Nikki Stone - Architecting Resilience in a World of Constant Change

[00:00:08] [SPEAKER_00] Welcome to the HR Data Labs Podcast, now part of the WorkDefined Podcast Network. Join us as we explore the vital role of compensation, strategy, data, and people analytics in navigating today's complex business world. With the resources of WorkDefined, we're now bringing you deeper insights and actionable ideas from top experts. Now, here is your host, David Turetsky. Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs Podcast. I am your host, David Turetsky.

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_00] And always we try and find the most brilliant people inside and outside the world of HR to bring you what's happening today with the world of work. And today we have with us Nikki Stone, the author of Architecting Resilience, The Key to Innovation, Growth, and an Era of Constant Change. Nikki, how are you?

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_02] I'm good, David. How are you today?

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_00] I am good. And it is a fascinating title and we're going to get into the topic in just a little bit because we are living in a breakneck pace of change right now. And it even hurts to say it because it's so bad. But before we do, Nikki, who are you and how did you get to this moment in time?

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_02] Nikki Stone, I'm the author of Architecting Resilience. You already said that. I'm also the founder of an advisory firm called YQ, where we work with founders and executives and help them scale their companies in various different ways, which is the most fun work I get to do.

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_02] I'm the host of a podcast called The Sixth Suite, which deconstructs exactly how leaders manage to move through change and help their organizations withstand the pressures of scale without collapsing their entire infrastructure and teams.

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_00] Which is very easy to do.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, David, don't you know it? I guess I do. And before that, I was a alphabet soup of C-level executive, chief commerce officer, CEO, head of revenue strategy, which was your CRO equivalent.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_02] And then all of the alphabets before that, EVP, SPP, et cetera, et cetera, when it came to and mostly in the large holding company environments like WPP or Publicis, where I sat on their executive leadership teams for the last decade or so.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_00] Wow, that's cool. But before we get into our topic, Nikki, we really want to know what's one fun thing that no one knows about Nikki Stone?

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_02] I know that you asked this, and I even sat and thought about this, and I really, really struggled with this because I am known as an oversharer. So I was like, what is something that is fun that people don't know about me? I think if you work really close with me and really, really close, like you're on my production team or something like that, you might know this. But I kind of dance when I get nervous, and I need a lot of movement.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_02] So when I'm thinking really deep about things, you'll see me and I'll be like bopping away. I just need to move it out. So a lot of times there's like random footage that I'll get from like our producer on the podcast that's just me like shuffling in the corner somewhere. Like he's like, you're ready to throw down break dancing or something. I'm like.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_00] That's awesome. But that's a really great way. And talk about resiliency. Our bodies do things sometimes in order for us to get through things. And that's you and your body telling you what you need to do. And it's a release of energy. That's just really neat. Do you think?

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_02] I recognize that. And I also recognize how much like music plays a huge part in my life. And so it I don't I don't know if I don't know if this is something you do, David, but please. I do for sure. I have like a repertoire of about 20 different songs that fit the different moods that I kind of need to go into. And I pick a song at the start of each year. That's like what I want to also bring into that.

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_02] And that way, when I need to focus or change my mood or elevate or I'm like in a spot where I don't know, there's crisis happening and things like that. And you just need to be grounded and calm in those moments. And it's like music is one of those things for me that immediately can pull me back into a spot, into a feeling.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_00] I actually am the same way. In fact, I have a iTunes mood music list that every single one of them, if I'm depressed, it snaps me right out of it because it's the stuff that makes me like Hold On Loosely from 38 Special or my favorite band Marillion. They have a couple of really cool songs that just, you know, immediately snaps me out of it. And I start singing along with it. Nobody wants to hear that, by the way.

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_00] But yeah, I'm the same way.

[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_02] My kids turn up their radio to drown me out.

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_00] Well, I've had to actually bring headphones with me when I go on trips with my kids or especially my 14-year-old son because he does not want to hear these songs anymore. And we actually have a Spotify, what we like to call rink list because I used to be, I used to work for a hockey rink and I was the skate guard. And I created my own playlist. And it was, you know, new tunes, the kids like, the kids, you know, whatever the kids are into. And then it was my stuff, Jump from Van Halen.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_00] When I was skating, I loved to skate to jump. But anyway, so we're totally off topic. But...

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_02] I'm going to need that playlist, by the way.

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, well, I'll send it to you. You'll laugh your butt off. It's very funny. So we're going to be talking about the Architecting Resilience, your book, The Key to Innovation and Growth in an Era of Constant Change. Because right now, it's just there. Right after this.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_00] So Nikki, getting back into it, tell us about Architecting Resilience and where it came from. And what are the major themes that actually came to you to create this? Because a book is a very personal thing. So tell us, where did this come from?

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_02] Man, it's a book of labor, of love. It's... Where did it come from? You know, Architecting Resilience really came from 25 years or more of corporate experience. And then 20 years before that, of startup experience. And I know I'm not that old, but I literally started when I was three going to buying meetings. I'm not joking. Like my parents took me to their buying meetings because my mom was a single mom. She didn't have daycare.

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_02] So if she started her own business, guess who was in the business?

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_00] Great experience. Right?

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_02] So from the time I was three, I'd be sitting in like these rooms that I, for all intents and purposes, should never have been in. And I learned so much. So I had all of this experience that I took then into the corporate setting and worked my way through. And really started to understand that there was a lot of similar patterns that happened. And one of my super skills as a neurodivergent is advanced pattern recognition.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_02] And so you spend enough time doing something over and over. And for me, I've built close... Well, it was over 15 divisions or companies from startup to through scale. And all of them exceeding $100 million. But some of them as high as $750 million at times. And worked sort of through that entire thing like on repeat. That was my career on repeat, right?

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_02] Like, they would move me to the next part to be like, now we want you to build this. Now you need to build this. Because what I could instinctually understand was how to build those teams at their core that could withstand that pressure of scaling in an organization. Whether that be a standalone organization or whether that be within a large holding company and a new division that's there.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_00] Which is an art form, by the way. Especially within a larger company. Because of all the tape that you have to trudge through.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_02] That is the absolute hardest part about doing it in a large organization. Is honestly, the amount of communication that it takes to get something done in an organization. And the flawlessness of communication.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_02] That needs to happen with that. Because you are going to step on toes. You are going to upset people.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_00] Burn bridges like crazy.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. That apple cart is like, it's waiting for you, man.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_00] Were you called the bull in the china shop more than one time?

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_02] More than once. More than once. For sure. You know, but what I also started to understand, especially as I rose through the rankings because of this particular skill, was that there was really defined infrastructure that we call. And funny enough, because I was, it actually, but I, blah, blah, blah, David, words be hard this morning.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_01] Words are hard.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_02] Apparently. The, because I worked largely in the ad tech space over the last 20-ish years, there was a common theme that we started to understand about how we spoke to people in advertising and how the campaign effectiveness on the execution would become much, much stronger. And that really was the IQ, EQ, CQ combination.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_02] And so once we cracked, I cracked that from a performance standpoint on how to market and talk to people en masse, it was really easy to see the overlaps in your teams about how that structure of people needed to be assembled because those same three things needed to be so prevalent or you were going to miss the mark in the actual consumer that you were speaking to.

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_02] And so that was like, how did I got to the book? I got to the book because I saw it at scale in real life as you were trying to change consumer behavior. How you did that with such mass for companies like Disney's and L'Oreal's and all of these huge, massive conglomerates out there that we were supporting. And I was like, interesting.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_02] When my teams reflected that same infrastructure, it was the golden ticket every time.

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_00] But Nikki, you mentioned something before that I want to come back to, which is that there are now a lot more. There is more emphasis on being able to work with people who have different patterns in how they work because, let's face it, all of us are neurodivergent in one way. There is no such thing as normal. And being able...

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_01] It is a curve for a reason. Oh my God, yeah.

[00:11:39] [SPEAKER_00] And there are people on the curve in different parts of the curve that don't believe they're on the curve. But in order to be able to effectively use the team as it is, it always fell to the manager to be able to pull them together. And typically, that manager didn't have those skills in order to do that.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_00] Do you think that what you found in the research for your book, as well as you living it, that managers need better tools in order to be able to find that thing, the EQIQ, that each individual needs?

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_00] That whether it's emotional intelligence or whether it's just whatever the skill is, how do we give the managers the tools to be able to reach those employees, to be able to get them to see what their place is on the team in order for them to... I don't want to use the word fall in line because that sounds awful. But in order for them to find their piece of that puzzle in the team.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I love that question, David, because I do believe that managers need more tools at their disposal in order to be able to build teams that are resilient. And that is the first thing, especially when we work with founders, when we work with executives. A lot of people started companies because they were really good at one thing, one practice skill, right? It was, I could make X really, really well.

[00:13:10] [SPEAKER_02] And they kept promoting me up the rankings. That didn't mean I was a great people leader along the way, even though my responsibility for people became higher. And so I do talk about this a little bit because the first thing is not everyone is equipped to be a people leader. Okay, first and foremost.

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_02] So as one of the things that I've always done with my HR and I think has really been one of the most valuable things is creating a separate path for those that are really meaningful individual contributors who do not want to go down the people management reality. Right.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_02] And that's a great thing.

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_02] I will say that most leaders get that very wrong. Even myself early on, because I'm naturally a solutions oriented person, I would want to just solve the problem. I'm not a therapist, though. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a doctor. I shouldn't be the one in there helping with that. But I should be, as you are people leader, really helping you find the tools that are right for you and the right paths for you to do that.

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_02] And just opening up my eyes to what all of those options were in the certification really helped me as I went to lead on at a more senior level. Because now you're dealing with people who are in the sandwich generation. They have parents. They have aging, ailing this. They have young children. They are living through marriages, divorces, renovations, moving, upskilling, all of the crazy things that happen at that sort of midlife point. And then when you are a very senior leader, that is your team, usually.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_02] And so what you're now managing is so much more than just the output that made that person so great to get to where they are, to be the person reporting up into you. There's a really big gap in there that understands sort of the human nature that goes along with their lives.

[00:16:06] [SPEAKER_00] We really need to get a link to what you're talking about in terms of training. So if it's in your book or if you have a link to where managers can get that training or where the people in the HR world who watch and listen to this podcast can get it, please.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_00] Because I think a lot of us struggle, especially as people leaders or as leaders of large organizations, we struggle with the recognized differences that exist today, not just in the backgrounds and education of the people that we deal with, but also in the neurodivergence of the people that we deal with.

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_00] And it's not one of those things where you can just say, you can't bring your authentic self to work anymore, or you can't bring your authentic, you have to be able to be a robot at work. Nobody's a robot. And we're all different. And now it's being recognized. And so having that understanding, having that ability to say, listen, I have David on my team. He's different. And he's brilliant. By the way, not me. I'm talking about a different David.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_00] But he's, that would be really bad if I'm calling myself brilliant. But he's different. And he needs special treatment. Not from the perspective of you have to coddle him, but you have to talk to him differently. You have to talk to him. In order to be able to get what you need from him, talk to him differently. And just because you're talking to him in that way, you're going to be able to get a star performer. In the past, we used to say, jettison that person. I don't need that headache. Now you can't. Or you shouldn't.

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_02] David, you absolutely cannot. I mean, there is a reason that so many companies, especially in the tech space, are recruiting neurodivergent people. It is because they think differently. This is that contextual intelligence that we lean into. These are the people who naturally, they can solve because they have, like my skill is advanced pattern recognition. And I can learn a subject at crazy amounts of speed, right? That's the beauty of ADD. Exactly. You can.

[00:18:12] [SPEAKER_02] You can learn and sit and dive into something and become a fair amount of generalist in something fairly quickly and at least be able to have an intelligent conversation with your teams. Right. And for me, that was really helpful, especially when you worked with like, I have developers on my team. Exactly. I have creatives on my team. Those are very different conversations. We had a guaranteed performance outcomes teams. We were doing Pythagorean theorem.

[00:18:42] [SPEAKER_02] Do you think the creatives understood what we were talking about?

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_00] No. Absolutely not. Their brains shut off for that period of time because they were going to have a meltdown if they tried to figure it out. Yeah.

[00:18:54] [SPEAKER_02] Absolutely. So how you pull out the best from your teams is so unique. I do talk about some of the resources that you can find at the Mental Health First Aid Training in the book, but I will absolutely make sure we share additional links and resources for that. Because I agree with you wholeheartedly. That bell curve that we talk about of normal doesn't really exist.

[00:19:21] [SPEAKER_02] It's just a bell curve and it doesn't ever collapse to 100% on either side. You're living in that curve. So it's just a matter of how you as a leader really start to break down your communication styles and to your teams. Even though the message is the same, the journey in which each person takes to get to that end road or end path can be very different.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_00] Absolutely. And needs to be. Right? And that's why solving for being a manager and a leader and an effective team these days, which is one reason why I love your book and I wanted to talk to you about it on this podcast. It is solving a Rubik's Cube. Being a leader of like, I have two neurodivergent children and just dealing with that.

[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_02] Go don't make sheep, David.

[00:20:16] [SPEAKER_00] Huh?

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_01] I said same, but go don't make sheep, David.

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_00] But well, I'm probably, I actually saw, I went to a festival this weekend and there was a sweatshirt that was embroidered. It said undiagnosed, but something ain't right. Right? And I thought about getting it for myself because, you know, I'm the guy who will obsess about something and stick on it for a while. And that's why I built how many businesses I built. In fact, if you look at my LinkedIn, people are very confused right now because of all the companies I'm building at the moment.

[00:20:52] [SPEAKER_00] But the reason why I'm saying this is because this is 2026. We've recognized that there are some people who are different. You mentioned all the differences between creatives and technologists and that's using one side of their brain or the other to their advantage.

[00:21:08] [SPEAKER_00] But in the middle becomes this leader who has to bridge the gap between the UX designers, who are the creatives, and the engineers and developers and the data scientists and whatnot on the right who think with the other side of their brain. And that Rubik's Cube now becomes our problem and the most effective leaders are those ones who know how to solve it on both sides. They know how to talk to the creatives.

[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_00] They know how to talk to the developers. Or they know how to hire the people that do. And that's very difficult. Like you mentioned before that you recognized early on, I think you said this. I don't think I'm putting words in my mouth. You recognized early on that because you were different, you could do things that other people couldn't do. And you recognized this not as a failure, but as a feature.

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_00] And you were able to then make that to be your differentiator. How do people find, especially leaders, how do people find that differentiator in themselves without having to do ayahuasca or mushrooms or go sit on a couch for six months? How do they do that, Nikki?

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_02] So good. I love David. You asked some great questions. I try. How do leaders find those skills in themselves? I think of this as a very, so I am a very analytical person, although I spend a lot of time in the creative realm. And so by nature, I like to work with the people that I'm mentoring. And I say, draw a Venn diagram. So this is what we're trying to get to, or a bridge, if you will. On the left side of the page, I want you to write down every skill,

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_02] everything that you have that's a skill set to you, right? Like whether that is cooking, whether that is Excel, whether that is, you have all of these things that you as a multifaceted person can do. And you can do very well. On the other side of the page, I really want you to understand everything that you believe once you've gone in. Say you're looking for a new job. I say, go in, go do your research.

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_02] Go find 10 jobs that you think are exactly what you want to do when you grow up. If, I'm still not entirely sure what that is, but if whatever that next thing is for you, find all of the things that they say that you then need to be and start drawing the lines that parallel over. These are your bridges, right? These are the gaps. They're over the bridge. If it's over the bridge, it's a skill set you have that you can walk across the bridge from one room to another.

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_02] If it's under the bridge, now these are things that you now then want to start working on. And so what I say the Venn diagram comes in. So now you have one circle over here and one over here. And right in the middle of that are all of the things that are going to help us connect that next thing. So what are those rooms? What are those familiar places? Is that for me, I used volunteering on boards for non-for-profits as a way for seven years

[00:24:23] [SPEAKER_02] while I was still in the corporate world in order to build up my board experience and all of that stuff. And really also lean into the things that I love, but to find those rooms that would help me learn those additional skills that would then get me over into the other place that I wanted to be.

[00:24:43] [SPEAKER_01] Interesting.

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_00] So I'm hearing you talk about your deficits as being opportunities.

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_01] They are opportunities.

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_00] Right. So, but what you're doing is you're telling someone to visualize their future and to see those opportunities as being ways that you can acquire the appropriate skills necessary to fulfill on that future vision board, right? Of saying, you know, this is what I want to be when I grow up, quote unquote.

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_00] And you're using the vision board as being your, in your case, the Venn diagram of being the way in which you're setting your roadmap from a product owner perspective. I'm an old product owner. And the sprints that you're doing are the individual jobs like the non-for-profit boards or whatever that get you those skills in a way in which doesn't conflict with your day job.

[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, that's exactly it.

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_00] And you're doing great for work, for the world, period.

[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_02] Right? So it's really fulfilling. The rooms are very kind and forgiving. They are willing to teach you because they're so happy for your expertise to be part of the conversation. You know, I also like, I'm an author. Yes. Although candidly, David, I never thought I would be. I got into college with a grade four reading education. They put me in an English as a second language class because my skills were so terrible, but my math skills were so egregiously high.

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_01] Right. Right.

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_02] So they were like, this is strange. And it wasn't. And it was because I had a bad teacher in grade four who poo-pooed all over my reading and it shut me down. Right. And that's where I just stopped. I got paralyzed there until I was in university. After college, I went to university and then really got into books.

[00:26:47] [SPEAKER_00] Send that person your book, by the way.

[00:26:49] [SPEAKER_02] Oh my God, Mr. Fortuna, there's one coming for you, man.

[00:26:51] [SPEAKER_00] Sorry, dude. You're in trouble.

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_02] But what I did learn was how to hear things. I could learn really quickly through audio. And so if I knew if I went to lectures, if I listened to things, if I went in person and then I taught myself physically how to read and ingest information. That was a whole different thing. I said I was in university by the time I got anywhere even close to it. And really understand a different learning style.

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_02] And so if you can teach yourself fundamentally how to learn, which is what education is in itself, it's just trying to teach you the different ways in which you learn. If you go back to the root of how do you learn, you can teach yourself anything. There's some great, crazy stories out there. Look at Arlen Hamilton. Oh my gosh, I like fangirl over what she did. She was homeless. She had a library card and a laptop.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_02] And she managed to build what is undeniably one of the coolest organizations I've ever seen and is invested into, as a VC, into hundreds of businesses that otherwise would never have been funded. And what she taught herself was just how to learn. And like that goodwill hunting sort of quote of like 25 cents and a library card. You can do a lot with that. There's podcasts. If you're an audio person, there's books. There's something.

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_02] There's so many ways in which you can teach yourself how to learn. I changed my algorithm on socials. I have socials that are set up for each part of the thing I want to learn. So if I'm doom scrolling on Instagram, I am learning about podcasts because I'm in that space now. If I'm doom scrolling on TikTok, I am learning about environmental things that are really important to me as a person and things like every platform.

[00:28:42] [SPEAKER_02] I deliberately set up my algorithms to feed my knowledge or curiosity so that even in my passive time, you're still actively engaging things that are meaningful to your own journey.

[00:28:57] [SPEAKER_00] But one of the most important parts of that was you recognized your deficit. You recognized the gap. And then you used your skills that you had, whether it was reading or whether it was recognizing what you needed to change in your doom scrolling. Where I'm going with this is you recognize something that needed to change in order for you to then learn that new skill.

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_00] And what we face in HR a lot is managers don't think they have deficits. How do we overcome this? I don't want to call it ignorance. It's not really ignorance because ignorance seems willful. How do we overcome this deficit that we have in our organizations in order to be able to show people there is a path forward that you can use in order to be able to fill in those gaps?

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_02] David, there is everyone has a deficit. And I think that if you're the type of leader who doesn't believe that you're human, then you're probably not going to believe that your team is human either. And that is probably the most detrimental thing in an organization because you are working with humans and the humans are the actual part that understand the context. They understand the emotional resignations. They understand how and why those decisions are being made beyond just the raw intelligence

[00:30:24] [SPEAKER_02] that they can get from the AI. Right?

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_00] Like, oh my God, it's 32 minutes in and we finally mentioned AI.

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_02] Oh, ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding. It had to happen. I think we avoided it though for 32 minutes.

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_00] We didn't have to because what we were talking about is we were talking about people, which was wonderful. Right. But 32 minutes in and we got there.

[00:30:44] [SPEAKER_02] And so when you ask that and how people can help with that path forward and show that there is a path forward, I think every manager first just needs to identify the fact that they are a human first, that you have with that the raw talent that comes with being a human and with that comes deficits.

[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_02] And you are a product of what you've learned, your environment, the context that's been around you, your upbringing, all of that comes with its innate superpowers, but it comes with its innate limitations. And showing a path forward, I think this comes down to training. So when we, I mentioned it earlier, when we look at those different career paths, the same thing needs to happen about what are the steps that need to happen in the training

[00:31:40] [SPEAKER_02] along the way for that person to get to people management? What are those seven or eight internal core beliefs that are reflected in your learning modules, that are reflected in the value alignments that you're asking these leaders to lead against? Because the biggest gap that I see is that most of the time the managers don't understand

[00:32:08] [SPEAKER_02] the values that they're supposed to be leading against. They don't understand the guardrails. Like I say, the values, those are the guardrails that you're leading against. You've not given them those parameters. Or if you have their words on the wall, they're not actually parts of your business.

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_00] Right. Well, a lot of times when we do performance management, we do the what. What am I asking you to achieve? We don't, we don't, we typically don't ask the how did you achieve it. Remember we talked before about burning bridges and being a bull in the tennis shop. We don't really typically do that. Now, sometimes you do, you talk about competencies. Are you living these competencies? But those aren't built into the algorithm that goes to the end of creating that score.

[00:32:55] [SPEAKER_00] A lot of times those are held to the side. And your score is only on what you achieve. I know, I know, but.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_02] That's the why. If you're not giving your people managers the why, why are people showing up? Because it's not just a paycheck, David. It's not.

[00:33:10] [SPEAKER_01] Sure.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_02] That only works as long as you are running with fear. Right. When you're a fear-based employee, whether that be because there's fear in your organization or fear in your life. Right. The paycheck is all you care about because you're running against whatever it is that you are trying to make sure that you can pay or whatever or do. That's, that's, there's not sustainable. As soon as that person finds a way out of fear.

[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_00] Nikki, look at what we've been dealing with right now with return to work edicts. Because it is all about fear. It is all about, you know, the ability to say to people, listen, you want your job? You better come back to the office. I don't care if you're remote. You better find your way back into the office or you're gone. Well, people know that the jobs, first of all, the jobs report was terrible this month, but forget about that. There are no good jobs out there.

[00:34:04] [SPEAKER_00] And if you are trying to find a job, there are a million other people trying to find that better job too. And you just have to hold on to what you've got. So fear is at the basis of the employment contract right now. It just is. It just is. And for those of you like me who are gray and, you know, 60 plus, forget about it. You cannot find a job. It's impossible. They all say you're too experienced, which is codified for you're old.

[00:34:33] [SPEAKER_00] We can't teach you new tricks and we don't want you. We have a five-year lifespan for us.

[00:34:37] [SPEAKER_02] All right. So we talked to, we have not talked about AI, but I'm going to for a second because AI is information, right? It gives us the median amount of information as a general, right? There's no excellence in it. It's just here's the baseline of the average, right? That's pulling the sum of the average in a math equation, right? That's what AI gives you. That's the intellectual part.

[00:35:00] [SPEAKER_02] What experience or gray hair gives us is the contextual and the emotional input to understand how to take the average to excellent. Yes. So what an ass backwards. Sorry, David, but like, sorry for my French there, but like what an ass backwards way of rewarding what you actually need in your organization, which is that tenured experience.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_02] Otherwise, you're putting out AI garbage and slop and your consumer knows it. They're not interested in it. We are seeing the rise right now. We see, we've seen this. We've seen this in the award circuits, in the music circuits, in all of the creative spaces where what is winning awards that deeply, deeply connected that like really creative, artistic, right? Raw. It's not oversynthesized.

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_02] It's not whatever, because people are already telling you that they are striving for that in real life type of connection. Right. So instead of using fear to drive people back to work, why don't you use what they're naturally trying to already achieve in real life human connection to drive a gather with purpose mentality that says, we absolutely want you to come together. I want my teams to come together. We gather with purpose. We meet meaningfully.

[00:36:27] [SPEAKER_02] We meet as a whole team once a week, half a day. We spend all of Monday mornings just sitting together, breaking bread together, hearing what's going on in each other's worlds across the table from the app building, like backend privacy by design guys to the creative guys who are on the podcast to like, right? All of the people working together, understanding where the other people are. They're talking different languages. We're breaking down those conversations, though. We're getting better because of it.

[00:36:55] [SPEAKER_00] It's called soul, Nikki. It's called soul. You're building an organization with a soul because those people can find the connections that makes them want to be there. And it's not just one plus one equals two. It's one plus one equals three plus because they're driving their whole self in.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_02] And, and David, then you have retention in your people and that experience stays more cost effective. If you're talking about it from a PNL standpoint, then recruiting somebody, bringing in new training them up, having the gaps in the misses in your organizations, blah, blah, blah. I can tell you mathematically why retention is better for your organization every time.

[00:38:07] [SPEAKER_00] Sure. It's not necessary to reduce the friction in order to be able to solve for those hotspots when they come up.

[00:38:15] [SPEAKER_02] Yes.

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_00] Because people understand each other better.

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_02] Why do we think friction is a terrible word? Friction is a billion dollar business idea. Every time. If you find the friction in where your organization is having constant friction over and over, I promise you if you solve for that, that is probably your billion dollar idea waiting to happen. And if you find that in an industry, like go and you look in an industry, right? Okay. Look at Shopify, right? Shopify is a great example.

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_02] People, you had Toby say to people, we need to create this so that we can allow these independent, independent companies to be able to sell their stuff online. And his investors told him, people don't want to do that. There's nobody doing it. He goes, because it's so complicated. And then, interestingly enough to that, once they created at ease, they ended up acquiring ancillary companies because their product still had complexities to it.

[00:39:12] [SPEAKER_02] And these ancillary companies did such a great job at solving for them that they acquired those companies and their founders and kept them in the organization as long as they possibly could because they understood that it wasn't about winning alone either, right? You're not going to do that. You're not in silos. You're not going to win on your own. But friction, friction is not something to be feared. It's something to be embraced.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_00] Well, and I want to enjoy a frictionless conversation with you next time because I think what we need to do is look at friction as a differentiator for our next conversation.

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_02] Let's do that, David.

[00:39:52] [SPEAKER_00] I would love that. We're 42 minutes now and I can talk to you forever apparently. So, but unfortunately, we have to end for today. Thank you. But Nikki, it has been so wonderful getting to know you and your brilliant mind. Thank you. Thank you. I think we definitely need to carry this conversation forward in a different episode.

[00:40:09] [SPEAKER_02] I would absolutely love that. It has, you were absolutely right. It was going to be an exciting conversation and I couldn't agree more. I really love the direction of where it's going.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_00] Well, thank you very much for being here.

[00:40:25] [SPEAKER_02] Thank you. I'm a big fan of the podcast. So, it's really meaningful to be here because HR teams have always consistently been my partner in crime in order to scale organizations because they're the key to the human capital that's coming into your organization.

[00:40:45] [SPEAKER_00] And we love leaders that recognize that. So, thank you very much. And thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe. Thank you for listening to the HR Data Labs podcast. Don't forget to hit subscribe and share it with your network. You can also check out the recordings on Spotify or the HR channel now on Roku and Fire TV. Thank you. Take care and stay safe.