[00:00:00] Dan: Hello, and welcome back to We Not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond. [00:00:13] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. How are you, Mr. Hammond? [00:00:17] Dan: very well. Thank you. It's the last of our second season. So, um, I, I'm going to be bereft obviously without our weekly recording sessions, but I have some excellent [00:00:28] Pia: did we get here so fast? [00:00:30] Dan: no idea. We've hurdled through season two. But I have some excellent and exciting news because we've had a, um, one of our listeners has left her a message on our Podinbox account and more of that anon, but Jamie clicked on the link and sent us a little voicemail religion, which we can hear now. [00:00:48] Jamie: Hi, Dan and Pia, this is Jamie. I was just uh, wanting to leave a quick note cause I was listening to the General speak on your podcast and he was talking a lot about commander's intent and how they've narrowed commander's intent. And then they leave it up to their staff to execute with autonomy and creativity in the field. And talking about that as well as them getting better and better by rehearsing. And as I was listening, it occurred to me how similar that was to the conversation about jazz, where the parallel here would be that the author of the song, um, you know, it's not just a bunch of people just throwing out solos. There's an author who make sure that the keys are the keys understood and things like that. So there's an intent, and then the staff or the other musicians sort of execute with autonomy, but around the guiding principle. And then of course, similarly to what the General was saying, they get better by rehearsing. So she thought it was interesting how these very, very similar principles applied to these very, very different sets of circumstances. [00:01:42] Pia: I think the point he makes here is that leadership is a key part of teamwork. Now leadership could exist inside the team, but also there's a leadership expectation from the managers. Or the team leader and then the style and the way that you do that is dependent on the situation. It may be more directive. It may be more facilitating the answer, collaborative, innovative, because it depends on the context that you're in. [00:02:13] But I think that was a really, that was the, to me, it's that flex, but the intent is you're creating those conditions, clarity, climate, and competence, for your team, for the outcome, that's going to create it to [00:02:27] Dan: Yes. And I, I just, I thought it was wonderful that we're talking about teams, you say about, and our team leadership here. You'd think that. Teams are so different in the military and jazz. I mean, can you think of anything more different, but actually Jamie's managed to extract a real commonality around that intent, and then operating with autonomy, serving that intent, but then also practicing in both of these fields, practicing what you can, which we've seen a few times this, this season, which is quite an interesting theme. So, some great goodies there. Thank you, Jamie, for that contribution, it's really got us thinking. [00:03:06] Pia: And I think it's a great platform to build on today's guest, who is Suni Lobo, who is the CPO of Marquetta and her experience and had breadth and depth of experience of leadership, teamwork, and culture in corporate organizations across the world is very deep. So, and I think she's got really rich insights. So let's hop over and meet her now. [00:03:34] [00:03:34] Pia: Welcome Suni. It is fantastic to have you on this last episode of season two. Welcome. [00:03:44] Suni: So wonderful to be here and really excited about connecting again in Italy with the australians. [00:03:51] Pia: I know. I know we have we've known each other for a long period of time and traveled around various destinations on the planet, but we'll come back to a bit more of that. So I'm going to hand over to Mr. Hammond for the torture chamber, which is the questions that he's going to be asking you. And then we're going to find out a bit more about you. [00:04:10] Dan: I'm sure this will be an absolute doddle for you, Suni. As you know, we have three packs of cards in front of us. The conversation starter cards, red, tricky, orange, urban sort of medium and green. Nice easy questions to get us warmed up. Which, which pack should I choose a card from at random for you? [00:04:26] Suni: How long have you known me? It's red. Dan. [00:04:28] Dan: I know we aren't going to run out of red cards. All our guests are so fronty aren't they? Gosh, I knew it. I did. I didn't even get the other cards out to be honest with you. Okay. Here is the, what's your re your random card. Oh, okay. This is a, this is really the red central something. I've not been honest about. [00:04:53] Suni: Where do I start? Not been honest about. I mean It's not something that I've not been honest about, but something that I've not shared widely is that I'm having a baby in five and a half weeks. [00:05:02] Dan: Wow. We know that the medium of podcasts, we can't see the, any visual effects, but you're presume you're you're a bit larger than we you were when we saw you last, I'm assuming. [00:05:14] Suni: Just a teeny bit larger. [00:05:18] Dan: Congratulations. That's wonderful. [00:05:20] Pia: the most amazing, brilliant news. I am going to I'm going to ask you the question, why, so the question was why I'm being as honest or as open. Is there a reason behind [00:05:32] Suni: No, actually, that's a really good question. And I've often thought about it. I, it's just something that has never occurred to me that I need to share. I'm going to have a movie to me it's just part of life and it is, it's a joyous time in our lives. And it's almost like when she's here, it is a, she, which we're very excited about when she's here. We'll share with the world, but it's not something that we've announced on social media or talked about but we're not we're not hiding it. [00:06:01] Dan: Ah, yes. Interesting. Interesting, good. Well, It will soon be within weeks. Very hard to keep quiet. I suspect. [00:06:10] Pia: And now that this is being broadcast to a million listeners. Everyone knows. [00:06:13] Dan: Right. That's right. It's all out now. Well, thank you for choosing We not Me to to launch the, the Suni-ette that is about to hit the planet. So Sydney, you Mentioned there, you're this this exciting stage in your life. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What's your journey been? [00:06:29] Suni: Wow, where do I start? Do I start from the beginning? You know, I grew up in Mumbai India small city, 22 million people, you know?] It's tiny. And did my first degrees there, Bachelors and a Masters in accounting. My parents were very socially progressive, but like true Asian parents, very educationally, not hello, but they were not asked. When I said to my mum well, I wanted to do management or leadership Felicity. She said, you need to do something tangible. So the options were engineering or accounting, so I chose the path of least resistance accounting, and then went to Australia after I finished my Bachelors and Masters to do what I truly loved, which was HR and I did an advanced, uh, Masters in human resources from the University of New South Wales. And the rest, as they say is history. [00:07:18] I've just loved my journey. In the organization design and HR sphere started in Australia, but lived in eight different countries globally all with work. So I did my OE through which was quite lucrative. And then I finally ended up in, in California 10 years ago with Cisco. [00:07:37] Dan: So I've always find these transitions. Interesting. How did you learn that you loved HR? [00:07:43] Pia: They're not necessarily linked to are they? [00:07:45] Dan: No, it was going to say, [00:07:47] Suni: Actually, that's a very good question. I've thought about it a lot. My mum was really quite an influential figure in my life and always talked to me about how I connected with people easy, easily. And it was something that was a strength of mine. [00:08:00] Back in the day when we didn't have this conversation about talents and strengths it was something she had observed through my life journey. And I remember thinking about how I could use that strength earlier on, in, you know, in something I'd love to do. But I also like strategy and I like thinking about orgs and how we can impact not only a financial aspect from an organization landscape perspective, but also human beings and communities. And how could I do that within an organization construct to set up? So hR seemed to marry that, that, the accounting financial. connection and driving human interaction and connection and development. It seemed to be the perfect sweet spot. [00:08:43] Pia: And to be able to do that, then I guess you've got to be really clear about what your philosophical stance is around that cultural aspect, around the value of people. So tell us what is that and how has that driven your choices in your career and your approaches and organizations? [00:09:02] Suni: It's an interesting question because of, often been at, as Viola, at crossroads in our careers and our lives, where we've had to make decisions about, you know, what's important to us. I found that the one thing that has helped me make decisions is what I think about when it comes to values, so I have strong set of values of course, and all of us do, but that those values are steeped in how what I do impacts people and impacts teams and impacts culture. [00:09:33] So if there is if I find the values in an organization or a particular situation that I'm in it's counter intuitive to how a decision that I make will impact a human being or a team or the culture of an organization, I'd find it very hard to actually go with that. [00:09:53] Dan: Where have you seen that actually, that philosophy really hitting the road, if you like, and working? [00:09:59] Suni: So I think, you know, a couple of examples, but I encourage on one example I, I so strongly believe in the value of human connection and. that we are much better together than we are as individuals. just going through this life journey that we're all going through. And it's specifically actually quite prominent for me in the last two and a half years with the pandemic and you know, seeing how different people are reacting and how we needed to come together as a community to get through the last two and a half years. And indeed, I think, when I think about it probably the next few years too. And you know, if you applied that to an organizational context w one of the companies that I'd like to talk about where we really practice what we preached was around building a culture of belonging. [00:10:43] A culture of belonging comes from teams feeling like they are, they have psychological safety. Um, So when the pandemic hit us about two and a half years ago, we will globally spread in 25 countries around the world. Uh, We were largely working from the office and we didn't have a remote culture and we had to overnight almost overnight just moved over more to way of working. And initially it was quite hard for the first couple of months because managers, leaders were not used to it. But then we did some purposeful things because we said we wanted to focus on our people and culture, because that was the one thing that we all identifed there was going to be a game changer for us. [00:11:23] We were headquartered out of the Silicon Valley in California. We were not being at the top of the market. We didn't have equity programs that impacted most of our employees, but we had a very strong mission and vision attached to our culture. And we really double down on that and pull the teams together where we'd have. conversations with them every six weeks. You know so every, every six weeks we'd connect with everyone globally, all about 800 of us on a call via a town hall just for an hour where we talked about our mission and vision, we talked about our people and our culture, and we really focused on driving team performance and coming together to create that sense of feeling. [00:12:05] So fast forward, about two years we, we then sold the company and we were a private company, sold the company. But when the main premise of our story, when we were selling the company to investors, potential investors was around our people in culture. And when you think about percentages, we had 89% employee engagement in a market that had about 56% employee engagement at that point, 91% team climate, so we'd measure the climate of the team and that had gone up by about 15 percentage points In the two year period, we had 5% turnover attrition in a market that had about 18% attrition, and we had seven years of average tenure in the organization. So people wanted to stay, and that was not because of compensation or stock. It was really about the mission and the vision of the organization and the culture we had created, where people felt safe to do really great work. [00:13:02] Dan: And how did that go after the acquisitions? Can do you, are you what, what, how did the story play out then? [00:13:08] Suni: That's a really good question because I've often thought about, is this a, is this a sustainable of binning formula? And I do think it is, we focused on it so strongly for two and a half years, and it really showed in the numbers. But after we closed the deal in less than three months, attrition spiked from 5%. to 18%. When I can attribute that solely to people, not feeling like they have that sense of mission and vision and camaraderie and the team spirit, where they could come together to do good work and they were being rewarded for the work they did. And they felt a strong sense of. belonging. They felt disconnected. They didn't know where they were going to and attrition spiked almost overnight. [00:13:49] So the lesson for me is, it's something that you have to work hard at, but you have to keep working at, uh, and you can work for two and a half years to actually get to that point and it can all go away. And in a, overnight almost if you're not focusing on it and you're communicating and you're creating that sense of belonging. [00:14:05] Pia: It's it strikes me that you know, we're here in 20, 22. God, we've had enough lessons to help us along, but we still seem to be stuck around this sort of a false paradigm. that to get results, You need to double down on how hard people work. I mean, Our number one important score is focused on getting the task done, and number 37 is strong personal connections. And yet that's the multiplier. That is the multiplier. But somehow when push comes to shove of getting results, we don't invest in it. What, why is that? [00:14:39] Suni: I think we've been so socialized, especially, to where we are at currently and headquarter currently up in California, we have this, we've got into the cycle of, we need to attract talent by just focusing on compensation and compensation drives people's behavior in an organization. And when I look at all of the data, that is probably the, the, 10th driver of what drives people on a scale of one to 10 uh, from a sustainability perspective. [00:15:11] Now, it can be below the point where you can attract talent. So you have to be at a decent level to attract talent. But after that, the multipliers occur when you're creating a sense of belonging when you're creating. Your spirit when you're creating a mission and vision that is simple enough for people to understand and can get behind. And when you're walking the walking to the talk, because a lot of companies will say for example, in the pandemic, we said, we right at the start of the pandemic, we made a commitment that we would not fire anyone from the company, even if our profits dipped. And the way we did that was that the executive team took a cut in their compensation to make sure that we were not impacting other people in the organization. [00:15:58] And initially we didn't communicate that, but there was a lot, because know, it felt odd to do that. But there was a lot of chatter in the organization around, how are we going to, how are we going to actually get through the pandemic? Because we would have, a supply chain, in the supply chain industry. So it was impacting us directly. And then we came out and did mention that in a town hall and, the kind of just feedback and camaraderie we got from our teams, by talking about it and being open about why we did it was a game changer. We never had a conversation about compensation increases after that because they knew that when it was possible, we do it. Because there was inherent trust in the executive team. [00:16:38] Well, How do you build trust with teams? How can you be vulnerable and honest and really bring people in when we've we feel it at a certain level in Silicon Valley that, at an executive team level, we need to hold information, not to be honest and open with our teams and bring them in, but I found the complete opposite. When you bring them in, you can, the world's your oyster, you know, cause you're all solving the problem together and we know what the problem is. [00:17:06] Dan: It's fascinating. Isn't it? In the part of it is all about risk mitigation. Isn't it? That if we tell people they will do something bad, whereas actually experience shows us that if you empower people, if you share information and empower people and they know the risks themselves the risk is more mitigated. It's actually less dangerous to, to share and empower others to hold that than it is to try to, hold it for yourself. If you would, is, does that ring true for you in the experiences you've had? [00:17:34] Suni: You know, I, I would say largely speaking, yes Dan. The one thing I will say is that trust is a very fragile thing. I've been in situations where I come into a team environment and I, my first mode is to trust and to be open and honest, but if they've had an experience in the past that has, that has not allowed them that opportunity to really trust easily. There's always that, that I think dynamic that you need to be in mind when you're coming into a team environment that what has informed the steam's culture coming into the. [00:18:06] And that's one thing that I have, I've gotten wrong on a couple of occasions of, I'll operate in the way that I operate generally, which is, I will trust, I expect you to trust me back, but if you've had some bad experiences and unfortunately in the corporate world, there are more bad experiences than good when it [00:18:24] Pia: Yeah. Yep. That's the sad reality. That is the sad reality and I think that's also, and I think to take your example, that's because we double down on individual accountability And then we have this sort of loyalty to the organization, but we dismiss the team, which is where the work gets [00:18:42] Suni: Yes. And where you have each other's backs, right? If you build a team environment where everyone knows that we are in it together, our success is about the collective and it's not about individual success, and you message that as a leader and you reward that uh, you know, so everything has to be aligned. You can't say one thing and reward another behavior, that's when you can have almost a self managing, team. [00:19:05] So in, in one of the instances, I left a really high-performing team as their leader and I left two people in charge as a tuna box. situation. And the team just flooded. With me getting out of the team and getting out of the way, because they knew that they could rely on each other. They knew there was trust in the system And I didn't necessarily need to be there to leave the team. And that to me, was the biggest success story, that they leaned on each other. And they were successful probably much more successful without me than I was in the way. [00:19:38] Pia: Yeah. Well, I think that's, there's a big dose of humility on your part, but I think that's also setting up the right conditions for the team to operate. And sometimes the leader has so much control that it doesn't create the right conditions. So it's the it's the opposite is true. And I think that's that's, it's a different way of looking at it. [00:19:57] So Suni, you're looking ahead. You're in the midst of Silicon Valley, and we're probably in a situation where the pandemic rumble on or something else or rumble on we're in a state of flux. Where in your view where do organizations need to put their focus? What what needs to help to drive and accelerate the culture, performance and actually engagement? And I'll just take a quick tangent here. The us spends a billion dollars a year on engagement surveys, but only has 20% engagement, which is not a great return on investment. [00:20:34] Suni: Something that I'm really passionate about and I talked about, you know, Teams coming together around a mission and vision. And that I think is a really once you get that it's really game changing for any organization. But I think the bigger kind of almost inflection point for us, when you think about engagement is this whole idea of feeling like you belong. And when you see it, when you, when we talk about belonging, if it has such a wide reach, it's not only about people feeling like they engaged in the mission and the vision of the organization, but it is a diverse set of people feeling like that. And that's where in my experience, the magic happens. Once you are able to attract diverse candidates from various backgrounds and various kinds of experiences, there's also diversity in experiences. And you're not trying to clone one particular type of person or engineer or leader, that's when the magic happens. because the sense of belonging becomes stronger when everyone comes in. to the table with their own set of unique experiences and the experiences are valued and there's trust, and people feel like there's a strong sense of psychological safety in the environment, that is the game changer. And that's when my, the belonging magic happens according to me. So getting there takes a little while I will say. [00:21:53] Dan: And what's the state of play right now. If you know, if we look, we all, we often look to California to Silicon Valley and the surrounding areas and the big organizations there for for a lead what's the state of play on that front. Are they working on that? Do you think? Is that [00:22:09] Suni: I think we have gotten to a point where we've gotten to this almost this hamster wheel of, someone pays x dollars to an individual and you need to pay X plus 50% to attract them. And it's a dangerous, it's a very slippery slope to go down. If we actually are able to remove us ourselves as leaders in Silicon valley, from that continuum and make sure that we are focusing on other aspects of why people feel like they want to come to work every day and be their best selves and do good game-changing innovative work and feel fulfilled, then I think that's when you know, your engagement continuum will shift, right? That's when your bang for your buck so to speak, uh, Pia, and it's not about spending millions of dollars on learning and development. [00:23:01] Pia: No, it's not. [00:23:02] Suni: It's about actually creating an environment where people feel like they are valued and they can do good work. And every voice can be. heard, which is very hard to do in Silicon Valley. [00:23:16] Pia: And sometimes people don't know exactly what, what high-performance good looks like. So I think that's part of the clarity picture is making that accessible for people and not as difficult. There's a big myth around what teaming and leadership is. And actually we can unpick that and make that much more democratic and much more accessible to a greater number of people. [00:23:41] Suni: And much more. I think it's all in the one thing that I've noticed, working in different organizations in the valley. This feeling that as leaders, we almost shy away from having a real conversation with our teams and our people. It's easy to send a memo, It's easier to send the letter. It's easier to say you're talk in a town hall at a broad level, but the connection one-on-one and with your team to drive that, the team comradery takes a lot of time, but it is the game changer. And we have some are going to continue them off. I don't want to spend the time it's a chicken and egg situation. I don't want to spend the time because it takes so much time to talk to my team and so much time to be one-on-one conversation and really not get that. You're not going to actually create that sense of belonging. If you don't do that [00:24:26] Dan: It really, you're making me smile so new because remembering the. work I did with teams in Silicon Valley actually we'd have these you a problem with a rise. We'd come up with a solution. And then we say how could you communicate with that with your team? and there'd be happy. There'll be 20 people and take people coming up with ideas. I'll talk to corporate comms. I could S you know, you could do a, you could do a day, a lunch and learn, and then it took five minutes. Every time for the for someone said I guess I could actually just go. Talk to people, it's as if it's the thing that we weirdly that human connection of just having a conversation is something that we somehow have been somehow have ended up being, trying to avoiding at all costs almost. It's it's strange, but it's so simple. [00:25:09] Suni: But I think also we're in the world, we're in today with the pandemic and all of the remote work that, you know, there's this tendency to hide behind the screen, to, and to feel like, oh, I have to be face-to-face with someone to drive that human connection. And I found that's not true at all. That's not true. [00:25:25] In a previous life, a team from Israel, And there were about 25 people in israel on the steam who had not met. Like literally a year and a half to two years before I actually went to Israel and met them face to face. But when I didn't eventually meet them face to face, I felt like I had a stronger connection with them. Then my team in California, because we were talking regularly, we're doing it all on WebEx at that point. But we're talking regularly every week and I felt a strong sense of connection with them being, involved, me and them being in Jerusalem. and when I met them like two years later, it was the icing on the cake, but it was not the time we started our relationship building because we didn't have that face-to-face connection or contact. So it's absolutely trut that in a global world, but we often tend to see that it's not. [00:26:16] Pia: And it's, it's a muscle that if we don't start practicing, particularly in teams, it will atrophy and the impact. We'll be much bigger, but it would probably, we may not be around, but the impact will be felt in the next generation. So I think that's why it's so important. If you bring that level of conversation, a different type of conversation, make people feel that diverse opinion is needed and valued across the whole team, I think we can change that dynamic. [00:26:48] Dan: And Suni, we we've loved hearing your experiences as usual, and there, they really um, thought provoking and, counter to so much conventional wisdom at the moment, and, um, really about making that human connection. We always ask our guests to leave our listener with something really practical that they can do tomorrow. So no pressure, but could you leave the second season on a real with something that uh, out of, out of all this, that people could just, where would you start if you've got a team? Of course context matters, but what's a simple way to just move in the right direction in your view? [00:27:27] Suni: I only think it's simple one conversation at a time. It takes time. Have conversations with not only individuals, but as with your team as a whole. But starting with having the real conversation about what truly makes people tick rather than connecting on a, an organizational level that we try to do in a corporate environment to me has been a game changer on my relationships with my teams and people I meet. [00:27:52] Pia: Well, we've loved this conversation. So I just been wonderful to reconnect with you. And and the simplicity is the power of this. [00:28:00] Suni: Yes. [00:28:01] Pia: And and sometimes we look for the more complicated answers, what an actual fact, the simple ones are right in front of us. So thank you. And that's been a, such a rich conversation, so good luck with mum hood in the future. [00:28:14] Suni: I can't believe I announced it on your podcast. [00:28:17] Pia: I know.. Neither could I, but [00:28:19] Suni: I was thinking what have I lied about? Like I don't feel the need to lie about things generally, like, [00:28:30] Dan: We did it. squeezed it out of you. [00:28:33] Pia: When it happens, we'll announce it we'll announce it on the show. [00:28:37] Suni: and I'm like, what is that renounce? I don't know if I find it really odd to on social media. Is it woo. Look at my bump. [00:28:42] Dan: I hope the birth is as easy as it was to get that truth out of you. So, uh, good, good, Good luck. [00:28:48] Suni: And, she's a soccer player, so I hope she doesn't give me more trouble coming out. But [00:28:54] Dan: You know, in all the complexity that we have around us here, it really struck me how Suni had sort of boiled down this thing into two, a stark choice, actually for motivation and engagement of people in teams. One is the money machine, you know, how can you pay more and keep paying more which is sort of, as she said, the hamster wheel or do you go down the route of actually having a purpose, being clear with your values, treating people as humans, giving a sense of belonging and engagement. Really fascinating how she sort of really put those out there. Of course, real life is a little bit more mixed up than that, but I think it does prompt leaders and team members and organizational leaders to really think about which path they want to go down. [00:29:43] Pia: And psychologists would call that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. And every piece of study has shown that extrinsic, external rewards finance has short-term efficacy. So yeah, you get a hit, and then you're looking for something else. That the longer term, the purpose, the mission, the values is the intrinsic, but it takes effort. And that takes time and structure and strategically to build that in to the fabric and the framework so that it becomes not only engaging, but becomes really attractive to the talent around you. But that's not a quick fix. But nor does it have to be laborious. As Sunni said, it doesn't have to cost a lot and it doesn't have to be overly complicated. It's a conscious choice. [00:30:37] Dan: It's so amusing, isn't it? Actually that the research shows, I think that to your point about extrinsic motivation, that financial motivation, like that works for basic practical tasks, so peace work. And yet we work in a, an immensely complicated complex world where we need to think that our fullest, and yet we're still using these old, old mechanisms. [00:31:02] But as you say, shifting to the other side, to actually engage people through culture is, is such an opportunity for us now to stop that, that, that hamster wheel of the money is really it's exciting opportunity [00:31:13] Pia: And it's a pretty cool way to end the season. It's a real, We Not Me moment. Really. It's focusing on that we actually builds all that. Not only builds performance, but builds that sense of, of collective identity and feeling part of something. And that's going to be really important. So I think, uh, I think it's an incredibly strong message to finish off the season. Oh, dear. But a bit sad. [00:31:40] Dan: We're a little bereft. Aren't we? However, we will be back Pia] in May, with uh season three of We Not Me, we've some amazing guests lined up and we're really looking forward to meeting them. But, uh, yeah, that's it. For this episode and this season. [00:31:53] You can find show notes and resources at squadify.net, just click on the We Not Me podcast link. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. Also do take a moment if you can, to give us a rating on your favorite podcast platform. [00:32:09] Yes, we back in may, but do messages on LinkedIn or via the website or leave us a voice message. All the links are in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you and we'll include your thinking and your questions in season three, episode one. [00:32:24] We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman of Origin. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me. [00:32:30] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.