Sherina Smith (American Family Insurance) | Designed to Last

22:03We recently got engagement results in some of the places where we score the highest as a manager trust, team trust, but also on I'm excited about the prospects and I feel really good about my contribution to the business. And that had not always been the case. That's been a lot of fun to get people really engaged and excited about the why behind what we do. There's the customer why behind what we do and there's the business side why of what we do. And it's really shifted the way we think about the ideas that we're excited about or not.

22:32Jim Stengel:What has made it work as well as it has? Has it been consistency? Has it been the leadership team? Because what you just rattled off there is impressive and you said it so easily, but that's a lot of hard work and there's ups and downs. And sometimes you have to change out people, change some of the work, change incentives. So what do you think really made this work as well as it has that resulted in the innovation we've been talking about with Disney and a lot more? Yeah, I mean, certainly there's been some team building. I spent a lot of time recruiting talent into the team that could really lead, guide, coach, and develop some of the younger marketers on our team.

23:14I spent a lot of time doing that. And so it meant for me that there were a lot of places, gaps that I filled personally until I could get the right person. But I feel really confident that that decision of talent and who you bring onto the team is probably the most important decision that you make. And so while it meant I had to extend myself a little bit differently than I probably would have expected to for longer than I probably intended, I'm really excited about the team that we've been able to build. We have spent a lot of time as a team building trust. We do team coaching once a month where we spend time really being honest with each other and talking about where are the spaces and places where we can help support and where are the processes that are broken that we need to fix.

23:56I think as a collective team, we have a lot of skill around collaboration. We have a lot of skill around trust. We have worked really hard to build in a level of conflict management that helps us to move things faster. So that's been, to your point, that's been a lot of work. I think the other thing that, to your point, it starts top down. And so the relationship that I have with Talisa is very helpful because I feel confident and trusted that my leadership is behind me. And so then that extends to my team, which allows them to extend that level of confidence and trust to the team out from us.

24:34Our vision as an organization is around being customer driven. And so it's really the right time to be customer crusaders within the organization, because we've spent a lot of time educating the organization on the customer journey, helping to bring people along and where they fit in the customer journey. And And from there, a lot of that has flowed through the rest of this team. I mean, I am a firm believer that when people feel good about the work they're doing, they feel like it's appreciated, they feel heard, and they can see constructive results, then hard work doesn't feel as hard. It feels really rewarding.

25:07And that's really what I think the journey our team has been on.

25:10Jim Stengel:Now, I've observed you in this journey, right? And you have moved, I think, from a position where the job in some sense controlled you because you didn't have all the people in all the roles you needed. And you take your job and your KPIs and the company's success very seriously. So now you have the people in the right spots. How did you go from the job controlling you to you controlling the job and reframing how you spend your time and the kinds of places where you show up? because I think that's been quite a transformation that I think a lot of people could benefit from your mindset from putting this thing together and now where you are now.

25:50Yeah, I mean, so my leadership style has always been to lead from the center and it probably always will be just because at heart I'm a practitioner and I'm a marketer's marketer. I love the work. I'm energized by the work. And if I wasn't at work, I still just naturally think about it. But I do think that I had to evolve from leading from the center to being centered as a leader. And what I mean by that is leading from the center can often mean that you have your arms and legs and everything. And so you're constantly responding. You're constantly giving feedback, responding to stimulus versus being centered as a leader.

26:29I think I did a much better job of like, wait, let me just get clear on what is our strategy? What is our vision? Getting the right team in place and then able to articulate that in a way that's compelling for the rest of the team. And the way we've done that has been a lot of different ways. It's been through what I would call a full curated day of storytelling where we've bought in guest speakers from around the building. And we've been very intentional about how we order that content throughout the day to help the team really embody and understand where we're going. It's also been around me creating clear structure and boundaries for where I will be engaged and where I won't.

27:08But the biggest thing has been, I think of it as, I was thinking about this this morning, it's a little bit of like, what do they say on the airline? You should put on your mask before you put on others. I think I was putting on everybody else's mask and not mine. Once I started to put on my own mask and really create space and time for me to be thoughtful, trust my team to be a lot more strategic, then I felt the team relax into their confidence around the strategy and the vision. And I was able to be a lot more of a value add in how I gave feedback to them or how I give feedback to them.

27:41Jim Stengel:How's it feel to be a centered leader now? I mean, and we're always working on the next thing, right? How we want to improve, how we want to spend our time. But talk about that. How does it feel to go from leading from the center to be a centered leader? I love that, by the way. And what do you think your next, I mean, management development hurdle is? I feel more energized than ever. I'm honestly having the time of my life in this job. I love the team that we've built. I love the work that we're putting out in the market. I like the impact that we're having. I think that we sit at the precipice of a very exciting time within the organization.

28:25There aren't that many teams who get to see a brand go from being, We've always been a national organization. We haven't always been a national brand. And so recently with the rebrand of one of our products that we sell through Costco from Connect to American Family Insurance, we're a national brand. Not every team gets to go through the wave of learning how to do it, watching the market respond to it, being thoughtful about how you do that. And so that has been incredibly energizing for me. I feel like I have a lot more, not one of its time, but I have a lot more thought space to devote to that and to devote to how we continue to grow as a brand and as a team.

29:17Jim Stengel:now you grew up in pittsburgh pennsylvania or the pittsburgh pennsylvania area you're an excellent student in grade school and secondary school you went to ohio state to study engineering and you're not and for the first time you were not really happy and you were struggling for the first time in academics. But there was a professor who kind of helped you out of that. Tell us that story. So to your point, you know, I was a really good high school student. I got A's in most classes and it was, I worked hard, but it wasn't, I'll put it, I worked hard, but it wasn't like impossible work for me. And so graduating from high school, I had this thought of like, oh, what will I do?

29:56At the time, it was the early nineties. And it seemed like there was a lot of demand in the market for engineers. I did well in physics, calculus, chemistry, fine. I could be an engineer. And so I did. I started. I tried. So I started at Ohio State in engineering. The first year was great because I was taking a lot of the classes that I had genuine interest in that were required. Psychology, micro and macroeconomics, some history classes. And then the second year, all those engineering classes kicked in. Physics, chemistry, calculus, engineering graphics. And it It was not my finest hour. I'll just leave it at that.

30:32And I remember like that moment where you're like, shoot, now what? And my parents, to their credit, were pretty, I'm the fourth of three kids. So maybe this is why they were kind of chill. But I just remember they were kind of like, yeah, you're going to need to either go to a smaller school because I don't know, is Ohio State too big? Or you need to change your major. It's kind of up to you what you want to do about that. But you need to do something about that. So I went back to school kind of like, now do I do? And there was a new class. There was a literature class that I always liked it.

31:04I always liked literature, always liked reading. I actually went to the first day of the class. The class was full and the professor told me it was full. And I said, well, can I just stay anyway? He's like, actually, no, because my class is full. We had some banter back and forth. And he's like, all right, stay after class. And so I stayed after class. And he's like, you know what? I respect your persistence. I'm going to let you stay. They would actually physically bring a desk from another classroom into the class. It was literally a full class. But from there, I just learned a ton from him.

31:33Professor Williams was his name. He taught literature. That was an African-American literature class, but he taught a lot of different English classes at Ohio State. We developed a strong working relationship. I started going to office hours. And one of those office hours, he just asked me, like, what's the story? Why are you so desperate to be in my class? and I explained to him that I was a fledgling engineering student and I was I'm just looking to raise my GPA professor Williams and I really like English so I figured I could take a couple English classes and so he's like okay stop there let's stop with like what do you really like and what do you really do well and where do you get energy and move from that point like your your how does he say your gifts are going to make room for you but they're not going to make room for you if you don't go into the spaces and places that you don't have the energy or the interest.

32:22And he's like, I have no doubt you could be an engineer. You just don't want to deep down inside somewhere. So let's go spend time on the things that you really like. And he just started encouraging me on, I kept taking a lot of his classes. I took a lot more English classes. He asked me, what did I think about business? Because I had taken econ the prior year and did well in and I liked psychology. And he was like, you should go look at the marketing department, see what they have. And so I did. And the rest, as they say, is history. But from there, he was really just a good mentor and an encourager of trusting your own thoughts, not looking at what you think other people think you should do, but really focus on the things that you have excitement and energy for and the rest of the things follow.

33:08Jim Stengel:It's an amazing story. And I guess he knew the impact he had on you because you followed up with him. but imagine if he did that just to a few students in his lifetime of coaching, the legacy that leaves. I mean, it's just an amazing story. And all of us have that in front of us. We have the opportunity to mentor, to coach, to be a sponsor. And I think it's just the most powerful thing we could do as leaders. And I know you agree with that. Oh, absolutely. To your point, we stayed friends, certainly throughout my time at Ohio State, and followed up with each other throughout my career until they recently passed away.

33:44unfortunately, but all the way through, like he had been kind of a touchstone because I always felt like it was almost like a proving point to say, look, you were right. And he's like, I know I was right. I don't need you to keep coming back. Tell me I was right. I know I was going to be right, but it really created a good friendship with him.

34:00Jim Stengel:Well, let's stay with the career journey. You spent 11 years early in your career at craft and that was significant in your development. Several people had a pretty big influence on you. So can you speak a bit about those 11 years. What did you learn from that pivotal time at Kraft? And what did some of those people who've also had a big impact on you teach you? Yeah, I mean, I think what I really loved about the time I spent at Kraft and what I think they do currently and did really well is that those jobs are basically full P &L jobs. Like you're learning from day one how to run a brand as a business.

34:38And so I learned, it was essentially like business school in practice, because you learn how to work across a lot of different functions. You understand all of the ways that the P &L works. You understand how to move things around to hit your business goals. I had to learn how to partner with manufacturing. I had to learn how to partner with the R &D team. I learned a lot about food science and food safety. You're deep into customer research. I think it was a great opportunity for me to learn how to lead people that did not report to me directly. So you come into this ecosystem as a relatively junior marketer coming out of business school, and you're leading teams of people who have been doing their jobs for 20 to 30 years.

35:21That in and of itself, I think, required a different level of self-awareness. And what was cool about that environment is I think of it as you had to be an agile learner. You had to be a courageous learner because sometimes you learn things that were not convenient. And you had to be able to respond to it quickly. And you couldn't necessarily have, you could be sensitive about the information or the way it was delivered to you. You just had to take it in and lead. So for sure, those 11 years were a big part of what makes me who I am as a leader. The culture was great for me. The way that we embraced team and customer outcomes was also a really good foundation building, typical classic consumer business and consumer brand building.

36:05In terms of the things I learned, I had a lot of people there that I worked with. And there's just like quotes that go through my head every now and again. One of them is this idea of empowerment and accountability. And so the notion of everybody wants to be empowered, does everybody want to be accountable? And how do you help teach people what accountability means? How do you teach people how to use critical thinking to take, what I'll say, controlled risk with contingency plans? because that's really what the accountability part looks like. I thought that Kraft did a really great job of teaching you not just the P &L, but kind of the construct of, I used to have a boss who told me, if you know the P &L, you know the P &L.

36:46It doesn't actually matter what the product is. It doesn't matter if it's a service or a product. You understand how to drive growth. You understand how to manage the fixed costs underneath it. And you understand how your variable costs are changing your profit levels, period. And I felt like I learned that lesson over and over again across a lot of different brands for the 11 years that I was there.

37:04Jim Stengel:Then you went to AmFam. You had a job or two in between, right? You worked a bit in retail. And you talked a bit about how you stumbled upon AmFam in a way. But when you had the meeting with some of the people internally, including Talisa, what was it that really pulled you over the line? Because it was a whole different industry for you. Yeah. So true story. It's going to sound like I made this up, but I did not. This is definitely a true story. So I lived in Chicago at the time because I worked at craft. I was home by myself watching the Super Bowl because I'm sort of a marketing geek and want to see the ads.

37:36And that year, Amphim had a commercial with Jennifer Hudson. And I remember, like, I can remember, I can see where I was on my couch watching that commercial thinking, oh, and it was somewhat of a, it was a quieter commercial. I remember it starts in black and white. It's not like, it wasn't like the traditional loud voices or whatever that you get in a Super Bowl commercial is much quieter, but really well done and elegant. And I remember the casting of it because I remember Jennifer Hudson was really hot at the top. Well, she still is. But at that moment, I feel like she was new on the scene.

38:11The storytelling was great. And I just, at the moment, I remember thinking, oh, that was a really good ad. That seems like a really cool company. I liked the idea that they made a commercial that really spoke to me directly with people that resonated with me. Done. Didn't think about it again. And so when the opportunity came back, the first thing I thought of was like, oh, oh yeah, no, I know that brand because I remember the Jennifer Hudson ad. I remembered how it made me feel and I remembered what I thought they must be like as a company. And so off of the bat, I was very interested and open to this insurance company, it was all about dreams.

38:49Because I just thought that the notion of inspire, protect, restore had so much emotional depth to it. I felt like it was presented in a way that as a company, it felt like, yes, it's insurance, but also almost like a lifestyle brand in the way it came to life and the advertising. So all of that for sure, drew me in that it was something that I wanted to be a part of. When I met the team, the team was great. I mean, I still work with people right now. who interviewed me and hired me. And so we laugh about that a lot. But I thought there was a warmth. There's definitely a sense of that family sense came through, a level of integrity in, I think Talisa talks about this in her podcast, but the idea that you could bring your whole self, like you could come and bring your whole self here, be accepted and really flourish in that environment.

39:51Jim Stengel:that's a good segue for the creative brief and my first question is you have a lot of strength and that was in this podcast is is uh is proof of that what would you say is your single most powerful superpower oh single most powerful superpower for me i think that i i liken myself to an architect, right? So when I think about an architect, I think about someone who understands like the science and the structure, my engineering background aside, but just structure and true, the guts of the business, along with someone who really can appreciate art. And so I think about marketing and what my superpower is, is really that intersection of being able to take in the left and the right brain information and process it into something that drives a business.

40:42So that consumer insight at the intersection of business value and how do you turn that into storytelling that is compelling for business growth is the place where I get the most energy. I don't know if it's my superpower, but it's certainly where I get a lot of energy from doing that. And I find myself doing that to build things over and over again from consumer packaged goods to I spent some time in pharmaceuticals to retail and now insurance.

41:07Jim Stengel:That's a pretty good superpower for a CMO, just saying. Now, you're an avid reader growing up. And two authors were important for you, Charles Dickens and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Why are those two authors the ones that you took to when you were growing up? Yeah. So for Charles Dickens, I remember reading A Tale of Two Cities. I loved the juxtaposition of the best of times, the worst of times. I feel like we always are constantly living in a paradox of everything is great and everything is not. and we're always trying to find the place in the middle where you can take advantage of what's great and you can continue to solve the problems of what's not.

41:46And there is something about that book and the way that he's able to really tell that paradoxical story of what's happening at pre-liberated France that I really liked a lot. It resonated. I thought the storytelling, the character development, the idea of a character who would give his life for the person that he loves and pretend like he's someone else, that Sidney Card and Charles Darnay mix, I think is really interesting. I love the elegance of the storytelling. So now you're going to make me nerd out. But like the elegance where it's, there's a lot of foreshadowing in that. When I think about what we do when we're at our best in terms of building brand and leveraging the brand to tell stories that emotionally connect with customers, many times there's some foreshadowing that's happening.

42:30There's a story that starts here, but doesn't necessarily end until you get to the point of transaction. but you're constantly building and following the customer through that storytelling. So I don't know. I like him a lot. F. Scott Fitzgerald, I just think, has a bit of whimsy to some of the stories that he tells. This Side of Paradise, Great Gatsby there. It's whimsy. There's a level. There's a dark underside to those stories. But again, it's two things living at once at the same time. And I always kind of like, I'm drawn to the way those stories are told.

42:59Jim Stengel:Are you still a big reader? I am. So what are you reading now? I just finished reading a book called The Personal Librarian, and it's about a woman who was a librarian to J.P. Morgan. I'm also reading a book, but it's about journaling. And the whole book, it's about the alchemy of journaling, basically. And each chapter is essentially a short story, but then it sort of lands you in a place to then journal. I think it's just, I like to journal because I like writing. It's interesting to now have a book that develops all these interesting prompts to get me to what to write about. So that's on my current list.

43:34Jim Stengel:You have three siblings. You're one of four. Two of your siblings are doctors. One's a lawyer. So that's quite a family. What did mom and dad do that worked out so well to have four kids like you? Well, for sure, we hit the parent lottery. Like, there's no doubt about that. We hit the parent jackpot. I would say my parents, there was a lot of structure in our home. My dad was in law enforcement. So he started as a police officer, moved into being a detective in law enforcement and narcotics. And then he was a parole officer for a while. And my mom was retired as an administrative assistant. Between the two of them, they sort of moved in hand, like hand in glove.

44:16I would say my dad was a direct personality. Like you never wondered what he was thinking. Always very supportive, but always a very objective and rational partner in helping you to get from point A to point B. He didn't leave a lot of wiggle room for foolishness, as he would call it. And my mom was sort of the velvet side of that glove. And she is, she's still that. She can be firm, but she definitely was the softer side of his perseverance, his structure, and his direct, I'll call it straight, no chaser style. What was interesting to me about them is they always knew, you know, my dad would always say, you got to know what you got, and then you got to work with it.

44:56And so for him, he felt like, I know what I've got and I'm not relenting because I have every belief in the capacity of my children and I'll do everything that I can to make sure they're successful. And I'm going to make sure that they believe that they can be successful. And I think that was probably the biggest part of it. Like he didn't ever doubt it and he never created space for us to doubt it. And so even more than the work, it was really like the esteem that they put in each of us.

45:28Jim Stengel:Now, you talked about reading being a passion. The CMO job's tough, right? We all know that. It's demanding. It can suck you up. You have to get in front of it, which you have done. But what else beyond reading keeps you grounded, refreshed, balanced, sharp? So certainly reading. I spend a lot of time with family. Faith is very important to me. And so I spent a lot of time just sort of reflecting on that. And it's a part of what grounds me and my core. It's what guides how I treat the people that I work with and that I lead. It's a lot of how I self-identify. And so that's definitely a grounding factor for me.

46:09The other thing I have gotten much better at now that I'm a center leader, not just leading from the center, has been just taking time away. I don't think that I had been really good in the past at creating boundary and space. And something that I've started maybe like two years ago now has been at least seven days out of the year that I take. And there's just there's no contact. I turn off my laptop. I turn off my phone. And I just spend a week with me journaling, really being introspective, meditation. And it feels like a reset for me. And it's quite energizing. I find it to be anyway.

46:45Jim Stengel:You know, this question is coming up. I always ask, what's the first brand that had an impact on you as a young child? Talisa said Coca-Cola with a great story, right? So what is yours? What do you recall as being the first brand that made you aware of a brand having an impact? Yeah, I've been anticipating this question and really like thinking about it. And there's advertising and there's brands. I guess I'll set advertising aside for a second and talk about the brand. I'm from Pittsburgh, as you said. I think the first brand that I was aware of that I knew in our house, there was no substitute for Heinz ketchup.

47:21I still remember the ad where the bottle tilts and it takes a long time for the ketchup to pour out. I remember like it was one of the things that you just it was literally written on the list. You're going to buy Heinz ketchup, not not any other ketchup. And it wasn't really acceptable in the house that like anything else. That's probably the first time I first brand. Like, I don't even know if I knew Heinz was a brand and not just the product until I got probably like 10 or 11, 12 years old because it was such a staple in the house. But that's probably the first thing I knew that you had to buy this brand.

47:56It was a very specific brand that you had to buy, and it was intentional.

47:59Jim Stengel:It's still a great brand and still a very differentiated product. It's a big part of it. And they do a great job of storytelling. Yeah, they do. They do. What's the legacy you hope you leave behind at American Family? You've been there seven years. You'll be there longer. When people look back at your time there, what do you hope they'll take away? I hope that people, one of the things we talk a lot about is that brand is more than advertising. Brand is an ethos. Brand is exceptional customer service. Brand is something you have an emotional connection to. and it is a core driver for customer decisions.

48:40And so I hope that in the time that I've been here, people embody that and people really take to heart the idea that the way we think about our customer, if we as a brand become like a best friend, it would mean that we anticipate their needs. It would mean that we seek to understand them and please them, delight them at times. and it would mean that we think about our business and we make decisions about our business in the same way we'd make decisions for our best friend. And that in and of itself to me is kind of the core of building brand because then that guides all the decisions that you make down to communication and the way you talk about it.

49:19Jim Stengel:It's a great metaphor. You know, way back when I was at P &G, I used to talk about that and said, if we had a KPI that was all about building friendships, you know, would we behave differently on our brands? And the answer is yes. You know, you wouldn't make a stupid ad. You wouldn't put out a promotion that was confusing. You wouldn't have a package that was hard to open because you wouldn't do that for someone that you love, that you had a relationship with. So I think it's a wonderful metaphor. And I think also, by the way, when you're doing work that seeks to build a relationship and friendship, it's better work.

49:52Jim Stengel:It's more rewarding work. It's more sustained. So I love that thought. Yeah, I mean, I think it's part of why we started here with the Hulu campaign. There's Hulu, there's some other work we've done that's an Inspire campaign that is long-form storytelling. But both of those bodies of work are about spending time to share the humanity of who we are as a brand and to build that connection to who we are and what we believe as a brand and to bring people along in an engaging way. Who's been the most inspiring person in your life, Sharina? Ooh, this one's hard because we've kind of talked about three of them already.

50:30I would be hard pressed to ever say that my parents haven't been two of the most inspiring people. It's hard to separate them because they're sort of like they operated in a very much of a yin and yang kind of way. Professor Williams certainly came around at a very pivotal moment for me where things could have gone a lot of different ways. And it certainly was his influence that guided me. But if I set those two aside, I would say probably the most be my sister. So my sister is nine years older than I am. As you mentioned, she's a doctor. And as the story goes, I was long anticipated. She's the one who named me.

51:09She had two brothers and no sisters. Really, really, really wanted a sister. And I can't remember a time when she hasn't been the person that I call to celebrate, to cry with, for advice, for just someone to laugh with. She is a great leader in her own right. And so she gives me leadership tips. She helps me to think through how to approach difficult, thorny situations in a way that represent our values and the way we grew up, and also takes into account the world, the complicated world we currently live in. And so, yeah, I would say it's

51:44Jim Stengel:Well, okay, Sharina. Well, this has been marvelous. Did I ask you everything you thought I would ask you? Or did I throw you any curveballs? Superpower was a curveball I hadn't prepared. But I think, yeah, we talked about pretty much everything. Did I answer the way you had expected me to answer? Well, you know, it's always interesting to prepare for someone who you know. I think it makes it actually very special. But also, it's a little bit more challenging. Yeah. You know, because I think you just want to, you know the person, but you want to convey something to our audience that is very helpful and inspiring and entertaining.

52:18Jim Stengel:And I think we did that. I think you did that. Wow. I had some good help. Thank you. Well, good luck with the series. It was really fun to talk about it. I'll be watching it. I love the trailer. My wife loved the trailer. Oh, good. Oh, good. So we'll be tuned in on May 5th, my birthday. So well done. You premiered it on my birthday. It's your birthday gift. Designed to last. That was my conversation with Shireen. Three takeaways from this one. If you're a business brand and life. I love this one. We'll have to start with this. Going from being a leading from the center kind of leader to being a centered leader.

52:50Jim Stengel:Such a powerful soundbite, such a powerful thought. Sharina talked about how she's always been a practitioner. She likes being in the middle. She likes having her hands on a lot of things. As she matured, she hasn't lost that tenaciousness, but she's much more of a centered leader helping her team and her company thrive. It's a wonderful lesson. The second takeaway is the power and importance of being a business first leader and a marketing leader second. Sharina spent a lot of time in this podcast talking about that was her learning at Kraft. That's how she operates now. That's how she onboarded when she came to American Family.

53:26Jim Stengel:She's always about what is the business? What are the economics? What's our P &L? What drives it? What are the growth drivers? What are my relationships like with other functions? She's business first. And by the way, being business first has made her an exceptional marketing leader. And the third takeaway is think deeply about how you engage people. Shareena's story about their long form content, the Disney project that's airing on Hulu in early May that started with how do we just think about engagement at a whole different level? How can we think about doing something which is a first in a category?

54:00Jim Stengel:and they're not the biggest spending company, but she wanted to be the most creative and innovative in thinking about engagement with your customers as well as your internal audience. That's it for this week's episode of the CMO Podcast. As always, I would be grateful if you shared our show with your friends, along with subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a Vive Original Production.