Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:12 If you almost think of the startup journey as trying to kind of build a vehicle and go through the forest or go down a path, right? The bumpier that road is for your employees, the people inside of the vehicle with you, the more energy they're going to spend, trying to smooth that road out so they can continue your job as a leader is to create an environment in which the people who that you've hired, who are great at what they do can focus on operating from a place of strength and achieving the results that you've agreed are the, both the company's results and the individual's results, rather than just getting out of their way. You know, I think what we want to do is just hire good people and then pave them a road to success.
Speaker 1 00:00:56 Um, well, just to get started following a short break off air, we're officially kicking off a series two of sailing so far, and we are now officially available to listen to on your favorite podcast platform, what Spotify or Apple or Amazon other podcast providers are available, of course, um, which is really, really exciting. And, uh, over the next few months, we'll be having really candid conversations with tech founders and people leaders talking about how they built and scaled their team though, which is always my favorite part, um, and chat to some really remarkable minds in the startup and scale-up phase. Um, so welcome to a dose of behind the scenes insight to help get fire, a people first approach to business and beyond. And I'm really proud to kick off this theory, this first one with Simon to Jesus Rodriguez, Simon, his chief of staff at the company that you've hand picking content for leading publication and turning them into audio that you can listen to anytime anywhere.
Speaker 1 00:02:05 And we'll hear a bit more about Curio from Simon later. Um, but having previously held the role of chief of staff at high-growth tech startup.com, Simon has done has a ton of experience partnering closely with founders and CEOs delivering daily success. That was a mouthful. Welcome to the show. How are you a lot of questions in that? Thank you very much for having I'm very excited to be a guest on the show. If we can put 2020 where it is, uh, I think more than enough has been said outside of this forum, but I'm very, very excited and happy to be talking about an audio platform on a podcast as well. So be prepared to venture into the world. Tell us a little bit about your story. Um, have you always been in,
Speaker 2 00:03:01 So yeah, I actually have not always been in startups with people roles. I began my career at Bain and company in the U S in Boston, Massachusetts doing your very textbook classic associate consultant up through to consultant trajectory. So really kind of ran the gamut in terms of my exposure to different industries and different capabilities and practice areas, which from where I sat was really good for sharpening a lot of these strategic and operational skills that I would go on to use quite a lot. And some of the generalist roles that I took later. So after Bay and, um, took a little bit of time off and that time off was really an opportunity I think, to reflect on, you know, when you leave Bain, you're kind of given this really powerful and extraordinary leave, valuable generalist toolkit, but then you're faced with is really difficult question, which is okay, you're a Swiss army knife, you know, which true you're going to go and cut down.
Speaker 2 00:03:57 Right? So, uh, took that time off to think about it. And it really just became evident to me that to have a direct impact, to be working with really an energizing folks, uh, who tended to come from a bit more atypical insecurities, you know, career tracks, startups, and scale-ups felt like the right opportunity for me. And, uh, scale up was a little bit less risky than a startup. Um, and initially for me to kind of dip my toes into the pool, to go from a highly structured environment to something a little bit more uncertain. And that's where I found nested, um, really enjoyed my time there, starting working in business operations more on the strategic and operational side of things through to working as Matt Robinson's chief of staff for a bit at the end of my tenure. And so it was kind of at that point where the strategy started to intersect to the more people focused side of things, because I think what you realize, um, or you might begin to be tempted to believe as an analyst or biz ops associate, is that, you know, enough strategy and enough data and enough analysis will get you to the optimal outcome.
Speaker 2 00:04:58 That's can be an assumption that you can build on over time. And the closer I got to the chief of staff role, and even now, the more I realized that the power of really driving results in these organizations, particularly in startups that can be so ambiguous. And at times chaotic it's to take the lens of looking at the person, looking at their motivations, looking at their support networks, their professional development trajectories has really the fundamental unit that any company, right. It is always the people that produce a product that create profit. And that is the logical sequence of things, right? The product is not the product in that sense. The people are the company that produces the product. So that's how I got to where I am now. And since then have been able to focus a little bit more on actually trying to drive some of the people's side of things indirectly through that operational sense. I think a lot of similar people leaders will find that the boundary between people and operation is typically very, very blurry and particularly in early stage startups, when you're trying to figure out what someone's role is, and that's kind of critically linked with things like their title, their professional development trajectory and their own motivations.
Speaker 1 00:06:04 Wow. Um, I think I've, well, I don't think I know I've worked with people with similar kind of background before, particularly, um, when I was back at LinkedIn and Google, where they had like really big ops teams that had the kind of background that you do. And I don't have to say, like, from my own experience, I did spend an enormous amount of time collaborating with those teams. So to hear that, you know, in your role that that's been similar in that even, you know, somewhat, um, sort of smaller startups and that kind of thing. But if there is one phrase that I'm going to take from what you just said, it is on a Swiss army knife, and I needed to figure out what tree to cut down. I think that is such an amazing analogy for the experience that you get when you move from consulting and then go into the broader world. And some people go into corporate, some people go into scale and startups like you have. So, um, yeah, what a, what a brilliant way to describe that. And so now you're the chief of staff at Curio. Can you tell me a little bit about the vision, the mission and kind of the purpose of Syria, what you guys are doing?
Speaker 2 00:07:03 Absolutely. I think a lot of startups say that, you know, they're out to save the world and I don't think we're trying to save the world, but fundamentally we're trying to use the power of audio to make people in their day-to-day lives, just a bit more empathetic, uh, fulfilled and hopefully wiser if we can. Um, the premise of Korea was really based on this kind of fundamental realization that there is so much valuable content, particularly within the journalistic realm that is trapped either behind paywalls or it doesn't get the light of day on the front page of different newspapers and things. Um, whether that is an article in the Ft, that might be a long read on climate change, whether that's a piece of artificial intelligence thought leadership in the MIT tech review, right, there is really, really good content where as a society we're sinking and normous amounts of time developing that really doesn't get democratized.
Speaker 2 00:07:55 And audio today is a medium that is both picking up in prevalence and penetration as we have new smart technologies that allow it to become the case. And from a consumer behavior standpoint, it's just becoming really easy to embed in the day to day, whether it was pre COVID, where listening to podcasts kind of replaced rate video on the way to work or your commute, or even today, when we kind of see behavior shifts and people want to listen to something to be stimulated, to get the company while there are out on a walk or cooking or doing the laundry. Right. So really it's about saying, how can we take all of this trapped content and try to democratize it in a way that's super easy to use for our users. Um, and then to build a really sort of valuable curation layer on top of that.
Speaker 2 00:08:42 Um, simply because there's so much content in the world that today, you know, if anything, we're paralyzed for choice, whether that's with entertainment or with things that we listened to. So what does that mean that we do right at Curio, we pay professional actors to read out what was previously written articles from a number of publications, like the wall street journal, financial times, and the guardian to read these tracks to you. Um, and where we're at as a company is really interesting and closed our series a earlier in the year. Um, and that means that it's all about going from being a very high powered team to building the backbone and the skeleton of a company. Right. Um, and I think there's a subtle mind shift that happens, that where you're saying, okay, we're going to start to specialize a little bit. We're going to start to formalize, uh, some of the things that we know into certain processes and systems, and juristics just to reduce friction and the way that we produce our high powered results. And in the process, let's bring some more people on this journey to see how much more we can really get done.
Speaker 1 00:09:41 Fantastic. I have to admit everything that you've just said is really kind of, um, uh, evoked like a real passion in me because I also used to read everything all of the times. I'm one of those people who's old enough to have magazines subscriptions once upon a time. And I didn't do any of that anymore. And I think, yeah, like how much information, how much knowledge, how much curiosity, um, is not being leveraged anymore because we don't access those platforms. Um, those aren't media anymore. So it's a, it's a fantastic proposition. Um, what's your journey been like at Curio so far?
Speaker 2 00:10:18 That's a great question. And I have to be honest, the reason that I ended up joining Curio was because, uh, I was a user of the product before I was actually sort of involved in the hiring process. My journey has been an interesting one. So I joined, um, back in may. So after the initial sting of lockdown had already begun, um, but still fully remotely and had done the entire hiring and onboarding process completely remotely. Um, now it's interesting because the, the job spec and the need of the job for me to join was really to say that we had a team of pretty specialized, strong experts across the company. And that had been working really well to get us to the point to prove what we needed to do for series a and bringing on someone like a head of operations or a chief of staff, which is what the role ultimately became was a way of saying, we know that there are some things that we need to get down so that we can just say, since you didn't operate a bit more quickly, right.
Speaker 2 00:11:15 Um, can we have someone who has the ears of the co-founders and can work across all of the managerial layer to ultimately drive whatever results we needed? So when I joined, it was a very broad remit. And then the past six months, uh, what I work on kind of fluctuates, I think, across four different verticals, right? There's one vertical, which is kind of the strategic aspect of what I do, which is talking with the co-founders to help them think through long-term company strategy, financial planning, or preparation. I think that's the textbook strategy that a lot of ex-consultants are familiar with was the second piece, which is operational, which is just about saying, Hey, what do we do today? How do we it, and do we need to rethink say our meeting cadence or the way that we run our all hands or the way that we do OKR and providing as much support as I can to facilitate those different processes?
Speaker 2 00:12:04 The third piece is really focused where I can start to focus on the people and the HR side of things, which is to say we're really, really lean team. And that means that the people function that we have is super lean as well. So how can we take what we have build on really the beginning of a really strong culture and try to turn that into something that's repeatable and scalable without losing that magic of what makes a series a company. And the last piece is just trying to get involved in the data aspect of things, because to build a data driven business, part of that is using it to drive strategy. And part of it is just then to embed it and kind of evangelize that to the entire team as your data stack evolves. So those four can span quite a lot of the entire company.
Speaker 2 00:12:44 And ultimately I'm really happy that I get to sit across all of those and keep a really close pulse to see what the business needs at different times. So the first six months has been a lot of listening, a lot of relationship building, trying to do the necessary things first. So do all hands the way that we think we need to get it done, try to get an OKR process up and running in the way that we do, um, be Mr. Fix it as, and when as needed to jump on things, as they arise, try to free up some capacity from different teams for different strategic meetings or board preparation. And I think the really exciting thing is that in 2021, um, we will have coalesced a lot of the hires that we made on the back of series a I'm sure a lot of folks out there can empathize with the first three to six months of that new period where you get a lot of new, uh, head offs or manager level hires that you make series a, it's a really catalyzed development. And that frankly just takes, you know, several months to get all of the butts in the right seats and understanding who is doing what, um, COVID has compounded that. So 2021 really becomes a year of aggressive top line growth for us and internally saying, okay, we know what all the pieces are now. Let's just put them together to build something really cool.
Speaker 1 00:13:53 And I think it's really interesting, like so many people that I've spoken to in this series of podcasts that you're really prioritizing culture at such an early stage as well. And making sure that even in the remote work landscape, that that culture is a core part of how you build your organization, whether that's from a process standpoint, from a people standpoint, product standpoint as well. I mean, it, it really does permeate so much of what we do in, in the space that we both work in. Um, what's some of the biggest learnings that you've had in the, in the time that you've been at interior. I imagine probably quite a few based on what you just said
Speaker 2 00:14:29 For sure, but I do want to go back and talk to them. One thing you just touched on around culture, because I think it's, I think it's so right. And there are two, two big things that I think, um, on that point that are so important about trying to be really fought and even talking explicitly about what type of culture you want to build. One is so many founders and early stage entrepreneurs will know that look, your, your job, or one way to look at your job is to say me, I need to make decisions with imperfect information that maximize upside and reduce risk, right? And so many of those decisions, especially on the people side, or even on the procedural side, will often come down to value judgments and being super clear about what those values are, whether it's something as small as the timeline and the speed with which you give feedback to an interview candidate as to whether or not they got, or what that feedback was, um, or the way that you are going to decide to carve up a new function in the business across an existing hire versus a new hire who's maybe more senior, but less tenured at the company, right?
Speaker 2 00:15:27 All of these set your company up on a particular inertia path effectively for the culture. And that makes it very much a today problems that if you're not thoughtful, it can easily become something where you end up in kind of a Nash equilibrium, where you've been making decisions that may not be optimal, which is why I think when we think about institutionalizing, a lot of these policies or processes, whatever they may be, um, culture needs to be at the floor. And to say from a values perspective, does this align with exactly what we want to project and do we believe in this? Hmm,
Speaker 1 00:15:57 Thank you. That was not. And it's also like, it's really interesting to hear you talk about some of these things as well, that are quite, um, things like culture and values, like can be quite nebulous, um, for people to kind of comprehend how you apply that and thinking you describe it as relating to decision-making relating to process improvement, you know, makes it real, makes it concrete for, for people who might be out there listening, thinking what could be, you know, cultural values, things that everybody's talking about all the time. So, um, thank you for that. Um, and so back to the learnings, what have been some of your big learnings? Like I said, it sounds like it might've been a bit of a baptism by fire little period. So yeah.
Speaker 2 00:16:40 Well, I think, I think everyone, everyone working at a series a company will, will know that there are always periods of feel difficult. And I think a lot of what we're experiencing today is either COVID related and some of the learnings, I guess in general, too, when you're at a series, a company, you are still in a period of quiet and calm, existential threat, right? You haven't proven it out yet. So you have, you do really have a lot to prove. Um, but I think the, the, the thought that I keep returning to is the following as a leader in some of these early stage companies, the greatest way that you can create leverage and leverage is really the name of the game is to focus on building systems that create an environment of learning trust and accountability to results. Um, so it's kind of a big statement, but unpacking the different bits first is when you go from being a small team of a lot of people executing a larger company that involves specialization, that involves more internal communication.
Speaker 2 00:17:42 Um, and that will feel like you're spending less time executing the actual work and that's a feature, not a bug. So the best thing that you can do as a leader then is to focus on ways through your communications, through your meeting, cadence, through your operations to say, look, I had all of these things up in my head that I used to be able to tell each person individually one-to-one about how we want to get things done, how we make decisions, the number of decisions and the complexity of the org will continue to grow exponentially, but your time is fixed and constrained. So you need to focus on giving your team the tools to think in the ways that you want them to think, whether that's decision-making heuristics small processes around how you do these things, um, or even embedding them in your people processes, right.
Speaker 2 00:18:27 And the way that you think about reward progression and professional development. Um, so while it can be tempting to jump in and solve the fire, it requires a lot of wherewithal to step back and say, you know, is this fire that I'm seeing now symptomatic of something else that is a deeper root cause? And how can I address that root cause such that I solve it once when I sold them for the future forevermore. Um, and really, I think that the way that I've seen that done best is to really focus on learning and trust building, especially in the early phases to be, to give that confidence around relinquishing control and providing more guidance from a high level with kind of less visibility about the day to day. Um, and really when it comes down to it, to, to building trust, which is really especially in a chief of staff where people will trust is the currency of everything that you can achieve.
Speaker 2 00:19:15 Uh, listening is really the best path that I've found to trust building. Um, and it sounds so simple, but it's really, honestly, one of the hardest things that I think I can do in a really hard skill to learn. I don't think it's something that we frankly teach, um, or are taught at any point as to really how to listen well, and to build empathy with the bolts that we're working with. Um, it's not so much like a cockamamie or spiritual or, you know, pseudo-scientific thing. Um, but what I'm talking about is, especially when you're new, especially as you're getting up to speed, or even when, you know, there's a problem and, you know, you need to solve it taking simple steps to ask either your manager or your peer or someone outside of it, what they think, what their experience is, and to try to deeply understand where they are coming from.
Speaker 2 00:20:00 Um, especially when it comes to resolving divergent opinions. I want to come to a decision, um, that listening aspect when I've seen leaders and when I've seen others listen, well, um, it creates an environment in which everyone is left to contribute their best. You tend to see greater workplace confidence, better results, and a sort of higher motivation to accountability, um, in the way that you run those things. So that fundamentally got aspect of listening that aspect to building trust. Um, and trying to build that into your environment is it may sound simple, but it's an incredibly hard to execute in practice and requires doing the work day in, day out in meetings, big and small,
Speaker 1 00:20:39 I have to say, um, you, you mentioned the word, I was, you were talking about building trust. If you were talking about listening and as you were talking, I was thinking empathy, empathy, empathy. And then you said, I'm building empathy. And I know that, you know, particularly in, in very small teams being empathetic towards each other can be quite easy because everybody knows each other really well. And maybe he's working side by side, maybe very closely, really ferociously for a period of time. Whereas, you know, over time as the company scales and you talked about relinquishing control, and again, that's, that's not just the CEO or the, or the founders empathizing with the people they're bringing on board, but the other way around as well, like recognizing that it could be hard for that person to let go, that it could be hard for them to relinquish it.
Speaker 1 00:21:22 You know, they, they baby that they've been working on for such a long time. And, um, and yet, you know what I mean in the workplace? I don't think it's cockamamie. I don't think it's pseudoscience. I've been working in the world for a lot longer than most of my case I've been alive. So I can, I can assure you that it is, you know, regardless of technology, you know, cats, Slack, whatever, it might be, those kinds of things just never go away. Um, is there any early or even recent BS advice or a myth that you've heard about that you would like to just blow apart risk today?
Speaker 2 00:21:58 Um, for sure. I thinking, thinking through this question, you know, at first I think it seems tough because I think there is a lot of good advice out in the world, to be honest, I think a lot of the, I don't think anyone ever gives out malicious advice. I think sometimes the advice is maybe taken out of context or maybe heard and interpreted in a different way. Um, but there are there actually, there are a couple that I think especially recently have come to crystallize in the forefront. Not because it's happened recently, but even going through the thought process of trying to think it through. Um, I think one of the myths that I'd like to correct or debunk is this idea of hiring good people and getting out of their way that's advice I've heard before. Right. Which is like hire the right people out of their way.
Speaker 2 00:22:39 Everyone's heard of that. Yeah. And I think that this, this advice, the way I interpreted it comes from intend to say, we want to build a culture of autonomy, right. And we want to bring in the best people at what they can do. Right. So it come, it starts from the greatest of intention, which is, I want to build a place where I can have smart people feel like they can go and build the company of the future that they, and we all want to build. I think where this goes, awry is in the second half and we say it and get out of their way. Right. I think what can sometimes happen is if you almost think of the startup journey as trying to kind of build a vehicle and go through the forest or go down a path, right? The bumpier that road is for your employees, the people inside of the vehicle with you, the more energy they're going to spend, trying to smooth that road out so they can continue your job as a leader is to create an environment in which the people who that you've hired, who are great at what they do can focus on operating from a place of strength and achieving the results that you've agreed are the, both the company's results and the individual's results, rather than just getting out of their way.
Speaker 2 00:23:46 You know, I think what we want to do is just hire good people and then pave them a road to success. And that looks like simple, um, not overly complex, but robust, uh, policies to say, look, when you come in, this is what the onboarding process looks like. This is what, uh, our approach to professional development looks like setting all of this staff holding up earlier on, not in a very complicated way, but in a regular way and checking in on it. Um, I think that re what that really does is it sets up all of these new hires to say, yes, I'm going to persist through the bumps and bruises that sometimes happen to begin an early stage company. I see what the prize is, both for me and for the company. And therefore I'm going to take all of this great motivation that I have and really take us to new Heights. Um, and so I think that really comes from, I think a lot of folks say, yes, I want my good people to ask for what they need, you know, and a lot of good people do do that, but I've also met a lot of really high performers who are self sacrifices. And as a matter of fact, a lot of the stuff, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1 00:24:47 Right?
Speaker 2 00:24:48 And so if we leave our employees to fend for themselves, they may burn themselves out. And that's a net negative, both for the individual and for the company. So the kind of solution, and the question I ask is what are the simple things we can do to make sure that our people are always feeling engaged, motivated, and growing, um, because their success should be our success as a company. Um, and it doesn't, I think some, some founders may be, you know, uh, wary of words, like process and protocol and things. And I understand that cause we think process bureaucracy, red tape, sclerotic, and slow org. Um, but there are some processes that almost like, you know, again, the scaffolding, if you're trying to build a really big building, right? You wouldn't want to build a cathedral foundation.
Speaker 1 00:25:32 Yeah. You need something that can, that can live on for a while. So, um, I'll just repeat that. So the, the myth was, uh, hire great people and get out of their way, should be hire great people and pave the way for their success is what you said. I couldn't agree with you more. That's absolutely wonderful. I'm taking that one home with me
Speaker 2 00:25:51 Another related one. And I would say it's a myth. I'm not sure if anyone's ever given me advice like this or said this explicitly, but I think it's a hidden assumption that's worth tackling. And this myth is that employee, employee attrition means that you have failed. Um, so attrition is something that, again is not a particularly savory topic, uh, within the startups fear you hear about, you know, things like churn and burn for early stage startups. And you hear about the stresses of working at early stage startups. And then when we think of attrition, because of that negative connotation, we tend to associate that painful feeling tone with the word. And unfortunately I think that that kind of innate, he very human pain avoidance means that we don't think as thoughtfully as we might about attrition and how attrition is actually a really important aspect of the entire employee life cycle.
Speaker 2 00:26:42 And so I think to refresh in the paradigm, I think what the thing that's worth saying here is number one, you know, you need to think about the life cycle, not just of one person, but your entire company. And the reality is that not every hire is going to be the perfect hire, no one will ever have in 100% hit rate. And that was the fact what I'll have to deal with right study after study has proven that we all, as humans tend to overrate our own abilities to make great people decisions. And even if you're great, you won't have a hundred percent hit rate. So that may seem like a little bit of a downer to start with, but here's the good news is right. I think what that means is that if we can just take a little bit more of a dignified approach to the way to be thinking about hiring and onboarding and performance management, you end up in less of these situations where either a, you have a really intractable kind of people issue that you may want to handle or be, if someone's doing a really good job, then you can kind of keep steering them up and up and out, which is the flip side of the attrition equation.
Speaker 2 00:27:43 Now, the reason that I want to say this too, is that sometimes we think that making one dismissal of filling the individual, it can be a really painful thing, right? And a lot of times, if there is a difficult discussion that needs to be had, we tend to avoid those difficult discussions because potentially there wasn't a robust process in place that led us down that track to say, here's warning, sign number one, here's number two. And then the net result is that you have these ruptures where it's kind of these isolated things that have been going on and on and on that don't get dealt with kind of in a forthcoming way, but here's the real rub. And this is what we know about from organizational psychology, which is bad. Sometimes it can be really painful to think about making one of these calls or even having one of these discussions.
Speaker 2 00:28:24 And yet if you don't and you know, there's a problem, we know that having one person on a call or within a team who either is exhibiting some type of behavior that doesn't align with the culture or something that is also detracting from the team's results that you're actually dragging the people down around you. So the impacts you get, if you're not thoughtful about kind of removing someone in a situation and you'll end up basically spotting the good people that you do want to keep, because they're going to be feeling the pain day in and day out. And so to kind of sum it up the way that I would talk about this as it really, you almost want to have a gardening approach to the way you think about people, right? Not every plant that you buy at the shop is going to grow based on the direction of sunlight in your house, the humidity in the air, the temperature, or even just the season and what you decided to buy a plant, right?
Speaker 2 00:29:14 And the second side is yes, if there are we in the garden or something that you don't want in the garden, you need to have a dignified conversation about that and provide that employee the opportunity to get better or to think about their opportunities elsewhere. It's a very difficult topic, but again, from what I've seen ignoring the root cause of the issue, doesn't make it any better. It tends to make it worse. And the longer they persist, the more, the more negative externalities tend to be. Um, and so perhaps it's a little bit of a downer to discuss, but the reason I wanted to say it is that if, look, you do hear about organizations like Netflix, for example, who have a bit more of a golden parachute style separation agreement, um, that's one option of doing it. But really the kind of the reason that I discussed is that the kind of organization that, that I would like to work for, and then I try to enact, and I think others would like to work for is the one where we can all be really transparent about what our progression path look like what's working.
Speaker 2 00:30:10 And if something's not working, having a Frank discussion about that, so that we don't live in this place of anxiety and worry about whether or not it's good enough, or if it's bad, what's going to happen next, right? It's all about giving people clarity and the way the things are coming down the pipeline so that they can take the steps they need to, to be the best team member they can possibly be.
Speaker 1 00:30:28 I will add two points to, to everything that you just shared there. Firstly, um, I think when you're talking about like not having those difficult conversations and, and I've been in human resources or people leadership functions for pretty much my entire career, um, not having those tough conversations, you know, not only has all of the knock-on effects to, you know, toxic culture and all of that kind of thing. It's also damn unfair to the people that were doing a good job. You know, like they're sitting there saying this person beside them, who's not performing, is not pulling their weight and, and what the knock on effect can be that that's a good people might start to leave because they think, well, you know, if that's what they're sort of putting up with, if, if, if that level of performance is okay, well then why am I trying so hard?
Speaker 1 00:31:09 You know? Um, so I think the, the knock on effect more to the, the high potential people and the high performance is even worse than the, than the sort of knock-on of keeping around some bad apples. But equally I wish I had one anecdote, um, from when I worked at LinkedIn, when we started as part about in orientation, onboarding, whatever you wanna call it now, um, might get them who we, at the time with the global head of sales, he would start off the induction by saying, welcome to LinkedIn. All of you will leave at some point. And from the global head of sales, you would sort of think, well, actually he wants to keep everyone around. So it's one of the flexible, and it was very, very ingrained in the culture of LinkedIn to talk openly about the fact that, you know, some people that came to the end of their run, like maybe they were in a particular location or in a particular function that, you know, didn't have a new role for them where they were, or, you know, after contributing and adding tremendous value for four years, it's time for them to go do that somewhere else.
Speaker 1 00:32:08 And that's okay. You know, the idea that we will spend all of our careers working to the same place. Let me tell you that dogs without parents. So their parents generation, you know, like our, our careers, our professional lives as a part of building experiences, building knowledge, building skills, and then, and then taking that somewhere else and sharing that with another group of people. And I think, you know, we know early stage companies, obviously, you don't want people to be leaving, you know, very, very soon after they start, but equally, maybe after two years has what you needed them to do and it's time for them to go do that somewhere else. And that's okay. Um, and sometimes I think people are even afraid of more afraid of having that conversation. And, and I know, um, you know, in a role that I had about, uh, three or four years ago, I actually sat down and with someone who quite young had only ever worked at that company.
Speaker 1 00:32:59 And I said, well, clients, you know, where, where would you dream place for you to work? And he named the place off at all, either head of people at that company. You want me to put you in touch with her and see if there's anything that you could do. And it was absolutely horrified. I said, but you know, if that's the right thing for you, then I'm happy to, to help steward that experience and, and coach you through that. Like I want what's right for you as much as I want what's right for me. And that then means that potentially somebody else can get that opportunity. So I think it's, uh, you know, your perspectives incredibly mature, incredibly, um, you know, well, hold three, one with, with regards to nutrition, it's just, we need to work out a way to get shareholders, to see it from the same perspective, because it's my experience at biting to have even greater difficulty talking about attrition than we do in early stage environments. So, um, thank you. So for, for sharing your perspective on that, um, time climate, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 00:33:52 So those shareholders, I would say, look, if attrition is a fact of life, you can either choose to be smart about it and be smart about it means not saying it and being planful, uh, or you can kind of allow it to, to continue the gardening metaphor, continue a lot, to allow it to grow in the shadows and not really check on it. And then you'll have no idea what's growing in your closet.
Speaker 1 00:34:13 Um, that can be pretty funky for those who've had university accommodation. Um, are there any specific initiatives or focuses that you're looking to put front and center for 2021? You'll, you'll kind of big, big goals, big objectives for next year.
Speaker 2 00:34:30 Yeah. Um, it's a good, it's a good question. And we're really excited for 2021, um, broadly both as a business and thinking through the people function that we have, I think from, from a business standpoint where we're at is very much where a lot of kind of recently funded series eight startups will find themselves, which is we have a core and growing user segment who like what we have to sell and we're providing them tangible value. And now what's really about taking that initial kernel of fit. Um, and trying to turn that into something that is both larger and more sustainable, right. Um, so what a lot of this ends up looking like is there's always going to be continuous product improvements to figure out how we can make that experience a lot more seamless for our users, but also crystallizing our value proposition in the way that we communicate to existing and new users so that our user acquisition just becomes a lot more of a well-oiled machine.
Speaker 2 00:35:25 Right. Um, and I think as we all know, if you're trying to reach a broader audience to reach a new audience, you have to be, you have to really crystallize what you're saying to keep it really simple and bite-size to bring new people in. So we're doing a lot of work, for example, to through, Hey, how can we make this pitch really sharp to help ease those new people into what our product is and help them to see the value, because fundamentally with, with our product, you know, it's, it's similar to a podcast it's, it's similar to other podcasting platforms that you might hear, but we don't yet have a language that's caught up to what say a Curio story sounds like, right? You wouldn't call it a podcast. You wouldn't necessarily call it a track. It doesn't get there. So really trying to push the communications and the way that we talk about ourselves from a people standpoint, um, I think what, uh, what we've learned and what I've learned over the course of the last six months is really just trying to lay a solid layer of the labs for what's happening in the company.
Speaker 2 00:36:15 And I think that leaves us as we kind of dust off and get close to the end of the year, give us a really good opportunity to come out with a robust set of people, initiatives that particularly are supportive on things like, uh, professional development and what that looks like for our teams. Um, and the way I think about this is we have loads of smart, talented folks who are super energized and motivated. How can I make sure that these folks are always supported to getting and achieving their own growth goals for themselves so that we can keep them at Jurriaan build a really sustainable product. Um, and so that begins again, probably with a lot of listening to go around and ask folks what it is they think they need to, what they would like to see. Um, and then trying to, co-create the answer in terms of a pretty robust roadmap. That'll take us through the year and hopefully into series B
Speaker 1 00:37:02 Again, I love the fact that you were already so focused on retention. Um, you know, and in some places early stage, it can be a bit kind of churn and burn. You know, we need these people now let's use them now and then we'll meet other people down the road, and you're really focused on, you know, bringing great people in and keeping them there for the longer term as well, which I think is a pretty unique perspective at series a. So, you know, kudos to you for that. Um, what would you say is that is a challenge when it comes to styling talent and people in an early stage, um, organization that if you had a magic wand, you could kind of wipe it away and it would no longer be that challenge.
Speaker 2 00:37:40 Um, you know, I'm going to say, I'm going to sound a little bit, one note, but to be honest, if I could do one thing, um, I would make everyone in the organization better listeners, I think. And I don't say this because I think I'm the best listener by any means. Um, but when I've seen good listeners, particularly in leadership, uh, if you've ever been in the room with a leader who knows how to listen to their team, incorporate the different information and they come up with a solution to it, I think we've all felt what that's like. And you do feel something different in the room and over time, if you continue to witness it and you see how that leads to better business results, right? Greater clarity and speed of decision-making, uh, which then leads to greater clarity in execution and overall, because everyone has felt heard, they feel like the, uh, the company's direction has listened to what the direction that they want to see is, and in my role, not just the Curio, but kind of beyond, um, and prior to it, I being the kind of person who frequently facilitates meetings tries to facilitate different decision points to a conclusion.
Speaker 2 00:38:41 I have the unique and pretty privileged perspective of seeing how disagreements can become dysfunction and what those symptoms look like. And so often what I've seen is, you know, you get into a group is a decision to be made. There's three or four different stakeholders who each bring their own perspective and they're each having tangential or orthogonal com rotations with each other. Um, and the gist of it is, well, I think I'm right. And here's why I think I'm right. And then somebody coming back and saying, I think I'm right. Here's why I think I'm right, right. Or here's, what's wrong about what you said, and you get a lot of back and forth. And I think what active, really good listening does is it allows us to switch from that kind of a control mindset, which is I'm coming to this decision with an agenda to kind of win the day towards a more of a kind of non zero mutual learning environment will be to come together and say, okay, here's the challenge.
Speaker 2 00:39:34 I maybe have 40% of the perspective that comes from this. She, my assumption, here's my thinking, what do you think, what are you seeing? How can we then triangulate our points of mutual agreement and then try to come up with a solution? And it sounds again, not to make it sound like the end all be all, but I have yet to encounter a challenge where taking a really thoughtful, empathetic listening approach to a decision like this, hasn't at least clarified what's unknown, or gotten us to a really quick point of saying, here's the interim decision, and then we'll revisit. So I think if everyone could be a little bit better at listening, particularly in these store needs issues, we would need less facilitation. There would be less time spent in meetings and nobody really understands what's going on or what the resolution is. Um, and overall, once you get those wheels hunting and people running a bit faster, I think that motivation, um, is a catalyst for even more motivation, right? And it becomes a virtuous cycle of, uh, an organization coming together to learn from each other to make smart decisions and to execute those quickly.
Speaker 1 00:40:31 Um, a few closing questions for you, Simon, is there anything that you listen to or watch for inspiration database?
Speaker 2 00:40:39 Hmm. Um, obviously I listened to Curio every single day. Um, I have to get that out of the way. No, but all shameless plugs aside. There are a few podcasts that I typically return to, I think some relatively big names, 10 versus podcast I'll dip in and out of, um, Sam Harris as well. I'm a big fan of his application on his podcast, making sense. Um, and there's another podcast as well called the knowledge project run by Farnam street and interviewed by Shane Parrish. Again, these were a lot of the classic self-development, um, I would say somewhat and new age information driven podcasts. I really liked them simply because I think you can learn so much from the individual stories of these luminaries. Um, it really human eyes as a lot of the lessons and advice that we're told, but don't always internalize and kind of really feel on an emotional level. Um, otherwise I listened very, very liberal doses of gangster app to get through my day, particularly when it's crunching through admin
Speaker 1 00:41:42 Liberal doses. Yeah. You know, somebody it's show tune for Broadway.
Speaker 2 00:41:52 For me, it's pop smoke, you know, there's nothing more soothing for me than, uh, just a roaring bass drum beating off my ears. And there's one thing that I have to say, especially because I'm back home in Massachusetts at the time of year, um, the film that never ceases to pick me up or inspire me, what I need lifting is Goodwill hunting. Um, it just is the best, you know, it's a classic, uh, I continue to work on my Matt Damon impression for the dollar and 49 cents late fees speech. It picks me up when I'm down. And to be honest, I think there are some, some good lessons buried in there as well, right. About, um, being humble, no matter which environment you come from and also learning to stay true to your roots. So I'll leave you with those.
Speaker 1 00:42:44 I'm so glad that you said that Simon, when you said I'm back home in Massachusetts and in my head just said, I was like, how do you like them? Apples is one of the finest moments of modern. I love it. I love it. And of course Robin Williams is in it, which, you know, uh, for me. Um, and then, uh, finally, is there a people leader or founder or source of inspiration or anyone that you think we should try to secure as a future, get someone that you really admire?
Speaker 2 00:43:15 Sure. So it's giving us a think. And the funny thing was, um, I saw this question in advance and the first person I thought of was Alistair Fraser. Who's now with the people collective. And then I scrolled through your back catalog and saw that you did an interview with his co-founder with people, um, no out. So Al was at nested, uh, when I joined and we didn't work together a ton, but we've been in contact since then. Um, and Al is an absolute mench, um, somebody who just gets it and has it together, um, and understand what needs to be done and as an empathetic sort of classic human being, um, a couple of people as well that I've worked with at message, who I think are just super smart guys and are also working in the people space in the job-seeking space, are Sam Franklin and Fillmore Golia who are two of the three co-founders over at Alta.
Speaker 2 00:44:05 Um, yeah, immense respect for those to work with them and BizOps when I was back at nested. Um, and I think, you know, I think they were, they were clued into something when it came to helping talent find the right jobs within leading startup spaces. And they've seen a lot of growth since then. And I think there's quite a lot of, uh, great thinking behind that. The last person that came to mind is actually someone that I wouldn't say I'm very close with, but I've had actually only one really in-depth conversation with, um, but Emily Lincoln Gordon, who works over at a test who is, um, actually made a connection of mine through, through a mutual friend and colleague, um, and she's working people roles in the past, um, has a legal background as well. She's now general counsel at a test. And I think it's, I've found it incredibly rare to find someone who is at the nexus of having a super, super sharp operations brain layered on with just a solid set of core values and empathy when it comes to communicating with folks.
Speaker 2 00:45:11 And it's just an expert communicator. Oh. And on top of that, she's general counsel as well. So not locking in the brand's department everywhere. Um, and I remember that one, we had a one hour conversation and I left that, uh, you know, feeling more inflated and kind of built up and I had an a while. So, um, I'm sure there's more where that came from. If you want us to reach out to her and Simon, I'm just going to say, thank you so much. I have learned today. And if I can, if I can say you have a real knack for explaining incredibly complex ideas are incredibly abstract ideas in very concrete, very specific, very practical ways. And I've really, really enjoyed hearing your perspective on things today. So thank you very, very much truly. It was a pleasure to listen. It's absolutely fantastic. And hopefully we'll get to chat to you again sometime. Thank you so much for having me really, really grateful. I've never been on the podcast before, so this is the first one I'll always remember if I'm late, I'm glad to hear that it was valuable and would love to stay in touch. Thank you so much.
Speaker 0 00:46:17 <inaudible>.
