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Ep 229, Generational Responses to AI

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WEBVTT 00:00:27.069 --> 00:00:30.028 Welcome to Conflict Managed. I'm your host, Merry Brown. 00:00:30.446 --> 00:00:34.729 This week on Conflict Managed, we welcome Maria Colacurcio. Maria is reshaping 00:00:34.729 --> 00:00:38.723 how enterprises govern their largest and most consequential investment, 00:00:38.932 --> 00:00:40.116 how they pay their people. 00:00:40.406 --> 00:00:44.989 As CEO of Syndio, she leads the company that defined the market for pay equity 00:00:44.989 --> 00:00:48.725 software and is now pioneering decision intelligence for pay. 00:00:49.334 --> 00:00:53.209 Under her leadership, Syndio partners with global brands including Walmart, 00:00:53.209 --> 00:00:57.595 Microsoft, and Salesforce to make everyday pay decision compliant, 00:00:57.868 --> 00:01:00.190 optimized, and aligned with business strategy. 00:01:00.747 --> 00:01:04.909 Maria previously co-founded Smartsheet, which went public in 2018. 00:01:05.298 --> 00:01:08.569 She has built her career at the intersection of technology, policy, 00:01:08.569 --> 00:01:13.179 and purpose-driven leadership, earning recognition as one of the 100 Most Exceptional 00:01:13.179 --> 00:01:17.041 Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs Builders Innovators Summit. 00:01:17.814 --> 00:01:19.932 Good morning, Maria, and welcome to Conflict Managed. 00:01:20.761 --> 00:01:24.589 Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Oh, we just had a wonderful 00:01:24.589 --> 00:01:28.139 little pre-recording conversation. I'm really looking forward to where this 00:01:28.139 --> 00:01:29.149 is going to be going today. 00:01:29.602 --> 00:01:33.166 So before we get to what you're currently doing and the role that you have, 00:01:33.433 --> 00:01:36.474 I would like to hear about the first job you ever had as a young person. 00:01:37.178 --> 00:01:42.260 Oh, my gosh. Well, okay. The first job I ever had, we're going way back. 00:01:42.707 --> 00:01:47.821 This was probably when I was 15 or 16. It was right before high school. 00:01:48.332 --> 00:01:51.861 And I had been a babysitter for a family in our neighborhood for a long time. 00:01:51.861 --> 00:01:53.585 So I guess technically that was the first job. 00:01:53.875 --> 00:01:57.155 But the first office job was that she also owned a talent agency. 00:01:57.492 --> 00:02:01.973 And so I got an hourly job there in the summer and my job was, 00:02:02.564 --> 00:02:08.601 calling all the parents who had signed up at this talent agency paid a grip 00:02:08.601 --> 00:02:12.591 of money for headshots and their child had never been casted and so here I am 00:02:12.591 --> 00:02:17.378 you know a 16 year old going into high school or 14 you know whatever I was 14 15 16, 00:02:17.860 --> 00:02:22.481 and having to call through this long list knowing that every single phone call 00:02:22.481 --> 00:02:26.061 was going to be an irate angry parent and I had my little script of what I said 00:02:26.061 --> 00:02:28.321 like Johnny wasn't hasn't been cast and here's why. 00:02:28.321 --> 00:02:32.211 And we still have hope for Johnny. And he did have interest in these four things. 00:02:32.211 --> 00:02:33.608 And I had a script for everyone. 00:02:34.223 --> 00:02:41.056 And remarkably, I made it through the full summer. But that was my first job was pure conflict. 00:02:41.381 --> 00:02:45.211 So I think it's interesting as it relates to all the things that you talk about 00:02:45.211 --> 00:02:49.681 and the psychology behind critical conversations that that was where I started 00:02:49.681 --> 00:02:51.876 my, quote, professional journey. 00:02:52.312 --> 00:02:55.731 That is so intense. Wow. Yeah, it was intense. 00:02:56.551 --> 00:02:59.481 I can, for a variety of reasons, it's like baptism by fire. 00:02:59.481 --> 00:03:03.471 Like, you know, maybe, maybe they thought that, you know, since you're young, 00:03:03.471 --> 00:03:05.971 then you could break the bad news the best. 00:03:05.971 --> 00:03:10.471 They won't give you as much grief or it's just, you know, low person on the 00:03:10.471 --> 00:03:15.844 totem pole gets the dirty jobs. But wow. How, how did you deal with, 00:03:16.221 --> 00:03:18.723 I imagine you got yelled at every once in a while? 00:03:19.363 --> 00:03:23.811 I mean, most calls I got yelled at because they had paid, the parents had paid 00:03:23.811 --> 00:03:26.236 so much for these professional headshots thinking 00:03:26.614 --> 00:03:29.511 and gone in with such high expectations thinking their kid was, 00:03:29.511 --> 00:03:31.836 you know, different and special when you hear the disclaimers, 00:03:32.161 --> 00:03:35.702 you know, only one and et cetera, because they had to give these legal disclaimers. 00:03:36.207 --> 00:03:39.882 But, you know, as I've grown up and I've had my own kids, you see it every day and it actually proves. 00:03:41.390 --> 00:03:48.099 Lives in my head rent free this idea that we all think our kid is different or special or you know, 00:03:48.651 --> 00:03:52.424 there's a little something wrong with everyone else's kids but our kids like 00:03:52.424 --> 00:03:56.674 you know and it's funny my brother and I had this conversation about when we 00:03:56.674 --> 00:04:00.004 were early days parenting because our kids are similar ages and when you go 00:04:00.004 --> 00:04:01.933 up to a group of kids where there's a conflict, 00:04:02.554 --> 00:04:07.624 and you know for certain a conflict is being initiated by your own child if 00:04:07.624 --> 00:04:09.485 you can't figure out where it's coming from. 00:04:10.083 --> 00:04:13.164 If you're like, what? I don't understand. Like, why is it? It's because your 00:04:13.164 --> 00:04:17.524 bias of not thinking it's coming from your own child is standing in the way 00:04:17.524 --> 00:04:20.863 of your ability to logically figure out where it's initiating. 00:04:21.223 --> 00:04:24.735 And I think that was true for these parents. Like they were just irate. 00:04:25.257 -->
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00:04:30.714 And to me, I think what's really interesting in this ability to compartmentalize 00:04:30.714 --> 00:04:33.714 is from a very young age, I was just like, well, this is the job. 00:04:33.714 --> 00:04:37.204 I have to get through this many calls a day, and I say my script, 00:04:37.204 --> 00:04:40.727 and then I'm quiet, and they get mad at me, and then I move on to the next call. 00:04:41.255 --> 00:04:45.769 So it was actually great training for a professional career. 00:04:46.306 --> 00:04:48.779 Yeah. I mean, for all the reasons you just said. 00:04:50.844 --> 00:04:56.724 And what you gained, a sort of tenacity, a way to realize, I imagine, 00:04:56.724 --> 00:04:58.324 somebody else's bad behavior is about them. 00:04:59.064 --> 00:05:02.334 And you're not the cause of it, right? Of course, a lot of times we get upset 00:05:02.334 --> 00:05:07.524 with the person who's delivering the news, but mostly that person had no hand 00:05:07.524 --> 00:05:10.518 in developing the policy and making the decisions. 00:05:11.186 --> 00:05:15.482 And yet it is, you know, when we are the bearer of bad news, right? 00:05:17.460 --> 00:05:23.084 How do we stay healthy? How do we stay okay with ourselves when somebody is, 00:05:23.502 --> 00:05:27.270 they're frustrated, but they are giving it to us? 00:05:27.951 --> 00:05:31.684 That is I imagine that is really has helped you throughout your whole career 00:05:31.684 --> 00:05:38.651 of thinking that that is just a part of it it is I I definitely have a a keen sense whether it's, 00:05:39.324 --> 00:05:45.461 An interaction with the gate agent at an airline or something goes wrong and 00:05:45.461 --> 00:05:48.845 you're in an event for work and it's really important. 00:05:49.135 --> 00:05:52.212 I've always had this keen sense of empathy for the messenger. 00:05:52.716 --> 00:05:56.791 And I think that's been a great thing just to model for my kids and for people 00:05:56.791 --> 00:06:01.631 around me that typically the folks in these frontline service roles are just 00:06:01.631 --> 00:06:05.041 delivering messages that are far outside of their control. 00:06:05.041 --> 00:06:09.034 And so to get angry with them is just absolutely unreasonable. 00:06:09.626 --> 00:06:13.141 And, I don't know, I'm glad I learned that early. Because when you see people 00:06:13.141 --> 00:06:18.936 doing that, it's just, it's such a distasteful thing to watch. Yeah. 00:06:19.325 --> 00:06:24.891 I think it's also really, I just love this idea of my kid is the best. 00:06:24.891 --> 00:06:26.198 My kid's the most special. 00:06:27.861 --> 00:06:31.331 And it's true. Your kid is the best and the most special to you. 00:06:31.331 --> 00:06:35.759 And that is a truth. And you see something in your child that other people are not going to see. 00:06:36.351 --> 00:06:39.971 And nobody's going to love your child the way that you do. and that is just 00:06:39.971 --> 00:06:45.879 the way of things so there's that and
when your child's not chosen and when, 00:06:46.332 --> 00:06:49.461 there's this disappointment out there and when other people don't see and or 00:06:49.461 --> 00:06:50.662 harm your child right there's there, 00:06:51.421 --> 00:06:56.301 is this there is this disconnect which is just as you as you already pointed 00:06:56.301 --> 00:07:00.945 out is such a good lesson if we learn it about our perspective our perspective 00:07:01.357 --> 00:07:05.281 and certainly when it comes to conflict or what we can see and who we're generous 00:07:05.281 --> 00:07:07.377 to and who we're not generous to. 00:07:08.361 --> 00:07:13.896 And a lot of it, many times with conflict, we think it's the issue. 00:07:14.308 --> 00:07:18.811 It's the issue itself. It's very rarely the issue. It's who are the people involved? 00:07:19.194 --> 00:07:24.931 Who's telling me this information? How am I perceiving that they are complicit 00:07:24.931 --> 00:07:31.686 in it or they are the cause of it or they're out to get me or they have my back? They're for me. 00:07:32.249 --> 00:07:40.489 And the same content, I understand it differently because of the relationships I'm in with the people. 00:07:41.514 --> 00:07:47.218 So all the way around, gosh, there's so much that you had the opportunity to learn as a young person. 00:07:47.816 --> 00:07:50.446 Yeah, it's true. So where did you go after that? 00:07:51.260 --> 00:07:55.864 So I spent a lot of time working in restaurants through college and out of college 00:07:55.864 --> 00:07:57.254 in order to pay the bills. 00:07:57.254 --> 00:08:03.024 And again, I learned so much as a waitress. It was funny. I was with a couple 00:08:03.024 --> 00:08:06.244 of girlfriends from college last weekend and we were all talking about our waitressing 00:08:06.244 --> 00:08:10.744 jobs and how much we still think about them and how much so many of those lessons 00:08:10.744 --> 00:08:11.963 have really stuck with us. 00:08:12.934 --> 00:08:18.084 I had a really interesting nonlinear career. So I was a history major in between, 00:08:18.733 --> 00:08:22.704 college and then moving on into the professional world. I moved to Galway and 00:08:22.704 --> 00:08:25.130 ran a bed and breakfast just for the experience. 00:08:25.495 --> 00:08:29.454 Then I moved to D.C., worked at the Smithsonian, the History Museum, 00:08:29.834 --> 00:08:34.644 worked on congressional campaigns, ultimately found myself working in marketing 00:08:34.644 --> 00:08:38.945 and communications for non-profits, sort of lobbying organizations in D.C. 00:08:39.485 --> 00:08:43.164 And the way I got into tech was just as non-linear. I was at a dinner party, 00:08:43.164 --> 00:08:47.374 it was the tech boom, and dinner party, you know, in those days it was sort 00:08:47.374 --> 00:08:50.784 of red cups and, you know, big pots of soup or something. It was very, 00:08:50.784 --> 00:08:52.598 you know, not as fancy as it might sound. 00:08:53.283 --> 00:08:57.286 And I was
just in the middle of breaking up with a boyfriend and I met this 00:08:57.286 --> 00:09:00.376 woman and she was visiting her friend from San Francisco and she said, 00:09:00.376 --> 00:09:03.065 you got to come to the Bay Area where everything's happening. 00:09:03.430 --> 00:09:06.356 We have an opening at my company. You should fly out an interview. 00:09:06.995 --> 00:09:10.446 And so I did. And it was incredibly technical in retrospect. 00:09:10.446 --> 00:09:12.968 It was a hardware software company, Israeli based startup. 00:09:13.490 --> 00:09:18.126 And I got the offer and decided what the heck. And I flew out and restarted 00:09:18.126 --> 00:09:21.751 my career in tech. And I just I loved it. I fell in love with it. 00:09:22.116 --> 00:09:25.336 And my initial foray into tech was in product marketing. 00:09:25.336 --> 00:09:30.576 So really, what you have to do in that role is be good at synthesizing and storytelling 00:09:30.576 --> 00:09:32.031 and being the bridge between 00:09:32.304 --> 00:09:34.986 a very technical story and then what the teams on the ground, 00:09:34.986 --> 00:09:40.456 the sales teams, the business development folks, marketing, what they need in order to translate. 00:09:40.456 --> 00:09:42.399 It really is the translation layer. 00:09:43.043 --> 00:09:47.066 And because I'm just insanely curious, I think that is the characteristics that 00:09:47.066 --> 00:09:49.562 served me so well throughout my entire life. 00:09:50.033 --> 00:09:54.676 I would sit in the server room with a bunch of these Israeli guys who were, 00:09:54.676 --> 00:09:56.401 you know, they're all former military. 00:09:56.633 --> 00:09:58.299 They're all incredibly technical. 00:09:58.636 --> 00:10:02.084 And I would just ask them a million questions until I understood it. 00:10:02.345 --> 00:10:06.216 And they really indulged my curiosity. Looking back, I'm like, 00:10:06.216 --> 00:10:08.590 oh, my God, I was probably so annoying. 00:10:08.840 --> 00:10:15.186 But also, they were super gracious because I don't know that anyone from the 00:10:15.186 --> 00:10:19.526 go-to-market side had ever been as curious into the ins and outs and the nuts 00:10:19.526 --> 00:10:21.006 and bolts of what they were creating. 00:10:21.006 --> 00:10:24.867 And these guys are creators. And I say guys because it was all men at that time. Yeah. 00:10:26.025 --> 00:10:29.346 And so I started there, and then I just continued my journey in tech. 00:10:29.346 --> 00:10:34.054 I worked for a couple of startups. I worked at Microsoft. I co-founded Smartsheet, 00:10:34.781 --> 00:10:40.876 went to Starbucks, and then eventually landed, and really from the beginning, 00:10:40.876 --> 00:10:42.296 at Cendia, where I am now. 00:10:42.922 --> 00:10:47.281 But as you said, a nonlinear, interesting career trajectory, 00:10:47.618 --> 00:10:53.566 and yet this curiosity and curating people's experiences, it seems like that 00:10:53.566 --> 00:10:55.746 is through line all
throughout, right? 00:10:55.746 --> 00:11:00.481 So even the bed and breakfast, how that is set up, the people's experience there, 00:11:01.363 --> 00:11:06.896 of course, being a server, it's all about what is their experience here and 00:11:06.896 --> 00:11:11.746 dealing with all of the technical issues of the food not being prepared the 00:11:11.746 --> 00:11:15.176 way somebody wants or being out of something or the wait times. 00:11:16.033 --> 00:11:20.036 And then, of course, dealing with hungry people, which is its own sort of level. 00:11:20.036 --> 00:11:25.005 But I can see that also relating to the storytelling of, you know, 00:11:25.336 --> 00:11:28.996 with tech, it can cause a lot of fear because people know they need it, 00:11:28.996 --> 00:11:30.316 but they don't know what they need. 00:11:30.316 --> 00:11:34.176 And if I get this product, is it going to solve this need? Am I going to be 00:11:34.176 --> 00:11:35.704 able to run it once I have it? 00:11:36.116 --> 00:11:39.193 I'm investing all of this. Is it the right thing to do? So there's a lot of, 00:11:39.477 --> 00:11:43.465 I'm sure, fear about adoption of certain kinds of. 00:11:45.002 --> 00:11:48.452 If I should adopt this or something else, how is it going to work? 00:11:48.452 --> 00:11:52.462 And so being able to bridge that so that people can have a clear picture as 00:11:52.462 --> 00:11:55.034 to whether or not this is the tech for them. 00:11:55.551 --> 00:11:58.672 And if you're not a tech person, which I am not, I'm going to have to rely on 00:11:58.672 --> 00:12:02.417 story and analogy to understand if this is the right thing. 00:12:03.177 --> 00:12:08.362 Yeah, exactly. I think so much of it is storytelling. And I do think, 00:12:08.362 --> 00:12:12.393 so it's interesting, right now I have several folks on my team, 00:12:12.937 --> 00:12:17.901 incredibly brilliant data scientists, folks in product, UX designers, 00:12:18.207 --> 00:12:20.506 who all majored in history. 00:12:20.989 --> 00:12:25.546 And I just, I think it's so interesting because I really do think the major, 00:12:26.154 --> 00:12:31.052 requires that you ask questions and see trend lines through information. 00:12:31.052 --> 00:12:37.665 You're looking at a series of events that happened and then predicting and analyzing 00:12:38.083 --> 00:12:45.462 and bringing to bear your thoughts and perspectives on how that could either repeat or not. 00:12:45.962 --> 00:12:50.022 And how do you see the confluence of things sort of coming together in a similar way? 00:12:50.062 --> 00:12:54.862 And anyway, I think the pattern matching is really interesting to see how that 00:12:54.862 --> 00:12:59.252 shows up in tech. But I talk with folks all the time and I'm never surprised 00:12:59.252 --> 00:13:00.724 to find out that that's their background. 00:13:01.662 --> 00:13:07.862 That is really interesting. The humanities, being able to be curious. 00:13:08.422 --> 00:13:13.662 How do we feed curiosity if we want innovation, if we want to be able to not 00:13:13.662 --> 00:13:17.612 only innovate, invent, and then being able to sell that, which is being able 00:13:17.612 --> 00:13:19.603 to translate whatever is innovated to innovation. 00:13:21.209 --> 00:13:24.319 Being creative as to who your market like you know who is your market and then 00:13:24.319 --> 00:13:25.587 being able to sell to them, 00:13:26.069 --> 00:13:29.799 takes a certain level of understanding story and what is history but a grand 00:13:29.799 --> 00:13:34.519 narrative right and being able to understand how it all goes together and what 00:13:34.519 --> 00:13:39.543 sources or who's telling you the truth or or how are they conveying a particular kind of message, 00:13:40.129 --> 00:13:43.379 yeah and oh it's to the humanities i always want to give a shout out if you 00:13:43.379 --> 00:13:46.969 if your child comes home and says they're majoring in history or philosophy 00:13:46.969 --> 00:13:48.610 or music or theater or art, 00:13:49.452 --> 00:13:51.779 that's they can be gainfully employed. 00:13:51.779 --> 00:13:55.639 There's lots of wonderful opportunities for them if that's something that they choose. 00:13:56.448 --> 00:14:00.291 Yeah, absolutely. So I want to hear more about curiosity. 00:14:00.843 --> 00:14:05.039 You know, children are naturally curious and many of us, it gets drummed out 00:14:05.039 --> 00:14:07.897 of us because in order to go through, 00:14:08.535 --> 00:14:14.909 traditional educational systems, you've got to streamline things and you learn 00:14:14.909 --> 00:14:17.109 this for this outcome, right? 00:14:17.109 --> 00:14:21.923 And so, you know, this whole test-based way that we think about quantifying education. 00:14:22.266 --> 00:14:25.894 So how did you retain this curiosity that has pulled you all the way through? 00:14:26.928 --> 00:14:31.726 How did I retain it? I think it's, you know, that's a great question. 00:14:31.726 --> 00:14:35.276 I'm thinking back to the way I was parented and whether it was something that 00:14:35.276 --> 00:14:37.392 was just naturally encouraged. 00:14:37.984 --> 00:14:43.506 You know, my dad was the youngest of nine kids. All my uncles were in some branch 00:14:43.506 --> 00:14:47.411 of the military. None of them went to college. My grandparents came over from Italy. 00:14:47.876 --> 00:14:52.336 And my dad's biggest goal in life was that his four kids would be the first 00:14:52.336 --> 00:14:56.432 to be college educated amongst all of his siblings and all the kids. 00:14:56.995 --> 00:15:01.006 And so it was something that he talked about constantly. He just constantly 00:15:01.006 --> 00:15:03.932 talked about, you've got to get an education, you've got to get an education. 00:15:04.437 --> 00:15:10.806 And so I honestly think that it's something that was just ingrained in me because 00:15:10.806 --> 00:15:14.386 I put those two things together, like curiosity and education,
00:15:14.386 --> 00:15:17.150 and what does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to get an education? 00:15:17.481 --> 00:15:21.742 So I really credit my parents for that because they never beat it out of me. 00:15:22.119 --> 00:15:25.686 And I think a lot of times, you know, that's the tendency with us as parents 00:15:25.686 --> 00:15:30.426 is that you see a spirited kid, you're exhausted, they're constantly asking 00:15:30.426 --> 00:15:34.646 questions and you're like, oh my God, I just, I can't answer any more of these questions. 00:15:34.983 --> 00:15:39.236 Or you say like, just get it done. Like instead of meandering around trying 00:15:39.236 --> 00:15:42.764 to figure, like you're reading them a book. 00:15:43.019 --> 00:15:45.276 You know, right now I'm reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to my 00:15:45.276 --> 00:15:49.212 18-year-old. And you can't get through a chapter without like, 00:15:49.566 --> 00:15:51.316 well, what about this? And what about this? And what about this? 00:15:51.316 --> 00:15:52.173 And what about this? Yeah. 00:15:52.863 --> 00:15:58.343 Just as adults in normal life, your tendency is to be like, can we just read the book already? 00:15:58.796 --> 00:16:00.903 Like, I want to go to bed. I want you to go to bed. 00:16:01.391 --> 00:16:06.333 But I do think there's something really important about being intentional about 00:16:06.333 --> 00:16:07.943 letting those meandering questions 00:16:07.943 --> 00:16:11.399 sort of wind around because that is the signal that we sent to them. 00:16:11.799 --> 00:16:16.223 And now as a CEO of a company, particularly in this era of AI transformation, 00:16:16.594 --> 00:16:18.417 curiosity is the thing I screen for. 00:16:18.759 --> 00:16:24.313 So when you think about builders, when you think about the types of characteristics, 00:16:24.313 --> 00:16:29.493 experiences, and skills that really make for someone who is going to succeed 00:16:29.493 --> 00:16:33.183 in this era, curiosity is really important. 00:16:33.183 --> 00:16:37.793 Of course, execution combined with that is important, but it's somebody who 00:16:37.793 --> 00:16:41.556 sees a problem. They don't necessarily ask for permission. They just, 00:16:41.921 --> 00:16:44.167 they figure out a way to solve it. 00:16:44.773 --> 00:16:49.653 And you know just before this call I had a meeting with my applied expertise 00:16:49.653 --> 00:16:54.209 team sharing with me all the really cool and innovative things that they're building with AI, 00:16:54.807 --> 00:16:59.893 and it was so fun to be able to see how their curiosity meandered into a solution 00:17:00.183 --> 00:17:05.314 so I got this training because I put them there's a pilot group of 22 employees that I put through, 00:17:05.837 --> 00:17:09.673 a very specific training on agent building that I took myself and I found it 00:17:09.673 --> 00:17:14.743 so valuable and so this pilot group was sharing with me I took the same training you did.
00:17:14.743 --> 00:17:18.183 Here are the different things that I was able to achieve and build with it. 00:17:18.183 --> 00:17:22.153 And they're so specific to their function and their expertise. 00:17:22.153 --> 00:17:24.576 It's not generic. I taught myself to write better. 00:17:25.383 --> 00:17:28.307 If you do it right and you have curiosity and you have the right training and 00:17:28.307 --> 00:17:30.758 tools, it's really amazing what's possible. 00:17:31.426 --> 00:17:34.907 I love so much of what you just said. But one thing that you just said at the 00:17:34.907 --> 00:17:39.267 end is that curiosity, sometimes it's this big word, this big concept, 00:17:39.267 --> 00:17:40.262 and it sort of like looms. 00:17:40.579 --> 00:17:42.669 But it actually is very particular. 00:17:44.027 --> 00:17:50.117 The result of being curious is many times a specific end product, like in the workplace. 00:17:50.117 --> 00:17:54.107 Right i was able to do this because i was curious and i allowed myself to come 00:17:54.107 --> 00:17:58.191 down and drill down and i found this right it is actually very, 00:17:58.887 --> 00:18:06.397 the curious mindset is not just a nice to have it's it's integral of creating 00:18:06.397 --> 00:18:08.157 and thinking and innovating, 00:18:08.814 --> 00:18:12.567 being collaborative all of those sorts of things are they're not going to work 00:18:12.567 --> 00:18:16.917 if you're not innately or you don't have the ability or you aren't curious. 00:18:16.917 --> 00:18:18.050 You're not activating that. 00:18:18.729 --> 00:18:21.527 And another thing you said I thought was really telling because I definitely 00:18:21.527 --> 00:18:25.399 resonate with this, with reading a book, right? Let's get through it. 00:18:26.242 --> 00:18:29.512 And the question is, like, what is the goal? Is the goal to get through the 00:18:29.512 --> 00:18:32.662 book? Well, it's a good goal to get through the line in which the wardrobe, right? 00:18:32.947 --> 00:18:37.382 But as parents, like, we want to finish the chapter or the whatever it is so 00:18:37.382 --> 00:18:38.795 that we can go on to the next. 00:18:39.323 --> 00:18:42.382 But if we stop and think, well, what is the goal for the child here? 00:18:42.382 --> 00:18:45.492 Like, what do I want my child to get out? Yeah, I want them to have this experience 00:18:45.492 --> 00:18:46.968 of hearing this whole story. 00:18:47.589 --> 00:18:51.312 But that's maybe just one of the goals, right? 00:18:51.312 --> 00:18:55.632 And so if I think this is good because they get this wonderful story and it 00:18:55.632 --> 00:18:59.339 sparks curiosity, if curiosity is part of what I'm trying to instill, 00:18:59.815 --> 00:19:05.762 then why would I think we've got to get through this story this month, right? 00:19:05.762 --> 00:19:09.592 Instead of we'll get through it, but we get this added good, right? 00:19:09.592 --> 00:19:14.422 That's just sort of question about what is somebody else's
experience. 00:19:15.162 --> 00:19:18.492 Why are they here like what is the the kid is getting a lot of things out at 00:19:18.492 --> 00:19:20.842 a time with their parents there's just so many good things they're getting out 00:19:20.842 --> 00:19:25.252 if you read to your children but that just was really I think about myself sometimes 00:19:25.252 --> 00:19:27.104 am I just trying to get through something, 00:19:27.661 --> 00:19:32.021 and that is an arresting thought what do you mean trying to get through as if, 00:19:32.711 --> 00:19:37.272 to get to the end the the whole journey really matters as to what the end actually 00:19:37.272 --> 00:19:40.348 is, what you actually got as you go through it. 00:19:40.966 --> 00:19:45.612 I think the intention is so interesting. And if I tie this notion of curiosity 00:19:45.612 --> 00:19:48.022 and asking questions back to the work that we do. 00:19:48.022 --> 00:19:53.192 So we do compensation analytics and we just actually a week ago released a white 00:19:53.192 --> 00:19:57.476 paper called the cost of ungoverned pay decisions. And what that means is, 00:19:58.068 --> 00:20:02.204 what's happening when you have a strategy for what you value as a company, 00:20:02.204 --> 00:20:06.375 but you don't tie it in real time to every single pay decision. 00:20:06.827 --> 00:20:10.344 And so it found basically there's three ways that these ungoverned decisions 00:20:10.344 --> 00:20:12.737 cost you money. Two are about the decisions itself. 00:20:13.068 --> 00:20:18.780 But the third one is my favorite because it actually reflects the total absence of curiosity. 00:20:19.934 --> 00:20:25.254 And the way that I'll explain that is nobody ever goes back to see whether a 00:20:25.254 --> 00:20:28.487 decision worked. So you're in the heat of it. 00:20:28.783 --> 00:20:32.634 You pay someone at the 99th percentile because they're a special snowflake. 00:20:32.634 --> 00:20:34.488 We're sure they would perform. 00:20:34.900 --> 00:20:38.563 They're ex-Google. They're really important. We know they're going to knock it out of the park. 00:20:39.088 --> 00:20:43.534 But that absence of curiosity is that you never close the loop. 00:20:43.831 --> 00:20:47.554 Every other capital decision in a company gets some sort of postmortem, 00:20:47.554 --> 00:20:51.551 but the largest line item on the P&L around headcount, doesn't. 00:20:51.923 --> 00:20:56.094 So if you're making those decisions 10,000 times a year and you're not learning 00:20:56.094 --> 00:20:59.564 from them, you're not asking the question, you're not using AI to analyze, 00:20:59.564 --> 00:21:02.227 well, did that work? Did that play out? 00:21:03.405 --> 00:21:07.254 It's just an organization that's not curious about its own judgment. 00:21:07.619 --> 00:21:11.822 So I found that to be really interesting in terms of curiosity at scale. 00:21:12.130 --> 00:21:14.220 And what does that look like when it's absent? 00:21:14.556 --> 00:21:18.701 Yeah, I
love it. Let's talk a little bit more about that when it comes to workplace satisfaction. 00:21:19.067 --> 00:21:23.034 You know, the old mantra, and maybe it's still around, it is still around for 00:21:23.034 --> 00:21:24.837 a lot of people, is don't talk about what you get paid. 00:21:25.348 --> 00:21:29.604 And yet people do talk about it. And then there's this feeling of I'm not being 00:21:29.604 --> 00:21:32.684 compensated properly given what somebody else is doing, right? 00:21:32.684 --> 00:21:36.004 There's all these backroom conversations. And so if you tell people not to have 00:21:36.004 --> 00:21:39.354 a conversation, it just means you may not hear about it. It doesn't mean they're 00:21:39.354 --> 00:21:42.674 not having those conversations. And that can lead to, of course, 00:21:42.674 --> 00:21:46.524 when you're feeling like you're being unfairly compensated for a variety of sorts of reasons. 00:21:47.134 --> 00:21:50.675 If we decide not to bring clarity and transparency to that. 00:21:51.928 --> 00:21:57.918 How do you see clarity and transparency and having what you're up to helping 00:21:57.918 --> 00:21:59.845 with having a healthier work environment? 00:22:00.515 --> 00:22:04.968 Oh, my gosh. It's so connected. So this paper that just came out that I mentioned, 00:22:04.968 --> 00:22:07.068 we have employed an IOPHD. 00:22:07.368 --> 00:22:12.358 So it's truly science driven. And it's been so interesting to see how she thinks 00:22:12.358 --> 00:22:16.775 about this link between pay, transparency, employee satisfaction and performance. 00:22:17.088 --> 00:22:23.754 Because pay is a lens through which a company shows what it values. 00:22:23.916 --> 00:22:25.896 It's visceral. It's emotional. 00:22:26.070 --> 00:22:28.314 We're trading our labor and our time. 00:22:28.751 --> 00:22:33.748 And so when somebody wants to know not just what am I paid, but what am I paid, 00:22:33.748 --> 00:22:38.207 and this is the key component, as compared to what my peers, 00:22:38.375 --> 00:22:41.731 others' functions, other people doing the same job at a different company, 00:22:42.612 --> 00:22:47.193 it's if they can't get an answer the dissatisfaction is around like. 00:22:48.108 --> 00:22:51.958 Your question doesn't deserve an answer when this is this is the trade that 00:22:51.958 --> 00:22:57.648 we're making so i do think this confluence of pay transparency legislation and 00:22:57.648 --> 00:23:00.191 ai transformation is creating, 00:23:00.643 --> 00:23:06.938 this incredible moment where companies are now not only required to put good 00:23:06.938 --> 00:23:13.608 faith job ranges pay ranges on job advertisements to show, but it can't be so 00:23:13.608 --> 00:23:15.008 wide you can drive a truck through it. 00:23:15.008 --> 00:23:17.867 It has to be good faith. That's the reason it means good faith. 00:23:18.366 --> 00:23:22.162 But now with the EU Pay Transparency Directive, if you are a global company, 00:23:22.598 --> 00:23:25.448 you're required to adhere to something called right to information, 00:23:25.448 --> 00:23:28.604 which means an employee can request comparable pay. 00:23:29.155 --> 00:23:34.832 And these are all really important. And these are about that satisfaction piece and about the. 00:23:35.466 --> 00:23:40.488 I just want a company to be consistent with what it says it values. 00:23:40.807 --> 00:23:46.342 So a really interesting one around this that we've looked at a lot in terms of tenure. 00:23:46.493 --> 00:23:50.853 So tenure is basically how long somebody's worked for a company, 00:23:51.067 --> 00:23:54.794 right? So that's sort of how you think about tenure. 00:23:55.253 --> 00:23:58.931 And almost every company we've worked with still pays people partly for how 00:23:58.931 --> 00:23:59.850 long they've been there. 00:24:00.303 --> 00:24:04.901 But a lot of times when you look at does it predict someone's pay, 00:24:05.337 --> 00:24:06.621 it's actually not in the mix. 00:24:07.021 --> 00:24:10.841 So a company will say, we care about tenure, we value tenure. 00:24:10.841 --> 00:24:14.481 But then when you look at it and you analyze the compensation details, 00:24:14.481 --> 00:24:16.441 it doesn't actually explain anything. 00:24:17.022 --> 00:24:21.899 So when there's inconsistencies like that, that really sends a message to employees, 00:24:22.523 --> 00:24:27.971 not that the company isn't valuing them necessarily, but that there's confusion 00:24:27.971 --> 00:24:30.648 around, I don't know what it is that you value. 00:24:31.171 --> 00:24:34.311 And so, again, that consistency with what a company says they value, 00:24:34.311 --> 00:24:38.741 why they pay what they pay, and then actually doing that in practice is really 00:24:38.741 --> 00:24:42.101 important. And companies just haven't had the mechanism or the technology to 00:24:42.101 --> 00:24:44.139 be able to do that until now. 00:24:44.609 --> 00:24:48.631 So I think that's really critical because, again, it's not so much about the pay itself. 00:24:48.631 --> 00:24:53.911 It's about the explanation, the explainability, the ability for an employee 00:24:53.911 --> 00:24:57.271 to really understand, okay, I get it. So you pay for this. I don't have that 00:24:57.271 --> 00:25:01.140 yet. I got to work to get that. And when I get that, I'm going to get paid more. That's it. 00:25:02.106 --> 00:25:05.568 And it's so much more difficult than it should be. Yes. 00:25:05.568 --> 00:25:09.998 I mean, so much about having a healthy work environment is having proper expectations. 00:25:09.998 --> 00:25:13.178 And so sometimes people don't even know what they should be paid, 00:25:13.178 --> 00:25:14.398 but they think they should get paid more. 00:25:14.398 --> 00:25:17.858 So even, you know, that, having understanding industry standards, 00:25:17.858 --> 00:25:21.908 understanding all of these other sorts of things, if you equip people with knowledge, 00:25:21.908 -->
00:25:24.538 then you can help them right size their own expectations. 00:25:24.538 --> 00:25:29.684 And as you said, if I feel like I should be getting this promotion or a pay increase, 00:25:30.212 --> 00:25:34.998 but I don't have the certification or these years or this clientele or these 00:25:34.998 --> 00:25:40.958 sales it's it's clear oh this is why Sally is making more because she has these 00:25:40.958 --> 00:25:43.987 factors and I do not instead of they like her more, 00:25:44.487 --> 00:25:49.718 or whether or not that's true we have to consider how things land and how things 00:25:49.718 --> 00:25:56.193 feel and so the more we can give people information that they can look at and really understand, 00:25:57.249 --> 00:26:00.581 what they want to do, why they want to do it, what the organization is going to reward. 00:26:00.953 --> 00:26:05.248 You're just empowering people to make better choices, be more engaged, 00:26:05.248 --> 00:26:09.596 and not have those unnecessary backroom conversations. 00:26:10.267 --> 00:26:13.444 Yeah, and this was, it's so true. So this is something I talked about at the 00:26:13.764 --> 00:26:17.633 Fortune Workplace Innovation Summit because it was a panel around pay transparency. 00:26:18.143 --> 00:26:23.234 And one of the things that you have to address is the flattening of spans and 00:26:23.234 --> 00:26:27.054 layers right now in the manager premium that companies are starting to embark 00:26:27.054 --> 00:26:32.684 upon, which means managers are getting many, many more direct reports that they're responsible for. 00:26:33.038 --> 00:26:37.844 And so one of the things that we're doing is we're embedding that pay explainability 00:26:37.844 --> 00:26:41.144 into the tools they use every day, whether that's Slack or Microsoft Teams or 00:26:41.144 --> 00:26:46.448 Workday or whatever, because what happens is if a manager can't explain a pay decision, 00:26:46.959 --> 00:26:50.404 they'll just avoid the conversation until it becomes a grievance, 00:26:50.404 --> 00:26:54.250 until it becomes something that is impacting and creating attrition risk. 00:26:54.761 --> 00:26:59.874 And the fix is a really easy mechanism. It's capturing the decision and giving 00:26:59.874 --> 00:27:04.763 in the moment the conversation needs to happen, the manager a clear way to say, 00:27:05.418 --> 00:27:11.078 I promoted Andrea and now I need to explain to John why I promoted Andrea and 00:27:11.258 --> 00:27:14.044 what it's going to take for John to get on the same track. 00:27:14.253 --> 00:27:17.561 Like something like that, that's really a management conversation. Or, 00:27:18.054 --> 00:27:23.772 I'm in a conversation with Andrea and I need to know what her range should be for the promotion, 00:27:24.173 --> 00:27:28.422 giving them that information in the moment in the tools they already use today 00:27:28.648 --> 00:27:33.984 is the ability not only to provide explainability around pay, but it also gives these, 00:27:34.524 --> 00:27:38.174 managers the empowerment to not push things off. 00:27:38.946 --> 00:27:43.964 So that they become this sort of elephant in the room that ultimately becomes 00:27:43.964 --> 00:27:46.133 an attrition risk. I think that's really important. 00:27:46.762 --> 00:27:50.894 I think that's so So wonderfully said, very important, and also can help us 00:27:50.894 --> 00:27:56.554 get away from us versus them, right? So if I don't have any sort of explanation, 00:27:56.554 --> 00:27:59.904 I've just been told this is what the range is or this is what's going to happen, 00:27:59.904 --> 00:28:01.280 then I can say, well, I don't know. 00:28:02.080 --> 00:28:05.255 But once you have something that is clear, then you can also have conversations. 00:28:05.609 --> 00:28:07.426 You know, so this is what you're saying the metrics are. 00:28:07.647 --> 00:28:10.700 Are they right for 2026 or whatever year we have to be in? 00:28:11.298 --> 00:28:13.822 Can we have conversations about whether or not this is appropriate, 00:28:13.822 --> 00:28:15.952 given this is the thing that just happened in the marketplace? 00:28:16.335 --> 00:28:21.582 And so when you have them spelled out, then you can have these sorts of conversations. 00:28:21.582 --> 00:28:25.272 Or I can say, oh, I'm valuing something different than this organization. 00:28:25.568 --> 00:28:28.542 This is not a place where I'm going to be able to be moving up because I'm not 00:28:28.542 --> 00:28:30.021 willing to do what they want me to do. 00:28:30.392 --> 00:28:33.538 I'm going to focus someplace else or in a different place within the organization. Yeah. 00:28:35.364 --> 00:28:40.302 And also something that you brought up in a Fortune article, 00:28:40.744 --> 00:28:44.552 which I was surprised about because I think with equality, when it comes to 00:28:44.552 --> 00:28:47.558 women's pay, we think, well, certainly we're getting better or getting better. 00:28:48.213 --> 00:28:54.882 But is it the case that women are making up grounds as being paid for the same 00:28:54.882 --> 00:28:59.714 job and all the same sort of, you know, outliers that men are getting paid? 00:29:00.684 --> 00:29:03.902 Yeah, so let me make sure I understand the question so that we're making up 00:29:03.902 --> 00:29:05.652 ground in closing the gap. 00:29:06.172 --> 00:29:09.202 Closing the gap. It looked like from the article you were saying that we are 00:29:09.202 --> 00:29:14.293 losing ground between the pay gap between women and men. 00:29:15.212 --> 00:29:19.612 We have been. So we were making incremental progress, and then that progress 00:29:19.612 --> 00:29:22.316 started to slip in COVID and post-COVID. 00:29:22.746 --> 00:29:26.943 And I think a lot of this, again, is answering that core question as compared to what. 00:29:27.239 --> 00:29:30.885 Like a lot of what we do with our customers is it's not just about, 00:29:31.556 --> 00:29:36.817 pay, it's about pay as compared
to what. So what are you using to make decisions? 00:29:36.817 --> 00:29:40.387 What percentage are you basing on market? What percentage are you basing on 00:29:40.387 --> 00:29:43.637 your policies? Whether that's we reward tenure, we reward education, 00:29:43.637 --> 00:29:46.225 we reward skills, we reward performance score. 00:29:46.881 --> 00:29:52.057 It's okay to reward things in a way that benefits your business and drives outcomes 00:29:52.057 --> 00:29:55.288 for your business, but you have to stay consistent with those things. 00:29:55.577 --> 00:29:58.637 So one of the things I say to customers all the time is that if we were merely 00:29:58.637 --> 00:30:02.187 consistent with the policies that we put in place at the beginning of every 00:30:02.187 --> 00:30:06.367 year when we're doing our headcount planning, so much of the pay gap would be eradicated. 00:30:06.704 --> 00:30:11.447 It is that once you have that strategy, it doesn't live on the shoulder of every 00:30:11.447 --> 00:30:14.512 single person in the organization as they're making decisions. 00:30:14.878 --> 00:30:20.769 So I think it's a really dangerous place to be to let pay decisions just run 00:30:21.053 --> 00:30:26.086 amok ungoverned because that is a huge reason why the pay gap still exists. 00:30:26.388 --> 00:30:30.137 And if we could build in pay equity as a constraint into every decision, 00:30:30.137 --> 00:30:34.067 which is what our customers are doing now, it's pretty remarkable what they're able to do. 00:30:34.067 --> 00:30:37.841 So when we've looked back at customers prior to implementing this technology, 00:30:38.277 --> 00:30:43.815 the variance on pay decisions away from policy was plus or minus about eight and a half percent. 00:30:44.320 --> 00:30:48.459 So if you think about that across thousands of decisions, that's, 00:30:48.644 --> 00:30:53.197 you know, seven percent of your annual headcount budget that you're wasting 00:30:53.197 --> 00:30:57.439 by overpaying as it relates to what your policies indicate you should pay. 00:30:57.799 --> 00:31:01.450 And in many cases, you don't need to be paying that in order to secure the candidate. 00:31:01.787 --> 00:31:07.547 So there's so much goodness in looking at and governing pay decisions as they 00:31:07.547 --> 00:31:09.637 happen in alignment with your strategy. 00:31:10.057 --> 00:31:16.947 And one of the goodnesses is to reduce those pay inequity gaps that are because 00:31:16.947 --> 00:31:18.417 of something like gender or race. 00:31:19.148 --> 00:31:22.453 Yeah. And I think, you know, when we don't have transparency, 00:31:22.453 --> 00:31:26.149 when we don't know what that side of the organization is doing or that side, 00:31:26.497 --> 00:31:30.773 then, you know, we'd have good intentions. But if we're not paying attention, 00:31:30.773 --> 00:31:32.535 then we may not notice. We may not. 00:31:33.034 --> 00:31:37.333 We think we're, because we have a value that we want to close that gap, 00:31:37.333 --> 00:31:40.673 we think we're doing it. But when they're not looking at the numbers to see, 00:31:41.033 --> 00:31:42.316 are we actually doing it? 00:31:42.682 --> 00:31:46.156 Why has it not happened? You know, asking all those really good questions. 00:31:46.580 --> 00:31:53.134 Or how can we, as an organization, make that go away in something like what you're talking about? 00:31:54.055 --> 00:31:58.944 Yeah. And I think also this mixed message. So the thing we've been talking about 00:31:58.944 --> 00:32:02.554 is this mixed message of what a company's value. How do we make sure their strategy 00:32:02.554 --> 00:32:04.955 is put into practice in every decision? 00:32:05.344 --> 00:32:11.585 The other one is the messages back to the content of your book and your work, 00:32:12.090 --> 00:32:17.918 is the messages, the inconsistent messages we are sending to our kids and to generations about AI. 00:32:18.313 --> 00:32:21.684 So when you look across the spectrum of messages, on one hand, 00:32:21.684 --> 00:32:25.122 we're saying AI is going to replace all the entry-level jobs. 00:32:25.743 --> 00:32:30.143 And so now we've created this culture in our kids. I have a 19-year-old, 00:32:30.282 --> 00:32:36.342 as you do as well, where the commencement speakers who mention AI get booed off the stage. 00:32:36.766 --> 00:32:39.724 They are very, very hesitant and reluctant to use AI. 00:32:39.724 --> 00:32:42.634 My daughter and I wrote companion pieces in Fortune about this. 00:32:42.634 --> 00:32:46.234 It's been fascinating to hear how she talks about cognitive surrender, 00:32:46.234 --> 00:32:52.784 and she doesn't want to give up her creativity and train a model to basically have that creativity. 00:32:52.784 --> 00:32:58.335 And she really believes in sort of human at the helm, which we do as well as a company. 00:32:58.823 --> 00:33:01.464 But we're sending this message that it's going to take all of your jobs. 00:33:02.039 --> 00:33:06.033 And so they have a reaction, totally normal and respectable. 00:33:06.625 --> 00:33:11.604 And then what we know as leaders in companies is the entry-level folks that 00:33:11.604 --> 00:33:15.604 will get picked up and get picked up for a really high price point, 00:33:15.604 --> 00:33:20.987 by the way, are the ones that have taught themselves how to harness and use these skills. 00:33:21.451 --> 00:33:25.230 So on one hand, we're sending a message that it's going to take your jobs, 00:33:25.398 --> 00:33:27.807 which is causing them to run from this technology. 00:33:28.069 --> 00:33:31.544 And then in reality, what's happening are the ones that actually embrace it 00:33:31.544 --> 00:33:34.135 are the ones that are going to get those roles. 00:33:34.489 --> 00:33:41.614 So how in the world can those inconsistencies of messages be consumed generationally 00:33:41.614 --> 00:33:46.404 and give people the right playbook as to what to learn and how to be curious 00:33:46.404 -->
00:33:48.490 because it's so bifurcated. 00:33:49.698 --> 00:33:52.734 That's really interesting so what do you think the solution is, 00:33:53.802 --> 00:33:57.732 I think the solution is having conversations. So one of the things that happened 00:33:57.732 --> 00:34:02.090 when my daughter and I, she did this project on the generational responses to AI. 00:34:02.386 --> 00:34:08.022 She knows that I'm an AI optimist. I use it tremendously in my work. I have a bunch of agents. 00:34:08.342 --> 00:34:12.722 I'm very big on keeping up and training my employees, giving them tools to actually 00:34:12.722 --> 00:34:15.572 harness the technology in a way that keeps the human judgment. 00:34:15.572 --> 00:34:19.592 I think that's critical because we can't let our brains atrophy in terms of 00:34:20.004 --> 00:34:22.611 surrendering all of our human judgment. and, 00:34:23.557 --> 00:34:27.954 But in having that conversation and actually through the process of publishing 00:34:27.954 --> 00:34:32.324 those pieces in Fortune, what was really interesting is I became a little more 00:34:32.324 --> 00:34:36.474 open to needing to rely more on my human judgment. 00:34:36.774 --> 00:34:41.694 And she became a little more AI curious. So she came down the stairs a week 00:34:41.694 --> 00:34:44.921 or two after we had published these pieces in Fortune. And she was like, 00:34:45.252 --> 00:34:47.364 I use Cloud Code to help me with 00:34:47.364 --> 00:34:51.010 this research that I needed to do for a Substack article I was writing. 00:34:51.480 --> 00:34:54.824 It was really cool, Mom. I built something. I felt like a coder. 00:34:54.824 --> 00:34:57.964 I felt like what an engineer might feel like because she built a thing that 00:34:57.964 --> 00:35:00.400 scraped websites and then populated a spreadsheet. 00:35:00.890 --> 00:35:07.181 And conversely, I had forced myself into having one call a day that was just, 00:35:07.686 --> 00:35:11.889 by cell that wasn't recorded where I didn't get the transcript because I started to notice. 00:35:12.519 --> 00:35:16.564 In the knowledge that every call was being recorded and I'd get the transcript 00:35:16.564 --> 00:35:20.904 to feed to my agents to analyze and get my level three listening. 00:35:20.904 --> 00:35:24.554 The listening that you do when you notice people's body language, are they leaning in? 00:35:24.554 --> 00:35:28.594 Are they leaning out? What's the tone of their voice? Like, even over a cell 00:35:28.594 --> 00:35:32.094 phone, you can figure some of that stuff out and then having to synthesize that. 00:35:32.094 --> 00:35:35.513 So even if I went back and reported to my agents what had happened, 00:35:36.018 --> 00:35:41.774 required a different human skill than just being on a call, knowing it was being 00:35:41.774 --> 00:35:46.974 recorded and sort of tuning out a bit, like not having that deep level of listening. 00:35:46.974 --> 00:35:51.894 So long story short, she sort of became a little more open-minded to using it, 00:35:52.294 --> 00:35:54.552 and I became a little more open-minded to not. 00:35:54.958 --> 00:35:58.834 So yeah, I think it was a really clear indication of how... 00:35:59.930 --> 00:36:06.511 We both kind of moved more to the open-minded way of thinking about something 00:36:06.511 --> 00:36:07.744 we had felt very strongly about. 00:36:07.999 --> 00:36:11.540 Yeah, that is so interesting, the mixed messages. 00:36:11.958 --> 00:36:17.111 And when we just talk to people who are like ourselves, then we're going to 00:36:17.111 --> 00:36:18.611 have those ideas reinforced. 00:36:18.611 --> 00:36:22.041 And I think that is, you know, something like AI, a lot of times we think, 00:36:22.041 --> 00:36:25.501 oh, the younger generation, they're more comfortable with technology, 00:36:25.501 --> 00:36:27.438 they're more willing to, the more this, that, and the other. 00:36:28.461 --> 00:36:32.552 In some ways, but in not always. And if we don't have those conversations. 00:36:34.482 --> 00:36:35.521 Then we're not even gonna be 00:36:35.521 --> 00:36:39.758 challenging ourself. Like, what have I offloaded that I should not have? 00:36:39.886 --> 00:36:43.811 Because it's taking away from what I want to be able to have, 00:36:43.811 --> 00:36:50.041 the elasticity of the brain and being able to be creative and to be innovative 00:36:50.041 --> 00:36:53.621 and not, how do I appropriately use it as a tool, right? 00:36:53.621 --> 00:36:57.611 And if we don't have those sort of right sizing and having your kid challenge 00:36:57.611 --> 00:37:01.828 you is a real i've had that too is a really good way to help you stop and think 00:37:02.130 --> 00:37:07.615 you know and how i justifying in the right way using this appropriately, 00:37:08.719 --> 00:37:13.131 so let me ask you about when i think about pay and how we're going to pay people 00:37:13.131 --> 00:37:20.125 or you know year end you know what someone's going to get what about, 00:37:21.241 --> 00:37:26.604 the untangibles so how somebody shows up how pleasant they are to work with. 00:37:27.659 --> 00:37:31.471 Do you think all that stuff can be captured? There's just some sort of formula number? 00:37:31.471 --> 00:37:35.432 Or is there this discretionary, human to human. 00:37:36.570 --> 00:37:42.211 How I feel, how you fit in, that is just not something that can be reduced and 00:37:42.211 --> 00:37:46.551 put in a spreadsheet and then put into exactly how we're going to pay everybody? 00:37:46.551 --> 00:37:47.714 What are your thoughts on that? 00:37:48.797 --> 00:37:54.344 My thoughts on that are that AI is giving us the opportunity to get closer and 00:37:54.344 --> 00:37:56.663 closer to measurement and, 00:37:57.286 --> 00:38:02.494 metrics around the delivery of business outcomes that we can start to track 00:38:02.494 --> 00:38:07.162 in a way that removes some of the bias, some of the proximity bias, some of the. 00:38:08.195 --> 00:38:13.244 Just
bias that you see every day that we all have and is proven as part of the workplace. 00:38:13.244 --> 00:38:18.354 Because that's really the ideal. I mean, it has become a complete dirty word. 00:38:18.354 --> 00:38:22.844 But when you think about a meritocracy, to me, what that means is I am going 00:38:22.844 --> 00:38:25.123 to be valued for the things I deliver to the company. 00:38:25.804 --> 00:38:31.374 And I think that's what we all want. If you have a 10Xer buried somewhere in 00:38:31.374 --> 00:38:36.194 your organization and they're getting paid like a 2Xer, that's a problem because 00:38:36.194 --> 00:38:39.864 you don't know that that person is delivering remarkable results. 00:38:40.364 --> 00:38:45.604 And I would say every single CEO, if you said, would you pay a 10Xer what they're 00:38:45.604 --> 00:38:47.754 worth? Absolutely. You want those people. 00:38:48.369 --> 00:38:52.444 But the problem is, is the way we've organized around building these strategies 00:38:52.444 --> 00:38:56.114 sort of in a room and then having them stay there and not be on the shoulders 00:38:56.114 --> 00:38:57.610 of folks making the decisions, 00:38:58.052 --> 00:39:03.564 is you end up overpaying and underpaying instead of paying for the outcomes that you want. 00:39:03.564 --> 00:39:08.544 And that's never been available to us before because we haven't been able to 00:39:08.544 --> 00:39:13.734 plug into all the systems, capture the context, and understand what does it 00:39:13.734 --> 00:39:16.759 mean to have an employee that's actually delivering business outcomes. 00:39:17.160 --> 00:39:22.105 So my belief is we're moving into a world where we really can start to capture, 00:39:22.628 --> 00:39:27.341 the end of the feedback loop, which is, did that person who we paid up for, 00:39:27.876 --> 00:39:33.263 deliver against the business objectives that we were targeting and justifying that pay for? 00:39:33.588 --> 00:39:38.493 And conversely, do we have high-performing folks somewhere in our organization that are underpaid? 00:39:40.314 --> 00:39:44.975 Yeah. So, of course, there's so many different things that can cause conflict 00:39:44.975 --> 00:39:48.772 at work and certainly when people don't feel like they're being paid appropriately. 00:39:49.214 --> 00:39:51.524 So let's just pivot and talk about conflict. 00:39:52.099 --> 00:39:57.775 In your younger, your first professional jobs, how did you deal with conflict? 00:39:57.775 --> 00:40:01.375 Are you comfortable dealing with it at the work environment? Not comfortable? 00:40:01.955 --> 00:40:04.107 And how does that compare to where you are now? 00:40:06.371 --> 00:40:11.105 I'll start with now now I run toward it I've found that conflict is so much 00:40:11.105 --> 00:40:14.978 easier to address if you just run at it like a brick wall and I would say. 00:40:16.361 --> 00:40:22.400 Results that are not meeting expectations, anything that's tricky or difficult 00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:26.101 to explain, just that's sort of my phrase is like, just run at it. 00:40:26.548 --> 00:40:29.270 Because the more you try to avoid it, the worse it's going to get. 00:40:29.270 --> 00:40:32.010 And the more you try to sugarcoat it, the worse it's going to get. 00:40:32.010 --> 00:40:35.099 So a couple of things I did early in my career that I've really been. 00:40:35.753 --> 00:40:39.180 It's just, I don't do anymore because they don't serve anyone. 00:40:39.180 --> 00:40:43.800 Number one is the sugarcoating. So I have a board member who's an incredible 00:40:43.800 --> 00:40:49.000 mentor and friend, and she always says to me, clarity is kindness. And it's so true. 00:40:49.620 --> 00:40:57.668 It's that critical conversation. It's how do you give someone feedback that is clear? 00:40:57.824 --> 00:41:01.670 And a lot of times that's going to feel bad in the moment because you're telling 00:41:01.670 --> 00:41:03.403 them something maybe negative. 00:41:03.850 --> 00:41:08.128 But the more you sugarcoat that or work around it, they're not benefiting. 00:41:08.500 --> 00:41:13.680 And again, I always think about my role and responsibility is to prepare the 00:41:13.680 --> 00:41:18.592 folks that are in my employ today for roles outside of my organization. 00:41:19.115 --> 00:41:23.790 And if they kind of go through their career and they have some sort of flaw 00:41:23.790 --> 00:41:28.867 that is not addressed directly, we're going to launch them into another job with that same flaw. 00:41:29.047 --> 00:41:32.580 And so we're not serving them and we're not serving our organization either. 00:41:32.580 --> 00:41:36.621 So I would say early in my career, my first tech job that I told you about, 00:41:37.138 --> 00:41:42.330 I was working with a group of women who were also sort of my closest friends. 00:41:42.330 --> 00:41:45.560 I ended up being roommates with one. Like, it's that early career. 00:41:45.560 --> 00:41:47.018 You know, we all go out for happy hour. 00:41:47.575 --> 00:41:50.240 And I got promoted. And now I have to be their manager. 00:41:50.971 --> 00:41:56.530 Oh, my God. Like, if there was a book of, like, 101 mistakes to make as a first-time 00:41:56.530 --> 00:41:58.494 manager, I made 102 of them. 00:41:59.260 --> 00:42:03.130 I just, I wanted to still be their friend. I didn't want to be the boss. 00:42:03.130 --> 00:42:08.386 I didn't like and I was so hurt when I started to be left out of things because 00:42:08.589 --> 00:42:10.030 they saw me differently. They 00:42:10.030 --> 00:42:14.330 couldn't, you know, trash talk or do the things that we had been doing. 00:42:15.173 --> 00:42:20.341 And I just, I couldn't, I couldn't handle it. And I don't think I even learned my lesson in that job. 00:42:20.681 --> 00:42:22.011 Like, I wouldn't say I left that 00:42:22.011 --> 00:42:24.618 job like, oh, I learned all these great things that I'm going to apply. 00:42:24.856 --> 00:42:29.035 It took a while before I
sort of figured out, oh, leadership is very different. 00:42:29.500 --> 00:42:34.521 Leadership can be lonely. Leadership is holding yourself and others accountable. 00:42:34.521 --> 00:42:37.631 Leadership is clarity, is kindness. 00:42:37.753 --> 00:42:42.188 And I think that's really tough for folks to learn when they're young. 00:42:43.102 --> 00:42:48.161 But we learn it eventually, hopefully. Was it anything in particular that happened 00:42:48.161 --> 00:42:53.448 or it's just a series of sort of misfires where you just eventually got the message? 00:42:54.166 --> 00:42:58.461 I think it was just a series of things that eventually you realize. 00:42:58.960 --> 00:43:05.281 Actually, I remember what it was. It was at the company after that one where I had to fire someone. 00:43:05.733 --> 00:43:10.251 And when I fired her, somebody else told me, you know, you could have avoided 00:43:10.251 --> 00:43:14.638 that had you given her feedback. And they asked me the question, 00:43:15.461 --> 00:43:18.864 the question that I ask people today, which is, will she be surprised? 00:43:19.914 --> 00:43:23.281 And if a leader is doing it right, when you have to let someone go, 00:43:23.681 --> 00:43:24.982 they should never be surprised. 00:43:25.220 --> 00:43:28.241 Because you've been giving them guidance and feedback all along, 00:43:28.241 --> 00:43:30.240 they know it's coming. They know they're not performing. 00:43:30.612 --> 00:43:34.054 And so when I had to answer that question, yes, I think she'll be surprised, 00:43:34.484 --> 00:43:37.398 it was so clear immediately that I had not done my job. 00:43:38.307 --> 00:43:42.736 And I think that's really important. Like if you're doing your job, 00:43:43.328 --> 00:43:46.956 nobody's going to be surprised by an outcome like that. 00:43:47.937 --> 00:43:54.137 So that was definitely a moment of, oh, yeah, I guess that's on me. 00:43:54.735 --> 00:43:58.927 That is a really great question and goes back to why we don't sugarcoat things. 00:43:58.927 --> 00:44:04.757 Because clarity is kindness. And that means that if I need to say something 00:44:04.757 --> 00:44:09.810 difficult or that might be difficult for somebody, they need to hear precisely what it is. 00:44:10.054 --> 00:44:12.440 What exactly? Instead of me trying to have to guess. 00:44:12.864 --> 00:44:15.887 So it's not that big of a deal. It is a big deal. You want this. 00:44:15.887 --> 00:44:16.857 I'm not really doing that. 00:44:17.415 --> 00:44:24.164 But coming out and say it. Sometimes people misunderstand what it means to be kind. So, right. 00:44:24.460 --> 00:44:29.027 Because I live in the South and there is, I love living in the South and people are very kind here. 00:44:29.027 --> 00:44:32.157 But then sometimes what needs to be said is that out of kindness and i think 00:44:32.157 --> 00:44:35.517 no that is selfishness and cowardice it's not kindness, 00:44:36.028 --> 00:44:42.195 it is kind to tell somebody something that is negatively impacting their professionalism 00:44:42.468 --> 00:44:45.202 or their whatever job it is that they're getting done, 00:44:46.102 --> 00:44:48.175 and and that's. 00:44:49.190 --> 00:44:53.059 And so the more touches we have with people, then we don't have to sandwich 00:44:53.059 --> 00:44:57.549 everything, right? So if people know how you feel about them and you tell them 00:44:57.549 --> 00:45:02.893 when they're doing good work, then you've, in a way, earned the right. 00:45:03.014 --> 00:45:05.889 Earned the right is kind of weird with your boss. But you can be heard in a 00:45:05.889 --> 00:45:08.469 certain kind of way and go with a certain kind of confidence because it's not 00:45:08.469 --> 00:45:12.849 the only time they're ever having contact with you, right? And so I can trust 00:45:12.849 --> 00:45:15.069 what you have to say that you're not trying to harm me, that you're trying to 00:45:15.069 --> 00:45:17.161 help me. I'm trying to help the business. 00:45:17.649 --> 00:45:21.929 Um and you right so the first time to have a difficult conversation is not the 00:45:21.929 --> 00:45:25.349 first time you have a conversation it should be way down the line because you've 00:45:25.349 --> 00:45:29.722 had all these other sorts of touches such that you are developing that person, 00:45:30.245 --> 00:45:34.019 it is clear that they're doing the right kinds of things and so then it would 00:45:34.019 --> 00:45:37.722 also be clear when they're not because they can trust that you'll tell them they don't have to, 00:45:38.399 --> 00:45:43.939 read your mind who wants to read their boss's mind yeah and it's so So it's 00:45:43.939 --> 00:45:47.754 so much easier said than done, particularly if you're, 00:45:48.845 --> 00:45:52.346 you know, in a startup, you're all in the trenches together and you're. 00:45:53.921 --> 00:46:01.810 It's really difficult to, I think, especially as women, overcome this desire to be liked. 00:46:02.611 --> 00:46:07.214 And I've seen it as a fatal flaw in many women who are trying to become executives 00:46:07.214 --> 00:46:12.464 because you really have to put that aside and do what's best for the business. 00:46:12.464 --> 00:46:16.544 And sometimes that means you are able to create and cultivate wonderful relationships, 00:46:16.544 --> 00:46:21.232 but you cannot put being liked ahead of doing what's right. 00:46:21.738 --> 00:46:27.344 And that's a hard lesson to learn. It really only is solvable when you realize 00:46:27.344 --> 00:46:31.954 that there can be disastrous outcomes for the people that you care about if 00:46:31.954 --> 00:46:33.963 you don't give them the right guidance. 00:46:34.715 --> 00:46:39.394 I think it's really, really important to note and also that we need to really 00:46:39.394 --> 00:46:42.204 tell people what it means to go into leadership. If you are now, 00:46:42.204 --> 00:46:45.544 I mean, so many people get promoted from a pool and now the people that they
00:46:45.544 --> 00:46:48.932 were at the break room with just like their experience, now you're in charge. 00:46:49.506 --> 00:46:53.664 And many times we just see oh i get this extra thing i get to do i get this 00:46:53.664 --> 00:46:58.794 increase in pay and very rarely will someone tell us this is what it's going to cost you. 00:46:59.654 --> 00:47:03.754 This is the the personal and it can be really big and can be devastating when 00:47:03.754 --> 00:47:05.052 people don't understand, 00:47:05.766 --> 00:47:10.364 because they feel like they're the same person but to misunderstand power dynamics 00:47:10.364 --> 00:47:14.719 at work to not understand the particular game that you're playing is a detriment to everybody, 00:47:15.207 --> 00:47:17.134 and so if you not everybody is 00:47:17.134 --> 00:47:20.917 should be a leader, right? Not everybody should be a manager or a leader. 00:47:21.201 --> 00:47:23.354 And that's, we should know that, right? 00:47:24.996 --> 00:47:27.889 But to really help people understand, if you're going to do this, 00:47:27.889 --> 00:47:29.779 this is what it's going to mean. 00:47:29.953 --> 00:47:33.181 And this is now what kindness looks like here. And this is what it looks like. 00:47:33.500 --> 00:47:35.949 If you really want to be liked, then you've got to deal with stuff, 00:47:35.949 --> 00:47:37.509 which can feel hard, right? 00:47:37.509 --> 00:47:42.959 That momentary discomfort for the reputation, the trust that you build. 00:47:42.959 --> 00:47:50.527 And it's a different kind of liking or peacemaking or just a different sort of view of success. 00:47:50.800 --> 00:47:54.625 I think very rarely people, women, don't get that message. 00:47:56.680 --> 00:48:02.102 I agree. And I think especially now we all have to be reassessing whether we're in the right job. 00:48:03.079 --> 00:48:07.349 I think AI transformation is changing so many things and it's making so many 00:48:07.349 --> 00:48:09.739 more roles accessible to folks. And. 00:48:11.942 --> 00:48:17.829 It requires tremendous change agility. It is the most important attribute. 00:48:17.829 --> 00:48:23.139 And I heard, you know, somebody that I really respect, Dee, he's the CHRO at AbbVie. 00:48:23.139 --> 00:48:27.129 He talked about this at a conference I was at. And he was just talking about 00:48:27.129 --> 00:48:32.649 the cultivation of change agility and how it really is the legacy ideal of change 00:48:32.649 --> 00:48:34.041 management in a new world. 00:48:34.953 --> 00:48:41.249 And management those two words the word that change change management to change 00:48:41.249 --> 00:48:47.053 agility like think about that word choice i love words i'm a history nerd i love writing, 00:48:47.546 --> 00:48:52.318 management to agility so something that is very sort of cut and dried clear 00:48:52.724 --> 00:48:57.299 concise concrete you manage the change there's a process by which you go through 00:48:57.299 --> 00:49:02.488 to manage the
thing versus change agility that really signals and. 00:49:03.941 --> 00:49:07.032 It's going to, you got to check and adjust. You got to be curious. 00:49:07.032 --> 00:49:09.514 You don't know. You got to be nimble. You got to be able to roll with it. 00:49:10.058 --> 00:49:16.782 Very different processes for how people can transform in this new era and what 00:49:16.782 --> 00:49:20.838 it requires of us to be in certain jobs. So I think about that all the time. 00:49:21.488 --> 00:49:25.042 I think that's really wonderful because, yeah, change management denotes we're 00:49:25.042 --> 00:49:29.182 changing from this to that and now we're done, right? You've managed the change. 00:49:29.182 --> 00:49:31.455 You've gone through the process and now we can sit in this. 00:49:31.914 --> 00:49:34.886 But agility really is the name of the game. And change is not going away. 00:49:35.217 --> 00:49:39.912 And so while it is the case that humans crave stability, it's how do I find 00:49:39.912 --> 00:49:41.962 that stability in the change? 00:49:41.962 --> 00:49:47.883 How do I develop those skills to not only accept but expect this? 00:49:48.173 --> 00:49:52.822 And so being agile, I think that is a really beautiful, evocative way of helping 00:49:52.822 --> 00:49:58.242 people set their expectations as to what does it mean to be relevant in the 00:49:58.242 --> 00:49:59.632 age of work in which we find ourselves. 00:50:01.235 --> 00:50:04.852 All right. So my last question for you is this. As you look into the world, 00:50:05.412 --> 00:50:10.242 the future, what do you think needs to happen so that not only will all people 00:50:10.242 --> 00:50:15.661 be treated with dignity and respect at work, but that they'll be encouraged to thrive and flourish? 00:50:16.750 --> 00:50:22.479 I think organizations need to leverage this incredible opportunity of technology, 00:50:22.990 --> 00:50:28.871 to start analyzing and giving the ability for their strategy to be in every single room. 00:50:29.754 --> 00:50:31.843 And I think that's important because I think, 00:50:33.141 --> 00:50:36.345 In a lot of companies I talk to, the strategy is very thoughtful. 00:50:37.115 --> 00:50:41.099 It's not flawed. It takes into account a lot of the things they're trying to achieve. 00:50:41.454 --> 00:50:45.495 It's that gap between the development of this very thoughtful, 00:50:45.495 --> 00:50:48.128 intentional strategy and what happens in the day-to-day. 00:50:48.835 --> 00:50:52.985 So my advice would be do whatever you can do to make sure you're closing that 00:50:52.985 --> 00:50:54.589 gap because the tools exist now. 00:50:55.019 --> 00:51:00.465 The tools exist now to pull and push information in a way that it can be analyzed 00:51:00.465 --> 00:51:04.665 and it can actually bridge that So that every single conversation that's happening 00:51:04.665 --> 00:51:05.802 with your frontline, this 00:51:06.121 --> 00:51:10.249 ability to have manager readiness in a way that we couldn't have before. 00:51:11.555 --> 00:51:12.955 It's very transformational. 00:51:12.955 --> 00:51:18.605 And it can provide the transparency that links to not only better engagement 00:51:18.605 --> 00:51:22.625 and better happiness and productivity and safety and all of those things, 00:51:23.693 --> 00:51:27.552 transparency and trust are two sides of the same coin. So the more transparency 00:51:27.552 --> 00:51:31.852 that you're able to offer, the more linkage to that strategy in everyday conversations, 00:51:31.852 --> 00:51:33.742 the more trust you're going to garner from your people. 00:51:34.850 --> 00:51:40.841 And I think that's really an opportunity to build a durable, thriving company. 00:51:41.735 --> 00:51:46.092 Great answer. Well, Maria, thank you so much for being on Conflict Management 00:51:46.092 --> 00:51:47.425 and for this great conversation. 00:51:47.918 --> 00:51:49.811 Yeah, thank you. It was a pleasure. 00:51:50.408 --> 00:51:51.970 Well, take care. Take care. 00:51:52.798 --> 00:51:55.956 Maria, thank you for the conversation, for the work that you're doing. 00:51:56.362 --> 00:52:00.175 It sounds really interesting, and of course it's important. 00:52:00.838 --> 00:52:04.092 Because we're at work, we want to get paid. We want to be paid equitably, 00:52:04.532 --> 00:52:06.589 fairly, however we want to think about it. 00:52:07.269 --> 00:52:11.257 We want, in our organizations, want to treat their people well. 00:52:11.890 --> 00:52:16.212 But certainly, in larger organizations, it's really hard to get your arms around 00:52:16.212 --> 00:52:18.780 some of that information so that you can be consistent. 00:52:19.834 --> 00:52:24.842 So that's wonderful that we have these products available to help us do the 00:52:24.842 --> 00:52:27.434 thing that we want to do anyway, to treat our people well. 00:52:28.051 --> 00:52:31.592 Conflict Managed is produced by Third Party Workplace Conflict Restoration Services 00:52:31.592 --> 00:52:33.137 and hosted by me, Merry Brown. 00:52:33.491 --> 00:52:36.173 You can find us online at 3PConflictrestoration.com. 00:52:36.573 --> 00:52:40.592 Come back. We have new episodes every Tuesday. And if you would like and subscribe 00:52:40.592 --> 00:52:44.230 wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, it's greatly appreciated. 00:52:44.781 --> 00:52:49.582 Our music is courtesy of Dove Pilot. it. And remember, conflict is normal and 00:52:49.582 --> 00:52:52.764 expected. Let's deal with it. Until next time, take care.
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