Post by Jason Allen Ashlock

Sometimes I can’t remember when I first met important people in my life. And it drives me crazy. I care deeply about origin stories and inciting incidents. And yet, for the life of me, I cannot recall the first time I met Stefan Minder. So forget the firs time (clearly I have). Let’s talk about the last time I saw him. A party bus. Las Vegas. Lights blinking, music bumping. Stefan's at the front. Dancing. The scene tells you everything you need to know. One of the most charismatic, authentic, relational leaders I've ever known, Stefan's charm is partly due to his lack of self-concern. The man is fully in the moment, entirely comfortable in his own skin. It makes him centered enough to ask hard questions, to laugh easily, to put the seriousness of any situation in perspective. In Vegas, the stakes weren't exactly low. It was a massive leadership event, with a crowd of hundreds, and a new strategic roadmap in the offing. Stefan's role was central to the new narrative. He'd spent years in top line management positions, and held an all-encompassing view of the business. And, critical to my work, he'd been an eager first mover in our service transformation. Those two things didn't always go hand in hand. You are likely not surprised to hear that experienced business leaders don't always jump at the chance to become CX / EX change agents. The old way, after all, had gotten them pretty far, made them good money, won them top jobs. Why change now? Stefan was different. It was in his nature to see the people dynamics as core to the service experience. So when our culture work was in incubation, Stefan was an early godfather, taking diligent notes in each of our meetings, among the first to grok the connection between EX and CX. Once he did, it became a flag he waved wherever he led, in every team and site. Over the years, our partnership became friendship, but I never lost the butterfly feeling you get when you're in the presence of someone you admire, someone you'd like to be like. At a leadership off-site in Switzerland, we stayed up late drinking wine and talking shop. The next morning, I'm slow to wake. And the first thing I hear is tennis being played. 7am. Stefan laughing on the court. He has the stamina of a man half his age. And the hair too! At some point I couldn't help it: I had to ask him how he managed to keep his hair such a perfect blend of salt and pepper. He looked around to ensure no one was listening, and whispered his secret. When, in his final act with KN, he stepped up to lead the next stage of the CX / EX journey, our partnership changed. He was the leader of the transformation story now. And I was his second. Watching him marshal everything he had built into a new narrative for the organization...now I was the one taking notes. Image: 2018. KN's LA office, where Stefan redesigned almost everything to create an employee experience worthy of our claims. This is #90 / #100KNStories. #NoAI = Every word is mine.