1986 – AI-Driven Coaching for Better Collaboration with Happy Companies’ James Lawrence

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1:05With us right now, it's James Lawrence. James, you are the CEO and co-founder of Happy, found on the web at happycompanies.com. Very cool platform. I'm so excited to share what you're doing, how you're making organizations and just dynamics, human dynamics just work better. So we'll get into that. James, it's great to have you. Thank you for joining us. Hey, Josh. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So please do give us an overview of what happy is and why this is so badly needed today. Yeah, great question. I mean, I've been a CEO for around 30 years. And, you know, one of the things you learn pretty quickly is all problems are people problems.

1:52And, you know, the last three or four years of my life, I've dedicated to building this new technology to help companies, you know, accelerate people at scale. and it comes from doing this wrong for a long time, Josh. As a young CEO, I really didn't know how to lead people well and it's a real challenge to do this at scale. I mean, you'd think the largest companies would have this all figured out, but the truth is that the larger you get, the more challenging it is to train and lead people. So it's been a fun project. Yeah, well, let's talk about, But being able to provide to our fellow leader that's listening to us right now, I think all of us want to make sure that we have a great workplace culture, whether that's in person or virtual.

2:44We want that esprit de corps. We want our team members to feel that they're valued. Certainly, I think most of us as a goal, we want to be able to communicate or understand some of these personality dynamics. and set people up to succeed. So could you maybe walk us through the Happy platform and how it accomplishes that? Yeah, it's pretty simple. I mean, we provide AI enhanced coaching at scale, but we do it right through the tools that employees use every day. So Slack, Microsoft Teams, their email. And so we provide personalized coaching for every employee using AI. And so it's kind of interesting.

3:25I mean, Happy learns each person. And I'll give you an example, Josh. Give me the name of somebody you work with, somebody in your team. Yeah, how about my number two, Alisa? Alisa, okay. So for example, if you and I and Alisa all worked at Up My Influence, and let's say you needed to pitch Alisa on an idea. If you were to look up Alisa and Happy, or if you were to get a slack about her, it would tell you how to pitch an idea. but because happy knows you and happy knows elisa it would actually provide you personalized contextualized coaching and how to picture an idea now if i look up elisa and i want to picture an idea happy knows me and happy knows her it would actually provide us different advice because here's the thing is like let's say that you were a very elisa was a very detail-oriented person and you're a big picture thinker it would tell you josh slow down think about the details Elisa's going to ask, how are we going to do this?

4:24How much money do we need? How are we going to pull this off? What's your timeline? But let's say that I'm detail-oriented also. It doesn't need to tell me to slow down a part of these details. In fact, what it probably needs to say is, hey, you and Elisa are both about the details. Make sure you guys don't get bogged down in the little stuff and look at the big picture too. So that's how the technology works. And it does this at scale in an organization. So we've got clients that have a thousand or 2000 employees, have young managers that don't necessarily know how to read people yet. And so it does this all in an organization where, you know, we help with a C-suite, but that young manager that just got promoted and needs to learn their five or six teammates, you know, it basically works in any of these different environments.

5:07So that's happy in a nutshell. And then it's a really easy lift to get it installed. So it's a it's been a fun project. Talk about why this is so critical today. And, you know, we think about the potential impact of not, in your example, you know, communicating something or, you know, introducing something. Because I think many of us, especially, I'll speak for my fellow visionaries who are idea machines sometimes. In the past, I know that I've presented things, and I could tell that the response was not elation. Like, in my head, I was thinking, oh, boy, they're going to be so excited about this.

5:54instantly, you know, folks on my team who are the doers to get it done, the detail people, you know, I could see, you know, you know, in the back of their brain. And I'm like, I'm not seeing elation. I'm seeing stress. And I'm like, oh, you know, now I feel like I've gotten way better at that. But again, I am way open to being coached, particularly on the day today's stuff, the small things, you know, having that second set of eyes as you're describing. Sorry, James, I feel like I'm kind of just monologuing here and what is attempting to be a question, but I would love your take on this. Yeah.

6:34I mean, let me take you back. There's a little bit to unpack there. So let me kind of take you back to your first question. You know, it's interesting. You'd said in the intro, which I thought was really fascinating, you know, talking about people wanting to leaders specifically wanting to create, you know, high levels of organizational culture. And I think that that's true. I think people do inherently want to create great cultures. They want to create an open culture that has trust, and they want to coach their people. The reality is two major themes have happened. One is they just don't have time.

7:09I mean, that's the thing is it's a one-two, but the problem is, you know, it's kind of like a multivitamin, like, you know, managers and leaders have so much on their plate that today they just find it difficult to find the time to give the kind of continuous learning and investment to their team that they want. And so that's the first thing. And the second thing is the changes in the world of work since, you know, since COVID, frankly, I mean, you know, you look at the statistics around hybrid work and about remote work, and it is a lot harder to create a relationship with, let's just talk about your manager, because we know the data shows us that your manager-employee relationship is the most important relationship inside an organization.

7:55And that relationship is harder to create. The connective tissue is harder to build. When you're in Columbus, Ohio, and your employee's in Florida, and you don't have the opportunity to connect every day organically and you're not intentional about it, it's a much bigger struggle. So, you know, I think the answer to your question is a little, you know, has to be looked at in a couple of different layers because number one, you have people that want to do this, but then you have a lot of changes in how people work. So, you know, one of the things we hear from business owners and innovators and CEOs is they say like, well, of course I want an organizational culture that's healthy.

8:35And like, that's what I want. But then you go, okay, we'll describe your current state. And a lot of times they describe, there's like a gap that exists between the kind of relationships they want their managers to have. And I always hear one thing, Josh, it's my turn to give him a monologue, I guess, but no, that's your job here. But I hear one thing that's really interesting that I think you and I would like to talk about, which is this recognition that the new manager is really been the one, if there's anybody that's taken a big hit over the last four years, it's the new manager. Because they got training in person four or five years ago.

9:11And a lot of that training was organic. It was like, I'm in the same office with you. And, you know, I'm running into some stress, and I just want to talk to you. And, you know, largely, that's, you know, that's hard to do, you know, organically in a remote or hybrid team. Yeah. So James, do you mind sharing a little bit? I think more increasingly in business communication, I think more and more of us are leveraging AI to construct that communication, or at least the outline that we can make sure that we put our own voice to. and I know that my team does that a lot, certainly for like illustrating SOPs or that sort of thing.

9:56But again, that's just one side of it, right? That's just the kind of the facts and figures and then we put our own lens on it or our own filter on it. And I've had things that Elisa, for example, has created to present to me and there are aspects of it when I read it and it stresses me out. So I see that this is such a valuable tool because, you know, and again, I'm going to advocate for the visionaries out there. We have an idea. We have a plan. Like, we've got this hope for what we can do. And if that just misses its mark, we think about, you know, the potential, I don't want to say damage, but, you know, the lack of impact that we are now having.

10:42So would you mind, James, maybe just illustrating how the platform works, how someone would use it, kind of walk us through the user experience? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, that takes, I want to take one step back, which is kind of an interesting theory, which is I'd like to invite you to something. I don't know what you're doing tonight at 1 in the morning. Between 1 in the morning and 5 in the morning tonight, I've got a seminar that I'm going to be attending, which is how to negotiate with the Japanese. Do you have any plans from 1 to 5 a.m.? Oh, yes. And it begins with an L and ends with a P. It begins with an S and ends with a P.

11:24I hope I better be sleeping by 1 a.m. Now, let's say that you and I were going to get on an airplane tomorrow to negotiate a$20 million deal with a Japanese company. Could I talk you into attending that seminar? Yes. Now you had my interest. Now you have my attention. So what do you think the delta was? I already invited you. You said you were going to be sleeping. Now it's important to you. What's the difference? It's a big deal. And that's part of my mandate. Like I have a responsibility. I have a moral obligation to my company and impact that I want to see in the world. Yeah. So what we call that is that great coaching needs to be relevant and applicable.

12:04And then the second thing is that it needs to be available on demand as well. And so part of, I'll explain to you kind of how the happy platform works, but it's based on two principles. One is continuous learning. If I put you in a, you know, how to be emotionally intelligent manager workshop, you might get some aha moments from it. It might have really meaningful value, but the data indicates that over time that will, the value will decrease. Your memory will decrease. your retention will decrease, and eventually 90 % of the learning will be scrapped if it doesn't stay current. It's why pilots are encouraged to continually fly, right?

12:41Because it's a skill that if you don't continually apply, you lose it. So happy starts with providing you daily coaching on the people you actually work with. That's the applicable part. And so between Slack, Gmail, Microsoft Teams, we're providing you constant coaching that comes in form of what we call the daily coach and daily coach comes in applicable on the people you actually work with. So then we also offer on demand. So for example, let's say that you were going to go pitch an idea to Mike and it was a big idea, or let's say you needed to give a performance review to Bob. You can go into either any of the tools like Slack, Gmail, Teams, or you can go into the Happy app and you can go, I need to pitch an idea to Mike.

13:25I need to give a performance review to Bob or Bob, my manager is going to give me a review, give me some tips about it. And so that contextualized coaching is available, like I said, continuously or on demand. But the idea is, is, is that the there's one last thing, which is in an organization, the question becomes, you know, if I've got a thousand employees and I'm a CEO, if I'm a manager of a team of 20, how do I get this all set up? This sounds like really complicated. How do I get all the coaching connections set up. And so part of happy does that like heavy lifting for you. So we use some social connectivity technology algorithms to basically figure out who in the organization works together.

14:04And we're delivering coaching on the people that a, you can opt into, but B will suggest coaching with people that you regularly work with a lot. And so it kind of unfurls at scale. And then, you know, when an organization puts it in their plat, puts it in as part of kind of their, their set of tools, it gets better and better every week because it learns more who in the organization is connected and how they're connected. So then the coaching suggestions are more appropriate. This is fantastic. Okay. So how does the application, or how does it work in terms of like, let's say that we've got an organization, I've got a big sales team, and I want them to be able to leverage and use this tool.

14:45How does pricing work? Do you have enterprise plans? Yeah, great question. So, I mean, the first thing is, is that you'd ask a little bit, like, how does it work? So it uses behavioral science and kind of AI enhancement is how it works. And so, you know, there's a technology underpinning, but it's one of the really quick questions we usually get is like, what kind of security is there? What kind of privacy is there? And so, you know, all of your personal identifiable information is hashed out as part of all the coaching. So while you will get coaching on others and they'll get coaching on you, you know, it's totally secure and private.

15:20And so, you know, that kind of addresses some people's privacy concerns, but no, it's a, you know, it's a, you know, most companies were appropriate for companies, I would say from a size standpoint, somewhere between 20 employees and, you know, 1500, 2500, you know, are, are kind of like, I would say middle to lower end enterprise organizations and then teams in larger enterprises. So and, you know, pricing is pretty affordable. It's, you know, two cups of coffee. So, you know, what we like to say is, Josh, you can't put a price on happiness, but we, but we do somehow we make it really affordable.

15:59Yeah. Love that. Okay. So I've got your website pulled up and to our friends that have been listening, let's get to the website. When somebody goes now you can request a demo. And again, just making sure I understand like Like, who is using this platform currently? Like, I don't know if you have any case studies or, you know, just examples of how people are, you know, who's using it, how they're using it. Yeah, I mean, so really the thing is, is that our core focus is to enhance organizational culture and helping people work more effectively together. That would be communication, collaboration, team effectiveness, manager training, manager effectiveness.

16:41Our tool improves retention. Um, so, you know, really we look at ourselves as an organization wide solution. That being said, you know, some large teams, you know, do they, you know, they might pilot us with a hundred people or 200 people. And so, you know, we're effective. Uh, if you have a company with 3000 employees, we can run a 50 or a hundred person pilot. And sometimes they just want to learn the tool a little bit. Um, but you know, we deal with a wide array of companies. And so it really comes down to, I think it's less the type of company, Josh, and it's more what the organization's goals are.

17:18Like how important is improving manager effectiveness? Like is that a core priority to them? Are they hybrid and remote? Now we work with companies that are in person, that are hybrid, that are remote, kind of the whole jambalaya or in between. But in particular, companies I think that have gone hybrid or they have employees that are not in the office every day and want to improve communication, collaboration, and connectivity. I would say quite a few of our clients have had, you know, kind of living in this new world of work. And one of the things that we hear often is like, hey, we need to improve our manager training.

17:51And so that's something like we have. Yeah. So so our vice president of partnerships, his name is Shia Cardiff. She has 10 years at Microsoft in leadership and HR. And so she's really phenomenal. But one of the things that, you know, she's kind of like she talks a lot about in demos is we're kind of in a discovery phase is it doesn't matter how big your company is. You can have people issues and manager training issues, whether you're, you know, have 20 ,000 employees or you have 10. And so, you know, really the weather how important those are to your core priorities. I think that talks a little bit to the leadership team and just what's important to them.

18:32And we're not for every company, right? I mean, some companies have other things going on and aren't ready to prioritize, you know, those things that our solution helps with. And so, you know, we try to make sure you can't fake your way into people. It's an authentic thing. And so, frankly, if a company were to put Happy in, it's not like some kind of magic bullet that if you've got a bunch of leaders that really don't care about the organization and that's clear, it doesn't matter what kind of software training you do. I mean, you've got to be intentional and care authentically. Well, again, it's been a great conversation.

19:12I absolutely love this. James Lawrence, again, CEO and co-founder of Happy, found on the web at happycompanies.com. Make people your competitive advantage. Happy is the coaching platform that improves organizational culture, communication, and manager effectiveness. James, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Josh, thank you so much.

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