Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:07 What we try to focus on is that being human and high-performing at work go hand in hand. So how do we find a healthy balance there to get the most out of you and for you to get promoted out of clue as well? So how do we keep you motivated and engaged
Speaker 1 00:00:24 By making this just really down to a safe environment where you can be yourself, but you're also set up for success. So you can really perform, which also is something that you want to do at work. Hi everyone. It's Marissa Bryan here. Um, and this was our most recent episode of sailing. So far, our podcast here at sea, where we have candid conversations with both founders and people, leaders, or talent leaders in scale-ups, uh, technology companies. And we find out a little bit about how they get that. Uh, essentially we're here to help people who are in the startup and scale up world, learn from others and get all of the tips and ideas that you can from people who've been there and done it before. And let me tell you, we have someone who has been there and done it before. So our guest today on sailing so far is Jesse Head of people at David's FinTech company.
Speaker 1 00:01:19 Cleo, Jesse has a ton of experience, as I've just said, doing this and knows a thing or 58 about how to do this from a people and talent perspective. Um, and, uh, on a personal note, of course, Jesse and I are both from the parts of the world where Christmas is by assuming goals. And it's a delight to, uh, to talk to somebody else from the Southern hemisphere today. So Jesse, a huge welcome to the podcast. How are you? Thanks so much. It's really, really nice to be hard too fast. And sometimes as well, I'm always January up here in the Northern hemisphere. It's it's kinda get ya, but, um, but yeah, aside from that, um, look the same as you, January used to be my favorite months of the year for a very, very long time. It was our summer holiday as those months where it's like you said, Cole through February and just a little bit trickier in 2021 than maybe it was in 2020, but I'm doing positive and say, you know, focus and motivated.
Speaker 1 00:02:29 Um, and, uh, and just your, my writing in knowing that you have lived and worked in tight towns, Helsinki, Highline, and now you live and work in Copenhagen and Copenhagen. No terrible timing, but from December, I actually tended to travel that. So I'm based nowhere now I have no, uh, no, no, no. So I'm actually Budapest today. Oh, wow. Yeah. Hopping around to whichever country will have me right now and we'll be traveling. So do you, Jesse, do you feel like your experiences, what, you know, working and living around the world has shaped the kind of people either that you've become today? Yeah, absolutely. So I started working in Ima, right? So India, middle East, and Africa. So it's emerging markets. I mean, for me the biggest fights there was, I was young. I was a woman. Uh, those are things that in traditional lockets are a bit harder to overcome.
Speaker 1 00:03:33 And I learned, you know, this very like entrepreneurial edgy, very, very different cultures. I mean, I come from South Africa with 11 official languages, and then I came up here to all places started in the Nordics, which is wildly different. I worked with Francois work, um, you know, with the UK, every culture just kind of, I dunno, why does your perspective? You become much more, at least for me, I became much more open and kind of, you can throw any different thing at me right now. And I'm just like, Oh, of course, that makes sense. So I've just, um, I think become a lot more open-minded and more welcoming to differences instead of being a bit intimidated by them, because I've now been the outside of, for what five years or so. So I'm just so grateful to anyone who makes an asset. And, uh, and I really appreciate that part of people a lot more.
Speaker 1 00:04:30 I think, excellent. That's something that we, we share in that regard. Obviously, uh, most people can hear that the Australian and annual South African, and I think, you know, when you, when you are taking immigrants, even if you speak the language and maybe even look similar to the sort of place, wait, it's still, everything's different. Um, and people still laugh at me because they think I'm talking about my underpants little things that you just don't even realize like that as well as the big stuff. Um, and Jessie, have you always held talents and people focused roles? No, not at all. I think that's what makes me a bit atypical in this space as well, because I've gotten on the sales side and then I'm on operations. And then the whole time it'd be working with people and doing a lot of hiring and managing teams and then actually running people teams, uh, within the ops function, but never actually going into this field.
Speaker 1 00:05:36 So I started that, I think like two and a half years ago, full-time just in people. So it's been a wow, a very speedy course in how to do this while scaling a company and, and being able to not just learn myself, but be able to make sure that it's a great supportive structure and motivating structure for, for people as well. Yeah. I mean, anything that sort of broadens your perspective broadens your, your point of view? I think it just adds so much value, um, to be in any role where you've had a variety of, uh, in some cases, you know, really conflicting different experiences. I think it adds so much to anyone's perspective maybe just to add in Emerson, which I found really interesting. So our CEO, yes, it was completely mad to take the risk on me here, hiring you for this role, but what I be figuring out lately, cause I have ended up hiring my team to say, everyone's function, uh, experts that then learn how to do people ops.
Speaker 1 00:06:38 And I found out that other companies are doing this too, which was huge relief for me. So actually our investors, uh, one of them in Sweden is called shindig. Uh, and they actually, within that, um, investment portfolio, they really encourage this type of, of hiring as well. So I just recently felt a little bit for the first time reassured. I was like, okay, this is actually something that people are getting more tempted by the kind of basic, um, knowledge and experience around leadership and management. You know, the kind of function that you're leading or managing really can be, can be quite agnostic because you've got those fundamental skills about having a plan, how to get people behind the plan, how to coach people to perform and, and exactly. It's something that it's funny, you know, you're living in Europe and living in Europe. I think it's something that when you perhaps are in up from a market where talent pool might be a little bit more restrained than it might be, say, New York or London, you know, you do tend to have to make choices and, uh, and get a bit more creative when you, when you don't have a plethora of, of candidates who might have that kind of standard set of profile.
Speaker 1 00:07:48 Um, really interesting kind of initiatives that are a lot of the younger up and coming companies are taking right now. You at play, Oh, I mean, you guys have had some pretty amazing success over the last little while. Tell us a bit about what you guys do and, and what the vision is and, and what player, you know, plan to be in the future. Sure. Um, so I'll tell you from the people's side. So I'm very, very biased on how I explained what our company does, but basically shares a FinTech, right? And all whole idea is that if you trust someone enough to hire them, you should trust them enough to spend company money responsibly. Um, and what we feel that we do is we really, so we give every single person, whether you're an intern or a part-time wacko or CEO, everybody gets a card, um, like a spending card and you can just spend money responsibly and it hooks up to the app.
Speaker 1 00:08:44 So everything's visible. And at the same time, you never have to get approval for things and stuff. It's like, we trust you. So it's super fun from a people because we are focusing on building a feature wax, um, and trying to make our mission is to make everyone feel valued at work. And the way that we do that, the, you know, the facilitator is obviously there's product say like, we value you. We trust you. You should never have to spend your own money and let us just, you know, empower you and delegate it. We don't have to control everything and centralize everything. And that's very much the basis for how we can build the people team and support our people up there as well. So this, this is just a really motivating for me on that side for thing, because you get super a lot of freedom.
Speaker 1 00:09:35 And as someone who has been a user of the product, I couldn't agree more having worked in organizations where doing your expenses with something that you had to like plan a day a month to get to having the flexibility, like you say, of being empowered, being trusted. And, um, you know, traditionally people might've thought that that was something that was really risky, but actually whilst it might be driven by the younger populations, um, coming into the workforce and empowerment trust responsibility that some of our core values here at sea. So, you know, I think that, um, you know, the assumption that somebody is going to do the wrong thing, as opposed to the assumption that that people genuinely want to do the right thing, exactly what we've seen transform the workplace over the last generation that you guys have hit that 10,000 customers in your most recent customer milestone.
Speaker 1 00:10:32 And you guys have also done a ton from a talent perspective since you first started in 2018, what your journey was like so far, uh, it's, it's been busy, I think is a good way to fit it. So, so I actually joined to set up the people function. It didn't exist and we were 40 people and I joined it, just raised a series. Okay, great. Let's grow. We get super ambitious by the end of next gen that hits 80 let's double in size. And I was like, wow, that's going to be, that's going to be in crazy. Uh, is three months later, we were 80. So what's happened with us is we've had this really high paced growth in terms of the product and with customer base, but also in terms of head count. So we've gotten from 40 people when I joined to we're around two 50 today.
Speaker 1 00:11:20 Um, and we kind of stopped growing. Normally we grow around 20, 25 people month on month. And then just during Corona, we did a bit of a hiring freeze and stuff. So we slowed down. So we'll be around 400 people by the end of now this year 21. So yeah, it's a journey where you hit these different milestones and suddenly the thing that you built doesn't work anymore. So it's a lot of, uh, we work as a product team as much as we can as people. So a lot of iterating expecting things to break being okay with it, experimenting, and then try to have a mixture of speed of execution, balance that with also quality, because now everything you ship starts to impact matured in 50 people. It's significant, right? If you do something super inefficient tool, something that's really not supportive, it can, it can have a bigger effect than when you do it with 40 people. So, yeah. So it sounds like, it sounds like some of your biggest learnings have been expectation expecting to break.
Speaker 1 00:12:26 Um, is there like a tactic or a piece of advice, like a Pearl of wisdom, if you like that you'd like to share with the listeners that you wish you knew before you got started, or that has been sort of a key to your success? The interesting thing for me, it's, it's also the things that you hear. But I think for me, the thing I was most worried about is the culture will break. I mean, I think that's every people, right. But instead of looking at like that, we've worked a lot on our values last year. Um, together it was co-creation with the company and it's, I think what would have been helpful for me to look at, from the beginning is to say, you can hold the same values, but if you're hiring more and more people, you, you should embrace the fact that your culture is changing and it needs to progress as you're in different phases of the business.
Speaker 1 00:13:21 So how do you keep those same values, but what entrepreneurship, which is one of our values, what that means at 40 people and what that means at two 50, the different types of entrepreneurship, but that's still valid. So how do you make sure they're celebrated, even though perhaps your impact will not be on the full company, knowledge will be on a niche. How do you make sure people, you communicate that and you make sure that people feel part of the journey where you can embrace culture changing rather than resistant, because successful startups are going to go past the point of feeling like a family. And, um, the more you can prepare the company for that, um, in a welcoming way, instead of a well business is going to change. We're now, you know, series B, if you can get that ride, I think that would have been something I would've started with from day one.
Speaker 1 00:14:12 I don't think our culture really broke, but it would have been reassuring for me as a people leader as well. And it's something, you know, Jesse, we work with that with companies that are scaling like you are, that's what we do that all day, every day. And the number of times that I've heard people say culture fit, you know, everyone has to meet the founder is one, has to be hired by the founder. You know, we have these values on day one and that's not going to change ever. Like, you know, even if you were a family, the family values that you would have when the kids are small, versus when they're adults would have to evolve in order to survive. So the idea that, you know, your company will evolve, your product will evolve. Your customer base will evolve, you'll expand internationally, but your cultural segment throughout all of that is really, um, you know, it's almost sort of leading onto the next question that I was going to ask you, which is, you know, what is the biggest kind of fallacy, biggest CS advice that you've ever been given when it comes to scaling a people function in a, in a, in a company like yours?
Speaker 1 00:15:18 Um, I mean, there, there are a whole bunch of different, there's a lot of valid for a lot of companies, but just didn't work for us. Um, so I think the thing is to me was the way that I decided to build our team was atypical. So I didn't split anyone into HR and just hiring right. And recruiters from day one. And that, I think it was an amazing leap of faith from, from the team to be like, you, you build your team, how you think it's best. Um, but from like the outside people's space, people were like, why don't you just have a HR coordinator and this and this and these specialized roles. Um, and that was quite a determination to prove that it could work like this and to build a more human team that like stays with individuals journeys instead of breaking up the relationships halfway through.
Speaker 1 00:16:17 So that was something where I felt very much on my own supported by the company, but that I didn't see so many people from the people space doing this. So that was nerve wracking because I never built this time at T type of team of four and 70. I was doing it in a very different way. Um, so yeah, I think I have to admit, I think like, as someone, myself who was working in HR for a very, very long time, I've never seen a team like that. But to hear you describe it as being driven by the relationships that you would have with the team members, from, you know, the hiring sort of through their onboarding and then even beyond, as they continue their journey as they, um, uh, continue their journey as a, as an employee longer term. I mean, it is definitely a very innovative way to do it.
Speaker 1 00:17:04 And if we have the opportunity to schedule another call, I would, I can talk to you about that for two hours. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to, it's got a lot of learnings, right? Because if you have these people who deeply care about that function, so say we have, you know, computer science is hiring Senate engineers that really care about it today. What's the first time they speak to someone, you build this like strong relationship, have this great debate about technologies or, or something they care about. And then when you're talking to your, you know, CTO about, Oh, you know, career progression or who should take this new role, you could bring something back from the interview process that you really noticed as a leadership trait or something they did with a team. And you have this also red thread. So you have this like big picture of, of your people.
Speaker 1 00:17:54 And I think that context helps you more on like the common sense side on how to actually best as support and use your people in the best place possible. Absolutely fascinating. And like I say, really innovative and people led approach to building a people organization, um, a book or a theory or a practice that someone learns at university. I think, like I said, I could talk to you about that for hours, but we do have to move on to talk a little bit more about what's happening with you at playoffs. Um, obviously we've hit January 20, 21. Um, so many of us, who've been an interesting evolution in life in the world. Um, what are you looking forward to over the next 12 months, um, in your career and in your organization? So I think 2020 for me, I've thought about those holidays really kind of get this out of my mind.
Speaker 1 00:18:55 Um, but 2020 I feel that we're a very product led people ops team and we're proactive, and we try to solve problems before other people notice that they could be a problem and things like that. And 2020, we just ended up being super reactive to an environment we couldn't control, but then also so sensitive, how do we support these people? So we became reactive to anyone's needs and there was that lives matter. And that was our let's chat about like women in the engineering space. And there's all these big topics popping up that we were trying to, you know, make sure that people were heard and supported on, uh, Australian fires. Like we were very much, we spread ourselves so thin and we became reactive. And I think that's Hondas because we haven't been able to build the things that people don't see that they need, we would just addressing needs.
Speaker 1 00:19:46 So we kind of became this almost like supportive a bit of a ticketing function. So this year, the greatest thing that's happened last week is we set up people priorities. And our co-founders, um, agreed on them last week. So we have two clear themes that are set for 21, and then everything else is going to be stupid and backlogs. And you can submit ideas much like you do with like a product code or something for a product when you do a feature request. Um, but it will be super clear on all the things we're not going to focus on, but still have the warm space like this is where you can pop it. But here's the reasons why we're focusing on these things. So having this proactive, like relief of like great, we're proactive again with following our timeline. And we're committing to certain things for the company that are best for our people.
Speaker 1 00:20:36 That's just, it's a great start to draw on the fire analogy. Um, when you spend your whole day, your whole career, your whole life, your whole week, day, whatever. Um, but you know, fighting fires, um, uh, as you know, as you have, as we have all really had to do over the last year, it's exhausting, it's exhausting intellectually, it's exhausting emotionally. So I think we're all very much looking forward to be proactive and sort of doing that groundwork so that there are fewer fires that you need to put out. Um, what are the things I have just loved about plyo? And, um, and it's, it's actually something, uh, our head of growth, Laura, who I know well, um, her and I have talked about is your career site. And I love, love, love, um, of the way that you talk about your organization and particular.
Speaker 1 00:21:38 Um, the thing that I really want to highlight, not just people who work there, but also people who have moved on and yeah. Having, having that sort of journey, talking about the entire life cycle of an employee a little bit about, you know, why it's to you, it's so important to even highlight those people who have moved on from what's the, what's the goal there in sharing those stories. Yeah. It's very odd thing. That's a lot of people it's kind of like an elephant in the room sometimes when people don't talk about the fact that everybody who's going to leave the company, potentially not the profile, but pretty much everyone else is going to leave. And no one really likes to say that, but at a certain point, I mean, for us, we grow so fast and I think companies stages, uh, like a part of when you join a company, if you're joining a scale-up, that's one of the reasons you joined based on the type of impact you have that type of work that you do, challenges you face, things like that.
Speaker 1 00:22:40 Um, and so what I've noticed with our employees who have left is we have some of the brightest tool-less people that I've ever worked with thought leaders, and they're just phenomenal colleagues. I'm still in touch with, uh, with loads of them. And what they've done is like a lot where, like, I don't have the impact I used to have at like one of our engineering directors. And he's a great example. He's like, you know, he joined with her less than 10 and he got to choose the technology. He got to build all these things. And when you're sitting there with the 180 people, and he's like, well, I mean, my impact isn't on the entire company. I can't just build something off of engineering. Quick. We have to check is that facile other people in the company. And I have my good ideas, which he does, and I just can't get them to go fast enough.
Speaker 1 00:23:31 Um, and so for him, the veteran was to go on and join us. I could call group of founding an organization again. And honestly, like when would you join joining carrying now with two 50? I didn't think I would have been high. I mean, I would not hire me for my role at this stage of the company. So also for me, I was at 40 to two. That's great. And then what is my impact now? I think that's also just very realistic to ask yourself because everyone, I think when you're growing so fast, you almost have to improve so much more like 10% month on month, whatever, to actually even be not qualified enough, but capable to keep up with the pace and the complexity that your role brings. I just think it's super realistic, like keeping your roles or deciding to move on, to do something else.
Speaker 1 00:24:27 It's just exceptionally healthy. If the company is changing the law. And I mean, our parents' generation are probably the last generation that will work for a company for, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, whatever it might be. And certainly my, my parents' generation like, um, uh, apparently that's, you know, I'm one of the first generations to see parents get made redundant from companies. They might've worked for 20 years. So, you know, you certainly do over time. Um, uh, you know, how, how to say it like overtime, you, you, you know, people evolve things change. And, um, I'm going to do a little bit of a shout out for one of my former employee employees, always at LinkedIn, um, for a time back here in London and, uh, w famously when you join LinkedIn on that induction day and you come into the organization on that very first day, they welcome you, but MD or the regional sales they private might be coming in and says welcome.
Speaker 1 00:25:24 Um, within two years, 60% of you won't be here and they genuinely celebrate the fact that people come in and value the amazing, but they'd move on and do something else and shying away from that or trying to control that yes, not gonna happen. Um, I think it's such a mature, such a, you know, uh, a grownup, your product will evolve. Your office might grow or shrink or whatever as well. So maintaining the human experience and really keeping that front and center for your, your organization is something that, that you're really, really passionate about. And you've heard me speak about it already today. What does that look like for you in practice? The idea of leading with the human experience and, and do you have any examples that you could share with us today? Yeah. Which ones?
Speaker 1 00:26:27 Well, the whole idea is what we try to focus on is that being human and high-performing at work go hand in hand. So how do we find a healthy balance there to get the most out of you and for you to get the most out of clue as well? So how do we keep you motivated and engaged by making this just really down to a safe environment where you can be yourself, but you're also set up for success. So you can really perform, which of course is something that you want to do at work. Um, I think something that's been very interesting is a couple of us who've been reporting to the CEO. It was a rather group because we don't really have a traditional management structure. So about 11 of us have gone to these authentic leadership offsite. It's actually been focusing on the relational and emotional sides of you and less on the professional side.
Speaker 1 00:27:22 So how you as a leader or your leadership style is impacted by the way, you as a person interact on the relational level and how you all, um, on an emotional level. So it's been a mixture of like one-on-one coaching. So, you know, coaching or therapy really tied in with a lot of like group work and upsides where you sit together and really try to understand how you're approaching things and your intention. And, uh, it's quite weird actually. I don't see a lot of companies doing that. If you have very, very kind of technology or science led founder, they might find that approach a bit. Whereas if you've got again, very sort of human experience, coaching, um, you know, background type founders, so I'd probably find that quite normal. Um, so I think that would be yes, but that's a challenge for other founders who listen to this.
Speaker 1 00:28:20 I mean, yes, he is a former CFR and Nick who, a other founder, he's a CTO. So they're both very seasoned, um, you know, colleagues who are quite down to earth and just human themselves, um, not in terms of career and profession, they weren't brought up in that environment. They've had the intention, they set the intention to do this, which I find phenomenal attitude is different. So I would encourage anyone like to, it's easy to maybe use that as an excuse, but I would suggest not to, I would love it if people listen to this today and really adopt that approach because let's face it. Um, as an, as an organization scale, the products will take you a certain distance, but it's the people building the product who are, you know, who are the people who are, that's, what's going to scale and growth in your organization.
Speaker 1 00:29:19 So things that, you know, you can't do it on technology alone. And I think, you know, there was some, I mean, we, I won't name any names, but there are horror stories out there about, you know, what, what has been happening to people in certain organizations over the last year, and even prior to that, and, and it damages your brand, if there is no imperative other than to maintain yeah, exactly. Damaging to your brand, if you've got a really awful reputation in terms of how you treat your people, and if you're a future of work product too. Right. So you're trying to make everyone feel valued at work. I mean, to me, there's quite a lot of pressure. You better make sure that what you build sell fresh, you know, make sure that it's really making the space. Um, so it also gives an interesting, um, like intrinsic motivation, right. Determination, really? I think. Yeah. Okay. Um, just one second. I think he took the dog, sorry. Oh no. What have you got that? You're chewing up there. Okay. You guys were biscuit,
Speaker 1 00:30:38 Um, in which case he wasn't meant to. Okay. Sorry about that. Pause for a second. She's laying on my bed, chewing up, crumbs on the bed. There are crumbs everywhere in the tax right now. Keep coming back now. Um, thanks for sharing. A couple of examples there, Jesse, about, about how you leave with this human experience. And like I said, I think it's such a key part of growth for a brand, for any organization in particular, like you said, for a company that's, you know, really leading the future of work, what would you say is the real challenge when it comes to sailing people, organizations, or the people in your organization? Um, you know, what's that thing that really drives you crazy that you maybe wish you had a magic wand that you could, um, that you'd love to share with us, how many wishes do, I guess you can have as many as you, like, let's make magic happen, managing expectations.
Speaker 1 00:31:51 Like how do you do that really well? So you don't let people down. So the trouble with being a future of work product. So from my perspective, right, that's great. And it's a lot of fun on how to build a people team and build up that part of the old, but also that means such different things to such different people. So in our company, I think everyone has a different point of view of what that means. So how do you make sure that people understand what you are choosing? What you've decided the future of work looks like within your company and for your products. And then still makes sure that people are excited by other future work initiatives and stuff, but can understand that you're not going to take the ball. I think that it's just a super one for me. It's going to be my personal challenge for 21. That's I mean, it's easy to sound like a people pleaser. I don't want to let people down, but that's modern ways to do this and I haven't cracked that yet. So that's why the reality is as much as we'd want to be all things to all people it's definitely possible.
Speaker 1 00:33:03 Yes. Some people will move on. You know, I actually remember having that conversation. Um, I sat down, I led a team in a global team in my last role, and actually sat down with somebody who reported to me. And I said, and I looked at him and I said, what you came here to do. He's not here anymore. You know, and I know someone who works here in New York, who's doing this who maybe can use somebody like me to recommend that guy looked at me. Like I was basically, you know, thanks for breaking his heart. And I kind of felt like a wall, but yeah, you know, you just cannot be all things to all people all of the time. And like you say, managing expectations around that and not feeling, not feeling bad, this is we're not giving everybody is perfect.
Speaker 1 00:33:55 And specifically when it's on really important initiatives, like I think social responsibility is something I'm very passionate about. A lot of people are like, we need to focus a lot on this and I'm so passionate. I'm like, I love it. But this year, actually our focus is on people development. In this case, I need to prioritize you above that. So saying no to like amazing initiatives. It's a little bit heartbreaking too, because you're like, I love that you're thinking of this, but I'm, I need to think of everything. And in this case, I'm putting you ahead of that, but I think you've actually articulated something there. Jesse, that's really important, which is if you explain why, and if you provide context and the, and like, you're not just sort of, you know, picking reasons out of the air, but there's actually force and, and, you know, a broader, a broader strategy, a broader plan.
Speaker 1 00:34:49 I think you can explain that for people. And, and, you know, you talked about social responsibility there and, you know, wouldn't it be great if we can fix all of the problems in the world, whether it was climate, whether it was diversity, whether it was, you know, looking after people who are less fortunate, whatever the situation, but again, you can't fix them and you do have to have a plan. And, and sometimes I get it, you know, for an individual person that plan might not be rifle or may not align with their values. So, um, yeah, managing expectations is something, anyone leading a team has to do all day every day. And we know, we know it's tricky. Um, couple of closing questions for you, Jesse, as we, as we finish up today's episode, um, what are you listening to? What reading at the moment to keep, give you inspiration on and hopefully give you a bit of a laugh as well.
Speaker 1 00:35:41 Yeah. Um, actually it's an interesting one because it's not something directly from the people's space, but I think it's something that impacts the people's space at least impacts my view on the world of people the most. So, um, there's actually a YouTube channel called special books by special kids. Um, and what it is is there's this incredible special needs teacher who goes and, um, interviews people with the neuro atypical conditions and, you know, just different ways of life and, you know, being bull top with different conditions and things like that. And ultimately the message that I always get out of these types of things and these amazing interviews with the most inspirational people I've ever seen is just how to widen your view or normalcy. So having this exposure to different perspectives and different ways, people see the world based on their own personal environment and conditions, um, you know, just helps you, the more you get exposed to that, the more open-minded you get and really accepting and just appreciating everyone.
Speaker 1 00:36:50 So that's my go-to, I think, special books for special kids, special kids, special kids to go and have a look at off the queue today. Um, is there a thought or a value or a phrase that you live by? Um, I think it's something I've chatted on. Newly-hired CRO about actually, which is positivity is, um, is a learned behavior. So it's something you choose to be. And specifically, I mean, if you look at Corona and you look at the resilience, we'd have to have you choose this, you can practice gratefulness, you can practice something, but you've got to have that intention. And I think that's something I've always been brought up with, but always lived by. And, um, and I think it's, it's honestly one of the most important things you can give yourself and give your colleagues and, and it just impacts your whole environment as well.
Speaker 1 00:37:49 So yeah, living, breathing example of it from this morning, and finally, is there a founder or a people leader or an organization even that you see as an inspiration for the way that you lead and you like to work? Yes. Um, I have a friend called Jess Hayes. Who's the VP of people at whereby so former appearance and she just does, she is phenomenal and doing a product people ops teams. So she's definitely worth checking out her thing. She just does a great blog. She might choose to know really, but definitely go check her out as well as someone who's thinking differently and doing it really well. And also I am incredibly proud of the amount of Australians there are around the world, leading global talent teams. In fact, the head of the head of talent at Facebook over in Menlo park in California was mostly, I'm not sure that she's still there now though, but yeah, we're, we're floating around all over the place, like so many, so many folks that we know from, um, from the Southern hemisphere who, who will move North eventually meet.
Speaker 1 00:39:04 We really still don't know why it has been a genuine place today. And I hope those folks who are listening in, um, enjoyed the, the wisdom and, and again, that's sort of the positivity and the, and the genuine focus on the human experience that you were able to share with us today. Um, I genuinely hope that we get to chat again. I'm sure that there's ways we could be talking about, but for now I wish you safe travels because I know you're on a bit of a journey in the next week. Um, and, uh, what have we got coming up happy Easter, I think is around the corner Ballantine to look forward to so have a fantastic day. And I hope that we get to speak again soon and thank you to everybody for listening. We'll be back with another episode soon of failing so far, take care. <inaudible>.
