B (2:42)

Oh, bad jobs have become the norm. Let's go.

A (2:46)

Zeynep Tan, welcome to Fixable.

C (2:49)

I'm so excited to be with you.

A (2:52)

We are beyond thrilled to have you on the show today. We're, of course, huge fans and admirers of your work. We are also friends and neighbors, so listeners you're going to hear a lot of love and affection mixed in with all that admiration and curiosity today.

C (3:10)

Yes, both ways.

A (3:12)

So our goal today is to fix frontline jobs. And here's who we're talking about. Grocery store clerks, call center employees, support staff, delivery drivers, people doing the essential work that keeps our world running. Because our society cannot function without these jobs. Today, we want to figure out how to turn these essential jobs into good jobs too. Zeynep, you've essentially started a movement around the idea of good jobs. So what is a good job from your perspective? Is this just about paying people a living wage?

C (3:46)

You know, it's not just about paying people a living wage, but I will say the absence of sufficient pay almost guarantees a bad job. Because at a minimum, a good job must provide dignity, respect and stability. So that means earning enough to support our families, having schedules that allow us to live our lives, and being treated as human beings with a heart and a head, not just a pair of hands. So what I've seen in my work is that when people don't make enough to put food on the table, and if their schedules are changing all the time with very little notice, no amount of recognition or belonging or purpose can make up for it. And sadly, right now, for tens of millions of frontline workers, those minimum conditions are simply not there.

A (4:47)

One of the main points in your work is that good jobs are good for everyone. So if we get this right, customers win, employers win, owners win, stockholders win. So is that the right way to think about this?

C (5:01)

Yeah, that's the core idea. And I think. And you led that with paying more because it's counterintuitive, right? They see there are lower profits or most people think that if companies pay their employees more, then prices must go up. And right now, like, we cannot afford higher prices. But that really is a false trade off because when companies don't invest in their workers, then they operate with high employee turnover. And high employee turnover is really expensive for companies. First, there are direct costs of turnover, you know, recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, time to full productivity. But then there are bigger costs that come from all the mistakes and lost productivity, lost sales errors, et cetera. So yes, maybe companies aren't spending the money on, on people, but they end up spending the money on other things and it oftentimes goes to waste.

A (5:58)

Give us some examples of the good actors here and maybe ground this in companies that you have seen do this well, and what is it that they're doing differently besides getting this counterintuitive point?

C (6:09)

No, Company is perfect. I'll just start with that. When I wrote my first book, that was many years ago, I called four low cost retailers model retailers. These were Costco, Trader Joe's, Quick Trip, it's a convenience store chain with gas stations and Mercadona, which is Spain's largest supermarket chain. And these companies are loved by their customers, they're loved by their employees and they're loved by their shareholders. And what's amazing is that I've studied them like 15 years ago and 15 years later they still outperform. So if you look at for example, the employee side turnover, their employee turnover is dramatically lower than their competitors, which means that they can invest so much more on hiring training without spending more money there. And their performance is so much better too. Costco stock price has grown 18% annually versus 9% of S&P 500s. This is since 1985. Marcadona. When I studied them, their sales per square foot was 70, 60% higher than their largest competitor, Carrefour. So those are like the performance outcomes. They deliberately make lots of different choices. But I think at the core, like the root cause of why is their mindset like the leaders of these companies have a completely different orientation. They are absolutely obsessed with, with creating value for their customers. Like everything in their business drives creating value for their customers. And if that's the objective like that, if that's the obsession, then having a strong frontline engine that can deliver that value is obvious for them. Like they can't afford to operate with high turnover. In fact, if you look at, you know, talk to these leaders, they find high turnover to be unacceptable. All the turnover, the problems, et cetera that come with it as un unacceptable. So they have a very different system that's driven by the mindsets that they have.

A (8:13)

Francis, I'm curious where your beautiful mind is going around this customer employee trade off.

B (8:19)

Where my mind goes though, Anne, is I have heard Zeynep talk about this so persuasively and yet the extended list of who's doing it, it's like it's still a well kept secret almost. And it's not for lack of telling people. I'm still so curious why in 2026 it's so hard for people to do.

A (8:42)

Yeah, let's go there right now. It's a great question and I'll say

C (8:48)

more companies are doing it now than before. There have been numerous examples of companies that have adopted this approach. Walmart was the epitome of the company that's not getting this right. So since then, they made amazing progress.

A (9:03)

Transformation.

C (9:04)

Their Sam's Club, like Walmart's Sam's Club engine, has transformed into one of those model companies.

B (9:11)

I was in the halls of Sam's Club when your ideas caught fire there and really spurred a turnaround, which just gets me thinking, if they can do it at that scale, the rest of us can do it at our scale. So I find this to be very inspirational and aspirational.

C (9:32)

Yeah. And then I can give an example of Mo's Original Barbecue. Two restaurants that did that and changed the lives of their employees and created much better outcomes for their owner, who was so scared to do this because it was his own money. So if you ever go to Maine, go to Mo's Original Barbecue and find the owner, Dewey Hasbrouck, and tell them that, you know, that they're creating good jobs and high performance and great experience for their customers.

B (9:56)

Now,

A (10:08)

Let's push on Mo's for a second, because this is counterintuitive to say, oh, I'm going to spend more on this thing that the market isn't making me spend more on, you know, out of faith that these beautiful things are going to happen. So take us through Mo's journey on this. How did they get over that fear? And how long did they have to wait to see the payoff?

C (10:29)

I think during the pandemic, the owner of these two restaurants lost the love for his business, and he had so many turnover problems. Customers were not happy, and he was fighting fires all the time as a business owner. And then he came across the Good Job Strategy. He reached out to us. We did a workshop. So we spent a lot of time teaching the components of the Good Job Strategy, because understanding the components, how they work together, create a little bit more confidence in the outcomes that you're going to achieve, because they're very logical.

A (11:06)

Let's go through those systems because you point out that there are these four. Four distinct operational choices that. That you need to make. So let's go through the four in the context of MOEs.

C (11:18)

Yeah. So four big components, pay schedules, career paths, expectations. And then, of course, the only way to afford that investment in people is through creating highly productive and motivating work. You can pay people more if they're more productive, and you can make sure that they stay with you if their work is motivating. So Mo's and so many other companies, what they've done, and this is what I've seen at Marcadona, Quick Trip, Costco, etcetera, is they make four operational choices that Work with investment in people to drive strong outcomes. So the first is focus and simplify. And that's about being, being clear about the value you offer your customers and then eliminating everything else that gets in the way of delivering that value and helping employees be productive. So that might mean products, services, tasks, and even requests from the home office. So for their product offering, moles decided to reduce their menu. You know, their menu had more items, they reduced their menu. They used to menu, which is a

B (12:22)

terrifying thing to do.

C (12:23)

It's a terrifying thing to do. You know, one thing I've learned, Francis, working with companies now is how strategy requires courage. Like I've never seen a strategy professor say, strategy is being all things to all people. I don't know if there's one, I haven't met them yet, but it's terrifying.

A (12:42)

It feels safer to try to be all things to all people.

C (12:44)

It feels safer and you guarantee that it will be mediocre for everyone.

A (12:49)

So Moe's simplified the menu that was

C (12:52)

their biggest and they started closing on Sundays.

B (12:56)

Okay, but if things aren't going as well as you want to narrow what people will give money in terms of the number of days and the number of things, I totally see your courage. These feel like very nerve wracking decisions.

C (13:11)

Yeah. And it's nerve wracking, Francis, when it's made in isolation.

B (13:15)

Yeah.

C (13:16)

It's not nerve wracking when the end goal is to improve value for the customer and, and to create a strong frontline engine that can deliver that value. So closing on Sundays is scary because you think about all the sales you're gonna lose. But if you connect that to, hey, now I can provide better schedules, now people have time to rest and I can reduce employee turnover and that enables me to create better value for your customers, then it's a different decision. So what oftentimes ends gets to, why it can be hard to to make the change is because we oftentimes look at organizations in isolation. We look at each decision in isolation and say, what is the impact on sales? What's the impact on sales?

B (14:03)

So if I just close on Sundays, it's not gonna miraculously solve all my problems?

C (14:08)

No. And the other thing they did is, and this is like Frances and I can nerd out about this, is they created more smooth workloads through cleverly deciding when to offer promotions.

B (14:22)

And by promotions there just for our listeners, you mean that's when you offer the discounts? That's when you offer them.

C (14:27)

Exactly, exactly. So if you offer promotions on low traffic periods Then you can smooth the workload, then you can give more hours to your employees. Now you can have more stability in schedules.

A (14:39)

So this is all under the category focus and simplify.

C (14:42)

Yes.

A (14:42)

And now we're standardizing and empowering, and

C (14:45)

that is about standardizing all those routine tasks and management practices, but then empowering people to both improve those tasks and use their judgment to solve customer problems and to improve performance. Once they started stabilizing moles, started getting ideas from frontline employees like, what can we do better? That's a very clear example of empowerment.

B (15:12)

What I love about this, Zeynep, is that when you said up front, you know, you have to design jobs for more productivity and for the work to be more motivating, I wasn't exactly sure what you meant by that, but wow, is it motivating to be able instead of having to do it right every time and somebody's judging you with a clipboard, you get to come up with ideas for improvement and you get to use your judgment to solve customer problems. All of a sudden I have a very different attitude about the job I'm going to every day.

C (15:36)

Yeah. And I can add a lot more value now. And because I add more value, the company can pay me more.

B (15:44)

Yeah.

C (15:44)

So.

A (15:46)

So for the non operations professors listening, just give us the intuition around the connection between standardize and empower, like those two ideas.

C (15:56)

You know, standardization has such a bad rep because the way we think about standardization is like home office things the front lines do and you don't use your head at all. But if you standardize. Right, and we can reduce the mental overburden of tasks that don't even require thinking, now we can use our capacity to make real decisions, to solve real problems, to make a difference for the customer. And in some ways standardization enables empowerment.

A (16:27)

Yeah.

B (16:27)

I would add to that beautiful description is that once you figure out the best way to do something, it's kind of heartbreaking to do it worse than the best way. And so what this allows you to do is figure out the best way. But then you know what? Until there's a new best way, and then we're going to standardize to that, and then we're going to standardize to that. Whereas I bet the bad job strategy, even when the employees can see a better way to do it, they're told to do it in the scripted way. And that's got to be demoralizing and to your point, Zeynep, and then there's no way you're adding extra value, which means there's no way we can pay you more for it.

C (17:02)

And I'll say, I love that, Francis, because if you look at what I wrote about these companies like Macadona, quicktrip, et cetera 15 years ago, what they do is very different compared to now. So if somebody goes and just copies their best practices, oh my God, they've improved so much. I mean, they're constantly using their frontline engine to improve their process product. And that's where the competitive advantage comes from because they're continuously improving value for their customers.

A (17:30)

Okay, so what about number three, cross train? What did Mose do cross train? And how is this helpful to the system?

C (17:36)

So the key about cross training is cross training for customer facing and non customer facing tasks so that you can achieve flexibility, so you can react to changes in traffic. So if you can do some kitchen tasks and front end tasks now, you can move depending on what where the need is. So that's what cross training is. Which means that people are always productive, they're always busy. And again, cross training not just produces flexibility and productivity, but also enables stable schedules because you don't have to change the number of people, you change what they do because they're cross training to do a variety of tasks and then

B (18:16)

the final choice training, it's a maddening thing in a system where I might be idle because there's nothing for me to do and other people have a backlog and I can't help them because I'm not cross trained. So cross training allows us to share the workload across tasks, which is partly

A (18:35)

what leads to the productivity gains in this beautiful system.

C (18:38)

Yeah, and we don't have to cross train everyone. To do everything like that will be another path to mediocrity. But just even a little bit, cross training goes a long way in terms of flexibility.

A (18:50)

Beautiful. And bring us home on the operational choices. Now, Zeynep.

C (18:54)

Yes, the last, my favorite operational choice, operate with Slack. So that means giving people enough time to do a good job, to serve the customers well and to be able to do improvement and so that managers can focus on leading and improving performance versus firefighting. So for Moz, the way that they created slack is by taking out all the unneeded things. They didn't add more people, but they took out workload to be able to create slack in their organization. Because yeah, you can, you know, you can empower people, but if they don't have time, they're not going to be able to make good decisions. If they don't have time, they're not going to be able to suggest improvements. So even having huddles to go through, like, what ideas do you have for improvement requires operating with slack, which is, you know, time I look forward to

B (19:48)

when we start talking about how these rules apply to everyone's life. But I'm just right now looking over the shoulder at all of the executives I see, and their calendars are the opposite of having any slack in them. And I guess I could interpret from what you just said, Zeynep, is that they are going to have a very difficult time having sustained excellence in the absence of slack, because your judgment isn't going to be as good. You're not going to be able to have improvement ideas like you're going to maybe do as well as you did yesterday, but very unlikely to do better than you did yesterday with that.

C (20:21)

Exactly.

A (20:36)

If I'm listening to this conversation and I am not in control of this whole system, but I am a leader of a team or I'm a leader of function, I have some power, but I'm not all powerful. How can I apply some of these ideas within my locus of control?

C (20:53)

I would start with your team and what you need to deliver as part of your team. And where are you falling short? Maybe you're not delivering things on time. Maybe the quality of the product is not good. So start with a problem that you need to solve and then look at the system that drives better outcomes. And you might find out like, hey, the reason our team is always slow is because we're not operating the slack right. People are burned out. We don't have enough time. But don't just add more people. Now step back and consider those choices. So what can we take out? Are there extra meetings? Are there extra things that don't create more value that we can do with that? Where can we standardize? Where can we reduce the mental overburden so people can make decisions? And it could be that you're not operating with slack because there are slackers in your organization. So another part could be like, how do we raise expectations so that we can operate with slack? So I would say find a problem that needs to be solved and then use the system, even as a middle manager in your boundaries to do that. And Francis, you said, you know, I would love to get to how it applies to our lives. I use this all four choices and investment in people in my life all the time. I always give examples to my students. But at the end, I oftentimes say how, you know, investing in people, investing in your relationships and making time for it, using the other four choices that stability is such a force multiplier.

B (22:34)

What's an example? Zeynep, if you can. If you can.

A (22:37)

I know I kind of want to go through all of them, but yeah, start with wherever you're going.

B (22:40)

Yeah, I was going to say I was focus and simplify. Like what's it. Do you have an example that you've done that, let's say in your personal life or at the Good Jobs Institute itself that you've done less, Reduced the menu, reduced the Sunday. Did your version of that.

C (22:55)

Yeah. I mean there are so many things that I don't do. I don't go out to dinner because I want to be home with my family for work related reasons. I don't work with any companies unless they have a low wage frontline workforce. Because the impact that I want to make in my career is to improve the lives of low wage workers and improve the performance of companies that employ low wage workers. I don't choose to teach certain things in my kids school. I choose not to participate in lots of activities. I don't pay attention to my kids homework. Like there I can go on and on.

B (23:34)

So it's a really hard, It's a

C (23:36)

really long list of things. That's wonderful.

B (23:38)

It's wonderful. I love the don't list. I love that. And that's the way to do it. And why don't you go through the other. I also want to hear Zainab on all of these.

A (23:50)

What about operating with. How are you operating with slack in your own life right now?

C (23:55)

Part of it is saying no to lots of things. Part of it is having help in my home for things that I don't want to do. I want to cook. I love cooking, but I don't want to clean up. So like part of it is that when my dad.

A (24:09)

It's a cross training opportunity for the family.

C (24:11)

Well, there's a lot of cross training using my custom, my children as operators. So they do a lot of things. There's a lot of cross training between Carlos and me. Like I focus on the kitchen technology. There are like, he's the tech, we cross train and there's a ton of standardization. I make the same cake for every birthday. It's the same MIT list. I just changed the name of this child and their number. I mean we have the same food. There's a ton of standardization. I call my mom every day, like very routine, standardized.

B (24:44)

So yeah, you make standardization look good. Zainab. I feel like I make standardization look like standardization. You make standardization look good.

A (24:55)

Yeah. So let me getting back to the organizational context. So why do.

C (25:01)

Well, and can I interrupt you for a second?

A (25:02)

Of course.

C (25:03)

I'm going to say I'm going to talk about the two of you because

A (25:06)

of course, well, we always have time for that.

C (25:08)

Zainab, for that.

A (25:09)

Please interrupt.

C (25:10)

Right. But about investing in people and relationships as a force multiplier. Like, look at what you two have been able to accomplish together because of the longevity of that relationship, because you know everything about each other and how to complement each other. And you can probably do so many things that others can't do because you have each other and you.

A (25:32)

And I mean, the cost of turnover would just be too high.

B (25:35)

The cost of turnover is not acceptable. But to your point, Zainab, about the. I really liked how you said that. It's the smart cross training. I can't do the vast majority of what Ann does, but there are a few things she does that I can do and that gives her more flexibility and, and vice versa. And so I bet if we used your four things for the checklist, we could come up with how we as a partnership have done those. And we are very customer obsessed and client obsessed as we do it. And that feels like the noble purpose for it.

A (26:11)

Yeah, I love that intuition, Frances. And that's where it started, I think is like, how can we be of service to our clients and put some substitution flexibility in here? I love that example. So I'm listening. I'm a leader. I want to do this. What should I watch out for? Where do well intentioned leaders get stuck trying to execute this strategy?

C (26:32)

I mean, we already started talking about one of them where they often get stuck is that the good job strategy requires some big bold choices and investments so that require trade offs. For example, investing in pay is scary. Reducing customer offering is scary. It feels very risky. And if they analyze these decisions in isolation, they will almost never make the change. I mean, we work with an organization where we were in the room, everybody decided, yes, we have to pay more along with so many other things. And then their CEO said, what is the return on investment in pay when you do that isolated analysis using historical data like of course, pay a loan doesn't do anything, right?

B (27:20)

No, because you haven't gotten the gains yet. So how can you.

C (27:25)

Exactly. And I'll give one example from Sam's club. When they made their connected changes, one of the outcomes that improved is a labor productivity outcome and they improved it by 16%. Now, if they had looked at historical data previously, they would have 1 or 2% improvements in labor productivity. They could have never imagined that upside. They did all else equal historical analysis. So this is one place where leaders get stuck. So we need to go to the logic and find ways to create confidence in the decisions that they're going to make. I'm not saying don't pilot things, I'm not saying don't experiment, but incorporate the systems view.

B (28:13)

Yeah.

C (28:13)

John Ferner, who is now the CEO of Walmart, when he wanted to raise pay and this was a 5 to $7 pay raise for people who were making about $15 an hour. Now it's a huge change. HR came and said don't do it. Last time we raised pay, it didn't reduce turnover. Finance said it's not in the budget. And then John said, thank you so much for all your feedback. This is what we're going to do and if it doesn't work out, tell the next guy not to do it. So, so it requires that leap of faith, but this leap of faith in something very logical. Yeah, yeah.

A (28:52)

And remind us of the end of the story for Sam's Club.

C (28:55)

The end of the story. I mean within two years their sales improved 25% without opening new stores. They have, they had higher labor productivity, their employee turnover dropped 25% for hourly workers and even more for, for managers. And they used to be like the low performing part of Walmart. They had closed 63 clubs. They were in trouble. Now they're the growth engine for the company. They've achieved so many years of same store sales growth increase. And then, you know, their initial pay raises were for a group of people. But once they got on a virtuous cycle, they started making more and more investment in people. So that was the beautiful thing and they continue on that path.

A (29:40)

From your perspective, what are the stakes of this conversation about good jobs? What can go right and what can go wrong here?

C (29:47)

Oh my goodness. What could go wrong is that we stay with the status quo. I don't know how many people are excited about the status quo. And tens of millions of people continue to be left behind. They work multiple jobs, they can't sleep, they can't take care of their families, live in a vicious cycle of poverty and we continue to have a middle class and tens of millions of people who lack hope. Now a weak middle class and people who lack hope is a really dangerous combination for democratic capitalism. So that's what can go wrong. But what can go right? Let's look at what you know, where we have agency to change is that we actually know how to do this. We know how to create better jobs. We know how to drive high performance companies. And the operational choices that we've been discussing, I didn't make them up. They're not new. They've been around for so many years. We can have confidence in those choices. And those choices have been used in real companies. So what could go right? Imagine the scale of this opportunity. There are more than 40 million people who work in frontline services. More than 40 million people. And if you look at where the job growth is coming from, especially in the age of AI, more job growth is coming from these low wage, frontline service settings. Food services, care, healthcare. Healthcare. If we can improve one in four jobs, that will be more than doubling the factory employment. So that's what can go right. We create a strong middle class and tens of millions of people now have hope instead of desperation.

A (31:37)

I love it. Zainab, you're awesome. You inspire us. The work you do inspires us. And we're so thrilled that you shared yourself with us today on the show.

C (31:47)

You're amazing. This was my favorite favorite podcast of all times.

B (31:54)

If you want to be on Fixable, please call us at 234-fixable, that's 234-349 or email us@fixableed.com.

A (32:14)

Fixable is a podcast from ted. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris, and me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Rahima Nasser from Pushkin Industries, and our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Baloraiso and Roxanne Hylash.

B (32:32)

And our show was mixed by Louis at Storyyard.