O’Brien McMahon is a senior vice president at Lockton, the world’s largest privately owned insurance broker/consultant. The company specializes in employee benefits and retirement programs.
That means McMahon has had his finger on the pulse of business for years. He’s seen trends, changes, and challenges regarding how businesses reward employees.
He says it’s not just about money. McMahon teaches his clients about a 5-level hierarchy of needs. He believes to get the best out of your people and to keep them, you need to see the whole person. McMahon also hosts a podcast dedicated to understanding human nature in the workplace called “People Business.”
As the number of working Americans starts to level off, the competition for talent will intensify. For that reason, McMahon says business owners and managers need to restructure what they do to create a human-centric experience that meets everyone’s needs. We call that redeeming work.
“This was such a fun conversation that covers so many great and unexpected lessons for business owners,” said BEATS WORKING host Mark Wright. “We even discover what teaching CrossFit taught O’Brien McMahon about human nature and potential!”
Resources from the episode:
- Connect with McMahon on LinkedIn.
- People Business is a weekly podcast exploring human nature in the workplace. Every business is in some way a “people business,” and it’s often how we manage these dynamics that leads to long-term success or failure. Listen to it here.
- Learn more about Lockton and their work here.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
Speakers: O’Brien McMahon and Mark Wright
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 00:00
Something that I have really come to believe strongly is that work is going to need to be redesigned over the next 10 or 15 years. Sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ways. But I think the design thinking and the experience design skill sets are hugely valuable when it comes to solving these types of problems. And I think HR leaders are uniquely positioned to be internal consultants to their organizations. They are the people experts. So, if they can build the skill set of designing better people experiences that also are more profitable experiences, if they can have that tool set or that toolkit and work internally, one just with their own team, but also with other operational teams around the business, I think that supercharges that role and turns it into something really, really meaningful.
MARK WRIGHT 00:58
This is the BEATS WORKING show. We’re on a mission to redeem work – the word, the place, and the way. I’m your host, Mark Wright. Join us at winning the game of work. Welcome to BEATS WORKING, winning the game of work. I’m Mark Wright. On the show this week, every business is a people business. O’Brien McMahon is a Senior Vice President at Lockton, the largest privately owned insurance broker consultant in the world. The company specializes in employee benefits and retirement programs. That means McMahon has had his finger on the pulse of business for years. He’s seen trends, changes, and challenges when it comes to how businesses reward their employees. He says it’s not just about money. McMahon teaches his clients about a five-level hierarchy of needs. He believes to get the best out of your people and to keep them, you need to see the whole person. And as the number of working Americans starts to level off, McMahon says business owners and managers need to restructure to create a human-centric experience. That meets everyone’s needs. We call that redeeming work. This was such a fun conversation. We also cover what teaching CrossFit taught O’Brien McMahon about human nature and potential. I hope you enjoy our conversation. O’Brien McMahon, welcome to the BEATS WORKING podcast. It’s great to have you here.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 02:30
Mark, good to see you again, excited to be here.
MARK WRIGHT 02:33
So, one of the reasons that I was excited to have you on the show is that, uh, you really have your pulse or your hand on the pulse of business. You’ve got a podcast that’s three and a half years old by now, and, uh, you’re also a benefits, uh, professional. So, you’re kind of in the business of understanding what’s going on in business and what the needs of business owners are. So, this is going to be super fun.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 02:59
Yeah, it’s the, uh, the fun part about my job is I get to go out and meet with companies every day and understand what they’re working on, what they’re struggling with, how they’re approaching their people strategy, how they’re trying to attract and retain talent. And so that’s, that’s the fun part is getting to understand that, how everybody does it differently and then, you know, also being able to help with some of those challenges.
MARK WRIGHT 03:21
So, you’re a senior vice president at Lockton, which is the largest privately owned insurance broker consultant in the world. Is that right?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 03:29
Correct. Yeah. We’re the only one in the top 10 that’s still a private family-owned business.
MARK WRIGHT 03:33
Wow. I’d love to know just from a day-to-day basis, what does that mean? When you meet with businesses, you’re talking about benefits packages. You’re talking about, you know, how to attract the best talent. Give me, give me an idea of a typical day.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 03:47
Yeah. So, our business has two sides to it. There is the commercial insurance sides or commercial insurance broker. And then there is the total reward side of our business, which is where I spend my time. And so that involves compensation, employee benefits, plans, retirement plans, leave policies, HR technology to some degree, and so we help clients come midsize companies with a few hundred to several thousand employees manage any of those programs or holistically look at all of it and kind of figure out what their philosophies and strategies are going to be and then what that looks like from a, an actual rubber meet the road policy standpoint.
MARK WRIGHT 04:30
So, when we talked a few months ago, um, what really struck me was that, uh, a lot of us employees and non-business owners really underestimate the time and effort that goes into designing and maintaining benefits packages. Give, pull the curtain back if you would, O’Brien, and talk about just what, what goes into that, and, and how important that is to the success or failure of a business.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 04:55
Yeah. Oh, there’s a lot that goes into it. Um, we are starting our annual process with clients. If you think most clients’ plans renew your insurance, renews January 1st, we’re starting with our clients late January and February on the planning cycle. So, we are kind of doing a state of the program, what’s going on in the world, getting an update on where their business is going in the new year. Um helping refine the strategy that we had just finished putting a lid on for the prior year. And then there’s probably anywhere between four to six major meetings that we have over the course of the year where we are taking that initial strategy discussion, bringing in a lot of options and ideas that might be a fit, evaluating those, analyzing what’s going on with the current program. What do your claims look like? Where are employees going for their health care? How much is that costing? Is that too much? Are they not getting enough care? Cause that can be a problem too. And then kind of taking a lot of data points, as many as we can get and helping them make decisions on what they’re going to do for that specific year, and then it comes down to the actual brokerage work, which is what you think of when you think of a broker, which is going to the insurance markets, going to the vendor marketplace, marketing coverage, negotiating that coverage, getting the best price, and then actually implementing it. Communicating it with people, leading open enrollments. Um, that’s, that’s sort of the standard of what we do. And then there’s, there’s all kinds of tangential stuff. Um, that relates to that building wellness programs. I mentioned leave policies, uh, just about every company out there has revisited their parental leave policy over the last three years or so. Um, the, I’ve been doing this work for almost 15 years now and the volume of work that we are asked to do by our clients has just grown. exponentially. So yeah, it can, it can be very complicated at the same time, I think it’s also important to remember sort of the basic foundation of what we are trying to do. And I think ultimately the role of benefits is to, the role of a benefits plan is to help people feel protected in some of their darkest times, right? It is to provide a security blanket to employees and their family members. And so, there’s all this fancy stuff you can do. You could have pet insurance and perks and all these different things. But I think what you, what you need to do at the very basic level is make sure that your people feel protected. And part of that is in the design of the program and how much money you contribute to that program. And then part of it is in how you communicate it and how you help people understand how to use it when they do get sick.
MARK WRIGHT 07:43
Yeah. That’s really interesting. Um, when we look at the overall cost of, of these benefit plans, let’s say somebody’s making $100,000 a year. How much does it cost for an employee like that to, to offer these benefits? Like what’s the range of cost to the employer?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 07:59
So, the average spend per employee per year is going to be about $12,000.
MARK WRIGHT 08:05
Hmm. And does that cover medical?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 08:09
That’s just for, that’s just for medical. Yeah. And medical is the big spend. Uh, dental is the next biggest, but it pales in comparison to, to medical. Medical is going to be 95 percent of what a company spends.
MARK WRIGHT 08:23
And are, are those costs going up year to year and if so, how much, how much are they? I mean, that seems to be the biggest struggle right now.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 08:29
Yeah. In, on the commercial insurance side of our business, you can cycle every so often through hard and soft markets, right? Where the, the pricing gets really difficult or where the pricing gets really easy, it’s always a hard market in the medical space. The cost of medical services goes up, inflation goes up, new services come online, new drugs come online. The newer drugs that are coming online are way more expensive than any drugs that have come on in the past. You hear a lot about specialty pharmacy or specialty medications. There’s just all these factors leading into these costs going up year over year. So medical trend has hovered right around six to eight percent per year. So, you know, most companies’ margins are not going up six to eight percent per year. And so, these programs can really put employers in a tough spot. And I think what you saw in the early 2000s, is a lot of costs shifting over to employees. You saw deductibles go up. You saw the actual contribution that employees pay go up. And about five years ago, that, that kind of played out. And now you see a lot of employers really trying to dive into the data to understand what’s going on in these programs and get much more sophisticated around how they manage this type of cost because you can’t just, you can’t afford to just keep paying it, but you also can’t afford to just keep shifting the cost onto employees because that negates the, the benefit aspect of it being a benefit.
MARK WRIGHT 10:12
Also, when we talked a few months ago, you mentioned, um, when you talk with employers, you talk about a hierarchy of needs and that, that pay is just a part of the equation. And I think a lot of, a lot of us, when we enter the workforce, we kind of think that, you know, the paycheck is really the only big negotiable, but then as we go on and experience and in years, we really understand that there’s a lot more to it than that. For that business owner that really isn’t familiar with, with this concept. I’d love for you to break that down. Cause it’s really interesting.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 10:45
Yeah. So, uh, this stemmed from both the work I do as a total rewards consultant, and then also the podcast that you mentioned and I was thinking about the work I do and just trying to figure out, where does this really fit into the grand scheme of what is important to employees? Because at the end of the day, a lot of what we are doing when we talk about supporting people in an organization is really helping the business attract and retain talent. Like, it really just comes down to how do we bring people into the organization and how do we keep them? And so as I was thinking through this and everything that I’ve read and heard and experts I’ve talked to and everything it really boiled down to me to five levels of this hierarchy and the first one is total rewards and it’s not because that’s what I do but I do believe that if you think about sort of our physiological needs when it comes to Maslow’s hierarchy, I think rewards provide those physiological needs and that level of safety for an employee, their compensation, their benefits, their retirement plan, their leave. And so, I think that that is the grounding level and I’ll unpack that in a second. I’ll, I’ll work up the hierarchy and then we can unpack it as you want to. But, um, so I think that is the base level. The next level above that is leadership. Because I, I buy into the thought that every problem is a leadership problem. I’ve heard, I’m a fan of Jocko Willink and his books and his podcasts. And I’ve heard him say that a number of times. And I think all the policies, all the culture, every decision that gets made. All stems on what kind of leadership you have. So, I, so total rewards and leadership. And I think of those two levels as hygiene factors. They’re not going to be overly motivating for people, but you need them to keep a healthy organization. It’s like brushing your teeth every morning, above that is where you get into motivators. And I stole from Daniel Pink’s book drive and modified it a little bit. I think the top three layers are helping your people achieve mastery, providing autonomy. And then creating environments for connection. And Daniel Pink’s book originally had purpose at the highest level. And that was kind of what I put in there originally, but connection feels more appropriate for a lot of reasons. And I’ve actually heard interviews with Daniel Pink talking about how he would change it to connection. Um making people feel connected both to the mission and the work that they’re doing and then also to each other. I think the power of, we’ve, we’ve seen, we experienced the power of community or loss of community through the pandemic. And I, there’s just a lot of great conversation happening now about rebuilding communities for people’s mental health and, uh, just engagement and performance and all that kind of thing. So, so those are the five levels. I’ll stop there, but I can unpack any of them if you want me to.
MARK WRIGHT 13:46
It feels, uh, super intuitive because when you talk about mastery, um, I think, I think all the top entrepreneurs that I’ve spoken to on the BEATS WORKING podcast, um, improvement is, is at the center of every single one of them. It’s like, if you’re not growing, what’s the point? Um,
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 14:03
And we all want to grow, you know? Maybe we don’t all want to be, the Michael Jordan of our industry, but we all want to grow. We want to be better. We want to do, we, we like doing hard things. We like the feeling of accomplishment. And I think some people shy away from that a little bit. Um, I think some people will either they’re too scared and they’ll take the easy route or, or whatever. But when they are put in a position where they get to be their best and they get to accomplish something, we all enjoy that.
MARK WRIGHT 14:37
And when you talk about autonomy, it’s, um, there’s nothing worse than, than having a job where you have no say in, in what you’re doing and when you see a problem and you try to get that addressed and, and it just falls on deaf ears. Um, so.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 14:52
Or arbitrary policy. We saw that coming. We saw that coming back from COVID, where people would just slap a policy out there and say, well, this is what our six managers want you to do. And that never went well, right? Because it was just arbitrary. It didn’t involve the voice of the people. People didn’t have a say in it. The organizations that I saw that responded, that did really well coming back, uh, to an office environment or, or at least figuring out what their voice sounded like post-pandemic work policies were going to be, they all involve the voice of the people.
MARK WRIGHT 15:26
Yeah. Well, let’s, let’s get into that quickly. Uh, is, you know, what, what, what has been the fallout of the pandemic and, and how has American business been sort of reshaped and altered for good? I mean, some, some trends were underway that the pandemic just accelerated. And, uh, but you, you’re right. We, we don’t. The dust really hasn’t settled in a lot of places in America yet.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 15:53
I don’t think the dust has ever settled, right? I mean, change is kind of the constant. And so, there’s still, you still hear, hear people clamoring that, well, we need everybody to be back in the office, or we still hear people talking about going back to the way things were. They never go back to the way things were. It, it’ll be whatever the future is, you know, and it’ll be different. You could be in the office, but it’ll still be different. Your clients may not be back in the office. You’re still using different technologies. You’re still working in different ways. Um, I don’t, I don’t believe that there is a right way to do it. I think there are several wrong ways to do it, but I don’t think there’s a right way to do it. Um I think the employers that are doing the best job have done both listen to their people and then also focus on performance. And I think there’s a balance between the two because I think if you surveyed people right as the pandemic was ending, working, those who were able to work from home, it was convenient, it was easy, people quickly reorganized their lives around that kind of flexibility, and there were a lot of people saying, no, I don’t, I don’t want to go back. Suddenly the change that everybody feared was having to go to an office every day. It was weird how quickly we adapted to that. But at the same time, if you play that forward a little further, once people started coming back to the office, everyone I talked to enjoyed time in the office. We enjoy, again, back to connection at the top of the pyramid. We want to be connected to people. We want to feel close to people. We like talking to people and running into people and having spontaneous interactions and spontaneous learning opportunities and mentoring opportunities. And so, I think people who look, see that and go, well, we, we have to go back all the time. I think that’s a little extreme. And people who say, well, we have to give people complete flexibility. That’s a little extreme. I think employers have the, the employers that have done well, I’ve walked the line in the middle to say, hey, we, we listened to you, and this is what you asked us for. And so, we’re going to create these policies. We also believe in these values and principles. And so, we are going to ask you to come in and do these things. And if you have an issue with that, talk to your manager, we’re happy to explain it or, or talk to you, but this is what we think is valuable. And this is what we feel is best for our organization. And like, people respect that if you’re open and honest and transparent about why you’re making the decisions you’re making. So again, and that, that goes back to not having arbitrary policies, right? People want that, that autonomy to have some kind of say.
MARK WRIGHT 18:32
Yeah. Um, we’ve been covering this issue on this podcast a little bit, and that is the power shift that’s taking place, uh, in the workplace in America when it comes to the worker-employer dynamic. Um, baby boomers are starting to age out, a lot of them are retiring, um, the, the competition for employees is getting a little more intense. I’d love your perspective, O’Brien, on this because you, you’ve been so plugged into the business world. It, it’s, it feels like uh, young workers today have a lot more power in, in the equation to, to demand what they feel is fair in terms of compensation and where they work and how they work. I’d love your perspective on that, on that power dynamic and if it has changed and what the, what the, what the fallout, maybe not fallout is a good word, but what the result is.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 19:26
Yeah. So yes, it has changed, but I think it’s changed several times over the last hundred years, right? There have been periods of time where we’ve had a really employee-centric market, and we’ve had times where we’ve had a really employer-centric market. And it, it’s a pendulum that shifts back and forth. I think it’ll probably continue to swing back and forth. But one thing that I don’t believe is going away anytime soon is the pressure on recruiting and retention. One of the things that I have been most keyed into is the change in demographic numbers over the last 20 years and what that’s going to look like on a go-forward basis. So, there are a couple of interesting changes in demographics that are happening. One is that our population isn’t growing anymore. We are basically at replacement rate in our workforce. So, while any individual company will be able to find people and attract people, the overall size of our workforce is not going to grow for the next 20 or 30 years, unless we drastically change our immigration policies and allow a lot more people into the country, which might happen, but for now, it’s not gonna happen anytime in the immediate future, and that is having a major impact. And then you look at the racial demographics in the country. And they have skewed significantly over the last 20 years. So, I can’t remember the exact numbers. I had this for a presentation I did, uh, six months ago, but I believe it was somewhere the Hispanic population was somewhere around four or four to 6%, like 2025 years ago, around 2000. And it’s up near 18 percent right now. And it’s going to cross 20 percent and get up to 25 percent in the next decade or so. And just like that shift alone is changing cultures. It is changing where employees come from, uh, the expectations that employees have. So, there’s, there’s a lot of shifts. If you have an industry that is predominantly white, your talent pool is going to shrink. You are going to have to get your message out to new markets and find new pools to fish in for employees. I might be a bad analogy, but, uh, I think you get the point. So, I, those dynamics together, I think are putting this pressure on the workforce and I think you’re starting to see it already in specific, highly skilled industries. You are seeing less people going into nursing, right? There’s a nursing shortage. There’s a doctor shortage. There’s a pilot shortage. Um, and we’re seeing it in our industry for somebody to come in and be a senior consultant in the employee benefits world. You have to have a lot of experience. You have to have spent time in our industry. So, our industry is only a certain size. And as more people opt out to go do other newer things, that just limits what we can do. But, I mentioned before the complexity of what we’re being asked to do has grown exponentially. So, we are going to have to find ways to do our work differently to recruit from different talent pools, all that kind of thing. Um, I’ll, I’ll stop there. I feel like I’m about to be, uh, at risk of rambling, but I think that that, that feels like the frog in the pot. It feels like the water, the, the water’s being heated slowly, and everybody is feeling more and more stressed, especially when it comes to recruiting and retention. And I think we’re all trying to figure out what’s going to make it stop. And I don’t know that anything is going to make it stop. And I think we need to figure out what that then means for how we approach the work that we’re doing.
MARK WRIGHT 23:11
And at very least, uh, gosh, uh, incentive to, to be good and to do good, to, to value humanity. Um, to just, to be that business, you know, you talked about hygiene, you know, in the rewards and the leadership and, and all those other things too, that, that cause people to want to stay. I’ve worked in industries where they say that their people are our greatest asset and they don’t, they don’t really walk the, you know, the talk, it seems like now a lot more industries are going to really embrace that idea that they really need to be good companies If they’re going to keep good people.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 23:47
Well, if, if you want people to enjoy working there, I think you’re going to have to do it. And I, and I think you’ll see people overreact. I think we already have where we want to just give people everything or listen to everything that they say and bend over backwards. And I don’t think that that’s healthy either because I don’t think that creates the hearty, driven. You know, connected workforce that we want. We want people to be doing hard things. We want people to face challenges and to struggle. But we want to be supporting them and we want them to feel good about it. We want to create a safe environment where they can fail and, not feel like they are judged, or their job or livelihood is going to be in jeopardy. So, there’s this concept of human-centric design, I think is going to be more and more important to the point I probably shouldn’t say this yet, but I’ll tease it anyway. Uh, I’m working with your partner, Dan, uh, and we are actually putting together a summit for 2024, where we are going to be helping people leaders build these skill sets. I, something that I have really come to believe strongly is that work is going to need to be redesigned over the next 10 or 15 years, sometimes in small ways, sometimes in big ways, but I think the design thinking in the experience design skill sets are hugely valuable when it comes to solving these types of problems. And I think HR leaders are uniquely positioned to be internal consultants to their organizations. They are the people experts. So, if they can build the skillset of designing better people experiences that also are more profitable experiences, if they can have that tool set or that toolkit and work internally. One, just with their own team, but also with other operational teams around the business, I think that supercharges that role and turns it into something really, really meaningful. Not that it’s not meaningful now, but I just think it supercharges that role and I would love to play a small part in helping HR leaders build that skill set. So, we are gonna, uh, we’re in the planning process for that event right now.
MARK WRIGHT 26:03
That’s pretty cool. Uh, shout out to Dan Rogers, who’s, uh, the, this podcast is the brainchild of, uh, Dan Rogers, just a great guy. He’s my boss. And boy, talk about somebody who is redeeming work just in the way he structured this company and the way he treats us and values us. Um, just one of the most enlightened, amazing people I’ve ever known in my life. Um, you know, as you’re talking through that, you know, there’s this, it’s like a parent with a kid who’s screaming, just give him what he wants in terms of benefits. And I’m thinking, I’ve been reading some articles on unlimited PTO recently, and that’s a really interesting dynamic because, you know, and I’ve talked to people who work in companies that have quote unquote, and I’m going to put that in hard quotes, uh, unlimited PTO. Some of these are large tech companies. Uh, I think you can probably imagine who I’m talking about, but the reality is it’s really not unlimited PTO. It’s, it’s but I’d love your perspective on this because I think the idea of, hey, you take as much time as you think is fair, that’s a good one, but it’s kind of like that it’s kind of like when you have a sick leave policy like you get 15 sick days a year and some people will call in sick exactly 15 days, whether they’re not, you know, whether they’re feeling good or not. And, uh, it’s one of those things. I’d love your perspective on that because that’s an example of, like, you know, 30, 40 years ago, if you, if you mentioned the idea of unlimited PTO, people would look at you like you had three eyes. So, give me your perspective on that.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 27:37
Well, what we have seen with unlimited PTO is that people generally take less time off than if they have a specific set amount because they get wrapped up in the work and there’s some pressure to not abuse that or there’s pressure to continue to work. Um, so we are seeing that it actually can have maybe not a negative effect, but in some cases a negative effect where people don’t take the time off. So, it’s, and then of course, there are people who will abuse that kind of policy and, um you know, that shouldn’t be allowed either, but I do think coming up with a policy of some kind of flexibility back to no arbitrary rules, you know, there might be a year where you want to take a big vacation and you need that extra week and it’s a meaningful birthday or, you know, or up to meaningful something your kids are graduating and they have some extra time and they want to go to Europe and it’s the once in a lifetime opportunity like we should be allowing people to do that as much as we possibly can. Um, so there should be flexibility. I, I, this is just personal how I feel there should be flexibility in this stuff. Um, as much as is reasonable or as much as you can afford as a business. Uh, I think a lot of it is said arbitrarily, but I think the unlimited PTO is nice in sentiment, but it all comes down to what is the actual culture in practice. If a manager gives people a hard time when they take time off, you don’t have unlimited PTO, right? If it’s not a psychologically safe environment for people to take that time, then it’s a useless policy.
MARK WRIGHT 29:21
I’d love to take a little side tangent down a rabbit hole here. You’ve been a CrossFit trainer in your life. And there’s a CrossFit gym that’s near my house, dangerously near my house. And every time I drive by, I look at people and my first reaction is, oh my God, they look like they’re in such pain, but man, they look really fit too. Um, I’d love to know what life lessons CrossFit has taught you. And also, if it’s translated to, to the business world for you as well.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 29:50
Uh, yeah, that is a good question. Um, learned a lot from doing it and from coaching it. Uh, I think one of the things I learned from coaching it is that we can and from doing it is that we can often do a lot more than we think we can. And I remember in particular, there was one session where everybody had to find their one rep max of a deadlift, which is basically where you take a barbell that’s on the ground with weight on it and you stand up with it. You know, it’s, it’s one of the most basic movements, uh, but it can be very hard to do. And the class was predominantly women. And I remember watching, walking around and they all had their one rep max pretty quickly. And I just walked around, and I said, and I watched him do it. And I said, I think you could put some more weight on there. Just do a little more and give it a shot. And I did this for like 30 minutes and all of the women in the class, had a PR personal record that day. One woman deadlifted a hundred pounds more than she had ever deadlifted before. And, and it wasn’t, her form was great. She probably could have done even more, but I just was like, well, that’s a hundred pounds. We don’t need to push it much more than that. Um, and so I think we often limit ourselves and don’t just try and see what we’re actually capable of. And so, I think that was something I definitely took out of that. The other thing is to your point about, they all looked miserable. Um, we do like hard things. I said it before, you know, we feel good when we do hard things. And yeah, maybe there’s some negative self-talk in the moment. I’ve definitely stood there in the middle of a workout going, what the am I doing here and why am I doing this to myself and I can’t do this and I’m not good enough and all this doubt creeps in and then the little voice goes would just do the next rep and just do the next thing, just put the next foot forward and lo and behold, I get to the end of the workout and it was faster than I thought it was and I holy cow. You know, I just did that. It was amazing. I feel great about myself. And so, I do think that willingness to embrace hard things. If you can, if you can push people to try, just magical things can happen, and confidence gets built and then that just compounds and builds on itself. I think I’ve, I’ve had the benefit of making some odd choices in my life that have really played out and only reinforced making more odd choices that have then really panned out. So, uh, you know, CrossFit being one of those, I, I had gotten into CrossFit and was kind of doing it on my own. And then I said, you know what? I think I want to, uh, I think I want to get certified and coach this stuff. And my mom said, well, maybe you should join a gym first. And I said, I don’t know. I just, I really feel like, like this would be just so much fun. And recognizing I had a lot to learn, but I just went and got certified before I’d ever actually joined a gym and through the certification met a gym owner and he had me apprentice under him and I learned a ton from the coaches of that gym and worked there for two and a half years.
MARK WRIGHT 33:09
For people, O’Brien, who are not familiar with, with the CrossFit, um, explain exactly it in from, from my sort of amateur viewpoint, it looks like a combination of aerobics and weight training all mixed together.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 33:22
Yeah. So, I’m going to butcher the exact definition of it at this point. It’s been a while since I coached it or was super immersed in it, but, um, it is meant to build overall fitness across modalities, meaning across different exercises and across different durations of time. And so, it’s trying to build general fitness and it uses bodyweight movements, strength training movements, kettlebells, Olympic weightlifting, box jumps, rope climbs, all kinds of different things and they all get mixed together in different ways. And there’s kind of three different core setups of a workout. There could be just basic strength training. There could be what’s called an AMRAP, which is you set a specific time and then you have a certain rep scheme. So maybe five pushups, 10 squats, five pull-ups, and you set a 10-minute timeline and you run a clock and you do as many rounds of that as you can in 10 minutes. So that’s an AMRAP. And then the other one would be where you take a specific set and rep scheme. So maybe it’s the push-ups, squats, pull-ups, and you have to do 20 rounds of that as fast as you can. And so those are kind of the three setups of the workout. And so, when you put a time component to a Strength component it creates a whole different challenge. And can you, are you good 3-minute bursts and are you good 20-minute or 40-minute, you know, durations. Um, CrossFit also one of the benefits of CrossFit is the community that it creates and I’m, you know I mentioned in the hierarchy connection is big. I think the reason that, that CrossFit got so popular. One, it was effective, but two, it created a huge sense of community from the people who participated. That every gym is called a box, and the, the culture of every box is unique. There’s autonomy within the structure, the franchise structure, so that, that each box can have its own culture, um, really connect with its own members so that there’s a ton of connection and support that happens within that community. Last thing I’ll say is, you know, CrossFit has gotten a little bit of a bad reputation as well. Uh, and anyone who is thinking of participating in it, the one thing I will say is you do have to check your ego. When you walk in the door because, because of the competition element It can be very dangerous if you jump in and try to match what somebody who has been doing CrossFit for a long time is doing and I’ve, I’ve seen you know, I’ve seen people do it I’ve been a victim of it myself where somebody’s doing something else like I could do that, you know, and then lo and behold you know, you can’t or you shouldn’t. So, the one thing I will say is, you know, you do hear about injuries and that kind of thing. And it’s generally when people are pushing themselves further than they are capable. And while we always want to push ourselves, and that’s one of the big benefits, we also want to understand that we need to do that on a progression. So, I just want to get that, like, caveat in there for people who are tuning me out talking about CrossFit.
MARK WRIGHT 36:31
Sounds like good advice. I want to talk about your podcast. Uh, but before we do, um, just as a business leader, one of the things that we have committed to do on this podcast is to examine how people set goals and achieve goals. And I’d love to know from, you’ve been extremely successful in your own business in this benefits world and insurance world. Um, how do you go about setting goals? Because it seems like a lot of businesses. are kind of arbitrary. It’s like, well, we, we did this much business next year. Uh, this year, next year, let’s do X. And instead of like a really thoughtful explanation of, well, why is that? It’s just like, well, here’s the bar. You’ve got to meet it. And then next year, here’s the bar. Do you have a philosophy on goal setting and achieving those goals?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 37:19
Um, yeah, I think there are a couple of ways you can approach goals. Um, the way that I tend to think about mine, I mean, there are, there are certain things that like, I want to go out and I want to create that. And, and that’s one type of goal where you say, I’m going to go achieve that thing. I’m going to write a book. I’m going to run a marathon. I’m going to, you know, whatever that is, I’m going to compete in a CrossFit event. Um, and that can be very finite. The work that I do building my book of business, you know, year over year, my book needs to continue to grow. And it’s one thing to say, oh, I want to sell 10 new clients next year. I want to sell $100,000 in business or whatever it is. For my work, I tend to think more in process goals because I want to work backwards and say, for me to grow to a level that I want to grow. How many opportunities do I need to work on in order to close that amount of new business? How many calls do I need to make to get that many opportunities or, or first, how many meetings do I need to have to get that many opportunities and how many calls do I have to make to set that many meetings and you can kind of work backwards from there and then you say, okay, it’s going to be roughly this range of activity that I need to put out there to create this end goal. And so now, I want to score myself on a weekly or monthly basis. Am I doing the things day to day that I need to do to achieve the long-term goal that I have? Because the nature of what we do, we’re only bringing on a handful of new clients every year. And so there can be long stretches of downtime and in order to feel like you are moving in the right direction you have to have shorter-term process goals, at least I’ve found, in order to keep your motivation up and keep yourself moving forward. And then it’s just a matter of showing up every day and doing the little things that compound to create that outcome.
MARK WRIGHT 39:17
I think that’s really wise. I think you could translate that. I’ve got, just out of view here, I’ve got my, my drum set on both sides of the room. And um, and, you know, as I’ve tried, tried to improve as a drummer, it’s, it’s, it’s one thing to say, man, I wish my bass foot was stronger. You can wish all you want, but until you set down the process and say, well, what’s the process that, that will take me from here to there? Well, every day I should do this and then this and practice with a metronome and do X and Y and Z, and pretty soon if you commit to the process, you, you, you get there. That’s, that’s really, that’s really good.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 39:52
Success is doing it five days a week or whatever it is, you know, hey, I hit my five days. I feel great about myself. I still suck, but I, I did it right. I, I achieved the goal. And then over time, you know, you do that for 50 weeks in a row, suddenly you don’t suck anymore. You know, you’re, you’re halfway decent and then you do it for another 52 weeks and you know, you’re even better and that’s, I think that’s how people get better and it’s, it’s hard to reframe cause it’s easy to think about the big goal and want to go all in and I definitely want to go all in all the time, but I have learned from doing the job that you have to focus on the process goals. That’s been, that’s one of the things the job has definitely taught me, and I’ve used that in, in other areas of life. So, I mentioned writing. I enjoy writing on the side and a couple years ago took on the challenge of writing a novel and you know, you don’t write a novel in a day, you have to sit there, and you have to do a little bit every day until suddenly you have 500 pages there in front of you. And it was like, holy cow, I got that done. Um,
MARK WRIGHT 40:56
So, did you get it done?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 40:57
I did. Yeah. I, uh, I self-published it for some, uh, some family and friends. I tried to get an agent and go that path. Um, I did not. In hindsight, I can see, I’m still very proud of the book and I wanted my friends and family to be able to read it, but, um, it was also supposed to be one of two in the series. And so, I didn’t want to sell it knowing that I wasn’t going to commit the time to write the second one. Um, so I just, but I had 25 copies made and gave them to friends and family. And then anyone who wanted to know what the second book would have been, I told them where it was going to go. So, well, I, I do have a children’s book coming out this year. Um, that, uh, that will be for sale, uh, around December 1st in 2023.
MARK WRIGHT 41:45
Oh my gosh. Well, we’ll look for that. That’s, that’s exciting. Uh, everyone that I know who’s written a book has said it was the hardest thing they’ve ever done in their lives. So, I, I, I commend you that you even wanted to, to go down that road because that’s pretty cool.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 41:58
I’ve always, I’ve just always liked writing. Um, I write nonfiction. I write fiction. I write, I always, as a kid was writing song lyrics and, you know, I guess I call them song lyrics. You could say poetry. I wrote poetry. Um, and, uh, and it was fun, actually the children’s book that’s coming out, I was able to take some leadership development work that I’ve been doing through locked in and, uh, turn that into a long-form poem and that is the book, it’ll be called How You Become You.
MARK WRIGHT 42:28
Wow. That sounds really cool. I love, I love that you have a, a creative side and, and uh, are keeping that sword sharp as well. Um, I’d love to talk about your podcast, People Business. Um, it launched in April of the pandemic year 2020. Was that, was that, did you launch it because of the pandemic, O’Brien?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 42:48
Yes, I did. I did. So, I predominantly sell to heads of HR and that’s, you know, that’s, those are the people I’m reaching out to. And at the beginning of the pandemic, HR was almost across the board tasked with COVID response. That’s where COVID response fell. So, we were having conversations as a sales team. First time I’ve ever had the conversations where we were saying, don’t reach out to anybody. Like you can’t be calling on anyone right now. It not only will it not be successful, but it will torch any chance of a relationship in the future. It’s just tone-deaf, but hell we’re an entrepreneurial organization. We need, we need to be out in the community. We need to be connected to our customers and finding ways to add value. I’m a big podcast fan. I consume a lot of podcasts anytime I’m walking, riding anywhere between my, all my in-between time, I’m listening to something and a friend said, oh, you know, I’m thinking about podcasting. I said, oh, that’d be really interesting. And, uh, so I, I spent an afternoon, and I wrote down on a whiteboard on the left side, it was all the things that I thought would be relevant to the HR community from a people business standpoint. And then on the right side, I wrote down all the things that I was interested in, which would be human behavior, psychology, um, behavioral economics performance. How do we become better versions of ourselves, all that kind of stuff? and I, I was like trying to figure out how to parse this all together and I woke up the next morning at 4 a.m., literally just like popped out of bed and said people business because on one side I had business and on the other side I people and I just realized that I could flip it and you know, every business is a people business and every person is in business in some way. And instead of having to choose which topics on the whiteboard I covered, I was able to circle the whole thing and say, I get to do all of this. And so, we really cover three key themes. It’s how do you become a better version of yourself? How do you have better interactions with other people? And how do you organize and lead people towards some kind of common goal?
MARK WRIGHT 44:52
That’s fantastic. Um, the fact that you focus on people, one of my heroes is Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks. He and Howard Schultz and Oren Smith built that company into what it is today. And, you know, that company is, is famous for, for saying, you know, we’re not in the coffee business, we’re in the people business and we happen to sell coffee. And you think about the, the experience that people have and that third place and the value of that third place of being able to be at the coffee shop. Um, what’s the most, uh, interesting thing that you’ve learned from the podcast? You’ve got 151 episodes under your belt, which I, that’s, that’s admirable, man. That’s a lot of work and they’re all about an hour in length, right?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 45:31
They are. Yep. Yeah, I did the math the other day and it’s over the equivalent of three college courses worth of lectures. So, I’ve basically curated for myself three college courses worth of lectures. So, I, uh, I can say the, providing that to the audience is fantastic. The secret benefit that very few people talk about is how rich the experience is for the host, and how much you get and grow being a podcast host. So, it’s selfishly, it’s fantastic. What is the most interesting thing I’ve learned? I’ve learned a lot. I’ve talked to a wide range of people. I think one of the things that has been maybe the most helpful personally is the theme of humility and the importance of humility in life. I’ve interviewed heads of HR, CEOs, uh, Navy SEALs, Green Berets. I interviewed a hostage negotiator. All of them brought up, unprompted, the importance of humility in being a high performer and a leader. And it happened so many times that I was like, really struck by it. And I like to think that I have a healthy confidence in myself. Um, you know, I, I really assess like, okay, how am I showing up with humility? And can I lead with more humility and ask for more help? And what does this mean? And I, the Navy SEAL gentleman who I interviewed, Mike Cirelli, uh, he, he had some great thoughts on humility and confidence not being opposites, but actually being compliments to each other and about how the SEAL community and really any high performing community has a really high level of confidence and also a really high level of humility to know that yeah, we’re going to go out and believe in our performance and then we’re going to assess that performance and we’re going to ask for help so that we can improve so that we can be better next time because we need to be better next time. And in that profession, you need to be better so that people stay alive. Um, that’s the most extreme version of it. And to know that even in that environment, humility was one of the key traits. It just really stuck with me.
MARK WRIGHT 48:00
Yeah. Oh, that’s such, that’s such rich wisdom. One of the friends of our podcast, a guy named Jeff Kaas owns a manufacturing company here in the Seattle area. And he said that so much of what he learned in business school was completely irrelevant. And you know, the, the, the lesson. So, what I’m hearing from you, O’Brien, is that there should be a course on why humility is important to success in business. And the thing, the thing that Jeff said is, you know, the thing that he learned as he got out into the business world was just how important relationship building was to, to success in business. So yeah, that is such, I mean, I’ve met some amazing leaders, and especially to a person when I meet someone who’s been in leadership in the military. They are always exactly how you described. They are absolutely confident and skilled and at the same time the most humble servant-minded people that I’ve ever seen and it’s just, it blows me away but you know the magic of that who would you want to follow somebody who’s highly capable and humble that feels so good, doesn’t it?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 49:09
Yeah, I, one of my favorite leaders. I’ve not had the opportunity to meet him but Admiral McRaven who got famous for the make your bed speech, uh the Texas, what was it, um, commencement speech that he gave. Yeah, yeah. And I was listening to him, I think it was on, back to Jocko Willink’s podcast, and I, I’m gonna butcher this, but this, essentially what I heard him say was that a leader has two key responsibilities. It is to set the direction, set the vision, set the mission, and then to make it as easy as possible for your people to achieve that mission. And I just thought that that was so great, like, he talked so much about how he would go and try to advocate for his people, whether it was within the system or in Congress or in a local theater to, to remove barriers to allow them to do better work and funny enough I, was so he was the head of all special operations around the world under Obama and one of the Green Berets that I was interviewing, I can’t remember if we had the conversation on the podcast or separately, but he told a story about McRaven and, and that was exactly the story he told was McRaven came down and said, you know, hey, what do you guys need here? And they said, this is, this is what we really need. And he went back and lobbied Congress to get funds to provide that service. And within six or eight months they had it and they were rocking and rolling. And just about what and this was an Army guy talking about a Navy guy. Uh, and just the, uh, the esteem and admiration that he had for him, uh, like really came through.
MARK WRIGHT 50:52
Well, Brian, this has been so much fun. I just wanted to kind of explore one thing before we, we wrap things up. Um, you’re in the business of consulting HR leaders consulting businesses on what they can do to make the work experience better and to create an environment that leads to more success, both financially and otherwise. So as, as you know, you know, we’re on a mission to redeem work. Here on the BEATS WORKING podcast. When you look at what redeeming work is, as it relates to what you do for a living and, you know, HR packages, benefit packages, and just how businesses run these days, what’s your best advice on what redeemed work looks like today?
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 51:36
I think redeemed work looks different in every organization. I think that’s the point. I think trying to understand what creates both a more profitable business and a more human centric business is the direction that we can and should all be aspiring to. I really think we have that opportunity. I think we are going to have to change and adapt. We’re already seeing it with ChatGPT and just the sudden emergence of what I think will, we will look back and say a very archaic version of, uh, AI, you know, we, it’s revolutionary now, but like I heard somebody talking the other day, like. If you look at today’s iPhone and you hold it up against an iPhone 1, it’s like an entirely different thing. So, technology is changing really fast and that’s going to require us to change work and how we work. And I think as we change that, if we can have a lens on what also makes it a better human experience. I think everybody wins when we do that.
MARK WRIGHT 52:44
I can’t think of a better way to, uh, to wrap this thing up. This has been so much fun. O’Brien, McMahon, keep up the great work and I think our paths are gonna cross again at some point, uh, in the near future. But I’m really inspired by how you are redeeming work and just, uh, the role that you’re playing in all of this. So, thank you.
O’BRIEN MCMAHON 53:00
Well, thank you for having me on and I hope something out here was helpful for the audience and, uh, yeah, it’s been a lot, it was a fun conversation. We went in a lot of rabbit holes I wasn’t expecting. So that always makes for a good time.
MARK WRIGHT 53:12
All right, take care. I’m Mark Wright. Thanks for listening to BEATS WORKING, part of the WORKP2P family. New episodes drop every podcast. Special thanks to show producer and web editor Tamar Medford. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from our Contributors Corner and Sidekick Sessions. Join us next week for another episode of BEATS WORKING, where we are winning the game of work.
