Fixing What’s Broken
The pandemic exposed some, shall we say, issues. From talent acquisition to company culture, the role of the office to the future of teamwork, and many others.
We can get by with the tech, but tech isn’t the only solution. So how do we identify what’s broken and how do we fix it?
Steve Cadigan, Future of Work keynote speaker and LinkedIn’s first CHRO, and Sally Thornton, thought leader and Founder + CEO of executive search firm Forshay, share their perspectives in a wide ranging conversation on all that needs fixing and all the silver linings of the pandemic.
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Max Chopovsky:
Welcome to the Future of Work, Fixing What's Broken. My name is Max Chopovsky. I help companies around the country find and negotiate the leases for their office space, ensuring that the space they have is the space they need and reflects and supports their company culture. Or as I like to say it, I help office tenants embrace the new normal. The Future of Work is a series exploring our evolving relationship with work, the how, where, and why, the trends in tech, disrupting and improving the workplace, and perspectives from thought leaders on the new normal. Sooner or later, we all have an event in our lives that will make us realize that life is too short. Death of a loved one, severe illness, personal trauma. But the pandemic was a once in a lifetime event that synchronized that realization for millions of people. It was the kind of global event that made us all realize that life is too short, all at the same time. So people started to evaluate everything from the color of the paint on their house. to their relationships with friends and family, to their relationship with work. So the demand skyrocketed from therapists to house painters. And when it came to work, people had more options than ever before. The gig economy, the passion economy, the sabbatical economy, it's not really a thing, but I think it will be. So people started to leave. Their bullshit thresholds became lower and companies started to recognize it and they started to adapt to it, to accommodate it. But then... The pandemic started to wane and employers realized they over-hired, so they started laying people off. And yet, the unemployment rate remains near pre-pandemic lows, so there are lots of unknowns. Meanwhile, companies have realized that what really matters is authenticity. They want people to connect with each other and with their culture, but that means they need an authentic culture. They want the optimal employee experience for their workers, but that means they have to define what employee experience means to them. They want teams to have the tools they need and the philosophies they can believe in, but they have to implement those tools and establish those philosophies. And they need to define what an office means to them, a hub for collaboration, a place they have to go into, or just an optional resource. The approaches to hybrid versus in office are becoming more entrenched from Lyft, all in the office to Airbnb, remote first. It's kind of all over the place and companies are digging in. So it's this evolutionary mess as it relates to the future of work, a massive global experiment in its earliest stages. And so today's guests have wrestled with these very questions for many years for themselves and for their clients. Sally Thornton is the founder and CEO of Forshay, an instigator on how to thrive in the future of work. to connect the Bay Area's most innovative companies with exceptional talent. Sally is a frequent keynote speaker on the future of work, including the science of work-life blend and applying design thinking to make work better. She also loves to share her expertise on women in leadership, harnessing the value of a multi-generational workforce and talent recruitment and engagement strategies. When she's not full throttle at work, you'll find her playing tennis or digging into a pint of mint chocolate ice cream.
Steve Cadigan:
Hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
I'm a cookies and cream guy myself, but much respect for going at it one pint at a time.
Sally Thornton:
Ha ha!
Max Chopovsky:
Steve Cadigan has been at the forefront of global talent strategy and company culture for the past 30 years while scaling LinkedIn from 400 to 4,000 people in three and a half years. Steve led the development of LinkedIn's legendary company culture and was at the helm of the talent function for its period of its highest growth and through the IPO having worked in five different industries and three different countries while also leading dozens of talent acquisition integrations all over the world. Steve has built unparalleled expertise for the talent arena. Steve's focus today. is to help leaders and organizations build winning talent solutions to compete in an increasingly complex digital economy. Stephen and Sally, welcome.
Sally Thornton:
Thank
Steve Cadigan:
A-MAX.
Sally Thornton:
you.
Max Chopovsky:
So there are obviously plenty of issues that need fixing around HR and the human capital side of the business. And the pandemic has both presented us with a need and an opportunity. So Sally, talk a little bit about what you're working on right now and why this is an exciting time to be in the space. And then Steve, I want to hear from you as well.
Sally Thornton:
Basically, I just try to make work better. So the way in which we do that is companies say, we need to redesign performance management where people actually want to engage in that conversation and feel like they're better for it. And it's time well spent. Or we need to reorg because we're either growing or contracting and we want to make sure the right people are in the right jobs. Or we need to hire a key executive. We tend to do chief people officer down to like director level. And we like to think about the social science, not just the skills. So we tend to think about the holistic way in which work gets done and we meet people where they are, right? So those are the kinds of things we like to solve. It's like, it can be a virtuous cycle, but we have to be intentional. So I feel like. The difference of Forche is that we've been in the seat. So a lot of my team members have been in HR. So we're not just recruiters who like take a job spec and fill it, which today can feel a little bit like AI, right? It's like match paste. We're more of the... listeners who've been in the seat and can see around corners and like to help people with oxygen masks like here's How to make your life better how to make the employees life better and then we feel better. It's that Oxygen can go all around
Max Chopovsky:
Side note, listening is highly underrated, so I appreciate that you do that.
Sally Thornton:
Yeah.
Max Chopovsky:
Steve.
Steve Cadigan:
Yeah, I would say the architecture work that most organizations are using was built for a slower pace, a more predictable, forecastable universe. And now
Sally Thornton:
Mmm.
Steve Cadigan:
the pandemic has really served to accelerate our recognition that this architecture isn't satisfying. Skills are changing faster than ever. People's perspective on work is changing faster than ever. The visibility and transparency to opportunity and to talent has never been greater. And all these things are colliding in just a deliciously chaotic way. So
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
we all find ourselves facing so many new challenges all at once. Uh, I really liked the way that you framed it at the outset, which is it is a big experiment and. Companies are not in business to experiment. They're in business to have predictable, reliable, consistent outcomes. And experimentation brings the unknown in and it's highly uncomfortable. And that's why I feel. Like you said, executives are digging in like we need to build consistency and continuity. I don't know that that's I mean, the consistency I talked about is the new normal is never normal. So that's
Sally Thornton:
Bye!
Steve Cadigan:
what you need to prepare for. And, you know, the best model for me is really the automobile industry, which has been around a century. And the company that is worth more than all the others is the newest one that is just arrived. It's Tesla. It's run part-time by a CEO who's got two other jobs apparently. And they're worth more than Ford, Honda, Toyota, and General Motors combined. And what the investors are recognizing is their capacity to innovate and create is greater because they're not entrenched in all these old architecture models of work. And that's powerful. And that's really, really unsettling for a lot of business leaders today.
Max Chopovsky:
And...
Sally Thornton:
Can I build on that? Because
Max Chopovsky:
Yep.
Sally Thornton:
what I love about Steve is he is so comfortable with the uncomfortable and yet that is not the normal, what's normally asked of HR or people leaders, the consistency is what's asked for. But what's interesting is my last corporate job was in marketing and that's where experimentation is needed, like demanded. And so because I had a staunch in marketing as well as staunch in HR, I was like, I'm That's why I use design thinking and apply it to HR because we love experiments in marketing and product. There's no company out there who wants to do normal stuff with their product or service. They want innovation,
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
they want new ideas, and they want to feel uncomfortable. That's creativity. Why do we take those beautiful tenants that talk about the customer experience and we don't apply them to what he's saying on the architecture of the employee experience? I think they should be mirror images of each other.
Max Chopovsky:
Totally, it's so interesting how you talk about, you know, HR being averse to discomfort. I mean, if we think about, so take our friend Elon Musk that we were talking about. So SpaceX, all right, I was watching that launch live, right, of the
Sally Thornton:
Mm.
Max Chopovsky:
heavy, and you see it going up, and then it starts, and then the trajectory starts to change, and you could see the broadcasters live, they're like, Okay, this is interesting. This is this is really interesting. This doesn't seem to be what should be happening. And they're
Steve Cadigan:
Hehehe
Max Chopovsky:
just like adapting
Sally Thornton:
This is
Max Chopovsky:
to
Sally Thornton:
not
Max Chopovsky:
this thing
Sally Thornton:
going
Max Chopovsky:
on
Sally Thornton:
to
Max Chopovsky:
the
Sally Thornton:
plan.
Max Chopovsky:
fly. Yeah. And then the thing just like tumbles end over end and just explodes in this spectacular fashion. And they were like, and I give them credit for this because they a hundred percent had a ton of media training. They were like, that was a wonderful, wonderful learning opportunity. They were like, We just gathered
Sally Thornton:
Right.
Max Chopovsky:
so much data
Steve Cadigan:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
and like most companies, we were just talking about this in the previous, in a prior episode, like they don't have hundreds of millions to burn on, uh, on collecting data. But the fact of the matter is the rate of change that we're experiencing around work is necessitating rapid experimentation. And by definition, that means that some experiments aren't going to be successful. And so we have to be able to accept that discomfort. So, um, Let's talk a little bit about an obvious question, which I still think bears discussing. So Steve, what to you does it mean to be a human-centric company?
Steve Cadigan:
I think it could mean different things to different people. From my experience, a human-centric company recognizes the necessity for customized employee experiences. It recognizes that how we create value comes through the human. And that's probably the thing we should talk about, strategize, think about, and operationalize more than anything else. And most of my career, and sadly, I've sort of followed this path most of my life. has been working for organizations that say, oh yeah, people are number one, but the last thing on the agenda is the talent topics. Okay, let's talk about the new markets, new products, new engineering, new acquisitions on the frontier. And then let's talk about succession planning. Oh, sorry, Steve, we ran out of time. Let's put it on next month's agenda. But
Max Chopovsky:
Yep.
Steve Cadigan:
it's really important, people are number one here. Or my
Max Chopovsky:
Yep.
Steve Cadigan:
favorite, hey, people are number one here. You're gonna start off on a 90-day probation period because we're not sure that we trust our recruiting processes. So... We're gonna put you on probation, but people are definitely number one here. You know, and I could just
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
go on and on. And, you know, we've, as you say, our default for most people practices is command and control and policy
Sally Thornton:
Mm.
Steve Cadigan:
creation, all out of the spirit of fairness, creating a fair frontier. So that all came from a good place. But I feel we lost the plot a little bit as economies and companies grew to... The point where we fail to recognize that people create the value that's where we should invest most of our energy and time Most boards of directors do not have someone with a deep people creative you know human centered
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
orientation and This is one of the things that really weighs on me right now. I've worked in the last year and a half with about 17 states Healthcare associations. Okay, and they're all saying oh Steve. This is so important to us. This is really really critical Thank you so much for your ideas and your thoughts and your provocations. OK, have a nice day. And I'm like, not one of you has called me and said, would you come and sit with our board? Would you consider being on our board? Not one. And so I still feel very frustrated that that recognition of human centered putting it at the first thing that you talk about, not an, you know, a marketing plan that people are number one, but really institutionalize that, which means in Q4, if you're in a sales organization and you're behind in your numbers. your sales leaders are dealing with the people issues. They're not closing deals. That's human centered. And then they're elevating other people to help solve those things. So it really is a time I think we need to think more about how meaningful that is. And I've seen it work. I mean, at LinkedIn and I had a leadership team that got it. And we did some incredible stuff when we put the human centered focus on the business.
Max Chopovsky:
do you think that some of these massive layoffs and the decrease in, let's just call it talent supply is going to swing the pendulum a little bit more in the employees favor and force companies to sort of take a different stance on this and reprioritize it?
Steve Cadigan:
I think that'll be an enabler for sure. And it happened well before all these layoffs. I think it's the fact that people are not just quitting faster than ever before. We've got more people, more white men in America who have quit and without another job than any time in history. And I think they're taking stock and thinking differently around what they wanna do, where they wanna go. And that just is just one marker in the beacon of this ocean of talent that we're dealing with, which is super interesting.
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah, that is. Now, while this talent is still at the organization, they work in teams. And so, Sally, I wanna talk a little bit about teamwork, which I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about. So,
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
it's obviously critical to the success of any organization, but the last few years, I feel, have exacerbated some existing issues. So, the
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
lack
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
of tools that we talked about, inadequate communication. And so, the concept of teamwork, the concept itself has to adapt to this, to thrive in the post-COVID world. So what do you think, and it's a big question, but
Sally Thornton:
I'm going
Max Chopovsky:
I
Sally Thornton:
to
Max Chopovsky:
know
Sally Thornton:
go to
Max Chopovsky:
you've
Sally Thornton:
bed. Bye.
Max Chopovsky:
spent a lot of time thinking about it. What do you think is the future of Teams and how do we get there?
Sally Thornton:
Yeah, it's being more intentional about the system. So Steve called it architecture. I love that. So if we think about human systems and teams, we know that the output of teams is greater than an individual. And so as we think about small teams, like is it what Jeff Bezos said, where it's like a team that can share a pizza, where you can build that psychological safety and you can really know each other and be able to still have diversity in the room, right? Diversity of thought. diversity of background, experience, all of it, right? As many layers as you can do, but it's being intentional. So I think unfortunately what our normative mode in hiring is fast, right? I wanna hire someone fast, I have too much work on my team's plate, hire, hire, and then we kind of lose that intentionality. So I think this is an opportunity anytime there's churn, which is like now. to
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
be able to be really intentional and say, okay, with this team, what do we need? So for my team, for example, we're mostly female. For me, a diverse hire is male, right? I wanna, so diversity, when I say that, isn't about getting a, you know, someone who has like four different characteristics that's an underrepresented group. It's really about saying for this team, what is needed? Let's be intentional about how we round out that team. And then let's think about how the team has the system that will support their best ideas and they're thriving as a whole person, right? So that means wellbeing, creativity, learning, right? All of that in this diverse, inclusive team and really paying attention to the science. So when we talk about experiments, there are many experiments that have been run that have told us a lot. So we don't have to start from scratch, right? Build on this basis of science that says, These are the things that we know will help a team thrive, like psychological safety. We know that, right? Google did a huge study trying to figure out why some teams were better than other teams, and it was based on science that was already there from Amy Edmondson. And even though these terms can feel... like a little academic, like a psychological safety, really what it means is going back to NASA, that people can say what they think is the truth or their opinion, like this is the data that I see, this is my interpretation of it, what do you think? And they're not attacked for who they are as a person, right? They're not attacked
Max Chopovsky:
Mm-hmm.
Sally Thornton:
personally. The idea can be discussed and debated, but they are safe as a human. That's what we need. That's the... fanciness of psychological safety, but it's not that fancy. It's just about how do we have creative conversations that then when we end the day, we feel like we did something successful. We came up with new ideas, we contributed, we were heard. We were, you know, we had a wonderful day. We can all do that, but it does require a systems approach and intentionality.
Steve Cadigan:
If I
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
could, Max, one of the most, I'm a huge sports fan, one of the most interesting examples we have playing out right now is let's just take college basketball this past season. Over the last three years, due to the pandemic, the NCAA changed some rules and they said, you can transfer to a school and not have to sit out a year and we're gonna give you an extra year of eligibility. So instead of four years, you can play five. Once they put in the, you can change schools slash, consider that the... parallel for work, change jobs without a penalty. We saw in this last year, more players on the top tier of the Division I changed schools than any time in history.
Sally Thornton:
Hmm
Steve Cadigan:
And coaches went from just recruiting out of high school to recruiting of every school in the world. So they're just pulling their hair out, trying to figure out like how do we prioritize, what do we look for? And also for the first time in history, when we look at the ranking of all the teams during the course of the season, we saw more fluctuation in who was top and bottom than any time in history. We see how all this movement happened. So when I think about the future of teams, I think about, we're going to have to build to expect people coming and going
Sally Thornton:
Yep.
Steve Cadigan:
and how do we onboard quickly? How do we, you know, uh, how do we adjust our chemistry to account for new players coming and existing players leaving? at a pace we've never seen before. And so one of the schools, Duke and Coach K, retired last year, but one of the things he started doing was as soon as he gets a player, he puts them in the WhatsApp chat group with the team before they're even on campus. So we're onboarding you before you even start. And here's another one, we're caring about you even after you leave the team, you're still part of the team.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
And that's the part that people miss, you're in or you're out. We've had this binary view of work. And it's such a lost opportunity, I think, We need to start like the team is all of us. No, it's the people who are going to be joining and the people who left. Let's use that
Sally Thornton:
Mmm.
Steve Cadigan:
knowledge. Let's keep them a part of this. And that's the missing piece when people like moan, all these people are leaving. I go, why? You know, they're still part
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
of the extended team. Like keep in touch with them. That's a valuable opportunity that so many people are missing.
Max Chopovsky:
It's like the alumni network.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
So I
Sally Thornton:
Yeah,
Max Chopovsky:
was just.
Sally Thornton:
we call it the fluidity and the future of work, because that fluidity, to Steve's point, it can be how you onboard them and how you alum them, right?
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
But it can also be how contractors come in and out, because no team is perfectly sized. And so how do you bring in expertise for a period of time? And that's the future of work right now, right, the free agent nation. And so that's the future of work. Designing for fluidity is essential. And it takes away this old idea of like that forming, storming, norming, performing. It's like, that's a very, it's a very static world that no longer exists. Like we should blow that up and talk about fluidity.
Max Chopovsky:
I mean, it's crazy. There are companies that assume that people are gonna work there their entire careers without
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm
Max Chopovsky:
recognizing the data that both of you are familiar with, which is that people don't work, don't stay at a job for more than a handful of years, depending on the generation, right? And so I was talking to somebody from a company the other day that I was looking at their website and. they literally have a career progression timeline for a typical employee. And there is an end at that timeline on that timeline where that person moves on to the next job. And they're
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
like, and that's okay, because
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
we played a role in your career. You played a role in our organization. You brought something to the company that maybe will stay here after you leave, you contributed to the culture. And we gave you something in return, which is experience, which is learning and growth. And I, To me it seems crazy that companies aren't recognizing the fact that, hey, you know what, it's okay to have an alumni network versus saying, oh, you're leaving, well then you're dead to us. You know what
Sally Thornton:
Right,
Max Chopovsky:
I mean?
Sally Thornton:
right, right. Well, and then the other thing I would say for anyone who's like shoulders are tense right now listening to us is it's always for me a yes and, right? Like I have
Max Chopovsky:
Yep.
Sally Thornton:
key employees who've been with me over a decade and I have people come in and out. So in case, you know, Steve said it, like it's not a binary choice. So when we talk about fluidity, there may be some who are like core, like, hey, these are people where I've designed for them to be on my leadership team. Obviously, you know, it's free agent nation, but... but I'm investing in them and I have a different expectation, that's okay too. So just, I always think of improv answers, Tina Fey. It's a yes and, right?
Max Chopovsky:
Yes, and 100%. So let's talk a little bit about the onboarding, the talent acquisition aspect of this, Sally. So what changes do you think COVID drove in the area of talent acquisition? What's kind of broken now and how do we fix that? I know it's a
Sally Thornton:
Oh,
Max Chopovsky:
long answer, but
Steve Cadigan:
And which
Max Chopovsky:
I think
Steve Cadigan:
time do we have? Yeah.
Max Chopovsky:
exactly.
Sally Thornton:
I know. Well, honestly, it's the speed. So the biggest challenge with COVID was the hiring was fast. And it was like, I'm sorry, do you have a pulse? Right? How
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
quickly can you start? And so I think that's why we're also seeing some of the the layoffs, although I think there's also just a lot of bullshit there of performative layoffs. But it was just too fast. I mean, that's, I would say that's my meta. Steve, do you want to dive deeper on the beyond fast? I mean, lack of inclusivity would be the other one is not really getting the culture right. Because when you onboard someone in a pandemic, what is that? What's going on culture wise?
Steve Cadigan:
Mm-hmm.
Sally Thornton:
I feel like people, and understandably, like this is like I get it. I come at it not judgy. It's more just like, given the circumstances, it was hard. You're trying to get people quickly. You can't see them in person. It's just a shit show. So it's with compassion that I say big mistakes were made with understandable reason. Okay, Steve.
Steve Cadigan:
Yeah, that last mile was always in person and we lost the last mile, right.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
And that's another great opportunity for us to, you know, maybe, you know, we experiment with some people, my clients experiment with like, hey, we're, we think we're eliminating some bias that we were possibly experiencing with in person. But the part that I feel was
Sally Thornton:
Right.
Steve Cadigan:
exposed, and I don't think it's been recognized enough is that we have been hiring for experience. And as recruiter for over 30 years, I can tell you When you get a job description from that hiring manager, it's got a shelf life of being accurate of about a couple of weeks.
Sally Thornton:
I'm going to go to bed.
Steve Cadigan:
But that's
Sally Thornton:
Bye.
Steve Cadigan:
what we're hiring for. We're hiring for that. But we know the job, the company, the market, the team dynamic are gonna change. So why are we hiring for that instead of, okay, these core principles, but these learning velocity measurements, like can the person grow? Can they learn? Have they learned new stuff before? Are they adaptable? Are those soft skills what we want? But no, it's like the belief is the more experience they have, the less training and the faster the time to impact. So I want that. But that is tiny compared to what it used to be. And that's the scary part again, for all these businesses, can't find the people we need as fast as we want. And when we do, they don't stick around. And I'm
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm
Steve Cadigan:
telling people, it's not gonna change. It's only gonna get worse. So, you know, you have to invest in your capacity to grow talent and spot people who can learn quickly. That's the big pivot. We are not gonna recruit our way out of this problem. We are not, we're gonna have to re-engineer work to address a more fluid reality. And that's, again, it's gonna take some investment of time. And people are talking more about these, the professionals' decisions and not the inability for organizations to change the architecture of how they think about creating value. And as Sally said, the biggest one that I see people continue to make is they're only talking about employees. And they have this
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
huge army of contractors and temps and independent consultants that I promise you, I don't have the data, but I promise you it's bigger than it was three years ago for every organization.
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
Because in an uncertain world, you don't wanna carry the burden of a full-time hire or the PR hit if you have to shrink the staff. So I'm gonna keep that what I call accordion, you know, a buffer
Max Chopovsky:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
of talent that I can expand or contract without the PR hit and without a severance charge and all that, but that's a universe that's sort of. Seeing like second class and I feel like it's increasingly need to be recognized as Sally said it's part of your team now Are you
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
developing are you nurturing that is the largest pool after referrals of hires in most organizations? Tempt to perm, you know or attempt to
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
full-time and
Sally Thornton
And
Steve Cadigan:
Yeah
Sally Thornton
we did have that. So Forche does both interim and executive search. And we had more conversions during COVID because they couldn't hire people fast enough. So they take an interim person from us. Like, Steve knows the data, even though he hasn't seen the data. So they would take an interim person from us and then convert them. And it was great, right? It's such a win-win because both sides get to test out, back to experimentation. Like, is this a good match? Because how much do we really glean
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton
in interviews? I mean, we're all fallible humans, right? The interview process can be a little
Steve Cadigan:
That's right.
Sally Thornton
sideways. So the try before you buy is a brilliant strategy for all sides, again, so
Steve Cadigan:
Yeah,
Sally Thornton
it's a full side
Steve Cadigan:
yeah.
Sally Thornton
win.
Steve Cadigan:
And I also tell people on the candidate side, you know, the imperfect job can often lead to the perfect job. And you know, I don't want to be a temp. I'm like, Yeah, but you get in the door and you do your thing, they'll figure it out. You will find you will find a home. And it won't
Max Chopovsky:
Totally.
Steve Cadigan:
necessarily be the thing you're doing. And I've seen that happen again, and again, and again, I've told I told this story on tik tok and it blew up because other people have experienced too. And I'll I'll share it here. This. I've had several times in my career, one of my top people go out on a leaf for whatever reason. We get a temp and we're like, oh no, you know, Sally's on leave, we're gonna just get screwed. Okay, we'll try to find the best we can. Temp comes in and slaughters it, better than the person who was on leave. And we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We thought, and that person was creating in some cases sort of a dependency on themselves to be the, you know, the cog that everyone needs. And when someone new comes in and does it totally different, you're just like, whoa. And this is what I, you know, like, why are we holding on to people so long? Like so many times I've also had people we thought were stars leave and then their teams are celebrating ding dong, the witch is dead. We hated that guy. They were horrible. And we're like, what? That they were always in our top quartile of, you know, talent and you know, we're humans. We get it wrong.
Sally Thornton
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
And some people are great at managing up and great at making their boss think that they're the star and then you take them out and you see a completely new picture. So why are we bemoaning? Fluidity. There's so many things that we can learn and benefit from.
Sally Thornton
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
So let's talk about some of that fluidity as it relates to what some are calling the great resignation or the great reshuffle. So there's obviously been massive layoffs in tech. And what's interesting to me though is that unemployment has gotten back to it has kind of stayed for close to a year at pre pandemic levels. So
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
Steve, you and I talked about this previously. Where is everybody? And are we using the wrong metrics?
Steve Cadigan:
We're definitely using the wrong metrics. We, you know, what is organizational vitality? What is organizational health? We really need to think about that. Part of me believes that we should stop measuring employee engagement and start measuring how many people came back after they left
Max Chopovsky:
Interesting.
Steve Cadigan:
as a key measure. But listen, the best explanation, and I've been racking my brains, and Sally and I have probably virtually had beers discussing this too, is like, where are the people that used to wash the dishes, park the cars? work in retail stores, which are having to change hours, close on certain days. You know, where are these people? And what was interesting about the tech layouts is they were not met with a hiring freeze to the magnitude we've seen before. Like when the dot-com bubble burst, it was close everything, stop the travel, we're not hiring and we're letting people go now, still people are hiring. And that's, I think, a recognition that skills are changing. But the only thing that I can that I've come across that helps me process this, like where's everybody is that the pandemic's halted immigration like dramatically in the United States. Every year going in the pandemic, we immigrated knowledge workers to the tune of 1.2 to 1.8 million a year. And that's stopped around the world. It stopped for two
Sally Thornton:
Hmm
Steve Cadigan:
or three years. And so that is going to create a different dynamic where Maybe the jobs that those folks were filling were filled by other people and the void is showing up in these weird places that we've
Sally Thornton:
Hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
not seen before. And I don't know that that flywheel of migration around the world is back to where it was, but we are seeing crazy stuff happen right now. Like Australia a few months ago declared a talent state of emergency. They said, we are short 600,000 knowledge workers and if we don't get them, our economy is doomed. So we got to,
Sally Thornton:
Mmm.
Steve Cadigan:
you know, start marketing talent all over the world and get them back here. And isn't it interesting that they were one of the countries that had the severest restrictions around reentry
Max Chopovsky:
interesting.
Steve Cadigan:
during the pandemic.
Sally Thornton:
Yep.
Steve Cadigan:
You're going to have to be in this nasty Motel 6 for three to
Sally Thornton:
Yep.
Steve Cadigan:
six
Sally Thornton:
Yep.
Steve Cadigan:
months. And people are like, no, I think I'll chill here in Costa Rica. They got good wifi and great pork and beans.
Sally Thornton:
Hahaha
Steve Cadigan:
And they fall in love with them in Costa Rica and they never come home. You know, and that played out like in really interesting demographic ways. And we don't even know. Like the stories are gonna be told. I'm curious about the birth rate and all these other things and tough times, birth rates generally go up. So it's gonna be interesting, but that immigration thing, Max, is one of the only pieces of data that can sort of help me reconcile it. Where do those people go? Oh, it wasn't people leaving, it's people that weren't coming in.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
That's a really interesting correlation with the Australia example.
Steve Cadigan:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
So Steve, I want to talk about LinkedIn for a little bit. So you built this culture at LinkedIn while growing headcount by 10x over a very short period of time, relatively speaking. But actually, I think the bigger success, the bigger success was a controlled evolution of the culture. while maintaining the company philosophy against the backdrop of an influx of people that outnumbered everyone else, nine to one, right? Like that's crazy to be able to maintain a culture, allowing it to evolve while keeping the right sort of north star. That's
Steve Cadigan:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
really hard. So culture has always been key to organizational success. Obviously we all know that, but it's the hardest to quantify. It's the hardest to even define sometimes, right? So what are the biggest challenges facing companies around culture and what can they do?
Steve Cadigan:
The biggest challenge is that they are using words like pillar and foundational and immovable terms rather than organic terms. Like,
Max Chopovsky:
Ah, okay.
Steve Cadigan:
there's a bunch of humans here that are in constant motion of change and you're trying to build something that won't. The beauty of the LinkedIn experiment for me and the experience for me, and it wasn't me, I was, you know, you've talked to Mike Amson, he was a huge part of the culture that we built there at LinkedIn. Because most of our growth was his organization was sales. is that we pivoted and this scared the hell out of me as a classic Western trained HR, you know, professional, we pivoted from here's the pillars from the mountaintop of what the forefathers of LinkedIn said is our culture. We pivoted from that to please come here and make our culture great. We think it's pretty good, but you we want you to make it better. And that invitation was real, was really a magnetic draw for a lot of people. And it opened the spectrum of who felt they belonged because they could come in and make it their own. And what I thought was gonna happen was we're gonna have all these fringe, weird things happening if we're gonna make it open, but it all came down to a similar thing. I wanna do stuff that matters. I wanna solve problems that are real. I wanna work with people I can learn from, and I wanna have a life.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
And when I would ask people who would ask me, Steve, what's the culture? And I'd put it back on them and say, well, what kind of culture do you want? You know, what's important to you? That was so powerful. And they would almost always say the same things. I'm like, okay, yes, that's what we want to come here and make it better. And that's where I think people have got it wrong. It's some immovable thing. The other thing they've got wrong is if they're not sold on culture being important, they're talking like it is. And I tell leaders all the time, if you're not sold that culture really matters, please don't tell your people it does because you're just creating a trap for yourself.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
Here's
Max Chopovsky:
Thank
Steve Cadigan:
the
Max Chopovsky:
you.
Steve Cadigan:
poster, but you're gonna do half the stuff when you want to and half the stuff you're not gonna do and it's gonna be worse than if you said, you know, you don't really care about it, you know, so But I think that's how I look at it. It's much more of an organic play and as Sally said it's Uncomfortable for people to have it a little squishy like that a little bit open, but they've got to recognize We're changing as a company. You've got to change your culture
Max Chopovsky:
People
Sally Thornton:
I just
Max Chopovsky:
don't
Sally Thornton:
want to
Max Chopovsky:
like uncertainty.
Sally Thornton:
add in there, yeah, sorry, one thing to add because Steve doesn't always realize how scientific he is. He's very data driven. But what he just said about the belonging is essential. So now we know with the science, so it goes, basically it's like diversity, inclusion, and then belonging is the highest level. Belonging, if you ask someone what that means, they are not sure. They're like, I don't know, I just feel good. Well, the technical scientific... answer is, it's when you contribute. You're asked to contribute. So when he was talking about belonging and then he was talking about people coming in and contributing to the culture, people don't want to just join something that like is something static. They want to feel like whatever I'm going to say is going to be absorbed. And if you already have a successful company, it can be tricky to recruit people because they're like, am I really going to make a difference here? Versus when I'm at a smaller company, my voice might have a louder disproportionate. impact, right? So what he said on the belonging and the contributing is really something to pay attention to because now we know that in the science that that is key. Back to like, it's not about engagement, it's about all these other things that we just keep learning.
Max Chopovsky:
I had a number of episodes back. It was all around kind of HR, so I had a number of CHROs. And one of the guests was Amy Bustuga, who was the chief people officer at Radio Flyer, and they have a legendary culture. And one of the things she said, I put it up as a quote, it was, once people join Radio Flyer to join the culture, they become the culture.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm
Max Chopovsky:
It's not us retaining them, it's them retaining each other.
Sally Thornton:
Mmm.
Max Chopovsky:
And I was like, mic
Steve Cadigan:
Yeah.
Max Chopovsky:
drop Amy. Like it
Steve Cadigan:
That's
Max Chopovsky:
doesn't get
Steve Cadigan:
like,
Max Chopovsky:
any better than
Steve Cadigan:
you
Max Chopovsky:
that.
Steve Cadigan:
know,
Max Chopovsky:
You know?
Steve Cadigan:
Jedi ninja warrior right there. Yeah.
Max Chopovsky:
I mean that's
Sally Thornton:
That's
Max Chopovsky:
what it's
Sally Thornton:
awesome.
Max Chopovsky:
all about.
Sally Thornton:
That's awesome.
Max Chopovsky:
So you have both worked on the talent and culture side obviously. What are some of the biggest lessons that you learned that you would advise companies to apply as it relates to their talent teams and their culture organizations.
Steve Cadigan:
go first, I guess I would say look at the frontier right now as a moment of experimentation. You know, what I love when I see organizations like Chick-fil-A, you know, they're putting alumni on their career pages. That's bold. They're recognizing that we're not a destination for everyone, but we're going to be the best part of someone's journey, right? We're going to come here and we'll help you get wherever it is you want to go. And that takes some maturity. Chipotle in the similar space does the same thing. It's like, we know we're not your dream job. We're good with that, but we're gonna make it the best part of your journey. And I think that increasingly talent is loyal to learning, not to
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
the company. And
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
because there's so many more choices, there's so many more possibilities that you can, that we've learned now that you can apply your degree, your experiences and different more. Beautiful ways and as a parent that's a beautiful thing as an employer. It's terrifying just terrifying people just have more So we need to build to expect people are going to go and that's the big you know I think talent strategy that doesn't mean that you're not worthy doesn't mean you know have a sexy culture or whatever that you're not nice It just recognize you know when I have organizations say oh no Susan left She was such that she was the only person knew that I said well that's on you Why
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
didn't you rotate Susan and put someone in Susan's role so that when Susan left, because you know she will, that you've
Max Chopovsky:
Yes.
Steve Cadigan:
got someone who can step in until you figure out what you want to do. And that to me, talent retention right now is playing defense. And listen, I want my best people to stay. Don't get me wrong. I definitely do. And some people will for different reasons. But I've got to prepare with the recognition that people probably won't. Every
Sally Thornton:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
conference I've spoken to in the last year, I ask this question. I said, here's the turnover data. People are leaving faster. OK, do you think it's going to, you know, we can talk about why, but the bigger question is, do you think that will change in the future? Do you think people are going to stay longer? And the answer 99% of the time is no. We do not believe. So then I say, well, I got some bad news for you. Every benefit, every piece of your work architecture was built to reward those that stay longer. And now you know they won't. So how about we take some of those resources and redeploy them? with build alumni networks, for example. Build, re-engineer work so that people are learning on the job so we don't have any job that takes more than a few months for someone to learn how to do. If you've got somebody that takes a year, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. They're gonna leave after 18 months and now you're host. Why do you do that?
Max Chopovsky:
And by the way, people come back too. Like if you take the
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
attitude that once you're gone, you're gone, you're dead to us, then they'll definitely be gone forever. But if the attitude is thank you, and we hope that we were able to contribute to your journey as well, let's
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
stay in touch.
Steve Cadigan:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
Like people come back all the time, but they never will if you treat them like once they're gone, they're gone.
Sally Thornton:
Right?
Max Chopovsky:
So
Sally Thornton:
Right? I would just add to that. So learning is essential. I think of this as a DNA strand of how these things interrelate. I think the biggest lesson is to be a systems thinker, to really just think how something impacts because we can be all very shiny bobble, you know, like a cat just going after like whatever feels exciting or gets your attention. I think the systems thinking is critical. so that you can think through as you're learning, how are you spiraling up? And are you looking around the corner for how these things play out? So, when you do X, what are the three steps you think might come next and how do you design for what you want it to be, understanding that there needs to be a variance, right? I just feel like that is an essential thing that... maybe it's the fluidity in the system too. Maybe we'll just add a couple of the things we talked about, how to stack these things, because it can feel like we're throwing a lot. So I would say, learning in a system for fluidity, just to give a few things that people can walk away and go, okay, I can remember that.
Steve Cadigan:
Yeah, and let me let me also add on to this. And this is something I'm going after with my next book,
Sally Thornton:
Oh, awesome.
Steve Cadigan:
which is, I think, and this is another, you know, LinkedIn experience, which took about 10 years for it to sink in. And I'm finally sort of, oh, I should have recognized that at the time, when we're building LinkedIn at hyper speed, we're putting people in roles that had no, you know, qualifications for at scale. Like I'm not saying 0%, but you know,
Sally Thornton:
Hahaha!
Steve Cadigan:
let's say 40 or 50% whereas normally you hire someone like 90% qualified. We're doing
Max Chopovsky:
Yep.
Steve Cadigan:
that
Sally Thornton:
Right.
Steve Cadigan:
all over the place. And you know what
Sally Thornton:
Right.
Steve Cadigan:
happened? The energy that was unlocked when people start doing stuff that someone thought they could do and they weren't sure that they could or, and you ask any executive, what's that moment where your career pivoted? Was it doing the same thing for three years and then you just mastered it and everything was good? Or was it when someone tapped you on the shoulder, go do this and you're like, no, no, no, I don't really, are you sure? And they're like, yeah. Go do that. I trust you, I believe in you. And you did it and the energy that you had more than offset the lack of experience. And that's why I like this fluidity and that's why I try to build. And I feel like I'm in a universe of trying to make people more calm. Like I said, like we're trying to shut, it's okay folks. That energy is so powerful. And that if you step back, that's what Silicon Valley is. We got more people building new businesses and companies than anywhere else in the world at scale and look at what's happening. The most creative. Most innovative, the most highest market cap organizations in the world are in the most fluid part of the world. So why are we designing that not to happen? That's
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
just a, that's a shame on us, right?
Max Chopovsky:
And they realize because these employers, the ones that are doing this, realize that A, the best answer can come from anyone. It can come from an intern if you just let them open
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
their mouth.
Steve Cadigan:
or someone
Max Chopovsky:
And
Steve Cadigan:
outside
Max Chopovsky:
two,
Steve Cadigan:
your company.
Max Chopovsky:
or someone outside the company.
Sally Thornton:
Mmm.
Max Chopovsky:
And the other thing it does is just imagine the loyalty that that builds within those people. Because they will always remember that, hey, that boss gave me a chance and they believed in me more than I believed in myself. I mean. What an amazing way to build a brand ambassador out of one decision, you know?
Steve Cadigan:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
So let's talk about the office for a little bit. So you both have very small teams, but yet you work with clients with headcount in the thousands, with facilities in the hundreds of thousands of square feet. So you have a front row seat to this. So Steve, I'm gonna ask you first, how important is the office?
Sally Thornton:
Hehehe
Steve Cadigan:
It really, it really varies. It really varies. And the trap that I see many of us falling into is a one size fits all approach. It's just faulty and it's not gonna work. But I'm dealing with hospitals, we gotta have people there. We just have to. So we're trying, how do we create more, what we're trying to solve for is a vibrant, highly talented workforce that is telling us we want more autonomy and independence. than we've ever had before. The only organization that I've seen that's massive, that's doing some really interesting stuff in this space is Unilever. They say on their website, we wanna offer you the safety and security of a full-time job with the autonomy and independence of a contractor role. That's what we wanna create for you. And that's like, whoa, they're just drop miking and people are just like, oh, that's interesting. I wonder what that looks like. Let me go check that out. So, You know, I think, you know, it's curious. I mean, you've got a front row seat to it. I think what I'm starting to see is organizations recognize if we want them here, we better deliver something, a different experience here than they had before. More stuff, you know, I don't know what that environment means to different people, but it's not just an office now. It's something
Sally Thornton:
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan:
more. And so, and that's interesting, you know, at San Francisco. where Sally and I spend a fair amount of time, is in a crisis right now. We have
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
restaurants going out of business at a clip we've never seen before, more empty commercial real estate than at any time in history. The city's about ready to go broke. No one's using public transportation.
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
It's really scary. It's one of the, it used to be the jewel. I take my kids up there like, this is disgusting, dad, look at all the homeless people. Why would you wanna live here? I'm like, it's San Francisco
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Steve Cadigan:
that I knew when I, you know, in the 80s and when I was... you know, live in there. So it's, it's tough. It really is tough. And that's sort of the ripple that this pandemic has created, like city economies are really facing some dire decisions. But I think, you know, the best thing, the best that I give people is just try it out. It doesn't have to be all the employees trying the same thing, but this team tried this and this team try that and let's let's try to hone in on and the other mistake that I see people making and I'll turn over Sally is that most conversations I had during the pandemic went something like this. How are you doing? Oh, Steve, brutal. All my key people are leaving, can't hire people, blah, blah. How's the business? Oh, best couple of years we've ever had. We're crushing it. I'm like, so maybe we're using the wrong measurements,
Sally Thornton:
Hahaha
Steve Cadigan:
right? Maybe that was okay. Maybe you learned. No one said to me, you know what? We learned we are so resilient and we can adjust and we can handle all this craziness and we learned a new way. No, it's all, oh, it's horrible. And then, oh yeah, we're making more than we've ever had. It's an interesting perspective that they bring.
Max Chopovsky:
That's it, it's a change of perspective. Sally, what do you think?
Sally Thornton:
Yeah, shockingly, I agree with Steve. It
Max Chopovsky:
Hahaha
Sally Thornton:
depends on the results, right? So I have biotech clients who are trying to solve cancer in a lab. They need to be in a lab, right? Do they need to be in the lab five days a week? Are there some parts of their week that they'll be doing research and they could be online and not commuting? It just depends on the results of the job. Then I've got designers of games. Some of that can be remote and then some of that's in a studio where they've got green screen and doing all the stuff. So it just depends on the job. And I think the difference that I hope most CEOs have, but I have seen a smattering of how people respond. There's on the bad end of the scale, it's like, well, I was successful doing it this way as a CEO. And so therefore I want everyone to do it like me. which sounds egocentric and is.
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
And then there are CEOs who say, I want the best results and I trust my people and I can measure what they're doing.
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
Because there are a lot of jobs where it's very measurable. We always knew sales should be out. You didn't want your salespeople in the office. You wanted your salespeople out meeting with clients. And that was success. And it was very clear to measure what success looked like. It just becomes that. question is this something we have to apply to a person who's in HR, a person who's in finance, a person who's the janitor. Like every role can be measured. It just requires us to be a little bit more thoughtful for KPIs or however you want to measure it to know that what success looks like both individually and as a team. This goes back to we can't get so narrow. We have to do the yes and.
Max Chopovsky:
Totally, totally. Well, before we wrap, I wanna. Sally, ask one more question of you, which is you've done a lot of work around hybrid and flex work and how companies should implement and what they should think about. I also think that one of the biggest challenges around implementing hybrid and flex isn't actually the logistics, it's changing minds. It's about
Sally Thornton:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
change management and the approach to helping people understand why they should do it. So talk a little bit about that change management around hybrid and flex and any lessons that that you learned or any lessons that companies can apply that are considering shifting you know from one to the other.
Sally Thornton:
Yeah, so it's the yes and, like, have a point of view that's informed by science. There is a lot of data that already exists about what works. And then survey your employees, because if your employees are all young parents, that's going to be very different. If your employees are close to retirement age, if your parents are dating in their 20s, like, you know, it matters who your people are and what they need to what hybrid and flex looks like. So it's like, what does the human need? And as you think about the ethnography or like, you know, maybe it's different groups of people, the personas. If you go back to marketing and apply it to HR, right? So what
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
are the personas in your groups? How might they get what they need as a human out of the work? And then how as a business do you measure individual and team outcomes? And that's the dance. And it's a great dance. It's the same dance you do in marketing when you think about your customers and you have their personas and you think
Max Chopovsky:
Yeah.
Sally Thornton:
about how they buy and you think about how are we gonna track whether we know we're successful. So use those same methodologies to your employee experience. And that's the answer for what's hybrid for you.
Max Chopovsky:
It's fascinating what can happen if companies can start to apply the approach to their external customers to their employees. Because I feel like historically a lot of companies have thought, well the emphasis is on our customers. Our people
Sally Thornton:
We are
Max Chopovsky:
will
Sally Thornton:
customer
Max Chopovsky:
be fine.
Sally Thornton:
centric.
Max Chopovsky:
Totally.
Sally Thornton:
Right,
Max Chopovsky:
But
Sally Thornton:
right.
Max Chopovsky:
really, without your people, who's going to serve the customers? Right?
Sally Thornton:
It's a yes and. Tina Fey had it right.
Max Chopovsky:
Tina Fey.
Steve Cadigan:
Mm-hmm.
Max Chopovsky:
That's right, doing it at 30 Rock. Well guys, this has been awesome. Steve Cadigan, Sally, Thornton, thank you both for being on the show and sharing your wisdom.
Sally Thornton:
Thank you.
Steve Cadigan:
Thanks.
Sally Thornton:
It was a joy.
Max Chopovsky:
And thanks to everyone else for tuning into the future of work. And we'll talk to you next time.