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Responding to CliftonStrengths Migration Challenges
CliftonStrengths

Responding to CliftonStrengths Migration Challenges

Webcast Details

  • Gallup Called to Coach Webcast Series
  • Season 7, Episode 41
  • Listen as COO Jane Miller shares how Gallup is listening to coaches' feedback and addressing CliftonStrengths migration challenges in this Community Update.

Jane Miller, Chief Operating Officer at Gallup, and Austin Suellentrop, CliftonStrengths Portfolio Manager at Gallup, addressed your concerns of the past two months as Gallup Strengths Center has migrated to Gallup Access on a recent Called to Coach Community Update. Jane and Austin spoke of Gallup's commitment to coaches and the steps Gallup is taking to listen to you; to learn from the challenges faced to date; and to improve Gallup Access accordingly -- including significantly lowering call wait times. Austin also addressed some improvements that have been made to Gallup Access over the past weeks and the December movement of digital kits into Access. He shared how Gallup will be improving the coaches' feedback process and previewed the January Learning Series and changes that will be coming in 2020 -- and the role coaches' feedback is playing in those changes.

Below is a full transcript of the conversation, including time stamps. Full audio and video are posted above.

Jim Collison 0:00

I am Jim Collison and live from the Gallup campus here in Omaha, Nebraska, this is Gallup's Called to Coach, recorded on November 1, 2019.

Jim Collison 0:20

Called to Coach is a resource for those who want to help others discover and use their strengths. We have Gallup experts and independent strengths coaches share tactics, insights and strategies to help coaches maximize the talent of individuals, teams and organizations around the world. If you are listening live, love to have you in the chat room. There's a link right above the video window. Click on that; it'll take you to YouTube and the chat room is there. You can log in, ask us your questions. If you're listening after the fact and you have questions, you can send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Austin Suellentrop is our guest and our host today. Austin is the CliftonStrengths portfolio manager and quickly has become my best friend at work. Austin, welcome to Called to Coach.

Austin Suellentrop 0:57

Thanks Jim. Right back at you. It's been a it's been fun to work alongside you. Good to be back on Called to Coach. It's been a, golly, probably a month or two since since we've been here. So, good to be here.

Jim Collison 1:08

We have a packed schedule today and a lot to get through. So Austin, why don't you get started.

Austin Suellentrop 1:12

Yeah, absolutely. So hello, everyone. Welcome. Glad to see you and talk with you today. We've got our regular Community Update for you today. We've got some fun announcements, some sort of updates on things we've been working on, and a little bit of a preview as to what you can expect towards the end of this year and into the beginning of 2020. But before we dive into that, before we dive into the announcements, Jane Miller is here with us today, our COO and she wanted to join us today for a few minutes to share some thoughts with the community; some perspective from her end. So I'm going to let Jane sort of speak for a few minutes before we dive into our regular episode. So Jane, thank you so much for being here and I'll kick it to you.

Jane Miller 1:53

Absolutely. Thank you Jim and Austin. Actually, you're allowing me to barge in. I asked if I could be here today. It's important to me. The last time I was on was a couple years ago, and I was speaking to the theme and strength of Belief. And I'm going to do that again today. I want you all to know, whether there are a few of you live today, or hundreds or thousands that watch this later. As coaches, we are listening to you, and we hear you. And we know it's been a rough 4 to 6 weeks. We are doing everything we can to get underneath the situation that's been occurring.

Jane Miller 2:28

In case you can see me right now, behind me is the Missouri River. And it's the second-fastest in the world. And I've got a little bit of an analogy to that river, relative to where we've been in the last 4 to 6 weeks with everything that's going on with our migration from GSC to Gallup Access and how that's affected each of you as coaches. So when I think about the river, we were actually told when we built on this site, that it was a 250-year to a 500-year flood plain. Well, the reality is within about 15 years of moving in, all of a sudden we were being flooded. We had disaster recovery plans in place to be able to move out. We had all kinds of things ready to go. Well, it started again this summer. And what we all know is that between the mayors of each city, all the way upstream to South Dakota, North Dakota, we have the Army Corps of Engineers releasing water at different times. But what we don't know is what the weather's going to do, relative to what it means to all the businesses, the parks, and the cities along this beautiful Missouri.

Jane Miller 3:26

The same is true for what what is going on with our migration. So the migration has had unintended consequences, both from a technical standpoint as well as from a customer service standpoint. So we knew we would literally have a flood when we went with the new supplier, with Digital River, who's been absolutely tremendous. But we also knew -- we did not know how much. So just like the weather component, we weren't sure what level of questions we would get nor how long each of those would take. So we have literally added additional staff all over -- not only in Omaha, but an additional staff in Lincoln, to do everything we can to make up for this.

Jane Miller 4:04

As I said, there's a few technical difficulties, there's a few staffing difficulties. We are working to resolve every single one of those, literally day and night. So we appreciate your patience. We understand and empathize with the frustration. And it's killing my Belief, because I want everybody to know that we care deeply about what the ultimate impact of strengths is. And when you can't get it for a meeting, it's very frustrating. When you can't log in and get a report right when you need it, it can be very frustrating.

Jane Miller 4:32

So we have had meetings every single day, all day long, to look at every single tactic we can to change the trajectory of where we are. We do have wait time under 9 minutes. We had someone just call in and say they made it within 3 to 4 minutes. So we know the changes are beginning to take effect. And they will continue to get better and back under that 5-minute threshold that we have promised for so long. So 24 and 48 hours is not acceptable, let alone some of the minute waits on the phone. Keep thinking about email and chat. We're doing triage to get to those of you who have large groups faster. So anyway, I just wanted to apologize. I wanted to say this was unforeseen at the level that it did exceed our some of our SLAs. And we are getting it back within line, and doing everything we can to make the experience better for each and every one of you.

Jim Collison 5:22

Jane, one of the things we talk, we talk a lot about this. And we've helped a lot of companies through these kinds of things. As we think about the effect this has had on us and we kind of look towards the future, how do you think -- how do how do how do you think we'll apply this, what we've learned out of this? And maybe not to the specifics, but just kind of in general, as a culture, how do you think we'll apply this to the future?

Jane Miller 5:42

Well, I think that's a great question. We're always testing things. And even with the best intentions and laid plans, the test didn't work in this particular case. So we don't want to get to the point where we're so risk averse we overtest and don't get anything to market or launched or migrated. But we will continue to do post-mortems. We do post post-mortems from a technical standpoint. We do from a customer service aspect. We do from our, our telephone equipment standpoint. We're looking at every single angle to make sure that the next time we have something, and I don't know how long it'll be before we have anything this large. We knew going into this, this is what we coded "behemoth" in terms of a migration for a company of our size.

Jane Miller 6:22

So it'll be a long time before we have anything of this nature. The other thing we probably wouldn't have done is we did a huge email launch within about 2 weeks of the migration. In hindsight, we would have pulled that back as well. So there are definitely things that we can say we wouldn't have done that in hindsight, but the best-laid intentions and plans sometimes go awry. And that's really where we're at today. And we are a company of high Achievers and Learners with huge Responsibility. So we will continue to analyze every bit of it and make sure that we are taking responsibility for it, owning what we can, and fixing what we can and remediating it with as many Restorative people and Maximizers to help us get through it for the future.

Austin Suellentrop 7:06

Yeah. Jane, I really appreciate you, you saying that and being here. I think, from the three of us to the community, I think it's really important that everybody who's on on here understands. I think you've all experienced probably Jim's passion and commitment to this, right, and his his effort to answer questions and guide people and direct. From my perspective, in terms of the manager of this portfolio, and trying to think of the brand and where we're taking this in the future, but also from Jane and the leadership of our company overall. But this is something we're all paying attention to. It's something we all take very personally. And that there there is a lot of things happening, to try to make the situation better; to try to improve things. We are committed to making it better. I think you hear from Jane, this is something we were prepared for but obviously not as prepared as we could have been. Right. And so we will learn and we will get better. So Jane, thank you for taking the time to be here and kick us off today as we update the community on the things coming down the road.

Jane Miller 8:03

And I just want to say, Thank you to you and Jim, Austin. What you've done to help the coaches understand where we are and why we are and to help everyone through their individual situations has been tremendous. The client service team and the tech team, everyone cares deeply and is doing everything they can, again, to remedy it, and we appreciate your customer service care immensely.

Austin Suellentrop 8:23

Absolutely. Thank you, Jane.

Jim Collison 8:26

Jane, thanks for -- thanks for joining us. Austin and I have a bunch of updates to do. But thanks for coming on. You can click that "x" and thanks for your time. We appreciate it.

Jane Miller 8:34

Thanks, guys.

Jim Collison 8:36

John had asked a question for Jane, but we're going to cover this kind of going forward; what kinds of issues should be we be aware of in case you haven't encountered them yet directly? We want to be careful not to put ideas in your head, John, of things. We are -- we actually are fixing things in real time. And, and so Austin, why don't we get started a little bit. We'll, we'll go back a little bit, some of the things that we have worked on -- even an issue yet this morning that we had to -- talk a little bit about that.

Austin Suellentrop 9:04

Yeah, absolutely. So when we migrated systems, right, that first week, late in September, when we when we went live with Access, right, there were a couple of things initially that just -- that weren't functioning the way we wanted them to. And so we jumped right on sort of initial fixes. I want to sort of outline some of the things that if you went into the system maybe that first week, and you haven't been back in and played around since, what's different now?

Austin Suellentrop 9:33

So that the first big one was for our clients and our -- and our coaches that have subscriptions. If you were to go in to your portal to try to find users, within that first week, we got the search functionality sort of up and running, so that you could search for people inside of a subscription. That was the first thing that we that we really quickly addressed. And then that next fix was all around the Community tab. So initially, the Community tab -- there was not a Search functional tab working. So inside Community, we got a search bar added to back to that pretty quickly, as well as the ability to fully export 34 results out of the Community tab. So those are the things, probably the hottest things right out the gate that we knew right away weren't working like they were supposed to. And within a week or two got those fixed and addressed.

Austin Suellentrop 10:23

Here in the last week or so, we've got some some other enhancements that have been made, sort of in this next round of updates. If you were to login now on Community, you'll see email addresses inside the Community tiles for individual users. That was feedback that this community shared to us saying, Hey, we like having those there. It helps us distinguish between different people. So we added those back in, got those back in so that's live now.

Austin Suellentrop 10:48

And then the other one -- this is a bit of a smaller segment of our audience and our customer base but, my gosh, customer base, we are really sincerely grateful for their patience on. The ability to take the assessment in the Czech language didn't work when we when we migrated. It worked on GSC. It wasn't functioning like we wanted it to inside of Access; there was half Czech and half English popping up throughout. So we took it down and offered it in all of our other languages. Well, the assessment in Czech is now back up and running. So it's now live, you can take the assessment in Czech again as of about 2 days ago. Right?

Austin Suellentrop 11:24

So those kinds of things are the direct result of feedback from you. Right? So it's feedback through our Facebook community. It's feedback through email, through reaching out in various forms and fashions. So I want you to know, as a team, we are getting that feedback. We're putting plans in place to make improvements all the time. We've got a whole roadmap of enhancements mapped through the end of this year and well into 2020. So want to make sure that -- those are sort of the things that have already happened in the site.

Jim Collison 11:55

Yeah, and one thing I want to say, Austin, it's been it's actually been helpful. I know it's a little stressful. When you guys do see something that's awry, you've kind of contacted me through Facebook to do it. That's one way to do it. Our customer support lines have been have been long and so it's hard. We really want you in the future, I really want you to be able to call, get right through and just be able to ask that question to operators.

Jim Collison 12:17

We have -- Jane mentioned it -- we have new staff, more staff, we've added staff. So they're, they're coming on, they're working. There's -- there's a little bit of a lead time and ramp-up to get them all ready to go. We really want you to do that; we'll be expanding chat in the future as well. Today, 9 to 4 U.S. time or 7 to 4 maybe that is U.S. time. And chats really should be the fastest way to do that. It varies -- right now, it's varying kind of depending on how you're doing it, what time of the day and some of those kinds of pieces.

Jim Collison 12:45

Of course, the bulk of our audience is the United States. The bulk of people are trying things first thing in the morning, usually between 8 and noon in the Eastern time zone is when we just get slammed. So no excuses there; just the reality of what we're trying to do. An Jane mentioned, we are doing a bunch of things to make that better.

Jim Collison 13:02

Continue, if you need to, post it on Facebook. I try to be as responsive as I can to get that to you. This morning was a great example. We were having some trouble internationally with the store. And we were able to get notices over to the individuals who work on that. And they got that fixed pretty fast -- had that back up and running and working. So we do appreciate that feedback. The nicer the feedback, the faster it works, I'm just going to be really clear with you. So, and I say that kind of jokingly, but it does help and so appreciate -- for all of you who -- who have come in, let me just say the guy kind of handling Facebook. I appreciate your dialogue and your help as well. I know you've been frustrated and we've tried to work on that as fast as we can. We have something -- we have some other things coming, Austin.

Austin Suellentrop 13:46

Absolutely. So as we think to the future, one of the things I'm, I've learned -- like, frankly, as a leader in the community on this front -- one thing I've learned is I got high Futuristic, high Activator, high Positivity. What does that mean? That means I get really optimistic that all these plans we have are going to work perfectly. I get really optimistic: This is -- oh, this is gonna be the greatest thing ever! And reality is sometimes different than that, right? Sometimes there's hurdles, and there's hiccups. So what I'm working on for you is -- for this community -- is a bit of a line of sight into some of those feature enhancements, some of those things we're working on, and how do we get your input into what it ends up looking like and feeling like, right?

Austin Suellentrop 14:30

So rather than laying out for you a timeline of "Here are all the things we have planned," one of the things we're going to be working on is working on methods and ways to garner the coaching community's feedback into what things you want. Right. So we're getting that right now very, sort of sporadically. We're getting it through Facebook; we're getting it through people emailing us suggestions directly; we're getting it through a lot of different forums -- people attending our courses and telling us, right? These are great, we love that; we welcome that; we need that.

Austin Suellentrop 15:02

So one of the things you can sort of expect from us, going into the end of this year and planning for 2020 is maybe a little more structure around how we solicit your feedback and how we get your your input into what we should be developing, how it could look, how it could feel, right. So that's that's something we're we've already got the ball in motion on. And so you can stay tuned to the to the strengths -- Certified Strengths Coach newsletter for that. Those of you listening who aren't certified, you can stay tuned to our new CliftonStrengths newsletter for information on how you can get involved in things along those lines. Right. So that's coming through the in the next month or so, we'll have some more structured ways to get your feedback.

Jim Collison 15:42

Austin, and let me also say, we've gotten a lot -- the feedback we have gotten through the -- the other ways, whether it's via email or through the Facebook groups or whatever, however you sent that in, we have captured that and are aggregating that together and as a team. And we -- like Jane said, it does feel like we've been meeting like all day, every day for the last 3 weeks. That's not true because we still have jobs that we need to get done here. But we've been capturing it and aggregating. So Austin is aware of it. He's kind of been -- he's taken point on this and is beginning to get that to the tech team. They've been prioritizing some of that. You and I have spent a bunch of time with our tech teams of saying, Hey, guys, this is -- and we've heard, Oh, we, you know, we thought this and it was actually that. And they're beginning to make some adjustments in that.

Jim Collison 16:28

Just know, as you send it in, it gets prioritized. And so sometimes it's going to be high, and we're going to do it right away. The Czech language was one of those. We knew we could not go very much longer with that not working. There are other "nice to have" things that we'll continue to add to that will take some time. So be patient with us on that. Austin, I think, as you talked about next year, we're going to try and forecast some of those things for you so you know what's coming earlier. I think that's been overwhelming feedback that we've gotten. It's hard because you don't know if you -- you say these things too early, and your promise them and you can't deliver, right, I mean it's a it's a it's a real dance. So you don't know what you don't know. So that is coming as well.

Austin Suellentrop 17:09

Yeah, absolutely. So So forecast -- I want to sort of think of sort of take us into January, (OK, because because realistically, I know here in the States, we're a couple weeks from from Thanksgiving, which in the business world and in U.S. really means the work year is just about done, right? People start taking vacations much deserved -- many of you probably deserve tremendous time with with family and friends. I want to fast forward to what you can expect coming in January and what and what's happening sort of end of the year and so forth.

Austin Suellentrop 17:38

The Learning Series is on the calendar. So we do the annual Learning Series for our certified coaches is on the calendar. It is going to be January 28th through the 30th. This is one of those situations where we got feedback from from you, the participants, the community, saying Hey, we've been doing this traditionally for like 5 days, every day for 5 days, and and it's a lot of days to have to block for live learning. Right. So we are taking a similar approach to what we did with some of the webcasts we did prior to migration where we're going to do three different time zones throughout the day. So the 28th, 29th and 30th, there'll be, I think, 7 sessions in total. Two days we'll have morning, afternoon and evening here in the United States time zones so that our friends in Europe and over in Asia and Australia can participate live as well a little more easily.

Austin Suellentrop 18:29

So we are finalizing the topics and who will be leading each of those sessions here in the next couple weeks. So stay tuned for more details on the content but wanted you to get the "save the date" in your calendar: 28th 29th and 30th will be of January 2020 will be the Learning Series. We're excited about the content we have there. We're going to take your feedback over the years on what's really resonated with you in terms of the type of session, the style of sessions and give you more of that, right. So we're excited about that.

Austin Suellentrop 18:59

But then, a little more A little more tactical, a little more content- and tool-related. The digital kits have been a big topic of conversation through this migration, right? So the migration people, I got some emails -- Where'd my kit go, where'd my kit go? I moved into Access but now I can't find my digital kit. Because the kits haven't moved! The kits were still sitting over here where they've always been, but now all your other experience -- well, the digital kits are moving over into Access, right? So on December the 13th, right, digital kits will move; they'll change locations into Gallup Access. And for the time period from the 13th through the 31st of December, they'll live -- you can access them in both places, right? Links will work from both places -- where they currently are on courses.gallup.com, as well as in Access, but come January 1 of 2020 they will live -- the only way to access them will be through Gallup Access, right.

Austin Suellentrop 19:57

So digital kits are moving. What's exciting about this move, aside from the convenience of them being inside Access, where you're already living and playing with strengths: They're getting a facelift, right. They're getting a facelift from a design perspective. The functionality is is not changing, right. When I say that, I mean that. They are working the same way. They will look a little different; they're on a different platform, but we have taken extreme care to make sure that the the click-through experience is what you were used to, that it is -- if if there are any changes, they are additional things you have; they are not anything going away, right.

Austin Suellentrop 20:35

What's going to happen when you see that? You're going to you're going to experience something for the first time in December 13, which I want to give you a heads up on and that is our domain colors -- those four colors that we've been using, like, the gold, the blue, the purple and the maroon. We are -- through the course of 2020, we are updating those colors. We're going to phase that in in 2020 The first time you will see that is in the new digital kits at the end of this year. And so why are we doing that? Why are we updating our domain colors? The main driver is those 4 domain colors are not fully ADA [Americans With Disabilities Act] compliant. So if I'm colorblind and I look at those 4 domain colors, I cannot distinguish the difference between the 4 of them. And so as part of our commitment to being friendly to all of our users, we have been working to update those colors to be fully ADA compliant so that all of our users can see them and clearly distinguish them, right.

Austin Suellentrop 21:36

So we are not flipping the switch and changing all of our colors right away. Right? This is a phased thing throughout 2020 where you'll -- over time, they'll get updated in Access; they'll get updated on Gallup.com; they'll get updated in our resources and materials. But the first place you will see them is in those digital kits at the end of this year. So I wanted to tell you that so you're not caught off guard. So you're not surprised and shocked when you see that.

Jim Collison 22:03

And Austin, they're not radically different, right? I mean, they're very, very close. We just had to do some work to make sure they were color compliant, right, for for ADA, and that'll work for other places around the world as well. So not like we went pink and orange and -- right.

Austin Suellentrop 22:17

Right. So we didn't just start at scratch just and pick 4 new colors. It's a shading game more than it is anything else. So again, stay tuned to the CliftonStrengths Newsletter and the Certified Coaches Newsletter for more information and more details. One of -- again, lesson learned from my end, one of the things you can expect from me is a bit more of insight into a timeline of when you'll see those colors show up in different places. We're working through that project plan right now so that we have a better idea, and I'll share more details with you.

Jim Collison 22:49

And just as an add-on to that, Austin, 508 compliancy is very, very important. And we actually have a team just for that. And so in 2020, you're going to see some design changes that are taking place to to make us compliant in that. We are continually auditing those pages, making sure it's the right thing to do, it works for the for for the various platforms -- the U.S. government, some of those other things that have to have to they have to work that way. We have some regulations where that has to work that way. So just be aware, you may see some of those design changes, and you're like, why would they change that? Well, most likely, it was it was 508 or some one of those other regulations that we had to follow.

Austin Suellentrop 23:30

Yeah. So I saw a question there from from Rachel about the details of the color so you can update your materials. Absolutely. We will, we will share it, we will share that as part of the certification in your in your in your working to brand yourself. We will give you all that -- that's part of that, that plan I'm outlining. Today, I'm letting you know what's happening, so that you're not caught off guard if you see them. But yes, we will be sharing all of that so that you can make sure you're in alignment.

Jim Collison 23:57

We're not changing anything till 2020. So you might want to -- you don't need to be worried about it at this point. Just kind of know it's coming. And you don't have to change it right away. You don't have to change it on January 1, right? We're going, we're going to be changing it over time. You have time as well.

Austin Suellentrop 24:03

Yeah, yeah. So I'll share more details with all of you is terms of when Access will be changing in terms of the colors -- when you'll see them in your reports, and so forth. So all that to come towards the end of the year and into the beginning of next year. Again, the only thing changing in the short term will be the digital kits in December, when they move into Access. So that's sort of the the latest in terms of updates from us.

Austin Suellentrop 24:36

I think what I want to make sure as we think about our our community, is I want all of you to hear -- you heard it from from from Jane earlier, I want you to hear from me as well: How much the feedback you provide helps. How much we plan for and think we account for things, we got caught off guard with a few things this time. And I'm committed to learning and getting better at that the next time we do this. And then our ongoing relationship, from from organization to community, is to try to garner more -- proactively garner more feedback from you. That's the thing I'm walking away with more than anything else. So I sincerely thank all of you for the work you do, for the impact you make, and also want you to know to keep the feedback coming. Right? That that it does help us; it is getting shared inside our organization to the highest levels to try and drive the change we need going forward.

Jim Collison 25:28

Austin, in the few minutes we have with questions, I think Rachel asks a good one. Earlier, she said, Overall, when all the updates and revisions are done, will you be aiming to restore all the functionality coaches had in the GSC to Access or will it be different in some way than we had before? And this is a long question or a long answer, but but do your best and what would you say at this point?

Austin Suellentrop 25:48

Yeah, so I think that all the functionality -- without digging into it, and I'm happy if you if we want to connect one-on-one, I'm happy to dig to make sure I fully understand what the -- all the functionality it refers to, because there's a lot of functionality. We -- when we moved transaction, we are absolutely looking at, and examining what makes sense for us to offer all of our coaches, in terms of the functionality you had, the functionality you currently have and the user-friendliness of that functionality.

Austin Suellentrop 26:20

So what we're committed to doing is we're committed to making it as easy as we can to take care of your customers and your and your clients to take care of what you need to get done, right. I think Access inherently functions differently than Gallup Strengths Center did. The portal itself works differently. So I don't want to say we're going to go back to the way it was, but can we achieve the same outcomes you were achieving? And can we help you help you in that sense? That's what we're committed to -- is giving is giving you a service and giving you an experience that lets you do what you need to do to take care of your customers and your clients. So that, yes, we'll commit to. I don't want to say we're going to go back to the way it was because the platform is just built in a different way.

Jim Collison 27:02

Yeah, well, and some of the things like we've gotten kind of hung up on some of the things that don't work. We have created some new things that do work where, you know, like with the individual codes, you can now revoke them, you can pull them back in, you can reassign them. There's some of that functionality there. You did it bulk, you know, when we first did the bulk purchase, we got a lot of negative feedback on that. And, and, you know, and people kind of figured out how to work around the bulk. And so, we don't want to get -- that's been the hottest topic by far on this. And we won't spend too much time kind of debating that, but just realize -- the other thing I think we kind of missed -- we've been hesitant to even advertise this yet, because there's been other things to get done. We literally produced hundreds of pages of new marketing content for you that now exist on gallup.com/cliftonstrengths.

Jim Collison 27:53

Just go to the About tab. if you have not spent some time out there, this this afternoon -- wherever, wherever you're at -- get a cup of coffee or your drink of choice. Go to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths, go to About. Look at the drop-down and see all the information. I get a question all the time: Do you guys have a 1-pager that kind of summarizes strengths? We do now! Well, it's not -- it's really kind of one website. But you can go out there and point people to that.

Jim Collison 28:18

What about the history of CliftonStrengths, Austin? When did it start? How did it work? Who was involved in it? we have a whole history page that's out there for you now. So don't miss. We also created a whole bunch of stuff around our webcasts. So you can go out there now, click through the themes. They have a bunch of information by theme behind no password. So if you want to send people, send your folks to it to get information on videos, and all those pieces, all the back catalogues of Theme Thursday are there, including the companion guides, you can do that. And we've missed a little bit of that. And I'll just continue to say that just because we've been so busy doing other things, but literally thousands of improvements that you begged me for over the last 2 years that I forwarded on to our marketing and materials team and said, Hey, can you fix this? They have fixed. So if you've missed that, take an afternoon; peruse through the CliftonStrengths site. You might be surprised at some really cool stuff that's out there.

Austin Suellentrop 29:14

I will. I'm glad you said that, Jim, because the the gallup.com/cliftonstrengths site is the best representation of the movement that I've found so far, right, in terms of the wealth of content; the the varied ways it can be applied; the stories and testimonials from everything -- from individuals and how strengths has impacted their individual life to organizations and how strengths has shifted cultures of companies. There's so much content there that we were genuinely excited to share with all of you that -- in the wake of the migration the last 6 weeks -- I think it has been overlooked by a lot of us internally as well to make sure we're we're telling that story. That this is part of the benefit of making this shift was getting to connect to all this other great content.

Austin Suellentrop 30:06

That is, to Jim's point, it's public domain. You can share it in emails; you can link to it in your communications with your customers and clients. And that as we work through the operational hiccups and roadblocks sometimes and speed bumps and whatever analogy you want to use, as we work through those, please continue to give us feedback. Please continue to reach out to us in various forms. I will -- I'm working daily with our technology and client support teams to find ways to automate things that are manual now so we can get you answers and resolutions faster. Right. And we've we've done that in some situations already, which have helped.

Austin Suellentrop 30:46

And so we're really excited for where we're going with all this. My excitement for the future of the strengths movement is no less than it was 2 months ago. If anything, my excitement is a little bit more honed, because I now know how to harness my strengths a little bit more effectively to help you. I may have let my Positivity and Futuristic create a bit of naivete in my mind around what it was going to take to pull some of this off. And I'll own that. I will 1,000% own that. But I'm excited for where we're taking this together. So thank you.

Jim Collison 31:16

Yeah, no excited as well. As we look at 2020, Austin, I couldn't be more excited about some of the things that are coming. Much of the feedback that we heard from you in 2018 and 2019 went into a lot of the work that we did. We had a team that spent a ton of time, kind of listening to that feedback, polishing some things up, cleaning some things up, making some things more clear -- on just the print and media side. Theme Thursday Season 6 will start January -- middle of January. We are still committed to Called to Coach. We have some exciting new formats coming for you that are quicker and faster and even some long-play case study stuff that's coming.

Jim Collison 31:54

So we're excited about what what started in our media spots -- what started as me goofing around on a Friday afternoon recording Called to Coaches has kind of turned into a whole media suite available for you. And we have different forms and different lengths and we can do an audio and video. So make sure you're taking advantage of all of those as well. And please, if you do one thing, when you see Community Update and Called to Coach, listen to it. We -- I do have to answer lots of questions that were in this. Put it on your phone, listen to it in the car. Please. Lots of answers that would save me a lot of time and allow me to help people that you know with with with or just be faster in helping people with some of the issues around it.

Austin Suellentrop 32:37

Well, Jim you're doing -- you're telling that to the people who are listening.

Jim Collison 32:40

Well, I'm hoping maybe some other ones will listen, you know, you gotta hope, Austin. You gotta hope. I don't know, I've been doing this for 7 years and I still keep hoping -- maybe that's Positivity [No.] 6. Austin, anything else before we kind of wrap it?

Austin Suellentrop 32:53

I want everybody to know that with -- I'm not on Facebook, personally. Not there. I've seen just about every comment because Jim and I are locked in at the hip. Right? So Jim is is is sharing things he sees there with me nightly, right. So we're connecting all the time. And so know that even though you may not see me replying, or jumping into comments on Facebook, I'm hearing them, I'm seeing them, I'm oftentimes giving Jim some answers to share with you on Facebook. So it's a it's a partnership between the two of us and -- and it's a, it's a team effort behind the scenes.

Austin Suellentrop 33:27

What I would hate is for anybody out there who's a coach to feel like you're not being heard, or to feel like Gallup is not there to support you. We are. And we're committed to it. We're working to get faster in implementing some of those responses and some of those improvements. That is my commitment to you is that we will continue to work to get faster and more effective and more efficient with that. Right. So thank you sincerely, and not to lose sight every single day of the incredible impact every one of you out there is making. That's why we do this, right. That's why we all got on board with strengths; it's why we became strength coaches because we're trying to help people's lives and help improve this place. So sincerely, thank you. Look forward to working with you down the road.

Jim Collison 34:10

Awesome. With that, we'll remind everyone to take full advantages of all the resources we have available on now on Gallup Access, just go to gallup.com/cliftonstrengths. We said that before. Send us your questions or comments, and this is really a great way by the way via email to get the questions in to us: coaching@gallup.com. If you have questions on a subscription, or you want to know the difference between the two or you just want to talk to somebody. By the way, if you're a non-subscription user, and you're like, you know, I'd really like some info on that and -- we can send you out a 1-pager but we'd rather talk to you. Like it's a lot clearer that way as we can talk to you about your business and what you do and how it fits in. We'd rather have a conversation. Send us an email: coaching@gallup.com. Just put, "I'm interested in a subscription" in the in the title and we'll get that routed over to the right person to get you a phone call to get you a demo in person. A lot easier to get it done that way as well. If you want to stay up to date everything that's going on, go to gallup.eventbrite.com so you know when all the live things are happening. If you want to subscribe to our YouTube channel, go to youtube.com search CliftonStrengths -- we didn't make that very hard -- subscribe to that channel, and every time we produce something new, you'll get a notification as well, to make sure that's happening. We've had some email notification problems; these come from YouTube so they won't get blocked. And so it's a great way to get it done as well. You can join us in our Facebook group facebook.com/groups/calledtocoach. We'll be back in December with another update. Austin, thanks for all your work. When I said you're my best friend at work, you quickly elevated yourself into that role. So thanks for being my "Q10" and my best friend at work, making sure -- I know Maika is listening, so

Austin Suellentrop 35:44

I know. I was wondering if you were going to say that with her on the line.

Jim Collison 35:47

I know. I did, I did.

Austin Suellentrop 35:48

I saw her.

Jim Collison 35:49

She is too, though. She is, too.

Austin Suellentrop 35:51

And that's a great part of our science. You can have more than one best friend at work.

Jim Collison 35:54

You can, indeed. Maika, thanks for jumping in the chat room and being part of this as well. We'll be back with a community update here in another month. With that, we'll say, Goodbye, everybody.

Jane Miller's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Self-Assurance, Individualization, Belief, Focus and Maximizer.

Austin Suellentrop's Top 5 CliftonStrengths are Communication, Activator, Futuristic, Belief and Positivity.

Learn more about using CliftonStrengths to help yourself and others succeed:


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