{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Random Access Memories","title":"My Failure Made Me a Better CISO | Assaf Keren, former CISO, PayPal","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2377,"description":"Most leaders spend their careers trying to prove they're good at their jobs. But Assaf Keren does something different, he teaches his managers how he's failed.\nThe current CSO of Qualtrics and former CISO of PayPal has spent more than two decades in security, but some of his strongest beliefs about leadership didn't come from the things he got right. They came from burnout, bad decisions, difficult feedback, and learning to let go of the need to be the smartest person in the room.\n\nIn this episode of RAM, Assaf joins Jake Bernardes to talk about the stories behind his book and the leadership philosophy they created.\nThat includes asking employees to tell him when he's wrong, telling leadership what he intends to do instead of constantly asking permission, and an annual ritual his team has learned to dread: Assaf publicly grading his own performance. One year, he even went to his boss and asked to be rated lower. But some failures cost more than a performance review.\nEarly in his PayPal career, Assaf was working across Israel and the United States, essentially working two shifts every day. Good nights ended around 1 a.m. Bad ones at 3 or 4. Then he'd wake up and do it again.\nHe did that for a year.\nEventually he was physically ill, emotionally reactive, unable to think clearly, taking 15-minute power naps between meetings—and closer than he realized to leaving cybersecurity altogether.\nCompounding that experience was something else he'd carried quietly for years: PTSD. During COVID, Assaf learned that an employee with PTSD was afraid to disclose what they were experiencing. So Assaf wrote a message to a PayPal Slack channel with roughly 40,000 people explaining his own experience.\nThen he stared at it, for three days. His extended family didn't know. His colleagues didn't know. He worried his leaders might see him differently. \n\nEventually, he pressed Enter, shut his laptop and walked away. Looking back, he says: “That was the moment I started healing.”\n\nMemory...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/AgTc_ajuZymV7B6Is4iwonkllAQv6bMTNgmQnuJEL_A/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS84NGMz/OWQxZDMwZjBiYjQx/ODZlYjc3ZjJlN2Jk/YzM5Yy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}