The Digital Seeker with Raj De Datta
Raj De Datta is a serial entrepreneur, he's the co-founder and CEO of the global software platform, Bloomreach. He's also the author of the book, The Digital Seeker. This show is pumped full of hacks and insights including: What is the seeker and why we need to focus on them? Why we would want to swap customers for seekers. How to harness Raj’s “Three A’s” to unlock creativity. What the long-term effects will be via digital experiences in the future. Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Raj below: Raj on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdedatta/ Raj on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rdedatta Bloomreach Website: https://www.bloomreach.com/ Full Transcript Below: ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you Raj De Datta is a special guest on today's show. He's a serial entrepreneur, he's the co-founder and CEO of Bloomreach, which is a leading software platform. He's now an author of the book, The Digital Seeker, which is a guide for digital teams to build winning experiences. But before we get a chance to speak to Raj, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: Have you ever tried to change anyone's behavior at work? It can be extremely frustrating. So often with great intention, it provides the opposite results ending in poor relationships, poor performance, and often causes the person to dig their heels in. Still some approaches clearly work better than others. In a study completed by the Harvard Business Review, a data sample of almost 3000 direct reports of almost 600 leaders focused on manager’s 49 sets of behaviors and assessed the leaders under, effectiveness at leading change specifically the manager's ability to influence others and move in the direction the organization wanted to go to. They then analyzed those at the highest and the lowest ratings on their ability to lead change. Then compared with the other sets of behaviors, they found that some behaviors were less helpful in changing others. And also that two had little or no impact, therefore providing useful guidance on what not to do. Being nice: I'm sorry, but being nice suggests that you may finish last in the game of change. It might be nice and easy, if all it took to bring about change was to have a nice, warm, positive relationship with others. Unfortunately, this research suggests that that's just not the case, and by giving others incessant requests, suggestions, and advice. I refer to this as “nagging” to be quite honest. Now, for most recipients, this is highly annoying and only serves to irritate them rather than change them, but is also often the change that most project managers adopt in the first instance and continue to do so despite their lack of success. But there were some indicators and some behaviors that did correlate with exceptional ability to drive change, and here are the top four. Unsurprisingly at the top of the list: Inspiring others, and there are two common approaches that most of us default to when we try and motivate to change others' behavior. Broadly, we could label them as push and pull. Some people intuitively push ot