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Exploring how humans connect and get stuff done together, with Dan Hammond and Pia Lee from Squadify.
We need groups of humans to help navigate the world of opportunities and challenges, but we don't always work together effectively. This podcast tackles questions such as "What makes a rockstar team?" "How can we work from anywhere?" "What part does connection play in today's world?"
You'll also hear the thoughts and views of those who are running and leading teams across the world.
[00:00:00] Dan: While a data-driven approach can yield huge benefits to teams, we also know that data can be used in ways that are not so helpful often unintentionally. So how do we maintain our intelligence on teams without lurking, prying, or distorting our own reality? Well, our guest on this episode of We Not Meet is Jenni McNeil, head of Information Security at Contact Energy in New Zealand, who's an experienced manager in a number of roles, and she'll share how to take a conscious approach to using data with good intent to get the best outcomes.
[00:00:31] 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.
[00:00:41] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. Hey, Dan. I'm just reading this week. Another one of these great, you know, names. You know, we sort of, I thought, do we have the, the quiet quitting.
[00:00:52] Dan: Oh yes,
[00:00:53] Pia: In China, I think they call it, they've, they've got a lying down phase. You know, people have been burnt out, so they're having a lying down. And so Gallup published something the last week actually, really about the, the inability to shift engagement post covid. And they're calling it the great detachment.
[00:01:11] Dan: It's sort of the opposite of engagement, isn't it, really? If you engage with something, you're detached. Right? I suppose. But the, but it makes sense really to call it that. 'cause it's pretty dire.
[00:01:19] Pia: And they had, you know, as we have, have, have, I've got data that's going across multi multitude of years and you can really see that there is sort of. Aftershocks Tremors post the post covid. In fact, we were so engaged in Covid, because it was all quite exciting and new and it was a bit novel. And then it's actually the, it's afterwards that actually, that things have really set in when we've had all that geopolitical instability and economic woes and pressure living. and, and multiple restructures, that's created quite a lot of, um, of challenges.
[00:01:52] Dan: there's huge, I, I still fail to understand why some of the biggest companies in the world had chosen the covid to, to start to sort of clamp down on, uh, everything Sort of make life difficult for us, but it's happened. And uh, so here we are and it looks, and it is having an impact on our people's engagement with companies. And you sort of sense it when you talk to people as well as seeing the data.
[00:02:15] Pia: And I have the pleasure of working with Contact Energy in New Zealand and working with a number of their wonderful teams down there. It's, been a real privilege. One of their senior leaders is the head of Info security, Jenni McNeil. And she has a really great way of seeing this information about her team, so the, the real validity and the value of engagement.
[00:02:41] Pia: And she's also, um, utilize Squadify for the last, you know, 18 months. And it's how it's used. And I think that's a really useful conversation because it's not a tool to, to sort of. Bash the ears of your team members. It's actually what, what's your, what are you trying to achieve? And that's actually, I think, the conversation that we need to, to look at.
[00:03:03] Pia: 'cause then I think that becomes really useful, um, for our listeners who are managers of teams. And hopefully this will be a really useful episode for
[00:03:11] Dan: sounds ideal. Let's go and hear from Jenni now.
[00:03:16] Pia: Jenni welcome to We Not Me
[00:03:18] Jenni: Thank you very much, Pia.
[00:03:19] Pia: We're going to delve into all things data inside teams, but actually not technology data. We're gonna talk about human data, but first probably the bit that you would really look forward to the most. We, we we're gonna ask you. Conversation starter card question, which for a technology person might be a bit scary because it isn't necessarily going to be too factual. Well, let's see.
[00:03:41] Dan: yeah, and this, I think this is a good one. I just cut the cards and here I have your card, Jenni. And it is one of my simple pleasures is what's one of your simple pleasures?
[00:03:51] Jenni: Um, simple pleasures. I, I really love reading and my most, the thing I'm enjoying most is my daughter has got into, um, a lot of the. TikTok book talk. Um, and she's been going through a lot of literature and she turned around to me and she said, I really want you to read this book because ever since I've read it, I think about it every day and I would really love an opportunity to talk about it with you.
[00:04:16] Dan: Hold on a second. So what is book talk? Is it talking about books on TikTok or is it something clever than that?
[00:04:22] Jenni: Unbelievably social media has driven a massive uptick in reading in a lot of young adults because they're socially conversing about and having fandoms around. Um, a lot of literature, heck of a lot of, uh. What we probably would've thought of a sword and sorcery back in the day. Lots of dragons, lots of fairies, and there's a certain amount of bat fetishing going on.
[00:04:43] Jenni: It's very strange, but, but it's, it's terrific. Right? These are, these are the kind of books that when I read it, it was boy literature and, and the girl. The girls, the girls would like, you know, we would be tolerated. Um, and, and now it seems like it's really driven by a fantastic batch of female authors and, and a huge range of people reading it.
[00:05:02] Jenni: there's an element of smart, but you know, we won't go into that. Um, uncomfortable when reading with your daughter.
[00:05:07] Dan: You've done really well. Um, we we're just on the first question, and you've mentioned bat fetish and smut already, so talk, welcome to the show. You've done, you, you're off to a cracking start.
[00:05:19] Pia: do you think that's gonna do the fact that we all have a British heritage? I'm just wondering. That's why I got sty within the first
[00:05:26] Dan: Exactly.
[00:05:28] Jenni: think it's such an English word, right? It's such a British, British tone.
[00:05:31] Dan: brilliant. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Um, oh, that's a superb one and a lovely thought of you and your daughter having chats about
[00:05:39] Pia: I, I share that. too. 'cause my eldest daughters. Doing extension English for her sort of final year. So I actually pop into her bedroom and because she's reading just a gargantuan amount of literature and text and I go pick, pick me a book, find me a book to, to read, and she's got really good taste and types of books that I would've never have normally picked up. So I really enjoy, I enjoy that too.
[00:06:04] Jenni: and, and for me it was because my daughter is actually dyslexic, so I always passionately wanted her to have the love of books that I had. And of course when I, when she was dyslexia, it was like, oh, that's gonna be a challenge. So the fact that she actually reads for joy and for pleasure, it's just wonderful full.
[00:06:19] Dan: Oh, that's a lovely start, Jenni. Thank you. And, uh, tell us a little bit more about your, your life to this point. Not, not in, you know, just the two minute, buy you in a box.
[00:06:28] Jenni: oh, goodness me. Uh, well, I, I started out, uh, desperately wanting to be just like my father, passionately de my, uh. Longing to be a, a manager, um, as early as possible, preferably before he was.
[00:06:40] Jenni: Um, so I wanted to be a manager and I wanted to be in sales because I was reasonably good at it. I achieved my goal and became a manager at the age of 25. Um, it was very clear that I wasn't actually a leader. Um. Somebody asked me about leadership, and I was like, I, I'm not a leader, I'm a manager. Um, so I understood the difference, um, but I didn't really know how to bridge the gap.
[00:06:58] Jenni: Um, I realized it wasn't actually what I wanted to do at all, and I luckily switched careers into technology. Um, I became an IT support technician. It was nosebleed inducing, steep, uh, learning curve, but uh, I did it and then fabulous pivot into cybersecurity, which is what I've been doing. More or less ever since.
[00:07:16] Jenni: A little bit of a hiatus when I moved to New Zealand. And uh, yeah, I'm now head of information security at Contact Energy, which I feel very, very privileged to do
[00:07:25] Pia: tell us a little bit about your team that you are currently managing
[00:07:29] Jenni: so. Um, I've got a wonderful team. Obviously I would say that, but, 'cause I hired them though mostly, um, the team is, is geographically diverse across the country. And in fact, we even have a contractor who's out the country, um. We are focused on, um, protecting the cyber resilience of contact energy, the organization that we work in.
[00:07:49] Jenni: Um, and the wonderful thing with cybersecurity as a profession is that they're very passionate. They're very committed. They're kind of already on the mission. They've already got the engagement with what they're trying to achieve. Uh, but they're also very. Quite detail orientated and tend to think that they're not fully appreciated.
[00:08:02] Jenni: So, um, there's always some interesting challenges there. And I've got, I've got a great mix of characters, um, and I've got a great mix of ages. I've got people who have only been in the workforce for two, three years. Um, we've even had graduates through, in fact, we're quite successful with graduate placements, which is important when you're trying to grow the future labor market and grow those skills.
[00:08:21] Jenni: but I've also got people, you know, uh, who have been in the industry for 25 years and acres of experience and, and can bring that and lean into. Well,
[00:08:29] Pia: Um, and so what's your approach? I mean, and, and, and I know that a lot of the listeners are running teams themselves. H how, how do you keep your finger on the pulse of trying to understand what's going on with the team? other than having. A lot of one-to-ones which we all know is probably not, not, not the best use of time. So how have you approached that?
[00:08:53] Jenni: One-to-ones aren't the solution for sure, especially when the team is, is geographically spread. I'd say the most important answer is to listen, not just listen with your ears. Um, listen digitally. Because what people are saying, what people are doing, you know, we have, I guess I call it like a water cooler chat room.
[00:09:11] Jenni: Um, when you're in the office, you've got the opportunity to kind of overhear casual conversations. When you are not in a physical location, you need somewhere that you can just vent or share a struggle and seek advice. And we created that for the team within, within our team's channels. and we also have a.
[00:09:30] Jenni: A meeting channel for coffee, no work, chat, sharing jokes, memes, whatever. They often get intermingled. Um, but the trick was to, to build that, have people sharing their thoughts and not to step in too much. Yeah. Not to step in and solve the problems. Not to step in and answer all of the questions, which instantly is really hard for me.
[00:09:49] Jenni: But, um, just to take that step back and let, let them work it through, let them listen to each other, um, and let them respond to each other. And then you can kind of take the temperature if you're paying attention, if you are actually listening to understand digitally, then you can kind of see some pain points or some challenge areas and, and, and, you know, take those away, reflect on those, and really think about how you're gonna apply some perspective that can support the individuals or the group.
[00:10:15] Jenni: Sometimes you can dive in later. Sometimes you maybe have a one-to-one with someone and you felt like maybe you were struggling a little bit with that. Do you wanna tell me about how, how you work through it? or just congratulate someone else who's just lent in and support someone, because that's the great thing, right? You can see real successes. Um, but yeah, keeping your finger on the pulses mostly about being connected but not enmeshed.
[00:10:36] Pia: so that, I think that's quite an interesting way. So actually observing the channels and not Going into fix the problems as such, but actually observing the patterns of conversation, see what the themes are coming up. That's a really interesting way of do, of doing that. And I think, you would normally be hanging around, as you say, like the proverbial water cooler and doing that. Quite sort of casually if you were face-to-face, but you don't actually spend any time in the office or very little with your team.
[00:11:04] Pia: So everybody, because you are all working in different locations. so, so what else do you use? ' cause okay, I, I'm gonna go there. Everyone uses an engagement survey. Te tell us from a senior leader's perspective, what's the value and, and maybe what some of the pitfalls of using that.
[00:11:21] Jenni: I love engagement surveys. I'm a passionate, passionate supporter of engagement surveys, um, in the more than 25 years, and I'm not going any further than that. Um, I, I have watched the extended use of them. I have, I. Think the, the value of understanding and having a fully engaged workforce is, it can't be understated.
[00:11:40] Jenni: And I think you had, you had somebody on a couple of weeks ago talking about engagement surveys and saying that was safety incidents were down, you know, 62% with a highly engaged workforce. You know, that's so important, especially if you're in, you know, energy sector or, or a dangerous working environment.
[00:11:56] Jenni: I, I always wanted to understand within the engagement surveys, I think a lot of the gold. The goal is in the trends, what's changed because you can apply your knowledge of what's changed situationally to what's changed in your survey responses, but also the detail, the response. Text, like most of the engagement surveys now will give you a deeper dive into what are people saying?
[00:12:21] Jenni: What do they mean when they're saying that they feel, you know, that this is a challenge area because what you think is the challenge area, what you think they mean is very often not, not at all what they mean. Um, so really just listening to understand to the answers that they're giving in terms of those trends and the current space.
[00:12:38] Jenni: understanding. The context. Context. 'cause things will have changed in the organization and those things may affect how the engagement's gone up, gone down. and of course, you know, understanding, and I think I, I was speaking to you, Pierre the other day, the most important thing is to be gathering that information, to understand and use it.
[00:12:56] Jenni: gathering, engagement, survey information so that you could have a good engagement score. Is not a valuable use of company time or money and more, it, it's incredibly disengaging for the people who are working in that organization. You know, if, if the goal is to have a great engagement score, then the goal is wrong because having a gate engagement score is not the outcome.
[00:13:20] Jenni: It's just a way of getting an indication if you like, um, the target, I mean, think it was a, a mathematician, um, Richard something. Um, he said, you get what you measure. I think that was really important. You get what you measure and if your goal is to have a good engagement score. You are measuring, having a good engagement score, that is what you will achieve a good engagement score.
[00:13:42] Jenni: but you won't necessarily do that in a way that is authentic or valuable to the business and the organization and the goals you're trying to achieve. What you want to have is a highly engaged workforce. An engagement survey is how you can measure and gather some data for whether they are highly engaged, somewhat engaged, um, and give you an area to focus in. How, how can you help, how can you support the, the people individually at a team, at an enterprise level, um, to have that sense of belonging and that sense of commitment to the organization.
[00:14:10] Dan: I, I think it may be is that Goodheart, is that Goodheart's law where you, you sort of, you, you, we, we, we see this problem sometimes where you, um, yeah, if you turn your measure into a, into a target, it's no longer very good measure. We, we do see this sometimes, um, in our work where it's not supposed to be a goal.
[00:14:29] Dan: Um, you've just gotta let that score be what it is, haven't you? I think that's a very, sound, but of course it requires actually. Psychological safety in the, in the business to, and the, in the teams and the organization to, to allow that. If, if the engagement score happens and then sort of dips and then some, the ton of bricks follows on the manager, then think, then it starts to get, the data's sort of corrupted a little bit, isn't it?
[00:14:54] Jenni: Absolutely. If if you, if you are using it as a stick, then, then it's, it's, it's going to, I think it, yeah, it, it just fundamentally changes your business outcomes. Um, you have to measure the success. Uh, but, but you have to look for the outcomes. You have to look for the business, the, the engaged people and, and I guess the engaged people comes from your highly performing teams. It comes from your low turnover. It comes from people who are advocating to, for other people to come work.
[00:15:17] Jenni: You know, if people are recommending others to come and work for you, that is, is a huge evidence that you've achieved that constructive. Environment for people to work in. You've got the engagement within your organization, your team, if you have a high engagement score, but maybe you've still got those problematic areas, I sense of turnover and recruitment and you know, presenteeism, then perhaps the score is all you've got.
[00:15:42] Pia: I do think that some, sometimes the system isn't set up very well, so it becomes almost like a compliance thing. And, um, senior managers feel that their bonus is tied to it or their, you know, their performance rating is tied to it. It becomes a board directive. So, and, and that in itself is in the intention.
[00:16:02] Pia: We, we, we, we are losing the overall goal, which is to create an engaged workforce.
[00:16:07] Jenni: I think there's two sides to that though. I mean, when you consider the, the way in which you. Get people to actively collaborate and learn on how to be better leaders, to engage their people, to support their people. You have to coach them, you have to train them, you have to give them the tools, and then you can measure them against the target.
[00:16:26] Jenni: Um, and I think that's, that's, it's that, it's that focus on enabling senior leaders to understand how important that is. Because otherwise you'll say we need an engaged workforce. But there's no, there's no grunt behind that. There's no power behind that. So I think it's absolutely vital that you do measure it, but the measure is not necessary. It's about how you set those targets.
[00:16:48] Jenni: I think many years ago, yeah, I had a, I had a, a discussion, a heated discussion. I was, I was quite junior in the organization at the time when I had this conversation because the, uh, the engagement score was a target that was tied to bonuses that was cascaded all the way down to the most junior person with no direct reports whatsoever.
[00:17:07] Jenni: And I had this conversation with the person at, at that organization, and I said, but surely you understand that you are going to get people who give high scores to get a better bonus. And they said, no, no, no, our people would never do that. I said, but no engaged. People who care about improving the organization wouldn't do that, but disengaged people. Absolutely will.
[00:17:30] Jenni: And Yeah. it was, it was a real, and I was like, there was just so much money that was being wasted to achieve an outcome that isn't really logical.
[00:17:38] Dan: And if you can set, it's sort of in the extreme, you are setting your own bonus, aren't you? To some extent. You're, you are answering the questions and say, you know, how much bonus do I want here? And it's not Yeah,
[00:17:50] Jenni: So, so that was, that changed as well by the way? In, in, in that particular, at least in the teams I was connected with at that organization that did change.
[00:17:57] Dan: The other thing we're seeing now is, is how AI is sort of monitoring what's going on in organizations, looking at sentiment and sort of getting, almost extracting, uh. This data from, from the sort of day-to-day goings on, almost just sort of, by the back door, if you like, without being sort of open about. Right. What's going, have you seen, have you seen that used at all? Have you, what's your, what's your thinking on that?
[00:18:24] Jenni: I think you've gotta be really very, very careful of that because I think if you wanna foster a psychologically safe workplace, you are not going to be using AI to monitor what people say type four, or speak to one another. Um, I think ethically, that's incredibly questionable and I mean there's, there's an enormous amount of legislation out there, which is now protecting people from that kind of activity, I think, where that.
[00:18:47] Jenni: That sort of tool is really useful when you are, when you are looking at, um, as I say, if you, if you take the comments that you might get from any kind of a survey response, um, you can, you can read them all individually and I absolutely encourage everybody to read all of the comments individually. We are not in this to lead people and take shortcuts, but what you can do is you can have, you know, the best intern.
[00:19:09] Jenni: In your AI assistant, so the AI assistant can maybe identify trends you've missed, maybe identify a, a sentiment or a tone that, that you didn't quite pick up. But equally, if, if you don't also read all of those comments, there is a human element to understanding, um. I don't think AI has yet achieved.
[00:19:28] Jenni: So while it's fantastic for, as an assistant, it's an awesome backup. Um, it needs to be very transparent, open, and it needs to be fair and ethical, and you need to handle it with care.
[00:19:39] Dan: In fact, it's, it's really interesting to say that 'cause when we were building the AI in Squadify, we, we were testing it against coaches' views, and it did raise issues that the coach hadn't spotted. The objectivity was really helpful, actually. You know, you, because you sort of have these biases as a human now, and obviously there are still issues with, with AI in some respects, but it definitely.
[00:19:59] Dan: We took that bias out and pointed out things that might not have been noticed. So as you say, it's sort of assisting the human in that way seems to make sense. But um, yeah, I think we're certainly with you and about the sort of openness of the information gathering,
[00:20:13] Dan: it's quite, is I think the theme you are. You are sort of un unpacking different ways. Jenni seems to be about authenticity of data. The, the openness of how it's gathered, the why it's gathered, the, the, the sort of keeping it real. I think that seems to be the, the sort of heart of the heart of the thing you're saying. Each time we've tried to divert you into anything dodgy or straight back to authenticity.
[00:20:37] Jenni: Yes. Well, I mean that's, that's at the heart of any, any. Decent approach to leading a team though is, is authenticity. You, you, you, you must be authentic with when you, and, and you must be honest and open, you are gathering the information and the privacy act requires you to be apart from anything else. If I'm gathering data in any way, and I'm using it for something other than what I've disclosed, then that's, that's not even aligned with laws, not even the New Zealand privacy laws, which are nowhere near as, uh, comprehensive as some other countries. so yeah, having, having that, um, transparency. Um, about what you're doing. So, you know, obviously when I'm talking about the digital listening, I'm an active participant in the, the channels. It's not, I'm, I'm not hanging out in the background lurking and making notes and, you know, but, but what it, what it allows you to do is to be part of the team.
[00:21:26] Jenni: But it's much like a manager sitting in the same room. You know, you are there and if they need you, they'll literally at you in the channel like, Hey Jenni, could you weigh in if you're, if you're hanging back too much? but it does allow you to be connected to people and to gather that information and that data on on.
[00:21:42] Jenni: What's going on? Where are people at? and sometimes you do have to step in. You know, I, I have, I have, I have sent an out ofAnd step away from the keyboard, take a deep breath message a couple of times to people because you can see that the temperature's escalating and you can, you can easily manage it, which doesn't mean you have to be constantly there. but it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly if there is any kind of issues that does just need a little bit of oil and troubled waters.
[00:22:09] Pia: I think that nature of the dialogue, you know, certainly in the work that we. That we're doing with Squadify. It's the data informs the dialogue that actually then informs the development. And sometimes that's, that is sometimes where engagement surveys can get bogged down because then it's the ne it's what to do next sometimes feels. too big, too gray, not knowing who's responsible for what. I think that's quite an art of leadership to really nail down specific actions from, from an engagement survey, and certainly that's, I think has been the work that we've been been focused on is how do we make that easier for managers and leaders to do that in the, in a respect.
[00:22:54] Jenni: Yeah. Engagement surveys give you a lot of information, a lot of data about what people think and how people feel. but it doesn't really tell you a lot of the why, especially if probably you have, and, and I, I'd say probably when you have lower engagement, you probably have less psychological safety, which means you have less notes and comments, which means you have less to work with in terms of the why.
[00:23:15] Jenni: and it doesn't give people any input into telling you how that they would like you to help them. Solve this problem. So yeah, it's a, it's a mountain of information that's very interesting and very useful, but again, it relies on you being a good leader to, to understand how to act on that information.
[00:23:31] Jenni: And there's not a lot of support for how to get there. Like how do you bridge the gap between the engagement survey results and then the improvement of those that's specific to your area, especially if you have a larger team.
[00:23:43] Dan: So Jenni, let's, um, let's get down to some, uh, some, some really practical ideas. Now, so you, you, you're an experienced manager. You, you've, and this, this is a subject that's close to your heart. Where, where would you point someone if. They're feeling, they're listening to, to what you're saying and thinking, ah, that all sounds good, but we don't have anything, I dunno where to start. Where would you point people to really sort of harness data
[00:24:08] Jenni: I, I think the problem is, Dan, is I don't crunch data. I just absorb it like a sponge, let it settle in and see what comes to the surface.
[00:24:17] Jenni: For me, crunching data is sitting and doing something proactively, and I, I don't, I, I, it, it's just something, it just becomes, if you, if you consume it, if you absorb it, if you think about it and reflect on it, and then just leave it alone because later, later is when it'll be, it'll make sense. An idea will come to you walking the dog or, you know. When you're trying to sleep and succeeding, I'm good at sleeping.
[00:24:40] Pia: I think it's quite interesting because some of the teams that I work with see the data as performative, and you can hear that in the language they use, uh, in, you know, are, are we okay? Is this good? Are we bad? It's very sort of like, you know, polaric statements around it, and that puts a lot of pressure on people.
[00:25:00] Pia: Whereas an actual fact, I try to remind people that we're, we're in an evolving workplace. That actually what we've learned, a lot of that's going out the window. We're having to really kind of unlearn and relearn different ways. So it's better to have, as you've said, a psychologically safe space to be able to go, well, that's interesting.
[00:25:18] Pia: What, what do we think about that? Rather than, this is a, some kind of score on a graph and it, and, and. That puts, that judges us. I, I dunno whether, I just don't think that's helpful in this environment.
[00:25:31] Jenni: No, it's not. I mean, it's, it's, it's great when you get a good score and you can go, yay, I have a fantastic score. My team is happy, I am happy and, and everything is good. Um, but like I say, it's an outcome. That you're after the, the, the act, the reality of an engaged team is what you're after. And the score.
[00:25:48] Jenni: If it's, if it's something that's indicating you have that, fantastic, but hopefully you already knew that. Like, I'd hate, I'd hate to be a manager who is leading a team and then has a surprise, incredibly low score because then I will have let the team down quite significantly, I think. and that's, that's true of, of Squadify.
[00:26:05] Jenni: That's true of any, survey of any kind of engagement survey. I've done quite a few different. Articulate the iterations of engagement surveys from different vendors. I think if you are surprised by your results, then that's, that's probably where that's some important data that you should consider, right?
[00:26:21] Jenni: Because the, the result isn't the thing that you need to focus on. The fact that you didn't have an understanding that that's what was coming is the piece of information that's really meaningful there.
[00:26:30] Dan: I, I'm working with a team just recently and they, um, they've been having base scores have been going up. And then the last one it was a drop. And as you said, I think it wasn't a surprise to the lead. I think they knew because they. Taken some actions, things that happened in the marketplace that had sort of really put pressure on the team.
[00:26:48] Dan: And what it's meant is that they, um, they probably might have pushed on through, but they're actually gonna have, they, you know, they're now talking about that day and say, okay, what is this? Rather than, okay, we all feel a bit crap. Um, we're overworked and stressed because of this thing, but they keep pushing on.
[00:27:05] Dan: Actually they're gonna come together and talk about, as you say, holding that data lightly. but to say, okay, this is, this has happened to us and we all put that data in. This is not someone coming in and measuring us. We, this is our sentiment. And um, that's the power of it, isn't it? But as you say, to hold that data lightly, explore the why.
[00:27:24] Dan: And then if needed, just sit with it for a while and let it percolate and, and, uh, see what will come out of it. That's an interesting, that's a nice little tip that actually sort of don't crunch the data, bathe in it, and, um, uh, and see what comes out.
[00:27:41] Pia: but also don't push it under a rug somewhere
[00:27:44] Dan: no, No, Sweeping.
[00:27:45] Pia: uh, no sweeping. there's not, you can bathe in it but you, but you don't sweep it away.
[00:27:50] Jenni: We're all British. Well, remember, I like, not this news. Bring me some other news. And
[00:27:54] Dan: Yeah,
[00:27:54] Jenni: good old Brian. Bless it.
[00:27:56] Dan: that's very good.
[00:27:57] Jenni: Yeah, but I think what, to your point Dan, it comes back to, um, the authenticity of why you are collecting the data. You know, when we talked about authenticity, a lot, the why of collecting the information in the first place is not to score your organization, your team. It is to guide and drive towards the outcome.
[00:28:17] Jenni: And if you, if you like, you say you have a team. If, if you, if that team had gone, oh, we've just dipped, The manager goes, I know why that is. Um, and, I don't wanna talk about it. then that's, that's an opportunity lost because there's an opportunity to lean into the team and go, we are hearing what you're saying.
[00:28:33] Jenni: We care about what you're saying. Now let's talk about what we can do together. ' cause it may be out of your control, right? There are situations, especially at the moment with the economic situation, you can't necessarily control. But what you can do is you can lean in and you can support the team and you can let them feel heard and let them feel supported and let them support one another.
[00:28:50] Jenni: And having those open conversations when you are doing, you know, Squadify or engagement surveys that are finding out these pain points. That's an opportunity.
[00:29:00] Dan: Yeah. Now, Jenni, you've sort of peppered, uh, our conversation with this, but, um, but uh, we've love to finish on a sort of media recommendation. You've had a few along the way. You, you've sort of covered a favor of the waterfront. Is there anything you want to leave us with?
[00:29:17] Jenni: Ah, I think everybody with teenage girls should read a Court of Thorn and Roses, because they need to understand the, the book talk land. I think anybody who is. Anything to do with technology would benefit from listening to a podcast called In Search of the Secure Board, which they're not making any more episodes anymore, so you can get through the whole thing, but is a fantastic lens into how the cybersecurity world is important to the.
[00:29:44] Jenni: Executive leadership and the senior leadership and the board, and the ways in which you can talk about that and the ways in which you can build that and build that into your skills. it's great not to have something peppered with acronyms and jargon. and for me it was great to help me get outta acronyms and jargon.
[00:29:59] Dan: Great recommendation, Jenni. Thank you. Marvelous.
[00:30:03] Pia: and just, you know, and, and a big thank you for just a, just a very pragmatic way that, that you've approached this subject and just bringing together like a, it's almost a data led approach that doesn't actually involve too much data, but involves, it, it, It actually involves the leadership to lead the data to, to really get a great outcome for the team.
[00:30:22] Pia: So and to make the differentiation of how to, how to really get the pulse check of their team.
[00:30:27] Dan: Thanks for being on the show, Jenni.
[00:30:28] Jenni: You're very, very welcome. Thank you
[00:30:32] Pia: I really like Jenni's initiative of having these digit channels and actually, you know, a largely remote organization but authentically using it. We use that word a lot, but I guess the opposite of that is like monitoring what people are, are saying and digging in and, um. Lurking to the point of it feeling uncomfortable, whereas in actual fact she was a participation participant.
[00:30:58] Pia: It was as if she was sitting around a table, but also a really good way to start to see trends, you know, not, not to get too sidelined by the topics of the conversation, but how were individuals feeling about things and where are they at? It was good temperature check, and I think for anyone who has a, has a, either a hybrid or a largely remote team.
[00:31:18] Pia: So what type of conversation do you want your team to be having? how are you involved? And then how do you utilize, utilize the data of that to support them,
[00:31:27] Dan: this, this is so important, isn't it? The, the sort of intent of the data, you know, why are we gathering this and how are we going to use it is so important, isn't it? And because we've seen so many. How, you know, measures can, can sort of send things in the wrong direction.
[00:31:42] Dan: I was thinking about a train trip that I took several actually. Um, where you're trying to get a connecting train, for example, and the train comes into the station and I, you know, you leg it to try to catch it. No, the train goes, it pulls out in front of you. Why? Because the measures are all about on time.
[00:31:59] Dan: Departures not on taking passengers, and, and I had that a couple of years ago, and then I was standing there. I think I was, to use the British term, I was miffed. Um, but I was standing there and then there was a poster literally there that I noticed what their, with their sort of measures of how well they're doing on, on, on time departures and all that. I don't care about that. I'd like you to be a minute
[00:32:19] Pia: at that
[00:32:20] Dan: yeah, exactly. But the same thing was easy. Why we gathering instead, how are we using it? Is it aligned so that we're, and, and I think Jenni's sort of real adherence to the sort of authenticity as we said in the conversation. I'm hearing this, I'm hearing this channel.
[00:32:33] Dan: I'm here to help. I can giant dive in. Equally, we're gathering this data, we want it to be real, and we're going to actually talk about that in a safe way so that when we do hit problems, we can actually talk about them. So, um, it's, uh, instead of it being something that can be manipulated or
[00:32:48] Pia: and I, I, think that, I think we mentioned that. We mentioned that on, on, on the. Main section of the podcast, you know, if it becomes performative, then, then it all becomes this, you know, are we good? Okay, well, we don't need to pay attention to
[00:32:59] Pia: this. Or are we bad? And whose fault is it? And that, and that's not that, that's not psychologically safe.
[00:33:05] Pia: I mean, it, it's, it's a fully dynamic situation with a changing context and human beings who are having a human experience that have equal changes and di dynamic. Changing context, you know, that's, uh, there's a lot of complexity there. So it's more about what's it telling us? What do we need to do, what are we responsible for? and what, um, what do we collaborate on? What, what do we, you know, what do we have to make decisions about?
[00:33:31] Dan: Yeah, and the data then facilitates the conversation, doesn't it? It sort of guides that it's really, um, it, that's the way it should be, but, and I think we've seen, haven't we, in the teams we work with sometimes, as you say, people aren't sort of used to that. They're used to, they're a bit tired of telling people what's wrong and nothing happening.
[00:33:48] Dan: But when it comes down to sort of, but if you can turn it into something, right, let's look at this data together and talk about it, that's a, that's a more wholesome and engaging. way to do things and it's, that's clearly how Jenni plays, plays things in her team.
[00:34:01] Pia: And it's also when you are measured, um, if you are in quite a competitive organization and you are measured on quite stringent metrics yourself, you bring that mentality into your relationships with each other.
[00:34:16] Pia: That's not, uh, they're two different things. So, you know, I might be responsible for achieving X million, but it's a little bit like, I don't have any sense of collaboration.
[00:34:25] Pia: It's almost how I'm going to win with or without the team in achieving that. And then, um, when you're looking at the data, it, I see teams, um, a lot of justification, a lot of denial, um, or, you know, that they make the facilitator look like an absolute idiot, which is, I've heard that many, many a time.
[00:34:45] Pia: So it's, it's a, it's a really interesting 'cause it can be quite confronting, but it's much more about this psychologically safe. What do we learn? We have to keep evolving. What's it telling us? What are the little things we can do? Because I've seen amazing results with teams that actually felt like this was all overwhelming and they just started picking on one or two things that they became absolutely focused on achieving. And it's had an, it's had a huge impact.
[00:35:13] Dan: Yeah. And it's, it's got a lovely halo effect, hasn't it? 'cause that's what I say to the teams I work with that, you know, just choose one thing and you'll find that everything else starts to get better as well, because you're actually working on that thing together. And so you're building that muscle of collaborating.
[00:35:28] Dan: Um, but as you say, sometimes our individual, our individual targets, we just become them. And we forget that actually we, we are not them. That's a sort of point of it. We don't have to seek it directly. There are, there are ways to connect and, uh, and achieve bigger things together. So, a really, a great conversation.
[00:35:45] Dan: But that is it for this episode. We, not me, as supported by Squadify. Squadify helps any team to build engagement and drive performance. You can. Find show notes where you are listening and also at squadify.net. And if you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. We Not Me, is produced by Mark Steadman. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.
[00:36:07] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.