The Work of Your Life
Your Work Friends Podcast: The Work of Your Life with Joan Burke
Culture isn’t a checkbox, it’s the secret weapon behind every high-performing organization. Join HR visionary Joan Burke as she unveils her ‘Work of Your Life’ blueprint from DocuSign to Responsys, showing you how to transform managers into master coaches, ignite engagement, and make retention your ultimate growth engine.
Speaker 1: 0:00
So if you really care about the success of your organization, if you care about revenue, then you got to care about the people who are leading the organization and your talent. It is a no-brainer.
Speaker 2: 0:24
Welcome to your Work. Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel, and we're breaking down work so you get ahead. For those of you that don't know, every year, mel and I sit down and think about what are the topics that we want to talk about, and then we think about the guests we want, and we're always looking for people that are actively in it. They're either a really deep subject matter expert, they're on the line in the seat doing the role and they're really able to think about how you get some of this stuff done. So we can always make work better, and one of the things that we were always wondering about are how do you create these cultures where people feel like they can really do their best work? And that brought us to Joan Burke.
Speaker 2: 1:02
Joan, if you don't know, her is just a real deal CHRO. She is now a board member, she's an advisor. She's been a chief people officer at places like DocuSign, marketo Responses. She's been a CHRO at small companies, major companies, in multiple different industries. She's been there, she's done that and she's been able to create these cultures where people can do the work of their lives, and we wanted to talk to her about how she did that. What did you think of this conversation, mel?
Speaker 3: 1:34
I loved it because as an HR person lifelong HR person like Joan I really appreciate the hard line that she took in every interview, which was she's human-centered and it's human first and if that doesn't align then it's not the right fit for her. And because of that alignment she's been able to go in and build these beautiful workplaces. I'm just really inspired by the legacy she leaves behind and the message it leaves for others.
Speaker 2: 1:59
It takes a whole village to create a culture where people feel like they can do the work of their lives. Joan gives you the playbook for how she did this, what needed to be in play at DocuSign, at Responsys. She's. Also gave us some tips If you're not in these types of companies, what you can do yourselves to create the work of your life and if you're interviewing, what you can look for and some questions you can ask to see if a company is going to enable you to do the work of your life. This conversation, to me, was just fantastic. Joan's the real deal, and with that, here's Joan.
Speaker 3: 2:41
At DocuSign, you really created something super special, right? It was a culture where that employee experience enabled a lot of folks to, as you call it, do the work of their lives. In today's environment, things are changing. How do you make the business case to do that today?
Speaker 1: 3:02
So the business case is the same as the business case was when we did it in DocuSign. I joined them in 2017. Even though it's an employer's market, the best talent always has options. You should never walk away from that or feel as though I have to prioritize revenue. I have to prioritize this and I don't have time or this isn't important. It is as important now as it was when we were doing it.
Speaker 1: 3:26
Now, when we were doing it hyper competitive, the market was crazy. Everybody's trying to get good talent. Now. I would say it's important to do that because you need to keep your good talent. The pendulum will swing. It will go from being an employer's market to being an employee's market at some point in time, and the companies that invest in their people now, when that happens, they're not going to see them walking out the door. They're going to have an increase in retention and I think it's a false narrative to say it's an either or. If you're going to prioritize a business, you're going to prioritize people. So it's absolutely as important now as it was seven years ago, when the market was very different than it is today.
Speaker 3: 4:07
Francesca and I often say people fuel your business. So absolutely Both are so super important right Well, at the end of the day, if you think about it, revenue happens because you've got great talent.
Speaker 1: 4:17
These things do not happen on their own. It always is people that are responsible for that success in organizations, always.
Speaker 3: 4:24
Oh, and they're the base of the business.
Speaker 2: 4:26
Yeah, so you have a very good point. I think the thing that won't change is that people want to be able to do work and do the good work and to do the work of their lives. I don't think that's going to change. I really don't that intrinsic need want desire. At DocuSign. That was what you were really striving for people to have is had some great partnerships in the leadership team there.
Speaker 1: 5:08
Certainly Dan Springer, the CEO, scott Ulrich, who was initially the CMO, became the COO. These are people who totally got it and we thought really long and hard about how do we differentiate DocuSign and so candidate is going to be looking at a number of different companies. What is going to make them want to come to DocuSign? If a candidate is going to be looking at a number of different companies, what is going to make them want to come to DocuSign versus go to Adobe, go to Google? How do we make sure, also, that the values that we stood for authentically DocuSign and not ones that you could go to any website and pick up the words and they're fine, but there's nothing special about it? This is where the working life came in. This is what we said. People, as you just said, francesca, people want to do great work. Employees do not come to work to do a crappy job. They don't. They don't come to work to do a boring job. They come to work because they want to succeed, they want to contribute and they want to do a great job. So we thought, looking back, when people view their career, what we hoped is that people would say donkey, sign. That's where I did the work of my life. This was a marketing thing, because Scott is a great marketer. We intentionally didn't say the best work of your life, because you don't need best. It's like the work of your life. That vacation I had the time of my life, so we had to operationalize it. We had to bring it to life and we talked about it as being actually really important and, in many ways, a personal statement. I, joe, wouldn't know what one of my employees' work of their life was until I spent time with them and we understood how we were going to help that person get there and what were the opportunities, what was the development? And then, when it came time to do our low engagement surveys, one of the questions we always ask is are you doing the work of your life? If you're not doing the work of your life, what do you need from the company? What do you need from your manager to do the work of your life? We put it into self-evaluations. We put it into feedback. It was an employment brand for us. Your recruiters are going to go to job fairs, they're going to have a booth, they're going to have a banner. It might as well be something cool that makes some sense, and it did. Our recruiters would say people would go by and say, whoa, work your Life, what's that all about?
Speaker 1: 7:18
There were a lot of components to the work of your life. We also invested very heavily in our managers in terms of developing and training them. We had a work your life management program that was based on four pillars. That were pillars that we believe were unique to DocuSign, that we want to help be our managers. So it was very real and I'll give you an example. I was on LinkedIn the other day and there's a woman who I hired, probably about six months before I left DocuSign day, and there's a woman who I hired probably about six months before I left DocuSign. She just left now. So we're talking three years ago. She was talking about going into the organization, but when she was talking about DocuSign, she said I did the work of my life. So I thought, wow, it stuck. It stuck, at least for people who were there. I think when we created that program, the work your life starts up.
Speaker 2: 8:04
That, to me, is a real test. It's one of the real tests of how do you have a brand that you know sticks, and one is just people using the language, which is huge. And what I love about the work you did, whenever I think about a brand and thinking about if you're going to say we want you to be able to do the work of your life no-transcript DocuSign stood for, which is an environment and the climate.
Speaker 1: 8:59
And we say DocuSign helps people, it saves paper, paper saves trees. So we're all about DocuSign for forests. And I would talk to candidates and I could see the excitement, enthusiasm when I would say let me tell you what we're about, let me tell you about this work you're doing, let me tell you how much we care about the environment in the world. There were a lot of really great components of the DocuSign culture that kind of came together in a way that I think made people feel really good about the organization. And one of the things you might ask is how did you know that it really delivered results for the company? And I think it's hard to take up one program and say, okay, I could connect the dots and this is the exact revenue we got from this because of that. But I can tell you that every time we did anything around this, anytime we talked about the work-year life and when we would fortunately for us get great reviews from our employees on Glassdoor, we saw an incredible spike in the number of resumes that were coming in. People want to work for a company that they feel good about.
Speaker 1: 10:02
Dan Springer is the CEO. His approval rating on Glassdoor was 98. We were always in like the top 15 companies in technology. That's how we can say it made a difference because our employees cared about writing great reviews, and those are the only reviews we cared about. Docusend was not a pay-to-play company. We were not going to ever be informed. We were never going to pay to be part of some sort of a best place to work. That's what we felt the real value was.
Speaker 2: 10:30
That's what our employees really said. Yeah, out of curiosity, the day-to-day feel like the vibe. I am very much on vibes lately, joan, when you think about the vibe at Dacusign when the work of your life was hitting on all pistons After launch.
Speaker 1: 10:50
It's embedded in the DNA. What did it feel like, just as a leader and an employee? Once they got it and that was a more from an employee communication perspective we would do mid-year feedback sessions. So it wasn't about evaluations, it was just feedback, and they were having conversations with their managers and we would really target those disingenuous about work your life, figure out whether this is working for people. So there was some excitement, enthusiasm. We went into a pandemic and the world changed overnight in March of 2020. Now, I would say, because we had built such a foundation with our employees about caring about them, about their development, about work your life, we were able to carry that through during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: 11:32
For any sheep people officer, I will tell you that in that 47-year career I had the hardest work I ever did was running a people organization during the pandemic. Yeah, trying to figure out how do we best support our employees through their mental health, through daycare. Hiring managers get comfortable around hiring people over Zoom, where they're like I never hired somebody I didn't meet in person. You better do it because somebody else is going to hire them. So I think we took the same level of care during that period.
Speaker 1: 12:04
It looked a little different. It was around support. There was a lot of different things we did to help our employees be successful and it paid off, I would say, in states. So the work shifted a bit and I used to say the companies that are win when this pandemic is over are the companies where the employees feel really good and felt very taken care of during that period. And DocuSign did it. And the reason why DocuSign did it it was a leadership team that actually believed that this was ultimately what's good for the employees. It's going to be good for the company.
Speaker 2: 12:38
Yeah, it sounds like, even in, I would say, a crisis situation, which COVID, especially in HR it was. I'm just going to say bonkers, absolutely bonkers. Right, but I love the fact that lens to enable people to do the work of your life, to truly care for people. It sounds like you're making decisions through that lens. It didn't change just because we were going through a very traumatic time.
Speaker 1: 13:00
You feel like you turned the volume up on that care during that time turned it up and we saw the feedback that we got in our employee engagement surveys, which we did at least two a year or more. The last survey that we did, we got 6,000 comments in that survey 6,000 comments and Dan and I would read every single one of those comments. He'd read them. I was going to read them. There was no way I was not going to be a patient animal reading those comments. But they actually produce so much more richness than really just the raw data and we heard people talk about how well they felt supported by their manager, and not just from a corporate perspective, and not just the programs and the benefits that we put in place, which were all new.
Speaker 1: 13:47
During that period we were able to really pressure test that the work we were doing and the decisions we were making and the investments we were making in again these benefits and trying to make it easy for people to take care of their kids and work from home and have Zoom and parents who were ill, and it was thank you, Francesca. It was a bonkers period, there's no other word for it. And then, if you think about it, we went from that to the great resignation right which can I say something that lasted about 15 minutes, Like really that was done and now the pendulum has swollen completely the other way. So one of the things I would say is think about the time you're in and what you need to do, but know that things change and can change very quickly. You don't abandon all the things that matter to you, that are important to your organization, just because you can and you can.
Speaker 2: 14:46
Out of curiosity, how important is it to have your peer group, the CMO, the CTO, any of the C's your CEO or your board? How important is it to have them on board when you're trying to make these kind of decisions and, probably more importantly, stick to the plan when shit's hitting the fan? How important is that so?
Speaker 1: 15:05
well, I critical. If the only people who are enthused about these programs that are willing to keep them alive, as the HR team, that's doomed, it's just never going to work. But having that consistency when the shit hits the fan, you're still not going to walk away from your principles and your values as an organization. You're still going to invest in employees, you're still going to care about the development, you're still going to give them feedback. You cannot do that without the leadership involved. The reason why I think we were so successful at DocuSign is because Dan was so authentic in both belief in these programs and talked about it. We did all hands meetings every quarter and during COVID we did a lot more of them just to make sure we stayed connected to people. He never abandoned the things that were like the pillars of who we were as an organization.
Speaker 3: 16:04
You've done this several times over now DocuSign. You did this at Responsys. What was the secret sauce? You have to have the CEO.
Speaker 1: 16:11
If you don't have the CEO, then it's going to be lips of risk, because that's who people look to, that's their coming to door, that's where they're getting their insight and their messaging. And it has to be authentic. It cannot be lips of risk because people see through falsehoods and I always say the most important leadership is authentic leadership. It's be who you are and with all those organizations I've had really authentic leaders who would speak to the programs, who would talk about the importance of employees in the team and helping them be successful. It worked. But if you don't have that, I would say it's running uphill Everything dies If HR is running it.
Speaker 3: 16:49
you have to have that buy-in. Let's say your CEO is a skeptic. How do you fight through that skepticism?
Speaker 1: 16:57
You kind of build a business case right and the business case is talent drives success. It just does. And even in a bad job market, which we're in right now, the best talent always has options, always has options, how bad it is, they always do. So if you really care about the successful organization, if you care about revenue, then you got to care about the people who are leading the organization and your talent. It is a no-brainer in some ways. And here's what I am excited about.
Speaker 1: 17:25
I feel like in many organizations and particularly I'm working with some VCs they get it, they totally get it, and where a lot in the past you might say, oh VCs, I don't want their portfolio companies to spend a lot of money on marketing and HR, I'm seeing VCs actually pushing their portfolio companies and these are companies of maybe $30 to $50 million of revenue to hire that cheap people officer sooner than a lot of founders are ready to do, because founders, by the most part, they don't want to spend money. So I am extremely encouraged about that. I'm also seeing a lot of enthusiasm for people going to these smaller private companies and not so much like the big companies the Googles, the Metas that people went to. They're feeling like they're getting an opportunity to really be very hands-on, to be part of a successful organization, to see where their contribution is actually making a difference on a daily basis, with less bureaucracy, maybe less politics. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity for people to seek out these smaller private organizations.
Speaker 3: 18:34
I coach a lot of folks who are being impacted by layoffs right now, so I'm seeing that trend as well. Even if they came from these big megas, they're looking at smaller orgs where they can actually feel the impact that they have. So that's tracking. When you think of pushback on budgets, we hear a lot around. Budgets are tightening up with everything that's happening with AI. Leadership's very focused on short-term results. Someone making the business case. What advice would you give to them?
Speaker 1: 18:59
I would say that the Work of your Life program at DocSign it was not a heavy investment at all. These were things we were already doing. We're already doing performance reviews. We were already doing employee engagement surveys. We already cared about what people felt on Glassdoor. We were already going to job fairs. It's not true that these things cost a lot of money. Get that off the table. Just say it's bullshit. Right here there is investment, for sure is when you're investing in developing people and particularly leaders. So when we created the Work your Life Management Program, that was an investment. We again decided that it was really extremely important to us to have great managers in the company. We needed to put together programs, we needed to design them, we needed to facilitate them. So there were certain places where you may be able to say, okay, I'm going to cut back a little bit on this one and maybe use some different approaches where I don't spend quite the same money, but caring about your corporate culture, being articulate about your corporate culture and reinforcing your corporate culture it doesn't cost money.
Speaker 3: 20:02
Those human components, those day-to-day interactions. That's free. You can change that tomorrow.
Speaker 1: 20:09
One of the things that we did at DocuSign is we had a mentor program and everybody wanted mentors, right. So we're like, all right, how are we going to make this, operationalize this and make this make sense? And we realized, when you ask somebody to be your mentor, it's a big deal right, and it's time this is going to take. But one of the things that we did, which is like a skinny version of a mentor program, is we said anybody will go and have a cup of coffee with you Half hour Well, great. So if somebody called me up and said, john, I was watching the all-hands meeting last month, I think you did a great job with the presentation. I'm really trying to work out skills. Can we have a cup of coffee in half hour and just talk about that? It's like absolutely so. There are ways to just skivvy back certain programs and things that are less intense or maybe not so time consuming and not so expensive. You just gotta be a little bit thoughtful and creative about it.
Speaker 3: 20:59
If your budget's tight, what are the three areas? You'd say? This is where you double down.
Speaker 1: 21:05
It's really about helping grow people. Managers we always cared about how we help individual contributors grow and succeed too. But at the end of the day, if I had a dollar of investment, I'm going to put 75 cents of it against managers and 25 cents against the individual contributors, because I know that ultimately the value that those individual contributors are going to get is because they've got a better manager who cares about their development, who cares about their career, who thinks about not just job opportunities but actually assignments that are going to help them grow and develop. And I always say that the most powerful thing we can do to help people grow is put them, give them on-job assignments to see how they stretch, see how they grow. The investment you make on the individual contributor side pays off by really overinvesting, maybe in the managers.
Speaker 3: 21:51
I love to hear it because I was just at a conference where a room full of people, when we asked how many people invested in their manager's training and development, maybe 5% of the room raised their hand, which was really disheartening to see. So you heard it here, folks 75 cents for your managers.
Speaker 2: 22:09
It's nuts to me. I'm going to make a Catholic Italian reference here, but you can cut this. So in Italian cooking, a lot of dishes start with the trinity, which is the onion, the carrot and the celery. It is the substance that makes everything right, it's the base, mirepoix, if you will. And I always think the trinity of talent development is onboarding, manager development and coaching. If you had to pick three and manager development, you're very good. Point, joan, 75 cents of that, right. The biggest onion little bit of carrot, little bit of celery. The onion is the manager development. The data's there, the results are there. You could do absolutely no formal training whatsoever, but if you had an amazing manager, you're set.
Speaker 1: 22:54
I love that. I've never heard about the Trinity Battalion cooking. I'm going to use that. Seriously, no gosh, God, really no. We grew up Irish. My mother was Italian. That's great.
Speaker 2: 23:04
There you go, there you go. We're big fans. We're big fans. Let's say you're an employee, you don't have this. What can somebody do as an individual contributor, no matter what their circumstance? Create the work of their life for themselves.
Speaker 1: 23:16
Oh man, that's a tough one. Yeah, I know they're not in a powerful position to be able to do that, which many people are not. Sometimes I say find it elsewhere, and I'm not saying leave your job right. For some people it might be leave your job, but for many others that's unrealistic. It just is not the right market for people to do that.
Speaker 1: 23:39
But find your tribe right. Find the people who are like-minded, who have the same sets of values. Find that network where, through connection and through conversations and through learnings about how people are dealing with those challenges inside their organizations, that you can take back for yourself to be able to say I'm not getting from my company, but I am getting what I need from this group of people up there. One of the things that's difficult is developing a network is hard, it takes a lot of work, but it can be so rewarding. I remember during the pandemic I had this network of about 20 chief people officers and we met every week for like just an hour and it was the good, bad and the ugly advice in terms of the thing that was working, the things that weren't working. It was so important, it was so powerful that if you don't have that if you can find a way to create that, I'm just, I have just always thought that could be incredibly rewarding to just have whatever mind appears.
Speaker 2: 24:44
It's interesting to see what other people are doing commiserate on the good, bad and ugly, because that's every job. There's always things. There's something so important about being part of a community. Just like, you're not alone in this, no matter what stage you are in your career, because there's a lot of human messy feelings that go along with every single stage in your career.
Speaker 1: 25:02
Absolutely. I could go into depth with DiWalt on this call about those crappy jobs I had and how hard they were and the lesson I learned and how I hoped during that period. And that's like experiences, right. The other thing I would say is you can create a network of people who have similar values at you but are at different stages of their career, so have seen the work and experienced it and can look back and say, all right, let me tell you, when I was in my 30s, the world was different, but a lot of the experiences and the challenges that you have there's definitely similarities. So here's how I cultivate people for all different generations and I think you'll find it very worthwhile. Best advice.
Speaker 2: 25:48
Curious about. On the flip of this, where you're interviewing for a company, what are the tells? What are the tells that say this is a great culture, this is a culture that's going to support you in doing the work of your life? Are there tells people can see from the outside?
Speaker 1: 26:02
There are. You want to make sure that it's not just the recruiters who are telling you that story. Their job is to serve a certain organization. You need to drill down. So when you're talking to an organization and hopefully having a number of different interviews with people so you get a good sense of that company and some of them would be peers, some of them would be a manager is that you're paying very good attention to what they're saying and you're actually teasing out from them whether or not what you're hearing from these recruiters if in fact they're real McCoy.
Speaker 1: 26:30
And then you check out Glassdoor, you check out Blind, you look at what people are saying inside the organization to know whether it's for real or whether it is just give talk. So you got to do your own homework and it does help, as I said, if you know your why and you can actually articulate your why, to have the people sitting across from you, from the company, explain why your why is either going to work or not work in this company. You should put them on the spot a little bit in a nice kind of way. That's how you tease this out, right.
Speaker 3: 27:02
What were some of your go-to questions? To tease it out.
Speaker 1: 27:05
Well, I think the biggest thing would be to say tell me what people three layers down this organization are saying about this company. Tell me what you're hearing from your teams. And if I was to just go around right now and go from desk to desk and just kind of casually stop and ask people questions what is it like to work here? What would they tell me? Would they tell it to? What would they say? And ask those questions and say what are your employee engagement scores? What are people saying about the employee experience here? Have you seen progress or are things going backwards? So it's just doing a lot of due diligence and interviewing the people in the company as much as they're interviewing you with you.
Speaker 3: 27:53
There's what you ask in the interview, but then there's what really happened when you get there on day one, your first 90 days in a company. How do you further tease this out? Like, how do you figure out who are the secret decision makers? What are the things that are going to make it a better experience? What are your questions in those first 90 to help you?
Speaker 1: 28:08
Who are the savvy insiders? You got to figure them out and some of that is asking. Again, it's asking a lot of people, a lot of questions and owning your own onboarding right. So it isn't just I'm the manager, here's the playbook, you have the free people to talk to. It's like all right. I got to drill down even more. I want to speak with these four people over here. I want to know more about what's going on in the IT department, not relying on a routine onboarding process, but create something for yourself that's robust.
Speaker 1: 28:43
And I would also say, as an insider from Chief People Officer perspective, onboarding is so important. Those first 90 days, those first six months, it's how you show up, because you want to know what's going on, but you want people to know you. My mother used to say it's not who you know, it's who knows you that matters. And that's really right, mom, that's what I would do. I would be really thoughtful about who I wanted to meet with and just make it happen. Just make it happen. And people don't say no, they really don't, you're new to the organization, they want to meet the new person.
Speaker 2: 29:17
I'll tell you I have a few regrets looking back on my career, A few. There's times where I'm like I should not have handled that the way I did I did. Life goes on. You learn right, you live, you learn. But one of the red thread regrets or if I could do it over again is I wish I would have done what you just suggested, which was get out there and meet people, Ask for the coffee, Get a habit of just asking for the coffee. Even when I was an individual contributor, I wish I would have done that, because it makes it so much more easy and enjoyable to get work done.
Speaker 1: 29:50
Absolutely, absolutely. That is part of working your life right. It's just feeling like you're part of an organization that you're connected to. Connections are so important. At the end of the day, we look back and say, did I feel like I made a difference here and who are the people that I can look and say, oh my God, look at the tribe. I was able to be part of that built up, part of something. Completely agree with you, francesca. Very important.
Speaker 3: 30:11
What you created super valuable and, I think, unfortunately a lot of ways, unique, and I hope you get to a place where this is more the standard and not the exception. How can we get there?
Speaker 1: 30:23
Back to what I was saying earlier about the pendulum swinging.
Speaker 1: 30:26
People and leaders could be mindful of the fact that things are going to change and the companies that continue to be committed throughout a sluggish job market and challenging competitive environment, they stay true to who they are. They're the ones who are going to win at the end of the day. They're the ones who are not going to lose their talent. Let's think about this. On the other side, all of those law firms that capitulated to the administration and actually in many ways destroyed their brand, hurt their culture and their values, and they've had some of their top lawyers who are walking out the door saying I'm not going to be part of this Law students who got out of law school. They don't want to interview with those organizations. So there's a big price to pay for abandoning what managed you as an organization just because you can or because the times are tough. In fact, when the times are tough is when you really need to double down and just be even more vigilant about what matters to you and how you want to run your organization.
Speaker 3: 31:41
Joan, are you up for some rapid round questions?
Speaker 1: 31:46
I am ready.
Speaker 3: 31:48
This can be one word answers. This can be as long as you'd like to take it, but really quick. Whatever comes to top of mind, Okay jumping in. It's 2030. What's your prediction about what work looks like?
Speaker 1: 32:03
One exciting thing is, I think we're all going to have AI agents who are going to be reading our emails for us and making our travel plans and maybe scheduling our doctor's appointments. So those are things I'm super excited about. But I want to answer that question by saying here's what I hope. I hope that by 2030, the human-centered jobs are more valued and are higher compensated, and by that I mean the teachers, the EMTs, the caregivers, the therapists. I hope that AI will have helped automate so much of the roles that can be automated that we will really see the need for these people to be doing the great job that they do. That's my hope. I like that.
Speaker 3: 32:46
That's a good one. What is one?
Speaker 1: 32:51
thing about corporate culture that you'd like to just see die already. Personality assessments, color, myers-briggs Dis I like to see them all go far away. I believe that they label people, and I have seen them do more damage inside an organization than them.
Speaker 3: 33:08
I agree with you. I think they're fun and it's interesting if it's like personal introspection. But too often they can be weaponized and people make them their whole personality when that's not the intent.
Speaker 1: 33:19
Let me just tell you I was talking to somebody who was leaving the organization and they were looking for their next role. We were talking and they said they did colors in their organization. This person said every single person on the HR leadership team was a red. So that kind of said you're not a red, you're probably not going to be on the HR leadership team. Anyway, that is a bugaboo of mine which I've actually had for some time.
Speaker 3: 33:39
Okay, what is the greatest opportunity that orgs are actually missing out on?
Speaker 1: 33:45
So I think it's cross-functional data. Data exists in silos inside organizations. First of all, we know it's not pristine and I think part of this whole going to AI is going to be like cleaning up data and making it good. But if companies can use the power of cross-functional information, they're going to be able to streamline decision-making, become way more efficient as organizations.
Speaker 3: 34:12
How many times have we all worked in an organization and found out three other departments are working on a similar project Exactly? A little more personal. What's on your playlist right now? What music are you listening to?
Speaker 1: 34:24
So I'm listening to a guy named Leif Volderweck Okay, check him out. One of his songs I really like Transatlantic Flight. I also love Kim Petraeus. She does a version of the old Kate Bush song Running Up that Hill, and if you like that song and there's many different versions of it I would say check out her version of it and her video of doing it at Outside Lands in San Francisco in 2022. She's so cool and it's just completely joyful. And then I'm a big fan of Florence, yeah.
Speaker 3: 34:57
I love her. You did a really beautiful collaboration. Do you know the artist Blood Orange? Yes, have you heard her collaboration with him? I have not. So this is a great tip. Very good, put that in your as Francesca says, be in your bonnet for this weekend. Go look it up, it's really good. What are you reading right now?
Speaker 1: 35:16
It could be audiobook or old school pages, so I'm an old school pages person, so right now I'm reading the Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich person, so right now I'm reading the Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. I stopped on the Pulitzer, I think, in 2020. But I would say that the book that I've loved the most that I've read in the last eight months has been James by Percival Everett, and I would highly recommend that book.
Speaker 3: 35:36
What do you really admire? Could be personal, professional.
Speaker 1: 35:40
There's so many people in my life and historically I admire, but I'm going to pick one person Right now. I'm going to pick Laura Steinem. We need to stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us talking about and reporting on women's issues, on reproductive rights, on equal pay, on health care. And the thing I love about her, she's 91 years old. She's still with us. She absolutely never sold out. She's my shout out, she's my hero right now.
Speaker 3: 36:15
What's one piece of advice that you've received, or just something that's your personal piece of advice that you want someone to know you would give everybody today?
Speaker 1: 36:24
If I could pick a couple, because there's career and then there's personal. So if I think about career advice, I want to say careers are long. Mine was very long, was 47 years long, and that means that you're going to have some jobs that are crappy jobs, and, rather than running away from them, a lot of those crappy jobs are incredibly important and meaningful. They're either the lessons you needed to learn, they're people you needed to know, or, in one case, it was a ticket I needed to punch. It was experience. I needed to get that next job, which was my goal, and so embrace the crappy jobs. They're going to happen the way of life.
Speaker 1: 37:07
The other thing I would say, though, from a career perspective, is know your brand and who you are. Know your why, know what is important to you. So let me give you an example. When I would meet with CEOs and I was doing job interviews for chief people officer roles, I would always say to them I believe the best human resources, I believe my job as the head of human resources is to help managers be the best managers they can be. Only people who work for me at HR is my team, the rest of the people who work for managers and how they feel about the organization is oftentimes how they feel about their managers. Do they feel like they're getting feedback and they're being coached and they're being developed? So I would say, if you don't agree with that, perfectly fine, but that means I'm not the right person for you, I'm not right for the role. Go hire somebody else. So that's just an example of a philosophy that I developed early on that stayed true for me throughout my career and I would use it as an evaluation tool as I was deciding where I was going to go next. And then the personal advice and this is not profound. Everybody on this who's listening to this has probably heard this, but it's a lesson that we don't always take to heart, and I can even give you a recent example that I did not, and I regret it. Make sure you tell the people in your life who have been meaningful to you, who you've learned from, what they've done and how they've helped you, and be specific.
Speaker 1: 38:36
When I was starting my career many years ago, I was at a large financial services company in Boston and as a very junior person, I had the opportunity to work with the CEO of that company, and it was remarkable that I had that opportunity because he was here and I was like and I got to know him and we worked on a few projects and I learned so much from him and I had so many great stories about this person as a human, as a leader. Two months ago he died at 98 years old and I wrote his wife a note and I said I want to tell you stories about your husband that come from a young professional. And I told her these stories. She wrote back to me and she said it was very profound for her to hear these and she said they were so jizzing with Jim.
Speaker 1: 39:22
The stories were so Jim and she said I wish he could have read this. And I'm like I wish I could have written it. I wish I had written it. So don't wait till that person's gone and you're telling their spouse. It's great to tell their spouse, but let them know when you have the opportunity.
Speaker 2: 39:37
What a gift to give someone to bring the spirit of their loved one back through the story. That's a really beautiful gift to give someone. Joan, it's been awesome to chat with you today. Tell us where people can find you.
Speaker 1: 39:51
I'm on LinkedIn Also. I'm part of the Chief People Officer Forum, so if there's anybody who is a Chief People Officer and wants to join a network, to build community and wants to quarter, have topics of interest and experts who are going to be able to talk about topics, we've got one coming up next week and it's all like AI. What is this going to mean for you people, officers?
Speaker 2: 40:10
We will link to your LinkedIn and the CPO forum. There's nothing stronger than community, so definitely check that out, joan. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you, joan.
Speaker 3: 40:19
It was great to be with you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesco Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care friends. Bye friends. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.
