation, what would that be? 

[00:27:48] Gary Yorke: It’s funny you asked that. I think in all leadership positions I kind of equate the business to a meal and being a chef. The takeaway that I see is that we have ingredients. 

[00:27:59] Gary Yorke: The ingredients could be their staff or stakeholders, so on and so forth. The products that we have to build and design. We have our measurements which are things that drive outcomes and outputs, but really the thing that makes a successful cook, chef, entrepreneur, businessperson is something that’s underestimated and under looked in many cases.

[00:28:18] Gary Yorke: When you taste a great meal, because it’s made out of love, that chef brings love to the table. And sometimes we look at people and we look at their resumes and their inputs, and they’ve done A, B, C, D, and E. But that intrinsic thing, that EQ, that quality of that leadership, how they actually drive things are underestimated. 

[00:28:36] Gary Yorke: So, the one thing I would say is understand when that person is in front of you, beside you, climbing that mountain with you, how much love does that person bring to the table? How much love and sincerity and integrity does that person bring to their staff? To their commitment to the organization? To their commitment to their customer that they’re serving? 

[00:28:56] Gary Yorke: I always believe in service, leadership and what have you, and being that servant and that public servant. So, I really challenge someone to look at that love and then when I equate it to myself, I love the challenges, and I see myself as that iron chef. That particular organization where they bring you these mystery goods and you have to make this wonderful meal out of it.

[00:29:15] Gary Yorke: I’m saying, bring me those goods because of the skill sets and the experience and the passion and love that I have. I’m confident that we’re going to build something together. It’s world class and it’s an organization, but it starts with people. With love of people, with integrity of people, and motivating and having a common vision and having that trust, not just with the public, but the people that you serve internally within your organization as well.

[00:29:37] Steve MacDonald: Well, I’m certainly not going to share this episode with my wife because she would not say that I make dinners with love. 

[00:29:42] Steve MacDonald: Gary, I would love to continue on. I know there’s all kinds of conversations and questions are going to happen as a result of this. Would it be appropriate if we gave out a link to say your LinkedIn profile, that people could reach out to you with those questions?

[00:29:55] Gary Yorke: Absolutely. It’d be my pleasure. It’d be my pleasure. 

[00:29:57] Steve MacDonald: Well, fantastic. Thank you for coming on and sharing an amazing accomplishments that you’ve created in your career and the successes. And I love that you attribute that to the team and to the culture. And that’s a team effort, but as a leader, you’ve got to create that psychological safety for them to do that and so I just want to say thank you for coming on and sharing. We’ve all learned so much as a result. 

[00:30:23] Gary Yorke: Thank you very much and my spider man friend thanks you as well. Much appreciated.