The Experience Strategy Podcast: Ecosystems of Wellbeing

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2020 reminded us that Wellness touches every part of our lives. As a result, companies are quickly discovering that workplace wellness is much more than in-house gyms, mindfulness apps, and healthy food in cafeterias. In this episode, we welcome Mia Kyricos, a globally respected thought-leader in the business of wellness, to explore the rapidly evolving landscape of Wellness and a uniquely integrated approach for helping organizations across all industries create purpose-driven wellness strategies designed to make companies, brands, services and colleagues inherently well.

Introduction: [00:00:00] This is the Experience Strategy Podcast. Where we look at the best and the worst customer experiences and ask what were they thinking? And now here are your hosts experience nerds Dave Norton, and Aransas Savas..

Aransas Savas: Hello and welcome to the Experience Strategy podcast. I'm Aransas Savas.

Dave Norton: And I'm Dave Norton.

Aransas Savas: Today we are going to wade into the rapidly evolving world of wellness with our guest Mia Kyricos. Mia is a globally respected thought leader in the business of wellness and brand strategy with two decades of experience cultivating wellness, hospitality, healthy lifestyle, and travel brands across over a hundred countries. As President and Chief Love officer of Kyricos and Associates a strategic advisory and referral firm, Mia advances the trillion dollar [00:01:00] business of wellness by activating ecosystems of wellbeing that span both commercial and internal business interest. Previously she was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Wellbeing for the Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Chief Brand Officer for Spa Finder Wellness and Vice President of the Workplace Wellness Division at Exos. Recently she was named the leading woman in wellness and Cornell University's alumna of the year. Her work and expertise has been featured in New York Times, LA Times, Skift, Smart Money, Hotel Business, Travel Weekly, Market Watch. The list goes on and on. She sits on the advisory boards of the Esteemed Wellness for Cancer, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, and the Global Wellness Institute. We are so thrilled and honored to have her join us today and introduce us to her [00:02:00] proprietary integrated framework for helping businesses respond to the rapidly evolving demands of consumer expectations related to what it means to be well. And she's gonna tell us why she believes that more love is always better.

We're also gonna hear it from my co-host, Dave, about recent research he's been doing to better understand consumer's expectations of systemic approaches to experience strategies. This is an action packed episode, so get ready and hopefully we'll find some universal themes in these bits of research and understand how they're really impacting experience for wellness, yes, but so far beyond. Mia, welcome. Thank you so much for being here today.

Mia Kyricos: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Aransas Savas: So Mia, please just start off by telling us a little about the mission of Kyricos [00:03:00] and Associates.

Mia Kyricos: Sure. Really we exist to legitimize the business of wellness around the globe. And I say that because I think we have a real opportunity to use wellness as a strategic differentiator in business and in life. And it's our mission to help companies do just that.

Aransas Savas: Incredible. When you say legitimize the business of wellness, what do you mean there?

Mia Kyricos: I mean that too often I think when we, all think about wellness and it's different to each and every person. We don't always take it seriously enough in a business setting, and it really can impact the bottom line. And I really enjoy helping companies and people and entrepreneurs, private public sector, you name it, really understand the benefits of leveraging the wellness of people, planet, and community. As a strategic business driver.

Aransas Savas: Say more about that.

Mia Kyricos: Sure. I think we [00:04:00] all know our frame of reference for workplace wellness, for example, has really been programs that have had mixed success over the last several years. And I think if we can shift from focusing on bringing wellness into the workplace as programs or perks and really shift to how we work and how a company operates. I think there's a real opportunity to make impact both for colleagues and consumers alike.

Dave Norton: That was the question I was gonna ask you is when I think about wellness, the first thing that runs through my mind is some sort of a employee program that's being run. And of course I want to know how do you think about wellness holistically within a company, that's fascinating, and with a company's clients that sounds really fascinating.

Mia Kyricos: Sure. I look at it and I think your frame of reference is probably what most people think [00:05:00] of. It's more a program or maybe it's a free gym or maybe it's a subscription to a mindfulness app, or maybe it's healthy food in a cafeteria, for example, or staff lounge.

But I think we have a much bigger opportunity to shift to think about the future of how we work. Because I think now it's not just about what we do or from where, but how we work. So how we show up to meetings how we care for our team members. How we better support remote work. If we're really thinking of that through the lens of optimizing people's wellbeing, that's significant.

And so we look at things much more systematically versus just a program because typically they have fleeting success and our goal is to make it much more about your DNA.

Dave Norton: And so you wanna look at it systemically. You want to understand systemically what's [00:06:00] going on. What are some of the tools that you use to help people understand systemically what's going on?

Mia Kyricos: We like to identify what I call an ecosystem of wellbeing. One that really considers both internal and external stakeholders and how they all work together, right? So a company might come to us and say maybe they offer products and services that are wellness related, that they like to optimize, launch a new product or something they're coming in from the goal of being focused on consumer wellbeing. Another company might come to us and say, the nature of work's changed dramatically. We're concerned about the rising mental health concerns of our employee base. We really wanna look at this from a program standpoint, from employee side of the equation.

And then what I do at that point is say well, why don't we look at this a little more holistically? Internally, you have leaders that are setting the charge and how they work and how they set the charge, so to speak, affects the overall wellbeing of colleagues. So let's look at that. [00:07:00] And then if the leaders are well, they'll turn around and work better alongside their teams, model better behavior, care about how they work and live and if they're happy those colleagues then turn around and better impact consumers because of the brands, the products, the services that they bring to market.

Consumers ideally become more well, and then they are creating the fabric of their community. And then that community starts to become more well, and that feedback loop goes back to leaders and it keeps repeating. And so our goal is to really look at it much more holistically than just a piece of the pie, if that makes sense.

Dave Norton: It does.

Aransas Savas: I love that infinity loop that you're creating of wellness, that each of these are creating greater wellness and deepening wellness within not just individuals, but businesses, and then into communities and hopefully into the world. I love to think about the ripple effects of these [00:08:00] things, and to me that is what is always behind a great mission.

Now, Dave, I know you've been doing some really important research around consumer expectations about systemic services and goals. Does anything Mia is saying here, strike you or surprise you?

Dave Norton: Mia, it's wonderful to find a kindred spirit when it comes to wellness. I've always been a bit surprised by what corporate culture has called wellness, a wellness program. It seems like on one hand we have like amenities that are given. Maybe you have access to a gym or something along that line, or maybe it has something to do with health benefits, right? They wanna make sure that the health benefits are our there for people and people are actually getting healthier in some way, shape or form.

But you are coming at this from a very different place. You're looking at it holistically. And what I like about [00:09:00] that is that in some of the research that we've been doing, we've noticed that consumers, when they talk about meaningful experiences, , they talk about this holistic, ecosystem friendly kind of approach to things.

They talk about things like positivity and balance, and being able to have the right frame of mind which I don't think you would've seen 20 years ago. I think they would've had a very different idea of what a meaningful experience is. How did you arrive at that particular insight that it needed to be holistic?

Mia Kyricos: Oh, such a good question. I'll tell you, I did not come out of a box this way. This is the result of a lot of falling up and falling down and falling back up again. In my previous chapters of my life, I've actually had to lead wellness and wellbeing for different companies. Hotel companies and a whole, a different group from some angle [00:10:00] my responsibility was to lead wellness or wellbeing, and it didn't necessarily have all the pieces. A lot of it was focused on commercial health and wellness for consumers. So for example I led health and wellbeing for a major hospitality company and my job was to look at health and wellness and how it shows up at a hotel stay or in between hotel stay and over time also how we cared for the wellbeing of colleagues that were responsible for those guest days.

I bring that up because what I learned during those years of my career is that if you are trying to implement a wellness program or a wellness experience in a system that's inherently unwell, it's going to be fleeting. It may not even be memorable. But typically when you're looking at the colleague, you can offer all those perks and you gave some great examples.

But if they're going back to their desks, then they don't feel like they can leave their desk or they feel like they can't take [00:11:00] advantage of the perks or they don't ever feel like they can shut down or their vacation and time off is not respected and the list continues. Benefits that they may have experienced from that experience or that perk is here today, gone tomorrow?

And so I realized, over probably after about a decade of having, I would say reasonable success commercially, but not systemically. That I thought, gosh if we need to do this well, it's going to have to start with the leaders. It's gonna also have to be with the colleagues. We're all gonna have to meet in the middle, and it's gonna have to be a team effort, but it has to be committed from the top down and the bottom up.

Aransas Savas: Yeah. That's where these things fall off. Somewhere in that infinity loop, there is a break. And so I think what you're saying here makes so much sense to find the ways to create continuity and value at every point in this process. One of the things we talk about a lot on this [00:12:00] show is the value of time well spent.

And what I hear in everything you're saying is that you are adding value for the customer whether the customer be the employee or the end user of the services by adding value and impact and meaning to their personal wellbeing. Now, I know you do a lot of research on the state of wellness. I would guess that this last year has had more of a transformative impact on people's needs with regard to wellness and their expectation of wellness, then maybe any year, possibly, certainly in recent history if not overall. What are the major shifts that you have been witnessing in your research?

Mia Kyricos: I think you hit the nail on the head. I think our last frame of [00:13:00] reference pre pandemic really was 9 / 11, right? We were shook to the core and we were reminded of our mortality and we saw renewed sense of our humanity and also, sacrifices we weren't willing to make anymore, right? About our own health and wellbeing, and reminded of what was important in life.

Then 2020 happened. And now of course, into 2021, and that frame of reference has changed, and I feel like it's tenfold because the whole world has been grounded and we've had to really rethink what's important in this life and the impact and connectivity that our wellness and wellbeing has on one another.

Really in the last 18 months covid has really just served as a catalyst for all things well I think if companies were flirting with it before, they're dead serious about it now, and that was born out of problems that we knew [00:14:00] existed prior to the pandemic. Things like worsening mental health in our country and certainly other parts of the world as well.

Those things have become exacerbated, but also the demand for and the consumption of wellness related products and services have been on the rise. Everything from travel. Yes. Travel to workplace wellness, and all the spaces in between really have just accelerated and also real estate is another example.

People are wanting to focus on where they live and increasing the health and wellness of that. So we're really seeing across every sector around the globe really a renewed focus on wellness and wellbeing of people, but also I think most compellingly planet and community. Because I think we're all realizing how much they're linked.

Dave Norton: And it strikes me as you guys talk about this, that there's no way for companies to go back to the wellness program the way it was before [00:15:00] 2020 where you have this program of the month mindset, right? Because nobody's gonna fall for that anymore.

They weren't falling for it before, but they put up with it because it was part of the culture. They knew that these things happened. Now they're going to want something that fits into their lives that really helps them to address stress, to address anxiety or depression or whatever it is that they're trying to deal with or their family life or remote work. You can't simply come to them with just a simple solution anymore. You really need to look holistically. So kudos to you for being right there at the right time with that kind of an approach.

Mia Kyricos: Thank you for saying that. That's very kind. I think you hit the nail on the head. A very pragmatic example is think of all of the offices we were attempting to make right by, the way the desks were set up, the lighting, the fitness center that was offered, all of these things. And now most [00:16:00] people were forced to work at home that weren't designed for work at all and brought their problems with them. If they're feeling stressed or anxious, and for those lucky enough to be left behind and not impacted by layoffs and right sizing efforts, they're left with far less resources, less time, and in spaces that weren't designed for work. Juggling the dog, the cat, the kids, the in-laws, the whoever they're caring for. So practically speaking, we've been forced to get real in many ways and not just do check the box on the program, but get real with how it is to live and work in 2021.

Aransas Savas: I love that. Dave, listening to all of this, how do you predict this will influence experience strategy in the coming year?

Dave Norton: Aransas, you talked about the importance of time well spent, and traditionally we have thought about time well spent as you line up these moments for people. First you line [00:17:00] up a benefit moment for them and then you line up a service moment for them and then you line up a I don't know, a diagnostic moment for them. That's not how I think people are thinking about time well spent going forward. I think they're thinking about the relationship between this activity that I'm doing in my personal life with this activity that I'm doing in my work life. And how those things have to come together. So I suspect that in the future, experience strategists will be looking much more at dynamic relationships, trying to understand those dynamic relationships and design for the systems that support them.

In the research that we're doing, we found that most consumers, and when we're talking about consumers we're talking about the way that they think about their personal life, but also the way that they're thinking about their work life. Most consumers [00:18:00] believe that they have systems in place and that those systems were disrupted by 2020.

And now what they have to do is create even better systems that are going to allow them to move forward. If all you're doing is staging one experience after another for your employees or for your customers you're gonna miss the boat in the future. In the near future. You really need to be looking holistically.

And I think that we're starting to hear people talk about the whole person, allowing the whole person to come to work because we had to, right? Because they were working from home and the kid came running in and was upset and mom just had to respond In that moment, that's the whole person right there.

The whole person is now a reality that we should be focused on and maybe the work situation cannot support everything about the whole person. Maybe that's not the role of [00:19:00] work, but we need to recognize that there is a whole person there and we can play a role in helping them to feel more successful. And by helping them in that particular part that we're doing for them, we make them a better worker. We make them a better person generally. That's where I think we need to be headed.

Aransas Savas: I love that. Again, so integrated in rippling. And Mia, this is a perfect opportunity I think to jump into something I feel like you've really become known for recently, which is the idea that love can be a business strategy. What do you mean by that?

Mia Kyricos: Yeah, that's a great segue. Yeah, I went on this quest in 2020 when we all had a little bit of extra time on our hands. I always had this theory that what if we institutionalized love. And love, not just the romantic kind although that sounds lovely, but what if we institutionalized love in a business setting, could it [00:20:00] stand to impact performance?

Because at the end of the day, you could believe in the wellbeing of people, planet, and community. But these are businesses that we need to support. And love is really a form of positivity. There's 10 different forms. Love is its supreme form, but things like gratitude, hope positivity, those are all different forms of love.

And if you could somehow bring it into a business setting, maybe influencing how you start off meetings, if you decide from an HR standpoint to manage to people's strengths versus focusing on compensating for their weaknesses. And there's a number of other practical things. And what I learned is the answers emphatically yes.

The quest took me to some really cool companies that are looking at love much more strategically than a marketing effort. But a car company, an airline, an insurance company. And I just was so excited and it really ended up becoming my beacon of [00:21:00] 2020 was becoming an evangelist of really making love a business strategy.

Aransas Savas: The thing I love about that in the context of this conversation is that it is inherently linked to taking a holistic view of human beings and looking at the interrelated and deeply integrated systems in which these human beings live. Knowing that our listeners, Mia, come from all walks of life and I know you have lots of experience and expertise in the hospitality industry and then the wellness industry proper as well beyond that. But knowing that these folks run aerospace companies and hair salons, what should they take away from this, given your expertise?

Mia Kyricos: I just think we're humans first and worker second. Nothing links us more [00:22:00] authentically really than our own humanity. And I think the greatest gift of 2020, the blinders are off and we're seeing people as they're meant to be seen. Their whole people that work as part of their lives is not their whole lives.

And they're trying to live life fully and well, caring for the people that they love and those around them. And I think to the extent that we can not over architect how we work, but think more about how we treat one another. It's such a little but profound shift. And when I think of the experience side of the equation and the background that you just highlighted for the listeners, I think experiences best friend is empathy, because only then can you design the world's best experience is if you are really attempting to walk in someone else's shoes.

And I think that's what we've been reminded [00:23:00] of in 2020. And I think if we can apply that to not just how we live, but how we work and how we show up for the people we care about that alone, you know don't have amnesia, is what I'd like to say. That's really the biggest takeaway from 2020. Let's take these learnings and let's apply them to the future of life and work as we move forward together.

Aransas Savas: I love that. Here we are, humans connecting over something so fundamentally important to our, not just survival, but to thriving. Dave, what other takeaways do you want folks to walk away from this episode with,

Dave Norton: I heard somebody in the banking industry recently say that we're all in the wellness business now, and I think the specific thing that he said was, we're all in the health business now, but he meant the wellness business. And by that he meant this is the opportunity area [00:24:00] that everyone needs to be paying attention to. And we all have a role to play. It's not just the role of HR anymore. Everyone has to play a part in supporting people, groups of people, not just individuals. That's another big takeaway for me is we need to be thinking from an experience strategy standpoint about the relationships between workers, the relationships between family members, and how we support them, not just the individual consumers. So there's a lot for us to really be focused on, and this is a true new frontier to go after.

Aransas Savas: Love it and talk about something that impacts experience literally at every moment and every touchpoint. For anyone listening, I hope that whatever you are responsible for in your company, in your life and leadership, [00:25:00] that you take this as a friendly reminder that we are all humans doing our best and just trying to be happy and well, Mia, thank you as always for bringing the inspiration, the clarity, and the important reminders. Dave and I are so happy to host you today. And to all of you listening, I hope you gleaned some powerful insight from this episode.

Mia Kyricos: Thank you both. I had a great time.

Closing: Thank you for listening to The Experience Strategy Podcast. If you're having fun nerding out with us please subscribe, and share wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Find more episodes and continue the conversation with us @experiencestrategypodcast.com.