April 15, 2025 • 56 mins
What makes great leaders different—and how do you measure it?
In this episode, we sit down with former DocuSign CEO Dan Springer to unpack the Ego Equation: (Skills ÷ Ego) ^ Work = Success. Dan shares leadership lessons from decades in tech, including how ego almost derailed his career and what changed after a layoff turned into a leadership awakening.
Listen for:
- The Ego Equation and how to assess your leadership effectiveness
- How Dan’s leadership style evolved from ego-first to impact-driven
- Why using “we” instead of “I” boosts credibility and career growth
- A fresh approach to performance reviews that actually motivates
- Signs your ego might be sabotaging your leadership success
- The mindset shift that helped Dan lead through IPOs and layoffs
Whether you're a new manager or seasoned exec, this episode delivers real talk and actionable strategies to lead with humility, clarity, and purpose.
Join us as we break down Dan's ego insights into strategies you can use right now—because leadership is chaotic enough without having to figure it all out alone!
Episode Highlights
⏰ 3:45 The Ego Equation: Dan's brilliant formula for measuring your leadership effectiveness and why a score of 16 is actually pretty damn good
⏰ 9:30 Leadership Origin Story: How Dan transformed from self-described "prodigious ego" guy to discovering the power of putting the organization first
⏰ 14:20 The Layoff That Changed Everything: The shocking moment when laid-off employees checked in on HIM that completely transformed Dan's leadership philosophy
⏰ 19:45 We Not Me: Why saying "we" instead of "I" gives you unlimited bragging rights (and actually works better for your career)
⏰ 23:10 Performance Reviews Reimagined: The counterintuitive approach Dan used at Responsys that flipped traditional performance management on its head
About Dan Springer:
Dan Springer is the CEO of Iron Clad and former CEO of DocuSign and a seasoned tech leader with decades of experience scaling some of the biggest names in SaaS. Before DocuSign, he was Chairman and CEO of Responsys, which he successfully led to a $1.6 billion acquisition by Oracle. He’s also held leadership roles at Modem Media, Telleo, NextCard, and began his career at McKinsey. He’s led billion-dollar exits, built high-growth teams, and knows first hand how ego can make—or break—great leadership.
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I try to define ego is.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
High ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting
yourself first, and low ego,which is preferred in this
context, is someone that putsthe organization or the greater
goals or family.
It could be.
Any type of organization you'reinvolved with puts that first.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
We brought Dan Springer on to talk about
leadership and ego, and he'sprobably one of the best people
to talk about this with, becausethis guy has ran mega
organizations as a CEO, as aboard member.
He's genuinely a really niceguy and, more than that, he
knows how to get returns in abusiness and really create these
workplaces that people love towork at.
(00:55):
If you ask anybody who's workedunder Dan Springer, they loved
where they were working, and sowe wanted to figure out what was
it that made him who he is andwhat did he attribute to his
leadership success?
And what he talked about wasego.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, he was such a great example of somebody who
can focus on the human in theworkplace while also having very
successful business results,and how those two things went
hand in hand together.
Yeah, there is some secretsauce that he shared with us.
That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Totally agree.
Dan Springer is the former CEOof DocuSign.
He's also still on the board.
He's an incredibly seasonedtech leader with decades of
experience scaling some of thebiggest names in SaaS like
Responsys, teleo, nextcard, and.
He began his career at McKinseywas a partner there.
He's led billion-dollar exits,built high-growth teams and
(01:51):
knows firsthand how ego can makeor break great leadership.
And you're right, mel.
He brought this refreshinglyhonest take on what it really
takes to lead well.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I think this is one of my favorite episodes so far
and one of my favorite guests.
The insights he brought werereally valuable and others will
get value out of this too.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It wasn't his Dave Matthews story.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I did love Dave Matthews as a fellow DMV.
The fun fact in Connecticut Iwas at the Meadows with my
friend for a DMV when there wasan entire flipping of the cars
and arson back in the 90s whatthe hell?
At a Dave Matthews concert.
It got out of control.
I don't know what happened andwe parked in a McDonald's
(02:31):
parking lot.
This is just a side story youcan take out, but it got towed
and we hitchhiked with somerandos to go find our car at the
Impel lot.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Listen my favorite Dave Matthews story, can I tell
you, yeah.
So there is something Icelebrate every year, which is
the anniversary of the DaveMatthews Band tour bus.
Oh, the bridges in Chicago.
And if you don't know thisstory, Mel, can I tell this
story?
Yes.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
They're probably like please not again, just when
we're not brought up, so I'venever been in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
There's the river in Chicago and then it dumps out
into the lake and over the riverare a series of bridges that
are grated and they can lift upand down so tall boats can go
through to the lake Keywordgrated.
The other thing I want everyoneto know about Chicago is it's a
massive architecture town, sothey have these wonderful
architectural cruises.
If you ever go to Chicago youhave to go on them.
(03:24):
They're fantastic and you cansee all of the different
buildings and the stories behindthem, etc.
They are typically open boats,so think about massive kind of
pontoon boats looking up andadmiring all the skyscrapers.
On this very warm summer daythere was an architectural boat
cruise cruising down the riverlooking at all the skyscrapers
(03:46):
and at the same time the DaveMatthews Band tour bus was going
over one of these gradedbridges and the bus driver
accidentally decided to dump thetoilet out and it dumped all
over this architectural horrorboat.
So it is one of the mostdisgusting stories, but also one
of the funniest stories on theplanet.
(04:07):
I love to tell it just becauseit's so man dave matthews, you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
If you were on that boat, the universe was just like
f you, in particular today.
What like?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
but you've got some explaining.
I love talking with dan, notonly about the dave matthews
story, but about his experienceand how he's really looked at
ego in this equation.
If you don't know, dan, he'salso a mathematician back
liberal arts major, which I love, but he has this idea of how do
you manage ego with skills andhard work.
How do you pull that intobalance to really set yourself
(04:38):
up for success and to set yourteam up for success as well?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
And you can do this equation yourself tomorrow to
gut check your own ego.
Yep, good tool, right away,great tool, and with that here's
Dan Dan.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
how are you today?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I'm doing great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Great, absolutely All right.
I want to get you right intothis.
We're here to talk about egoand leadership and your
background.
I'm so excited for it.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
All right, we want to start in understanding your
origin story around the wholeconcept of so and ego and the
role ego has played, and so I'dlove to understand how your own
relationship with your own egoevolved throughout your
professional career.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I've been called by many, particularly as a young
man, to have prodigious ego, soI guess this is a good topic.
The simplest construct aroundthat I try to define ego is high
ego is putting yourself as theprimary, putting yourself first
in the context.
It could be your family, itcould be your office, it could
be your company, it could beyour sports team, whatever it is
.
And low ego, which is preferredin this context, is someone
(05:53):
that puts the organization orthe greater goals.
Or, again, it could be family,it could be any type of
organization you're involvedwith puts that first.
And my own origin story, I think, is a good, healthy, I mean
growing up with the world beingpresented to me.
In a certain way.
It was when I was growing up Iwas pretty egocentric.
(06:13):
I think I was pretty focused onDan, and although I had
wonderful role models like mymom, my hero, who demonstrated
to me by putting me first, beenreally dedicated to whichever
life to me, I probably shouldhave seen that sooner, but I was
a little slow on the uptake andsomewhere, probably in my late
20s, I at least became aware ofthe fact that I was a little bit
(06:36):
of a selfish person or aselfish SOB, maybe it would be
more accurate.
And then professionally Istarted to figure that out a
little bit in leading people.
But it wasn't until I had myfirst son that I think I really
figured out that it wasn't aboutme.
And once you have that abilityto love someone more than you
(06:56):
love yourself, it opens up yourability to just be much less
egocentric in everything you do.
So that was probably my.
So I was.
I'm embarrassed to say that now, but early thirties before I
probably got to a reasonablyevolved sense of ego.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, that makes sense, right, our brains aren't
even fully formed until we'reabout 24, I think so to make
good decisions and things likethat.
So it's totally understandable.
We're in the non-judgment zone,by the way.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
All right.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
So having your son obviously major pivotal moment.
What other kind of pivotalmoments did you have that really
transformed your understandingof ego, especially in leadership
?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, so two, actually One before I had my son
in my first job managing people.
So I worked for the phonecompany.
I was a forecaster, aeconometrician, I did modeling
and I showed up and they didn'thave sophistication at Pacific
Valley at that time.
So I quickly got promoted lessthan a year in my first job as a
college and I was now managingpeople.
My parents' age that had beenprofessional forecasters but
(07:54):
didn't have some of thetechnical skills I had, and I
quickly realized how bad I wasat the job.
But I couldn't figure out forthe longest time why.
And it was because I was alittle jerk.
I couldn't figure out for thelongest time why.
And it was because I was alittle jerk.
And who's this little jerktelling me he's experienced and
good people with probably acondescending ear if we want to
be honest about it.
But I eventually got thatfeedback so I did get a snippet.
(08:15):
Being a jerk is not the bestarchetype of manager that you
probably want to have.
Then I think fast forward toprobably having a son.
But the it was one period thatI think was really powerful for
me, where I started to respecthow wonderful some of the people
we work with are and I ran acompany you've never heard of
called Tellio.
(08:35):
It was my first time as the CEOand I ran it into the ground.
we sold it for 50 bucks to ourDonnelly maybe a little more,
not very much money, and sothat's why you've never heard of
it and I will bury the detailsof the company.
It's important to me but itwon't be to your audience.
But something happened is rightafter I joined.
It was like it was a diresituation and we had to do a
slight restructuring.
It was a small company but wehad to do a layoff and I had
(08:58):
never done that in a role, in amanager role, in a manager role.
I've been a consultant atMcKinsey, so I've been around a
little bit of cost cutting.
And that night after the layoffI was in my office late and
four of the guys that had beenlaid off were standing outside
the doors like a glass doorlooking in and they knocked and
they came in and for a minute Ihad this thought are they
telling you to beat the crap outof?
(09:19):
me, I can figure out why theydon't want to stay around and
these four guys sat down andthey just asked to check in on
how I was doing and they saidthey could tell how difficult it
had been for me to go throughthe layoff their layoff, not my
layoff, their layoff that theywere worried about me and I'll
tell you for the next couple ofyears.
(09:40):
That was this incredible strongfeeling.
Every time I thought about it itmade me feel worse, obviously,
because these are the greatesthuman beings that could get laid
off and they're worried aboutthe guy that just came in to be
their boss, that had to carryout the action.
And two, it just made me realizehow wonderful people can be and
it's just always stuck with meas a message that we have a
responsibility when we lead anorganization for those people, a
(10:03):
responsibility when we lead anorganization for those people,
and I vowed I would never ithasn't happened yet, but it
could never have a layoff ofpeople who were doing their job
well and were losing theiropportunity because leadership
in this case me failed toprovide the opportunity.
So don't overhire, don't getinto that situation and when you
have it.
It's a painful lesson, but itwas hugely eye-opening for me
(10:26):
against the quality of peopleand the really serious
responsibility we have asleaders for the people that work
for us, and not everyone feelsthat way.
I think it's really importantIf you're not feeling that way,
not caring that much about yourpeople, what are you doing in
management?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, you have to think about the whole person and
get down to humanity.
At the end of the day, we arebigger than our jobs, so life is
bigger than that.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah.
So Mel and I didn't go to mathschool.
Dan, we did not go to mathschool.
I know you did.
I know you were being a jerk tothe Yellow Pages people.
Let's talk about how you were ajerk, dan.
No, I'm just kidding.
I was sitting there thinkinglike you were 30.
I think I was like 35 before Igot that that lesson around.
(11:09):
Don't be a total asshole topeople.
But one of the things that Ilove about what you've come up
with is an ego equation or anequation how to think about ego,
because we have all thesestories around.
It's about how smart you are,it is about your strategy and
you're playing five degree chessover here.
Or maybe it's about the factthat you work your ass off.
(11:30):
I'm wondering if you can talkabout the mathy equation.
You have to think about ego andwork and skills as it relates
to success.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
It's a little bit geeky.
Sure, it's only geeky when youput numbers to it.
Conceptually, even liberal artsmajors like myself even though
I was a math and liberal artscollege people we can really
grasp these concepts.
The simple expression whichI've used in this so like sewing
needle and thread is you haveyour skills that are usually
highly correlated to the fortuneyou were given with your smarts
(12:01):
and your ability to buildskills.
And then you have your ego.
As I mentioned earlier is yourability to control your focus on
yourself versus to the broaderorganization, and then, as you
said, how hard you work.
And the equation for the geeksout there like myself is you
take those skills that you have,the S, you divide it by your
ego, so you want to have lessego, obviously.
(12:22):
Then you take that and youraise it to the power of how
hard you work.
And if you do play around withlittle numbers I generally use
one to five and you assessyourself.
I'll give you my ownself-assessment, so yeah, and
then we're, we're on thisspectrum think of this bell
curve spectrum, not a one tofive.
When it comes to skills thathave been built, I think I'm a
four.
Most of my life asserted I wasa five, but we can get to the
(12:45):
ego point.
I just had a lot of goodfortunes.
It's not so much that I'msmarter than other people or
more skill, I just showed up insome really good situations that
made me look good.
So I've had a lot ofserendipity.
And then the ego.
And again I don't think I wasever a five.
On the ego, Maybe I was a four.
There's a distribution curveand there's other people out
(13:05):
there that could be prettycondescending, jerk like two,
but I was probably in the fourzone.
I'm down to about a two in myself-assessment.
So I'm pretty good not the best, but I'm pretty good at trying
to really put the organizationfirst and get out of my own ego
and then on how hard I work.
It's four or five.
I've been a five at times.
Sustaining five is verydifficult but I think I'm a good
(13:26):
, solid four.
So if you use the four, two,four, you say four divided by
two is two.
You raise that to the power offour and you get two, four,
eight, 16.
And that's pretty good.
And, of course, when you're acompetitive person, like I am,
you play this game and you go.
Okay, what I really want to dois be a five over a one.
Raise it to the it.
(13:47):
Just, it really probablydoesn't happen very often and,
quite frankly, if you havepeople operating with a high ego
, you do the math.
If you're around a one, itdoesn't matter how hard you work
.
You're not going to get thenumber any better.
If you're below one, it'seffective.
A person working really hardhas all focused on themselves
could actually be a detriment toan organization.
(14:07):
So that's how I think about theformula and have to chat about
each of the elements more, but Iuse that in evaluating people
and thinking about how effectivethey can be in our organization
.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Let me ask you this so you're 16 and you're so score
.
Is there a range?
Let's say you're building out aC-suite, for example, or you're
building out whatever andyou're trying to gauge where
people are at what's consideredlike a good score.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
16 is good and again, it's my form.
I'm not going to create asystem that I have a terrible
outcome in.
And you're like, wow, I reallyneed work, I have to change the
model.
But 16 is good, have to changethe model there.
The 16 is good and the realchallenge is it's the most of us
, of course, most situation.
I'm talking about me as asoftware exec to 16.
Um, by the way, the only placeI've ever been better is
(14:56):
actually in in in sports, andthe reason is and this is that
you're really fortunate if youhave this makeup my whole life,
life I played sports all throughcollege, division III college,
but still some of my collegesoccer and lacrosse teams.
But all through school, allthrough every team I ever played
on, I don't think I was everthe most skilled player on my
(15:17):
team and I had just enoughself-knowledge to know.
I think sometimes I was one ofthe better players I knew.
I was never the most skilledplayer on any, whether it was
football, soccer, basketball,cross, whatever but nobody
worked harder.
I don't believe anyone on anyteam I was ever on.
I know it was a prettyaggressive statement to make,
but I can't.
How are you going to know?
(15:37):
How are you going to refute it?
Speaker 3 (15:38):
anyway, Ever Sounds a little like.
Ego Sounds a little like ego.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way.
Can you have ego about how hardyou work?
Maybe, and I do think if youlook at the stats score you'll
always see not as many pointsbut a lot of assists from Dan's
work, and that was the joy I hadas being a playmaker and trying
to make other people score andsucceed.
So in sports it's the only timeI've ever been ever better than
(16:04):
I have as a profession.
But I would just clearly say 16is taking me a career to get to
.
I was realistically a one-two,probably most of my career
because of the ego thatsuppresses the ratio of the
smarts, and so if you had a teamof 16s, that would be a killer
team.
Everyone could get their egosdown.
Some people might get it by afive and a three.
(16:25):
You're playing the differentmodes, but yeah, it's all about
getting that balance right.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Is there ever a situation where you need to have
hot ego?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, and again, the problem with the definition of
the word ego in general.
There could be a lot ofdifferent nuances and
interpretations of that, and Ithink they can be healthy ego
for sure, in the construct thatI'm defining.
I don't think so.
I think it's optimal is to be ateam player, because not only
does it help the team's output,but then it forces other people,
because of that behavior youexhibit, to do the same.
(16:55):
People want to be drawn, Ithink, to something bigger than
themselves, and if other peoplelead that way, it makes it
easier.
So you have a knockoff effecton other people when you bring
down your ego and some culturescan get to the place where that
happens.
But just to be clear, there'shigh-performing cultures that
have high ego.
I worked at McKinsey.
There are investment banks, Iwould tell you.
Most of them is a model wherepeople are fighting,
(17:19):
particularly in banks, for theircompensation.
It's a big thing, it's a let meshow you how great I was and
the deals I got done.
Therefore, I deserve morecompensation in that model.
By definition, I think youshould answer your question.
That's supposed to be a highego place.
Now, over time, that can havebecome destructive, and yeah,
but I think that's the balance.
(17:40):
Leadership and that kind oforganization has to figure out a
way to maintain thatcompetitiveness around
individual performance and atthe same time still figure out
how do we have some collegialnature that we can build a firm
together.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
You've taken your career where it is based on this
model.
You see it and evaluate yourteams based on this model.
We doubled down on ego, but Iwould love to understand what do
you think about skills?
And when you think about hardwork, what would you recommend
people consider when they'relooking at upping those
potentially?
Just to balance out theequation.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
One thing I tell you about the skills side, the
hardest part about skills, it'sthe one I think we can do the
least Now it doesn't mean youcan't take classes and get
training things, but core thingthat drives and in fact you
didn't ask if I stole this idea.
There's no SEW, quite like theway I do it.
But this construct of thesesort of three forces in
determining how effective peopleare in their work was stolen
(18:36):
from a guy I worked with atMcKinsey years ago, an
Australian guy, clemenger, andhe actually initially his
thinking was it wasn't skills,it was smarts.
It's also smarts are trainable.
It's a very McKinsey way tothink about it.
Right, and he'd been a careerMcKinsey Was we just want smart
people, because smart peoplewill figure out problems, but
they'll also figure out how tolearn and grow To some extent
(18:58):
your clock speed.
You can work on it.
You're born with what you got.
Thank or don't thank yourparents, but you got what you
got.
So that one is much harder forpeople to control.
And I would tell you the bestthing you can do to either quote
unquote improve your smarts oryour skills it's the learning
you get, it's taking wisdom fromyour experiences.
So what makes you smarter,effectively or more skilled is
(19:19):
the fact that you have abilityto take feedback and say, oh, I
got to move a little bit overthis way, so that's probably the
most important piece, exceptthat a lot of it is going to be.
You're given processingcapability and then the one is
applying yourself, and if youjust do more and you're active,
it goes back to the work.
How hard you work.
If you take on opportunities.
Every time you have a chance todo something new and different,
you do it and then you listenand learn about how you did.
(19:42):
That's the best thing I thinkyou can do to improve your sort
of smart skills and on work,that's probably the least
complex, right?
And it's just how will you applyyourself?
It's definitely about workingsmarter, not just harder,
although I sometimes think weuse the excuse of working smart,
not hard, to not fully deployourselves and really invest
(20:04):
ourselves in the things we'reworking on.
But that could be personal,professional, across the board.
We often know when we're justshowing up and there's days
sometimes where that's all youcan muster, just showing up.
But if you find yourself onlyjust showing up a lot of the
time, you're probably not in theright place, because you just
don't have that enthusiasm foryour work to allow you to get up
(20:24):
to a four or maybe even a fiveon how hard you work.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, it's interesting when you have those
where you.
Is it context you know what I'msaying Like when you're in a
situation I know when you wereat DocuSign or Responsys, for
example, too, it felt like thatwas like these magical times,
right, these magical cultureswhere you wanted to show up,
right, it's the context of it,or is it the individual that's
always going to have that lens,or is it a combination of both?
I think it could be situational, right.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, but your point about the magical times what
makes people remember times asmagical is because they work
really hard with a group ofpeople they respect and care for
and built a great album, andwhen you do that, it bonds
people.
I think we were chatting theother day and I told you that
there was this 10-year reunionof people from when we sold
(21:12):
Responses to Oracle and Ithought the whole idea was a
little wacky in the first place,to be completely honest with
you, and then, when hundreds ofpeople showed up and said it was
a really special way for themto be back with people, it felt
more like a college reunion thana company had been part of.
You had something special andthat culture that you were part
(21:33):
of will always be important toyou.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
It's the power of when you have this in masses,
right, when everybody is pullingin their weight or has a high
SO score, right.
That's the power of that too.
Come to think about it, I don'tthink I've ever had a magical
work experience where I phonedit in or where I was very
egocentric, or like I was thesmartest person in the freaking
room, like that never, everhappened.
I think that's common.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I think that experience you're describing is
probably common and I would saythere are times, particularly in
technology industry, where youget on a wave and you probably
could continue to have greatsuccess with phoning it in a
little bit, although be careful,because when you're riding that
kind of wave it's going tocrash at some point.
But I would tell you, I betit's not a magical experience.
(22:19):
I think it's very difficult, ifyou didn't really work hard at
something, to truly enjoy thesuccess and the outcome, because
it's not as important, it's notas special to you as if you
know that you really appliedyourself fully.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, you got to be invested.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Something that really resonates with me with what you
said, because, as anotherformer athlete but I will say I
was D1.
Just rubbing it in a little,just a little, but I was a rower
, so it doesn't really count asa former athlete, throughout my
life, one of the things that Iheard time and time again from
my coaches and like you, I wasnever the best, but what I
always got was the heart award.
Because when you're the onegiving heart and in my mind,
(23:09):
when I keep hearing you say hardwork, that's what I keep
hearing.
Oh, the people who give heart,like you have the heart in it.
Is that what you mean when yousay hard work absolutely?
Speaker 2 (23:18):
and in fact it's funny.
I was thinking about your pointabout crew.
It actually is a great examplebecause, if you think about
again, I never rode crew in anyclose to semblance of a real way
, but oddly enough, I went to astrange high school in Seattle
that happened to have crew,which is unusual, particularly
(23:39):
unusual.
Then on the West Coast, I'mgoing to start and for the next
six, about six minutes, I'mgoing to get increasingly
uncomfortable to the point thatmy body's going to hate what I'm
doing and I'm going to collapsein exhaustion and you go and
that's what we do every time andthat's our form, and there's
(24:02):
probably some track and fieldthings that are like that a
little bit, and it's the onlyone you do in unison, depending
on three other, seven other Iguess, four and eight if you
count.
But what a crazy bond thatpeople must have with the team
when you go through that.
You've probably seen it, but yousee the boys in the boat.
There's a movie from the bookthe Boys in the Boat.
(24:22):
The book was better than themovie.
Usually Not always, but usuallyit's the University of
Washington men's crew that wonthe Olympic gold medal in 1936.
No-transcript.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Oh, I loved crew.
By the way, I think when Italked to any of my teammates,
most of us did it so we couldwatch the sunrise before class,
because it was just a funexperience at 5 am.
I wanted to go back to thosehigh-performance work cultures,
because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big
law.
We work cultures because we'veall worked in them, right, like
I worked in big law.
We've worked in the big four,all of those things.
Do you think something has tohappen in terms of, like
(25:14):
performance management?
Performance management set upin a way to be egocentric or to
build ego, because there'salways this kind of back and
forth?
Do you brag about the workyou've done and that impacts
your potential bonus and yourraise or your opportunities for
growth, but none of us get ourwork done, necessarily as
individual contributors.
Even when you're an individualcontributor, you still need
(25:35):
others to complete your work,and so do you think there's an
opportunity for organizations tothink differently about
performance management and howyou brag about the things you've
done while also bringing alongeveryone else who helped you get
there?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I think so.
Yeah, and I'll tell you thefirst thing.
There's certain things inbusiness life that are close to
universally.
True.
There's probably none that arequite, but there's two I want to
talk to One related to yourquestion, but first I'll do the
other one.
It's amazing how what we learnedin kindergarten is so important
for what we do in life.
Saying please, saying thank youand saying I'm sorry when
(26:14):
appropriate is the simplestthing to do, and when we don't
do it oftentimes it leads tofairly significant conflict and
problems.
I'm not saying it always solveseverything, but at least
creates the opportunity and thespace to be successful.
And one of the things that Ithink is really corollary to
that is about teams that youdescribed.
And if you say we instead of I,first of all people know.
(26:40):
So if you're so worried that youhave to be clear that you did
something, the detraction thatyou're going to get from your
colleague to everyone else Ineed you to point out that it
was you Way swaps, any extrabenefit you might get in bonus
time or what you're just got, ismy opinion.
But if you do that chest beatingand you do it around a wee,
it's amazing how everyone givesyou license to brag all you want
(27:04):
because it's about wee, and ifyou figure out a way to try to
give the credit in a credibleway to other people, because
we've all seen the bullshit, thefake oh, thank the little
people, because it wasn't me andyou just look and you're like,
okay, that not only gets you thecredit for having delivered the
(27:31):
great results that your team'sdone, but, more importantly,
that we language makes everyoneelse feel great and it sets us
up for another success, becausenow everyone wants to do it
again.
So you're also buildingfollowership from teams.
So I think that's the answer tothe question is just be a we
oriented and get away fromneeding to point out what people
(27:51):
probably already know whenyou've done something great.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, I'll tell you too, where I've seen people be
really successful is with thatwe language and that authentic
we language like you talkedabout, with their team, and also
cross-functionally as well.
When you can be we, when you'rereaching across the aisle with
finance and HR and marketing andyou're going at it we as one,
that is hugely powerful,especially as you're going up in
(28:16):
the ranks.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
And I would also tell you I think it's powerful when
you're the hardest grader onyourself.
A lot of people say they're thehardest grader on themselves,
they're toughest on themselves.
I don't always find that to bethe case and I find if you can
do that and get a reputationamongst your colleagues for
being tougher on yourself thanyou are on them, it's a really
exponentially improvingopportunity.
(28:38):
I'll give you one sort of dumbexample.
But at Responsys I had thisthing where I tried to change
the way we thought aboutperformance reviews.
So we did everything out of 100.
It's just just like a hundred.
But a hundred was perfectPretty hard to be perfect and I
was CEO for 10 years atResponsys.
I had twice a year had a reviewand I would submit my
(28:58):
self-assessment, just like Iwould have all my managers first
submit a self-assessment, and Inever had a hundred.
I never got above low ninetiesand we had a couple of quarters
that led to a half yearperformance that you would say
those were pretty good and I hada board that would push back
and say come on, this has got tobe a hundred percent and I'm
like a hundred, how can you geta hundred?
(29:19):
But what would happen is I'dcome in and say, yeah, I think I
had an 82.
And they'd be this is crazy.
You at least have a 90.
We have to argue this up to a90.
Think about that.
Normally my experiences beforethat was the other way around.
I think I'm about 115.
And then someone else has tosay, god, we really think he's
about a 90, but now we've got tosay he's an 80 to try to
compromise.
So it just totally changes that.
(29:41):
Every single executive mydirect reports at responses but
one and I'll get to the one in asecond Over time grasped that
and said this is the way I wantit to be.
I want to be in a situation whenI come in tougher on myself and
my manager was me says no, Ithink better than that.
(30:02):
Those conversations are sorewarding and I did.
One executive who was verytalented and a great executive
and he had grown up in a senseof I'm above 100%, everything I
do is above 100%, and the mathmajor in me says there is no
above 100%.
It's impossible to be above100% Asymptomically.
(30:23):
Approaching 100% on most thingsis almost impossible, and so
that mentality to get out ofthat I got all Ben Antonio, but
I got everyone else there and itwas I think it was a big part
of our culture that then wentdown and trickled down wherever
what it was saying like.
Let me be tougher on myself.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Let me ask you this In those moments, did you want
to rate yourself 100?
In the back of your mind, wereyou like I actually was 100, but
I'm going to put it in myselfat a 91?
Or were you like, no, I wasgenuinely in 91, you wasn't you
can't what's truth I thinkthere's times where I thought I
was pretty damn good.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah, we had a lot of challenges too, but the early
parts of the company was acomplete turnaround.
There was some, I think.
You know I often talk I'll giveyou a.
Let me answer your question,then I'll give you them.
Yeah, there were times when Ithought I was great, but because
I defined it it as 100%.
It's just yeah, you can't.
One of my pet peeves when peoplesay I gave 110%, you don't have
110.
There is no 110.
(31:17):
And I appreciate what theconstruct they're trying to say
pushing yourself.
No, it's like the crew thing,like my 100% is to get us there
in six minutes.
I got us in five minutes and 55seconds.
I did more than a hundredpercent.
Well, you just reset.
What a hundred percent is?
That's new love.
But but that concept, yes, thereare probably some times when I
might've been a little bit Idon't know too cute by half
(31:40):
about saying no, the IPO wasgreat, it just wasn't really the
accomplishment I wanted for thecompany.
I think we could have donebetter.
Or my last time I sold thecompany at the highest multiple
SaaS offer company I'd ever had.
That was a pretty good outcome.
Ceo should feel good, the wholeteam should feel good about
that.
But there were some things thatjust weren't quite optimized in
(32:01):
those periods and I think it'simportant to always tell
yourself that the grade youwould give yourself is lower
than the grade you'd give thecompany If you're the CEO or
general manager for yourbusiness, because telling people
I'm better than you are and I'mpulling us up, it's a hugely
odd message to send, and you andI have talked about this before
.
I think the leadership model Itry to think about is the
(32:22):
inverted pyramid.
Instead of a CEO at the top andthen all these people coming
down, I say the job of a leaderis to make everyone else on the
team successful.
So you should think about it asan inverted leadership model.
And the simple example is thatif you think about a company,
particularly if it gets to scale, even if you have a lot of
self-confidence, managed ego Ihave a lot of self-confidence.
The best I could be at acompany of scale let's say
(32:47):
there's a thousand employeesmaybe I could be as good as
three or four people.
I would have to just be in my Agame constantly.
Best case, I could be as goodas three or four actually, but
if I could make each of thosethousand people 10% better,
that's like hundreds of peopleyou've added of good work, so it
just swamps it, and so if youget your mindset to think like
that versus to think top, downones, so it just swamps it.
(33:09):
And so if you get your mindsetto think like that, versus to
think top down, I think it helpsyou to achieve.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I like the we, not me , concept over there.
Yeah, when you think about howleaders can accurately assess
where they fall on this scale,can they accurately self-assess,
or does it require someexternal measurements?
I'm the only one that canself-assess.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
You're the only one Awesome, sorry, sorry.
Of course, everyone can do yourown self-assessment.
In fact, doing aself-assessment is great.
More valuable for most of usprobably two is to ask the
people you work with, ask yourcolleagues, ask the team you
manage, ask your manager hey,how do you think about me?
In this format, and that wouldbe the fun exercise.
If you're doing it as amanagement team, I should do
this actually my next gig.
(33:54):
You should actually just askeveryone to do that assessment
for everyone on the team andthen you give people the sense
of here's what you said aboutyou and here's what the rest of
us said about you.
In each of these dimensions, Ithink it could be really
powerful way, and I'll tell youthat the hard part about it is
assessing.
You try to think aboutassessing people when you don't
have a lot of data.
(34:14):
Most people, if you work withcolleagues and you ask people oh
yeah, francesca, usually peoplehave a pretty similar view.
The hard part is like whenyou're interviewing someone and
you meet them and you say, hey,should we hire this person?
You're trying to assess howsuccessful they'll be.
It's much harder to figure outsome of these things.
There's some things that aretypically around the smarts and
skills.
People have degrees and things,or people have a track record
(34:37):
where they've deliveredtremendous performance.
So you see some areas where youcan get that.
The ego one, of course, is thehardest one, although the work
one is interesting because a lotof people tout how hard they
work and again they're justabout working hard.
It's about working smart.
Sometimes you can't completelyrock that.
You get a better sense fromother people, but the ego one is
the hardest one and the wayI'll give you my fun interview
(35:00):
question.
I love to ask people.
If it were you, mel, I wouldsay hey.
So, mel, if I had in the roomeveryone that you've been
working with for the last fiveyears, but you weren't there and
I said to them what's reallygreat about what Mel does?
What would they say?
And then you answered thatquestion and then, when I'm
(35:21):
finished, I said, hey, if Iasked that same group, what are
the things Mel should be workingon?
What are some areas where youknow Mel could be a little more
effective?
What would they say to that?
And of course, everyone lovesthe first question.
First of all, they'd say I'mthe smartest person.
They give you, as they should.
You're giving them a softballto say what's great about you,
yeah.
But the second question isinteresting because there's
(35:43):
basically three buckets ofanswers and some people are in
tune with issues that they'reworking on and they've gotten
feedback in the past.
Maybe they've made someimprovement, they know there's
more, and that's a reallythoughtful and great answer.
Another answer is I don't thinkthey have anything to say.
Look, that would be it.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Look at what we're saying.
Such a weird response.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Really they just have .
No, they actually just they'venever dawned on them that people
might not think they're perfectand they may be great but just
like.
That's an indication that weought to be probing further how
effective they are in teams ifit's never sort of done.
But the worst answer of all iswhat I call the faux answer.
And the faux answer is let metell you what they'd say Now.
(36:24):
First of all, they say I worktoo hard and carrying the load
of the whole team makes everyonefeel terrible because I do so
much more than everyone else,and that's a real problem for
people.
And they give two or threethings that you're like the most
ridiculous fake critique of alltime.
Then you actually realize thisperson's smart.
They probably have someawareness of things that they
(36:45):
could work on and be better, butthey're manipulative and
they're full of shit and they'rebasically going to say let me
tell you how I can smooth that.
That's actually indicative tome.
They could be skilled and theremight be certain roles where
that sort of ability tocommunicate and feel if they're
going to be an actor orsomething you might say that's a
great skill, to be able to haveright To improvise that answer.
But to be a colleague, that's aperson that's I'm going to be
(37:08):
wary, I'm going to be wary.
Can they really dedicatethemselves to a mission to work
with other people?
So that's a great question toask.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I love that question, Someone who worked in talent
acquisition.
I think it's such a smartquestion to ask because I've
heard also those rehearsedanswers and you're like, oh OK,
yeah, I don't know about that.
What are some ways?
I guess, when you think aboutwarning signs Because I would
see that as a warning sign, justas you did but when someone's
in the job, what are some of thewarning signs that indicate ego
(37:39):
might be creeping up orinterfering with their
leadership effectiveness?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Core issue of where an ego is a problem is usually
not in someone's self-ledefforts around their
interactions with the team, andso I think where we see people
who are less effective teammembers and aren't able to the
company or the team first,that's where you see it and you
see it from their colleagues.
And what do I be careful about?
I'm a big believer in thingslike 360 feedback.
I'm not actually a hugebeliever in massive programmatic
(38:05):
you have your talent,background, sort of solutions
but I think the discipline ofgetting feedback in a thoughtful
, targeted way, as opposed tojust lots of forms that people
start filling out in a shittyway, is not, honestly, the key
to success.
It is in a thoughtful way,given the person and the
individual.
You as a manager do work, butgetting that feedback from folks
is great.
(38:26):
One thing to be careful aboutis just because other people are
unhappy with someone orcomplain about someone doesn't
mean they're the problem.
Are unhappy with someone orcomplain about someone doesn't
mean they're the problem.
A lot of times we ask someoneto carry some pretty heavy water
and drive some prettyaggressive performance and some
people might not like that andthey might say that's a bad
person.
A lot of times.
Let's get this at.
Docusign or CPL would saythey're not living the DocuSign
(38:48):
values.
They were very important.
We had this really strong setof values.
Docu DocSend's an amazingcompany and it's got some things
that are really strong.
By the way, we've had somechallenges last couple of years.
Some of those values haveallowed us, I think, to maintain
more success.
But it's really easy to pullthe values card and say I don't
like the way Mel's doing thatand so I'm going to say throw
(39:12):
the value set.
I'd be really careful that theperson that's willing to throw
that might not just be doingwell, they might be actually
saying the scrutiny andmanagement I'm getting is making
me uncomfortable.
And the person is trying togive me aggressive feedback and
somehow I missed the memo thatsaid feedback is a gift and
since I didn't think feedbackwas a gift, I think the person's
riding me really hard, butactually they're trying to make
(39:34):
me better.
So get feedback but make sureyou're triangulating and then
get observations yourself.
That's how I'd proposeattacking that role.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Okay, here's a question.
I feel like we have a lot ofrepresentations of ego in the
extreme.
I've seen very high up leaders,board members, ceos, it could
be even a manager.
I've seen individualcontributors and they're so
egocentric they're bordering onnarcissistic or maybe they are
or just a straight psycho.
We've all worked for them.
What do you like?
(40:03):
Some of those environmentsincent that, incent that
behavior, reward that behavior.
If you're in an organizationthat you feel like that's
happening, or you're walkinginto a culture where that day
that's happening, how do youstart to advocate for more of
this balance?
How do you operate as yourself?
(40:23):
If you're someone that isn'tthat way and likes to operate
with more of the balance, do yougo?
What do you do?
What's the play there?
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So, the first thing is why?
Why do you want to do whatyou're describing you want to do
?
Do you diagnose that there's aproblem in the company?
You see a performance challengehappening at some point, or we
have a nutrition problem becausewe have some people's behaviors
driving good people out.
I'd like to try to understandwhat the thing I'm trying to fix
is before I take my remedy.
But in general, I'm a bigbeliever in we motivate people
(40:50):
with incentive structures.
Some of those are financialincentive structures, some of
the praise, all sorts of levelsthat we have for incentives for
people.
And so if you're drivingbehavior and you're seeing it
not just one individual, butyou're seeing it more creep into
your business in a way that youthink it's not healthy, I'd
look at your incentive structure.
And so one of the phenomenas isyou might say we have a lot of
(41:10):
individual achievement awards.
Let's go to a team award and acompany could take a bonus
approach and say it'ssubjectively based on each
individual's performance.
Or you could say we're going tohave a total team outcome.
These are our top three goals,and if we achieve them we all
win in that award, and if wedon't, that's one lever.
But I think that kind ofconcept is thinking about what
(41:31):
you've put in place in yourorganization to drive the
behavior you're driving.
And the other one and this isone that I don't understand why
more people don't do it otherthan you know.
I have some conflict avoidancein my own nature, so I
understand it's a humanphenomenon.
We often avoid conflict,francesca, less you than the
rest of us.
You're so nice.
(41:52):
You spiked on that in a good way, but the answer is talk about
it.
I don't know.
We have this thing whereeveryone's in a closed room
secretly saying, oh, Billy'sdoing this and Susie's doing
this.
Hey, Billy, Susie, people thinkyou're being a jerk and I don't
know why.
That's not who I think you are.
So let's go show them that'swrong and what are the things
we're going to do together tohave it?
(42:13):
And I think, same thing Noteveryone accepts feedback as a
gift at the beginning, but youhave to explain to them.
You want to be successful here.
You're going to work with me inaddressing this feedback and I
think you would find most people90%-ish people if they know
that you care about them andthey know that you respect them,
they will take that feedbackand they will want to be better.
(42:36):
And there's some people whojust can't take it or see it
feels too personal and they haveto say it's not me, it's the
person that's complaining.
Understand that there's a cycle.
You go through that process.
Past that, I think most peoplecan say you know what?
I want to be better, I want tobe more effective, so I want to
work on it.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah, Mel and I are.
We're writing a book and wejust came out of research and
that's the number one thingaround being feeling like you're
being respected and valued.
You cannot have feedback, trust, development, conversation,
anything without that.
That is the base, for you haveto have that mutual respect and
that mutual value, and I thinkit's something that we overlook
(43:13):
or we assume it's just thereyeah, right and we've never had
a goddamn conversation about it.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah, and I'll, yeah.
Um, and you have data.
And so what happens when youhave data?
You sometimes that ad is justnobody cares what you know until
they know that you care.
And so if you're there, you sayI got all this information,
make you better.
I'm like, are you trying tomake better?
If you're there and you say Igot all this information to make
you better, I'm like are youtrying to make better?
Are you setting me up forfailure?
Like when I understand thatyou're.
When you show up to tell mesomething, it's because you care
(43:40):
about me and you care about thesuccess of what we're building
together.
Yeah, then I really do want toknow, I want to understand, I
care about this feedback that'sgoing to make me better.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, I think starting with care is such a
huge thing.
Starting with care might beyour answer to my next question,
which is I'm dead.
It's a little crazy out therethese days, but it's a little
uncertain.
Yeah, hashtag tariffs, speakingof incentive structures as
opposed to sticks.
I am curious, though if you'rea leader, especially if you're a
C-level executive, and you havethe entire company on your
(44:13):
shoulders and you're trying tonavigate uncertainty it could be
now, it could be in the future,I don't care, but I am curious
about how you protect thatbalance of your ego as you're
going through that, because Ihave to believe that it might be
up and down, depending on whatsituation you're in, what win
you have, what punch you justtook in the phase.
(44:33):
How do you maintain and balancethat ego when you are just in a
blitzkrieg of bullshit?
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, two things.
One, it was harder for me toinsightfully answer that
question today because I'm at aplace where I've had so much
good fortune in my career andI've gotten a lot of boost.
That makes me feel good aboutmyself professionally, and not
that I don't have things I'mconstantly working on, for sure,
(45:00):
but I've been so fortunate thatI don't walk around with a chip
on my shoulder that I, you know, because of this crisis or some
other, I either need to provemyself.
I do feel like I need to provemyself every day, but I don't
feel like I'm coming from adefensive way of doing that and
proving myself.
So that makes it easier.
But if I go back a couple IPOsago, yeah, I think it's a real
challenge.
(45:20):
I think what you're describingis absolutely a challenge, and
the more that the market getscrazy your market, whatever that
is it's easy to feel like it'sunfair and lashing out and
attacking, and then sometimeseven the people that are close
to you.
You should be pulling together.
Some people are critical ofthem.
We're blaming.
You know the blame game.
If you just sold more, wewouldn't have this problem.
(45:42):
So it's your fault.
Sales is fault, which has been ahuge issue, by the way, in
enterprise software the lastcouple of years, the number of
companies, because I spent a lotof time talking to people about
running more software companiesthat say a company is great,
the only problem is our salesteam.
If we just had a new head ofsales, it's going to be great.
I'm like really, because everysoftware company is saying the
same thing.
Is it really just the salesleaders?
(46:02):
I don't think so, and so I dothink the hard thing when
everything is going crazy likethat is to just go back and say
what can I control and what canI not?
I can't control tariffs, Ican't control any of these
things.
I have to make decisions basedon the fact that some
externalities are there andthose external factors are
happening.
But I have to go back to ourteam and say I don't know what
(46:23):
the outcome is.
I just can't tell you what theoutcome is going to be, but I
can tell you what the inputs areand we're going our very best
at doing it in the way webelieve and at the quality that
we believe we can deliver forour customers, for employees,
whatever.
And let's just do that, becausethat's what we can control, and
I know it's the same thing likestock price is a phenomenon.
Companies go public and everyCEO gives the same speech, or
(46:45):
pretty much every CEO.
Guys, we can't control thestock price.
You shouldn't be spending timelooking at the stock price.
That response is early on.
I made this thing.
I said I'm not going to look atthe stock price except for
Friday afternoon every week.
I will not look at the stock Ifyou ask me about it.
I don't want to know.
I don't care.
I don't want to know what thestock price is.
What am I going to do on anygiven day?
How are you.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
This is a backward.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
This isn't that.
Leaving is a backward indicator.
We got to be focused on ourbusiness and getting people out
of that mindset.
Actually, one thing we didresponse is we had the IPO and
we didn't go ring the bell inNew York.
We did the IPO.
We came back to the office andwe were with the office and the
people and the day after IPO wesaid let's play Sales to do.
(47:28):
We got product to build.
We got customers to take careof.
We said what happened to gopublic yesterday?
It's fun and Our customers takecare of it.
What happened to go publicyesterday?
It was fun and we should allfeel good about it.
It was a nice accomplishment.
Back to work, because itdoesn't matter.
It doesn't matter in thecontext of what we have to do
every day.
I'm sure we care about it andcreate liquidity for people.
Lots of wonderful things thathappen.
I'm not against celebrating.
I'm all about celebrating.
Why do we have the opportunityto celebrate?
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Because, because we did these other things really
well for the last several years,so let's keep doing those
things.
Looking back at your youngerself and what you know now, what
do you wish you could tell youryounger self?
Speaker 2 (48:10):
I think probably a couple things.
One is I didn't have a lot ofpatience, I was in a hurry and I
think it's okay to be movingfast, but I think I would tell
myself as part of that smell theroses, enjoy the time, enjoy
the experiences you're having,and I sometimes skip things to
get on to the next, andsometimes I think that's a
(48:35):
mistake a lot of us make.
And life it's not the end, it'sthe journey and really making
sure you enjoy the journey.
And that probably is mostlythen around investing in
relationships, and notnecessarily just like your most
important relationship, but thepeople you know that are just
wonderful.
It could be colleagues, couldbe friends, any number of places
.
Really take advantage of thosepersonal relationships.
(48:56):
That is what life is fun to do.
So that'd be number one.
Number two, and there's noquestion, after the practice
speech I gave you on this topicearlier, I would tell myself to
chill, cool my jets a little bitabout then and realize that the
joy I was going to get in life,the real joy I have, comes from
seeing other people beingsuccessful, and I had to
(49:19):
accumulate a certain amount ofprofessional success and
personal success before I couldstart to do that.
So I missed a lot of years of alot of joy I could have had.
I think I had little snippetsof it.
I'm not a total jerk.
I did care about the people Iworked with but it was all in
the lens of they could besuccessful to make me more
successful.
And if I think I could havejust appreciated them more for
(49:39):
them and been better for them,starting that sooner I would get
a lot more joy.
So those would probably be thetwo things.
There's probably a lot ofthings I would tell myself, but
those would be the.
Those would be the.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
I like it.
The second one, especially whenyou think of giving their best
advice to emerging leaders,that's like a big takeaway that
they can start today.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
Rapid round questions .
You can answer these with oneword or a sentence, or however
long you want.
Sometimes these are our mostinteresting questions.
Are you ready to play?
I'm ready to play.
Okay, it is 2030.
What does work look like?
Work will be very similar towhat it is today in the
(50:24):
post-COVID world Very similar.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
All right, interesting.
No, I should elaborate.
I thought I was supposed to dorapid fire.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Wait, now, I want to know the answer.
Wait, why do you think it'sgoing to be similar?
Why do you think it's going tobe similar?
Speaker 2 (50:35):
I think we've had a lot of transformational change
going into and coming out ofCOVID and I think the amount of
change in the way we work,assimilate is limited.
We're humans and we have ourpatterns and we have our trends.
So I think we've gotten to thisplace.
I don't think it's exactlyequilibrium, but in terms of our
people going to be in theoffice, are they going to be
(50:59):
remote, I think we're getting tothat zone of where we're going
to be.
I would add, I think artificialintelligence will change the
way we work, but I think it'sgoing to be less impact.
It'll be massively impactful onbusiness, less impactful on
people than I think we realize,because we're adaptable and the
things that get automated andthen we do things as humans that
can't be automated.
So I don't think that willchange as much as some people
are forecasting in the next fiveyears.
Are you an AI optimist?
I'm an optimist, for sure.
Yeah, I definitely.
(51:19):
I have my I call it terminatorawareness of what's happening.
I just don't see it.
I really don't.
Maybe it's my.
I'm an optimist.
I'm also.
My faith in humanity is prettyhigh.
Yeah, I'm pretty optimistic.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
That's good.
There's a lot of really awesomepossibility there.
I'm stoked for it.
I'm stoked for it.
Yeah, what music are youlistening to right now?
Speaker 2 (51:39):
I've been listening to Dave Matthews almost nonstop
the last 10 days.
Nothing wrong with a little DMV.
We had Dave come to an event.
Jane Goodall introduced him tome.
We did an event at DocuSign.
He is the funniest person I'veever been on stage with.
If he was an actor, I don'tknow if you know this before he
became a musician he was anactor.
(51:59):
He's been in a number of filmssince he's become famous, but he
is just the funniest.
He has the driest, quick-wittedsense of humor that I never
would have fully understood,even though I've been a fan for
years and then joined C&M onstage, so Dave was the bomb Best
session ever.
At any event, Get out.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
I always read him as like either really awkward to
talk to or making like reallyuncomfortable jokes period.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yeah, I got the impression.
He seems like a good call.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
So he roasted me in front.
He had the DocuSign employeebase and customers and he was
constantly making fun of me in away that the docuside employee
based and customers and he wasconstantly making fun of me in a
way that, of course, thataudience love oh sure so you
know he knew his audience.
Um, yeah, he's a musical genius.
So you're right, sometimesthere's oddities with people who
are creative geniuses.
Uh, there's some of thatawkwardness.
He's so genuine.
I'll just say one littlesnippet.
(52:49):
We should move past davematthews, but he moved to
seattle from charlottesvillewhere they really got going.
So he lives in in the seattlearea and up until this is about
five years ago, he just movedout of a one bathroom house with
his three children and his wifeand he was just like, yeah, and
driving his 1970 somethingvolvo, he's just a guy, that's
(53:12):
like.
I don't have any heirs.
He's just the same person thatI think he wanted to be ever
since he was probably 20 orsomething like that.
Yeah, he's a treasure.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
See that story restores my faith in humanity.
Honestly Like that's it.
Okay, what are you reading?
What are you reading?
Speaker 2 (53:29):
So I just finished reading something I half read.
It was embarrassing Principlesby Ray Dalio, which is a tome of
a big book.
But the exciting thing that Ijust started reading again and I
think I read it before.
But I'm embarrassed.
I can remember his Profiles inCourage.
It was a Pulitzer Prize winning, jfk wrote it and it's one of
(53:50):
those books that everyone knowsabout, but then you just maybe
never read.
And anyway, jillian got it forme and I saw it at a bookstore.
He's a bookstore and I'mreading it and he's a gifted
writer, in addition to beingsuch a special politician.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
It's also interesting to go back, even if you have
read something way back, to goback and reread it.
All right, here's my lastquestion for you.
What piece of advice would yougive someone?
What's your best piece ofadvice for them?
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Oh, if it's mildly professional advice I suppose
there's other realms, but Iguess this would fit more
broadly is in life the key is tofind I used to be a consultant,
so I like to do everything intwo by two matrices.
It is to find the combinationof the things that you're good
at and the things you like doingand get into that upper right
corner.
And I think the biggest thingthat people sometimes forget is
(54:37):
the things you like, and I thinkwe're naturally drawn to.
We get positive feedback on thethings we're good at, but
finding that intersection of thethings you really love doing,
that's the thing that you needto focus on.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
It makes it really enjoyable, right?
I look forward to it.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Cool, love it.
We appreciate you being with ustoday.
Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Me as well.
I really enjoyed it.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
This episode was produced, edited and all things
by us myself, mel Plett andFrancesca Ranieri.
Our music is by Pink Zebra andif you loved this conversation
and you want to contribute yourthoughts with us, please do.
You can visit us atyourworkfriendscom, but you can
(55:20):
also join us over on LinkedIn.
We have a LinkedIn communitypage and we have the TikToks and
Instagrams, so please join usin the socials.
And if you like this and you'vebenefited from this episode and
you think someone else canbenefit from this episode,
please rate and subscribe.
We'd really appreciate it.
That helps keep us going.
(55:41):
Take care, friends.
Bye, friends.
Thank you.
I try to define ego is.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
High ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting
yourself first, and low ego,which is preferred in this
context, is someone that putsthe organization or the greater
goals or family.
It could be.
Any type of organization you'reinvolved with puts that first.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
We brought Dan Springer on to talk about
leadership and ego, and he'sprobably one of the best people
to talk about this with, becausethis guy has ran mega
organizations as a CEO, as aboard member.
He's genuinely a really niceguy and, more than that, he
knows how to get returns in abusiness and really create these
workplaces that people love towork at.
(00:55):
If you ask anybody who's workedunder Dan Springer, they loved
where they were working, and sowe wanted to figure out what was
it that made him who he is andwhat did he attribute to his
leadership success?
And what he talked about wasego.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, he was such a great example of somebody who
can focus on the human in theworkplace while also having very
successful business results,and how those two things went
hand in hand together.
Yeah, there is some secretsauce that he shared with us.
That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Totally agree.
Dan Springer is the former CEOof DocuSign.
He's also still on the board.
He's an incredibly seasonedtech leader with decades of
experience scaling some of thebiggest names in SaaS like
Responsys, teleo, nextcard, and.
He began his career at McKinseywas a partner there.
He's led billion-dollar exits,built high-growth teams and
(01:51):
knows firsthand how ego can makeor break great leadership.
And you're right, mel.
He brought this refreshinglyhonest take on what it really
takes to lead well.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I think this is one of my favorite episodes so far
and one of my favorite guests.
The insights he brought werereally valuable and others will
get value out of this too.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
It wasn't his Dave Matthews story.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I did love Dave Matthews as a fellow DMV.
The fun fact in Connecticut Iwas at the Meadows with my
friend for a DMV when there wasan entire flipping of the cars
and arson back in the 90s whatthe hell?
At a Dave Matthews concert.
It got out of control.
I don't know what happened andwe parked in a McDonald's
(02:31):
parking lot.
This is just a side story youcan take out, but it got towed
and we hitchhiked with somerandos to go find our car at the
Impel lot.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Listen my favorite Dave Matthews story, can I tell
you, yeah.
So there is something Icelebrate every year, which is
the anniversary of the DaveMatthews Band tour bus.
Oh, the bridges in Chicago.
And if you don't know thisstory, Mel, can I tell this
story?
Yes.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
They're probably like please not again, just when
we're not brought up, so I'venever been in Chicago.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
There's the river in Chicago and then it dumps out
into the lake and over the riverare a series of bridges that
are grated and they can lift upand down so tall boats can go
through to the lake Keywordgrated.
The other thing I want everyoneto know about Chicago is it's a
massive architecture town, sothey have these wonderful
architectural cruises.
If you ever go to Chicago youhave to go on them.
(03:24):
They're fantastic and you cansee all of the different
buildings and the stories behindthem, etc.
They are typically open boats,so think about massive kind of
pontoon boats looking up andadmiring all the skyscrapers.
On this very warm summer daythere was an architectural boat
cruise cruising down the riverlooking at all the skyscrapers
(03:46):
and at the same time the DaveMatthews Band tour bus was going
over one of these gradedbridges and the bus driver
accidentally decided to dump thetoilet out and it dumped all
over this architectural horrorboat.
So it is one of the mostdisgusting stories, but also one
of the funniest stories on theplanet.
(04:07):
I love to tell it just becauseit's so man dave matthews, you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
If you were on that boat, the universe was just like
f you, in particular today.
What like?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
but you've got some explaining.
I love talking with dan, notonly about the dave matthews
story, but about his experienceand how he's really looked at
ego in this equation.
If you don't know, dan, he'salso a mathematician back
liberal arts major, which I love, but he has this idea of how do
you manage ego with skills andhard work.
How do you pull that intobalance to really set yourself
(04:38):
up for success and to set yourteam up for success as well?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
And you can do this equation yourself tomorrow to
gut check your own ego.
Yep, good tool, right away,great tool, and with that here's
Dan Dan.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
how are you today?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I'm doing great Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Great, absolutely All right.
I want to get you right intothis.
We're here to talk about egoand leadership and your
background.
I'm so excited for it.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
All right, we want to start in understanding your
origin story around the wholeconcept of so and ego and the
role ego has played, and so I'dlove to understand how your own
relationship with your own egoevolved throughout your
professional career.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I've been called by many, particularly as a young
man, to have prodigious ego, soI guess this is a good topic.
The simplest construct aroundthat I try to define ego is high
ego is putting yourself as theprimary, putting yourself first
in the context.
It could be your family, itcould be your office, it could
be your company, it could beyour sports team, whatever it is
.
And low ego, which is preferredin this context, is someone
(05:53):
that puts the organization orthe greater goals.
Or, again, it could be family,it could be any type of
organization you're involvedwith puts that first.
And my own origin story, I think, is a good, healthy, I mean
growing up with the world beingpresented to me.
In a certain way.
It was when I was growing up Iwas pretty egocentric.
(06:13):
I think I was pretty focused onDan, and although I had
wonderful role models like mymom, my hero, who demonstrated
to me by putting me first, beenreally dedicated to whichever
life to me, I probably shouldhave seen that sooner, but I was
a little slow on the uptake andsomewhere, probably in my late
20s, I at least became aware ofthe fact that I was a little bit
(06:36):
of a selfish person or aselfish SOB, maybe it would be
more accurate.
And then professionally Istarted to figure that out a
little bit in leading people.
But it wasn't until I had myfirst son that I think I really
figured out that it wasn't aboutme.
And once you have that abilityto love someone more than you
(06:56):
love yourself, it opens up yourability to just be much less
egocentric in everything you do.
So that was probably my.
So I was.
I'm embarrassed to say that now, but early thirties before I
probably got to a reasonablyevolved sense of ego.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, that makes sense, right, our brains aren't
even fully formed until we'reabout 24, I think so to make
good decisions and things likethat.
So it's totally understandable.
We're in the non-judgment zone,by the way.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
All right.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
So having your son obviously major pivotal moment.
What other kind of pivotalmoments did you have that really
transformed your understandingof ego, especially in leadership
?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, so two, actually One before I had my son
in my first job managing people.
So I worked for the phonecompany.
I was a forecaster, aeconometrician, I did modeling
and I showed up and they didn'thave sophistication at Pacific
Valley at that time.
So I quickly got promoted lessthan a year in my first job as a
college and I was now managingpeople.
My parents' age that had beenprofessional forecasters but
(07:54):
didn't have some of thetechnical skills I had, and I
quickly realized how bad I wasat the job.
But I couldn't figure out forthe longest time why.
And it was because I was alittle jerk.
I couldn't figure out for thelongest time why.
And it was because I was alittle jerk.
And who's this little jerktelling me he's experienced and
good people with probably acondescending ear if we want to
be honest about it.
But I eventually got thatfeedback so I did get a snippet.
(08:15):
Being a jerk is not the bestarchetype of manager that you
probably want to have.
Then I think fast forward toprobably having a son.
But the it was one period thatI think was really powerful for
me, where I started to respecthow wonderful some of the people
we work with are and I ran acompany you've never heard of
called Tellio.
(08:35):
It was my first time as the CEOand I ran it into the ground.
we sold it for 50 bucks to ourDonnelly maybe a little more,
not very much money, and sothat's why you've never heard of
it and I will bury the detailsof the company.
It's important to me but itwon't be to your audience.
But something happened is rightafter I joined.
It was like it was a diresituation and we had to do a
slight restructuring.
It was a small company but wehad to do a layoff and I had
(08:58):
never done that in a role, in amanager role, in a manager role.
I've been a consultant atMcKinsey, so I've been around a
little bit of cost cutting.
And that night after the layoffI was in my office late and
four of the guys that had beenlaid off were standing outside
the doors like a glass doorlooking in and they knocked and
they came in and for a minute Ihad this thought are they
telling you to beat the crap outof?
(09:19):
me, I can figure out why theydon't want to stay around and
these four guys sat down andthey just asked to check in on
how I was doing and they saidthey could tell how difficult it
had been for me to go throughthe layoff their layoff, not my
layoff, their layoff that theywere worried about me and I'll
tell you for the next couple ofyears.
(09:40):
That was this incredible strongfeeling.
Every time I thought about it itmade me feel worse, obviously,
because these are the greatesthuman beings that could get laid
off and they're worried aboutthe guy that just came in to be
their boss, that had to carryout the action.
And two, it just made me realizehow wonderful people can be and
it's just always stuck with meas a message that we have a
responsibility when we lead anorganization for those people, a
(10:03):
responsibility when we lead anorganization for those people,
and I vowed I would never ithasn't happened yet, but it
could never have a layoff ofpeople who were doing their job
well and were losing theiropportunity because leadership
in this case me failed toprovide the opportunity.
So don't overhire, don't getinto that situation and when you
have it.
It's a painful lesson, but itwas hugely eye-opening for me
(10:26):
against the quality of peopleand the really serious
responsibility we have asleaders for the people that work
for us, and not everyone feelsthat way.
I think it's really importantIf you're not feeling that way,
not caring that much about yourpeople, what are you doing in
management?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, you have to think about the whole person and
get down to humanity.
At the end of the day, we arebigger than our jobs, so life is
bigger than that.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah.
So Mel and I didn't go to mathschool.
Dan, we did not go to mathschool.
I know you did.
I know you were being a jerk tothe Yellow Pages people.
Let's talk about how you were ajerk, dan.
No, I'm just kidding.
I was sitting there thinkinglike you were 30.
I think I was like 35 before Igot that that lesson around.
(11:09):
Don't be a total asshole topeople.
But one of the things that Ilove about what you've come up
with is an ego equation or anequation how to think about ego,
because we have all thesestories around.
It's about how smart you are,it is about your strategy and
you're playing five degree chessover here.
Or maybe it's about the factthat you work your ass off.
(11:30):
I'm wondering if you can talkabout the mathy equation.
You have to think about ego andwork and skills as it relates
to success.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
It's a little bit geeky.
Sure, it's only geeky when youput numbers to it.
Conceptually, even liberal artsmajors like myself even though
I was a math and liberal artscollege people we can really
grasp these concepts.
The simple expression whichI've used in this so like sewing
needle and thread is you haveyour skills that are usually
highly correlated to the fortuneyou were given with your smarts
(12:01):
and your ability to buildskills.
And then you have your ego.
As I mentioned earlier is yourability to control your focus on
yourself versus to the broaderorganization, and then, as you
said, how hard you work.
And the equation for the geeksout there like myself is you
take those skills that you have,the S, you divide it by your
ego, so you want to have lessego, obviously.
(12:22):
Then you take that and youraise it to the power of how
hard you work.
And if you do play around withlittle numbers I generally use
one to five and you assessyourself.
I'll give you my ownself-assessment, so yeah, and
then we're, we're on thisspectrum think of this bell
curve spectrum, not a one tofive.
When it comes to skills thathave been built, I think I'm a
four.
Most of my life asserted I wasa five, but we can get to the
(12:45):
ego point.
I just had a lot of goodfortunes.
It's not so much that I'msmarter than other people or
more skill, I just showed up insome really good situations that
made me look good.
So I've had a lot ofserendipity.
And then the ego.
And again I don't think I wasever a five.
On the ego, Maybe I was a four.
There's a distribution curveand there's other people out
(13:05):
there that could be prettycondescending, jerk like two,
but I was probably in the fourzone.
I'm down to about a two in myself-assessment.
So I'm pretty good not the best, but I'm pretty good at trying
to really put the organizationfirst and get out of my own ego
and then on how hard I work.
It's four or five.
I've been a five at times.
Sustaining five is verydifficult but I think I'm a good
(13:26):
, solid four.
So if you use the four, two,four, you say four divided by
two is two.
You raise that to the power offour and you get two, four,
eight, 16.
And that's pretty good.
And, of course, when you're acompetitive person, like I am,
you play this game and you go.
Okay, what I really want to dois be a five over a one.
Raise it to the it.
(13:47):
Just, it really probablydoesn't happen very often and,
quite frankly, if you havepeople operating with a high ego
, you do the math.
If you're around a one, itdoesn't matter how hard you work
.
You're not going to get thenumber any better.
If you're below one, it'seffective.
A person working really hardhas all focused on themselves
could actually be a detriment toan organization.
(14:07):
So that's how I think about theformula and have to chat about
each of the elements more, but Iuse that in evaluating people
and thinking about how effectivethey can be in our organization
.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Let me ask you this so you're 16 and you're so score
.
Is there a range?
Let's say you're building out aC-suite, for example, or you're
building out whatever andyou're trying to gauge where
people are at what's consideredlike a good score.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
16 is good and again, it's my form.
I'm not going to create asystem that I have a terrible
outcome in.
And you're like, wow, I reallyneed work, I have to change the
model.
But 16 is good, have to changethe model there.
The 16 is good and the realchallenge is it's the most of us
, of course, most situation.
I'm talking about me as asoftware exec to 16.
Um, by the way, the only placeI've ever been better is
(14:56):
actually in in in sports, andthe reason is and this is that
you're really fortunate if youhave this makeup my whole life,
life I played sports all throughcollege, division III college,
but still some of my collegesoccer and lacrosse teams.
But all through school, allthrough every team I ever played
on, I don't think I was everthe most skilled player on my
(15:17):
team and I had just enoughself-knowledge to know.
I think sometimes I was one ofthe better players I knew.
I was never the most skilledplayer on any, whether it was
football, soccer, basketball,cross, whatever but nobody
worked harder.
I don't believe anyone on anyteam I was ever on.
I know it was a prettyaggressive statement to make,
but I can't.
How are you going to know?
(15:37):
How are you going to refute it?
Speaker 3 (15:38):
anyway, Ever Sounds a little like.
Ego Sounds a little like ego.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way.
Can you have ego about how hardyou work?
Maybe, and I do think if youlook at the stats score you'll
always see not as many pointsbut a lot of assists from Dan's
work, and that was the joy I hadas being a playmaker and trying
to make other people score andsucceed.
So in sports it's the only timeI've ever been ever better than
(16:04):
I have as a profession.
But I would just clearly say 16is taking me a career to get to
.
I was realistically a one-two,probably most of my career
because of the ego thatsuppresses the ratio of the
smarts, and so if you had a teamof 16s, that would be a killer
team.
Everyone could get their egosdown.
Some people might get it by afive and a three.
(16:25):
You're playing the differentmodes, but yeah, it's all about
getting that balance right.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Is there ever a situation where you need to have
hot ego?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, and again, the problem with the definition of
the word ego in general.
There could be a lot ofdifferent nuances and
interpretations of that, and Ithink they can be healthy ego
for sure, in the construct thatI'm defining.
I don't think so.
I think it's optimal is to be ateam player, because not only
does it help the team's output,but then it forces other people,
because of that behavior youexhibit, to do the same.
(16:55):
People want to be drawn, Ithink, to something bigger than
themselves, and if other peoplelead that way, it makes it
easier.
So you have a knockoff effecton other people when you bring
down your ego and some culturescan get to the place where that
happens.
But just to be clear, there'shigh-performing cultures that
have high ego.
I worked at McKinsey.
There are investment banks, Iwould tell you.
Most of them is a model wherepeople are fighting,
(17:19):
particularly in banks, for theircompensation.
It's a big thing, it's a let meshow you how great I was and
the deals I got done.
Therefore, I deserve morecompensation in that model.
By definition, I think youshould answer your question.
That's supposed to be a highego place.
Now, over time, that can havebecome destructive, and yeah,
but I think that's the balance.
(17:40):
Leadership and that kind oforganization has to figure out a
way to maintain thatcompetitiveness around
individual performance and atthe same time still figure out
how do we have some collegialnature that we can build a firm
together.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
You've taken your career where it is based on this
model.
You see it and evaluate yourteams based on this model.
We doubled down on ego, but Iwould love to understand what do
you think about skills?
And when you think about hardwork, what would you recommend
people consider when they'relooking at upping those
potentially?
Just to balance out theequation.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
One thing I tell you about the skills side, the
hardest part about skills, it'sthe one I think we can do the
least Now it doesn't mean youcan't take classes and get
training things, but core thingthat drives and in fact you
didn't ask if I stole this idea.
There's no SEW, quite like theway I do it.
But this construct of thesesort of three forces in
determining how effective peopleare in their work was stolen
(18:36):
from a guy I worked with atMcKinsey years ago, an
Australian guy, clemenger, andhe actually initially his
thinking was it wasn't skills,it was smarts.
It's also smarts are trainable.
It's a very McKinsey way tothink about it.
Right, and he'd been a careerMcKinsey Was we just want smart
people, because smart peoplewill figure out problems, but
they'll also figure out how tolearn and grow To some extent
(18:58):
your clock speed.
You can work on it.
You're born with what you got.
Thank or don't thank yourparents, but you got what you
got.
So that one is much harder forpeople to control.
And I would tell you the bestthing you can do to either quote
unquote improve your smarts oryour skills it's the learning
you get, it's taking wisdom fromyour experiences.
So what makes you smarter,effectively or more skilled is
(19:19):
the fact that you have abilityto take feedback and say, oh, I
got to move a little bit overthis way, so that's probably the
most important piece, exceptthat a lot of it is going to be.
You're given processingcapability and then the one is
applying yourself, and if youjust do more and you're active,
it goes back to the work.
How hard you work.
If you take on opportunities.
Every time you have a chance todo something new and different,
you do it and then you listenand learn about how you did.
(19:42):
That's the best thing I thinkyou can do to improve your sort
of smart skills and on work,that's probably the least
complex, right?
And it's just how will you applyyourself?
It's definitely about workingsmarter, not just harder,
although I sometimes think weuse the excuse of working smart,
not hard, to not fully deployourselves and really invest
(20:04):
ourselves in the things we'reworking on.
But that could be personal,professional, across the board.
We often know when we're justshowing up and there's days
sometimes where that's all youcan muster, just showing up.
But if you find yourself onlyjust showing up a lot of the
time, you're probably not in theright place, because you just
don't have that enthusiasm foryour work to allow you to get up
(20:24):
to a four or maybe even a fiveon how hard you work.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yeah, it's interesting when you have those
where you.
Is it context you know what I'msaying Like when you're in a
situation I know when you wereat DocuSign or Responsys, for
example, too, it felt like thatwas like these magical times,
right, these magical cultureswhere you wanted to show up,
right, it's the context of it,or is it the individual that's
always going to have that lens,or is it a combination of both?
I think it could be situational, right.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, but your point about the magical times what
makes people remember times asmagical is because they work
really hard with a group ofpeople they respect and care for
and built a great album, andwhen you do that, it bonds
people.
I think we were chatting theother day and I told you that
there was this 10-year reunionof people from when we sold
(21:12):
Responses to Oracle and Ithought the whole idea was a
little wacky in the first place,to be completely honest with
you, and then, when hundreds ofpeople showed up and said it was
a really special way for themto be back with people, it felt
more like a college reunion thana company had been part of.
You had something special andthat culture that you were part
(21:33):
of will always be important toyou.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
It's the power of when you have this in masses,
right, when everybody is pullingin their weight or has a high
SO score, right.
That's the power of that too.
Come to think about it, I don'tthink I've ever had a magical
work experience where I phonedit in or where I was very
egocentric, or like I was thesmartest person in the freaking
room, like that never, everhappened.
I think that's common.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I think that experience you're describing is
probably common and I would saythere are times, particularly in
technology industry, where youget on a wave and you probably
could continue to have greatsuccess with phoning it in a
little bit, although be careful,because when you're riding that
kind of wave it's going tocrash at some point.
But I would tell you, I betit's not a magical experience.
(22:19):
I think it's very difficult, ifyou didn't really work hard at
something, to truly enjoy thesuccess and the outcome, because
it's not as important, it's notas special to you as if you
know that you really appliedyourself fully.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Yeah, you got to be invested.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Something that really resonates with me with what you
said, because, as anotherformer athlete but I will say I
was D1.
Just rubbing it in a little,just a little, but I was a rower
, so it doesn't really count asa former athlete, throughout my
life, one of the things that Iheard time and time again from
my coaches and like you, I wasnever the best, but what I
always got was the heart award.
Because when you're the onegiving heart and in my mind,
(23:09):
when I keep hearing you say hardwork, that's what I keep
hearing.
Oh, the people who give heart,like you have the heart in it.
Is that what you mean when yousay hard work absolutely?
Speaker 2 (23:18):
and in fact it's funny.
I was thinking about your pointabout crew.
It actually is a great examplebecause, if you think about
again, I never rode crew in anyclose to semblance of a real way
, but oddly enough, I went to astrange high school in Seattle
that happened to have crew,which is unusual, particularly
(23:39):
unusual.
Then on the West Coast, I'mgoing to start and for the next
six, about six minutes, I'mgoing to get increasingly
uncomfortable to the point thatmy body's going to hate what I'm
doing and I'm going to collapsein exhaustion and you go and
that's what we do every time andthat's our form, and there's
(24:02):
probably some track and fieldthings that are like that a
little bit, and it's the onlyone you do in unison, depending
on three other, seven other Iguess, four and eight if you
count.
But what a crazy bond thatpeople must have with the team
when you go through that.
You've probably seen it, but yousee the boys in the boat.
There's a movie from the bookthe Boys in the Boat.
(24:22):
The book was better than themovie.
Usually Not always, but usuallyit's the University of
Washington men's crew that wonthe Olympic gold medal in 1936.
No-transcript.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Oh, I loved crew.
By the way, I think when Italked to any of my teammates,
most of us did it so we couldwatch the sunrise before class,
because it was just a funexperience at 5 am.
I wanted to go back to thosehigh-performance work cultures,
because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big
law.
We work cultures because we'veall worked in them, right, like
I worked in big law.
We've worked in the big four,all of those things.
Do you think something has tohappen in terms of, like
(25:14):
performance management?
Performance management set upin a way to be egocentric or to
build ego, because there'salways this kind of back and
forth?
Do you brag about the workyou've done and that impacts
your potential bonus and yourraise or your opportunities for
growth, but none of us get ourwork done, necessarily as
individual contributors.
Even when you're an individualcontributor, you still need
(25:35):
others to complete your work,and so do you think there's an
opportunity for organizations tothink differently about
performance management and howyou brag about the things you've
done while also bringing alongeveryone else who helped you get
there?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I think so.
Yeah, and I'll tell you thefirst thing.
There's certain things inbusiness life that are close to
universally.
True.
There's probably none that arequite, but there's two I want to
talk to One related to yourquestion, but first I'll do the
other one.
It's amazing how what we learnedin kindergarten is so important
for what we do in life.
Saying please, saying thank youand saying I'm sorry when
(26:14):
appropriate is the simplestthing to do, and when we don't
do it oftentimes it leads tofairly significant conflict and
problems.
I'm not saying it always solveseverything, but at least
creates the opportunity and thespace to be successful.
And one of the things that Ithink is really corollary to
that is about teams that youdescribed.
And if you say we instead of I,first of all people know.
(26:40):
So if you're so worried that youhave to be clear that you did
something, the detraction thatyou're going to get from your
colleague to everyone else Ineed you to point out that it
was you Way swaps, any extrabenefit you might get in bonus
time or what you're just got, ismy opinion.
But if you do that chest beatingand you do it around a wee,
it's amazing how everyone givesyou license to brag all you want
(27:04):
because it's about wee, and ifyou figure out a way to try to
give the credit in a credibleway to other people, because
we've all seen the bullshit, thefake oh, thank the little
people, because it wasn't me andyou just look and you're like,
okay, that not only gets you thecredit for having delivered the
(27:31):
great results that your team'sdone, but, more importantly,
that we language makes everyoneelse feel great and it sets us
up for another success, becausenow everyone wants to do it
again.
So you're also buildingfollowership from teams.
So I think that's the answer tothe question is just be a we
oriented and get away fromneeding to point out what people
(27:51):
probably already know whenyou've done something great.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Yeah, I'll tell you too, where I've seen people be
really successful is with thatwe language and that authentic
we language like you talkedabout, with their team, and also
cross-functionally as well.
When you can be we, when you'rereaching across the aisle with
finance and HR and marketing andyou're going at it we as one,
that is hugely powerful,especially as you're going up in
(28:16):
the ranks.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
And I would also tell you I think it's powerful when
you're the hardest grader onyourself.
A lot of people say they're thehardest grader on themselves,
they're toughest on themselves.
I don't always find that to bethe case and I find if you can
do that and get a reputationamongst your colleagues for
being tougher on yourself thanyou are on them, it's a really
exponentially improvingopportunity.
(28:38):
I'll give you one sort of dumbexample.
But at Responsys I had thisthing where I tried to change
the way we thought aboutperformance reviews.
So we did everything out of 100.
It's just just like a hundred.
But a hundred was perfectPretty hard to be perfect and I
was CEO for 10 years atResponsys.
I had twice a year had a reviewand I would submit my
(28:58):
self-assessment, just like Iwould have all my managers first
submit a self-assessment, and Inever had a hundred.
I never got above low ninetiesand we had a couple of quarters
that led to a half yearperformance that you would say
those were pretty good and I hada board that would push back
and say come on, this has got tobe a hundred percent and I'm
like a hundred, how can you geta hundred?
(29:19):
But what would happen is I'dcome in and say, yeah, I think I
had an 82.
And they'd be this is crazy.
You at least have a 90.
We have to argue this up to a90.
Think about that.
Normally my experiences beforethat was the other way around.
I think I'm about 115.
And then someone else has tosay, god, we really think he's
about a 90, but now we've got tosay he's an 80 to try to
compromise.
So it just totally changes that.
(29:41):
Every single executive mydirect reports at responses but
one and I'll get to the one in asecond Over time grasped that
and said this is the way I wantit to be.
I want to be in a situation whenI come in tougher on myself and
my manager was me says no, Ithink better than that.
(30:02):
Those conversations are sorewarding and I did.
One executive who was verytalented and a great executive
and he had grown up in a senseof I'm above 100%, everything I
do is above 100%, and the mathmajor in me says there is no
above 100%.
It's impossible to be above100% Asymptomically.
(30:23):
Approaching 100% on most thingsis almost impossible, and so
that mentality to get out ofthat I got all Ben Antonio, but
I got everyone else there and itwas I think it was a big part
of our culture that then wentdown and trickled down wherever
what it was saying like.
Let me be tougher on myself.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Let me ask you this In those moments, did you want
to rate yourself 100?
In the back of your mind, wereyou like I actually was 100, but
I'm going to put it in myselfat a 91?
Or were you like, no, I wasgenuinely in 91, you wasn't you
can't what's truth I thinkthere's times where I thought I
was pretty damn good.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah, we had a lot of challenges too, but the early
parts of the company was acomplete turnaround.
There was some, I think.
You know I often talk I'll giveyou a.
Let me answer your question,then I'll give you them.
Yeah, there were times when Ithought I was great, but because
I defined it it as 100%.
It's just yeah, you can't.
One of my pet peeves when peoplesay I gave 110%, you don't have
110.
There is no 110.
(31:17):
And I appreciate what theconstruct they're trying to say
pushing yourself.
No, it's like the crew thing,like my 100% is to get us there
in six minutes.
I got us in five minutes and 55seconds.
I did more than a hundredpercent.
Well, you just reset.
What a hundred percent is?
That's new love.
But but that concept, yes, thereare probably some times when I
might've been a little bit Idon't know too cute by half
(31:40):
about saying no, the IPO wasgreat, it just wasn't really the
accomplishment I wanted for thecompany.
I think we could have donebetter.
Or my last time I sold thecompany at the highest multiple
SaaS offer company I'd ever had.
That was a pretty good outcome.
Ceo should feel good, the wholeteam should feel good about
that.
But there were some things thatjust weren't quite optimized in
(32:01):
those periods and I think it'simportant to always tell
yourself that the grade youwould give yourself is lower
than the grade you'd give thecompany If you're the CEO or
general manager for yourbusiness, because telling people
I'm better than you are and I'mpulling us up, it's a hugely
odd message to send, and you andI have talked about this before
.
I think the leadership model Itry to think about is the
(32:22):
inverted pyramid.
Instead of a CEO at the top andthen all these people coming
down, I say the job of a leaderis to make everyone else on the
team successful.
So you should think about it asan inverted leadership model.
And the simple example is thatif you think about a company,
particularly if it gets to scale, even if you have a lot of
self-confidence, managed ego Ihave a lot of self-confidence.
The best I could be at acompany of scale let's say
(32:47):
there's a thousand employeesmaybe I could be as good as
three or four people.
I would have to just be in my Agame constantly.
Best case, I could be as goodas three or four actually, but
if I could make each of thosethousand people 10% better,
that's like hundreds of peopleyou've added of good work, so it
just swamps it, and so if youget your mindset to think like
that versus to think top, downones, so it just swamps it.
(33:09):
And so if you get your mindsetto think like that, versus to
think top down, I think it helpsyou to achieve.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I like the we, not me , concept over there.
Yeah, when you think about howleaders can accurately assess
where they fall on this scale,can they accurately self-assess,
or does it require someexternal measurements?
I'm the only one that canself-assess.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
You're the only one Awesome, sorry, sorry.
Of course, everyone can do yourown self-assessment.
In fact, doing aself-assessment is great.
More valuable for most of usprobably two is to ask the
people you work with, ask yourcolleagues, ask the team you
manage, ask your manager hey,how do you think about me?
In this format, and that wouldbe the fun exercise.
If you're doing it as amanagement team, I should do
this actually my next gig.
(33:54):
You should actually just askeveryone to do that assessment
for everyone on the team andthen you give people the sense
of here's what you said aboutyou and here's what the rest of
us said about you.
In each of these dimensions, Ithink it could be really
powerful way, and I'll tell youthat the hard part about it is
assessing.
You try to think aboutassessing people when you don't
have a lot of data.
(34:14):
Most people, if you work withcolleagues and you ask people oh
yeah, francesca, usually peoplehave a pretty similar view.
The hard part is like whenyou're interviewing someone and
you meet them and you say, hey,should we hire this person?
You're trying to assess howsuccessful they'll be.
It's much harder to figure outsome of these things.
There's some things that aretypically around the smarts and
skills.
People have degrees and things,or people have a track record
(34:37):
where they've deliveredtremendous performance.
So you see some areas where youcan get that.
The ego one, of course, is thehardest one, although the work
one is interesting because a lotof people tout how hard they
work and again they're justabout working hard.
It's about working smart.
Sometimes you can't completelyrock that.
You get a better sense fromother people, but the ego one is
the hardest one and the wayI'll give you my fun interview
(35:00):
question.
I love to ask people.
If it were you, mel, I wouldsay hey.
So, mel, if I had in the roomeveryone that you've been
working with for the last fiveyears, but you weren't there and
I said to them what's reallygreat about what Mel does?
What would they say?
And then you answered thatquestion and then, when I'm
(35:21):
finished, I said, hey, if Iasked that same group, what are
the things Mel should be workingon?
What are some areas where youknow Mel could be a little more
effective?
What would they say to that?
And of course, everyone lovesthe first question.
First of all, they'd say I'mthe smartest person.
They give you, as they should.
You're giving them a softballto say what's great about you,
yeah.
But the second question isinteresting because there's
(35:43):
basically three buckets ofanswers and some people are in
tune with issues that they'reworking on and they've gotten
feedback in the past.
Maybe they've made someimprovement, they know there's
more, and that's a reallythoughtful and great answer.
Another answer is I don't thinkthey have anything to say.
Look, that would be it.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Look at what we're saying.
Such a weird response.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Really they just have .
No, they actually just they'venever dawned on them that people
might not think they're perfectand they may be great but just
like.
That's an indication that weought to be probing further how
effective they are in teams ifit's never sort of done.
But the worst answer of all iswhat I call the faux answer.
And the faux answer is let metell you what they'd say Now.
(36:24):
First of all, they say I worktoo hard and carrying the load
of the whole team makes everyonefeel terrible because I do so
much more than everyone else,and that's a real problem for
people.
And they give two or threethings that you're like the most
ridiculous fake critique of alltime.
Then you actually realize thisperson's smart.
They probably have someawareness of things that they
(36:45):
could work on and be better, butthey're manipulative and
they're full of shit and they'rebasically going to say let me
tell you how I can smooth that.
That's actually indicative tome.
They could be skilled and theremight be certain roles where
that sort of ability tocommunicate and feel if they're
going to be an actor orsomething you might say that's a
great skill, to be able to haveright To improvise that answer.
But to be a colleague, that's aperson that's I'm going to be
(37:08):
wary, I'm going to be wary.
Can they really dedicatethemselves to a mission to work
with other people?
So that's a great question toask.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
I love that question, Someone who worked in talent
acquisition.
I think it's such a smartquestion to ask because I've
heard also those rehearsedanswers and you're like, oh OK,
yeah, I don't know about that.
What are some ways?
I guess, when you think aboutwarning signs Because I would
see that as a warning sign, justas you did but when someone's
in the job, what are some of thewarning signs that indicate ego
(37:39):
might be creeping up orinterfering with their
leadership effectiveness?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Core issue of where an ego is a problem is usually
not in someone's self-ledefforts around their
interactions with the team, andso I think where we see people
who are less effective teammembers and aren't able to the
company or the team first,that's where you see it and you
see it from their colleagues.
And what do I be careful about?
I'm a big believer in thingslike 360 feedback.
I'm not actually a hugebeliever in massive programmatic
(38:05):
you have your talent,background, sort of solutions
but I think the discipline ofgetting feedback in a thoughtful
, targeted way, as opposed tojust lots of forms that people
start filling out in a shittyway, is not, honestly, the key
to success.
It is in a thoughtful way,given the person and the
individual.
You as a manager do work, butgetting that feedback from folks
is great.
(38:26):
One thing to be careful aboutis just because other people are
unhappy with someone orcomplain about someone doesn't
mean they're the problem.
Are unhappy with someone orcomplain about someone doesn't
mean they're the problem.
A lot of times we ask someoneto carry some pretty heavy water
and drive some prettyaggressive performance and some
people might not like that andthey might say that's a bad
person.
A lot of times.
Let's get this at.
Docusign or CPL would saythey're not living the DocuSign
(38:48):
values.
They were very important.
We had this really strong setof values.
Docu DocSend's an amazingcompany and it's got some things
that are really strong.
By the way, we've had somechallenges last couple of years.
Some of those values haveallowed us, I think, to maintain
more success.
But it's really easy to pullthe values card and say I don't
like the way Mel's doing thatand so I'm going to say throw
(39:12):
the value set.
I'd be really careful that theperson that's willing to throw
that might not just be doingwell, they might be actually
saying the scrutiny andmanagement I'm getting is making
me uncomfortable.
And the person is trying togive me aggressive feedback and
somehow I missed the memo thatsaid feedback is a gift and
since I didn't think feedbackwas a gift, I think the person's
riding me really hard, butactually they're trying to make
(39:34):
me better.
So get feedback but make sureyou're triangulating and then
get observations yourself.
That's how I'd proposeattacking that role.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Okay, here's a question.
I feel like we have a lot ofrepresentations of ego in the
extreme.
I've seen very high up leaders,board members, ceos, it could
be even a manager.
I've seen individualcontributors and they're so
egocentric they're bordering onnarcissistic or maybe they are
or just a straight psycho.
We've all worked for them.
What do you like?
(40:03):
Some of those environmentsincent that, incent that
behavior, reward that behavior.
If you're in an organizationthat you feel like that's
happening, or you're walkinginto a culture where that day
that's happening, how do youstart to advocate for more of
this balance?
How do you operate as yourself?
(40:23):
If you're someone that isn'tthat way and likes to operate
with more of the balance, do yougo?
What do you do?
What's the play there?
Speaker 2 (40:29):
So, the first thing is why?
Why do you want to do whatyou're describing you want to do
?
Do you diagnose that there's aproblem in the company?
You see a performance challengehappening at some point, or we
have a nutrition problem becausewe have some people's behaviors
driving good people out.
I'd like to try to understandwhat the thing I'm trying to fix
is before I take my remedy.
But in general, I'm a bigbeliever in we motivate people
(40:50):
with incentive structures.
Some of those are financialincentive structures, some of
the praise, all sorts of levelsthat we have for incentives for
people.
And so if you're drivingbehavior and you're seeing it
not just one individual, butyou're seeing it more creep into
your business in a way that youthink it's not healthy, I'd
look at your incentive structure.
And so one of the phenomenas isyou might say we have a lot of
(41:10):
individual achievement awards.
Let's go to a team award and acompany could take a bonus
approach and say it'ssubjectively based on each
individual's performance.
Or you could say we're going tohave a total team outcome.
These are our top three goals,and if we achieve them we all
win in that award, and if wedon't, that's one lever.
But I think that kind ofconcept is thinking about what
(41:31):
you've put in place in yourorganization to drive the
behavior you're driving.
And the other one and this isone that I don't understand why
more people don't do it otherthan you know.
I have some conflict avoidancein my own nature, so I
understand it's a humanphenomenon.
We often avoid conflict,francesca, less you than the
rest of us.
You're so nice.
(41:52):
You spiked on that in a good way, but the answer is talk about
it.
I don't know.
We have this thing whereeveryone's in a closed room
secretly saying, oh, Billy'sdoing this and Susie's doing
this.
Hey, Billy, Susie, people thinkyou're being a jerk and I don't
know why.
That's not who I think you are.
So let's go show them that'swrong and what are the things
we're going to do together tohave it?
(42:13):
And I think, same thing Noteveryone accepts feedback as a
gift at the beginning, but youhave to explain to them.
You want to be successful here.
You're going to work with me inaddressing this feedback and I
think you would find most people90%-ish people if they know
that you care about them andthey know that you respect them,
they will take that feedbackand they will want to be better.
(42:36):
And there's some people whojust can't take it or see it
feels too personal and they haveto say it's not me, it's the
person that's complaining.
Understand that there's a cycle.
You go through that process.
Past that, I think most peoplecan say you know what?
I want to be better, I want tobe more effective, so I want to
work on it.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Yeah, Mel and I are.
We're writing a book and wejust came out of research and
that's the number one thingaround being feeling like you're
being respected and valued.
You cannot have feedback, trust, development, conversation,
anything without that.
That is the base, for you haveto have that mutual respect and
that mutual value, and I thinkit's something that we overlook
(43:13):
or we assume it's just thereyeah, right and we've never had
a goddamn conversation about it.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah, and I'll, yeah.
Um, and you have data.
And so what happens when youhave data?
You sometimes that ad is justnobody cares what you know until
they know that you care.
And so if you're there, you sayI got all this information,
make you better.
I'm like, are you trying tomake better?
If you're there and you say Igot all this information to make
you better, I'm like are youtrying to make better?
Are you setting me up forfailure?
Like when I understand thatyou're.
When you show up to tell mesomething, it's because you care
(43:40):
about me and you care about thesuccess of what we're building
together.
Yeah, then I really do want toknow, I want to understand, I
care about this feedback that'sgoing to make me better.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Yeah, I think starting with care is such a
huge thing.
Starting with care might beyour answer to my next question,
which is I'm dead.
It's a little crazy out therethese days, but it's a little
uncertain.
Yeah, hashtag tariffs, speakingof incentive structures as
opposed to sticks.
I am curious, though if you'rea leader, especially if you're a
C-level executive, and you havethe entire company on your
(44:13):
shoulders and you're trying tonavigate uncertainty it could be
now, it could be in the future,I don't care, but I am curious
about how you protect thatbalance of your ego as you're
going through that, because Ihave to believe that it might be
up and down, depending on whatsituation you're in, what win
you have, what punch you justtook in the phase.
(44:33):
How do you maintain and balancethat ego when you are just in a
blitzkrieg of bullshit?
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, two things.
One, it was harder for me toinsightfully answer that
question today because I'm at aplace where I've had so much
good fortune in my career andI've gotten a lot of boost.
That makes me feel good aboutmyself professionally, and not
that I don't have things I'mconstantly working on, for sure,
(45:00):
but I've been so fortunate thatI don't walk around with a chip
on my shoulder that I, you know, because of this crisis or some
other, I either need to provemyself.
I do feel like I need to provemyself every day, but I don't
feel like I'm coming from adefensive way of doing that and
proving myself.
So that makes it easier.
But if I go back a couple IPOsago, yeah, I think it's a real
challenge.
(45:20):
I think what you're describingis absolutely a challenge, and
the more that the market getscrazy your market, whatever that
is it's easy to feel like it'sunfair and lashing out and
attacking, and then sometimeseven the people that are close
to you.
You should be pulling together.
Some people are critical ofthem.
We're blaming.
You know the blame game.
If you just sold more, wewouldn't have this problem.
(45:42):
So it's your fault.
Sales is fault, which has been ahuge issue, by the way, in
enterprise software the lastcouple of years, the number of
companies, because I spent a lotof time talking to people about
running more software companiesthat say a company is great,
the only problem is our salesteam.
If we just had a new head ofsales, it's going to be great.
I'm like really, because everysoftware company is saying the
same thing.
Is it really just the salesleaders?
(46:02):
I don't think so, and so I dothink the hard thing when
everything is going crazy likethat is to just go back and say
what can I control and what canI not?
I can't control tariffs, Ican't control any of these
things.
I have to make decisions basedon the fact that some
externalities are there andthose external factors are
happening.
But I have to go back to ourteam and say I don't know what
(46:23):
the outcome is.
I just can't tell you what theoutcome is going to be, but I
can tell you what the inputs areand we're going our very best
at doing it in the way webelieve and at the quality that
we believe we can deliver forour customers, for employees,
whatever.
And let's just do that, becausethat's what we can control, and
I know it's the same thing likestock price is a phenomenon.
Companies go public and everyCEO gives the same speech, or
(46:45):
pretty much every CEO.
Guys, we can't control thestock price.
You shouldn't be spending timelooking at the stock price.
That response is early on.
I made this thing.
I said I'm not going to look atthe stock price except for
Friday afternoon every week.
I will not look at the stock Ifyou ask me about it.
I don't want to know.
I don't care.
I don't want to know what thestock price is.
What am I going to do on anygiven day?
How are you.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
This is a backward.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
This isn't that.
Leaving is a backward indicator.
We got to be focused on ourbusiness and getting people out
of that mindset.
Actually, one thing we didresponse is we had the IPO and
we didn't go ring the bell inNew York.
We did the IPO.
We came back to the office andwe were with the office and the
people and the day after IPO wesaid let's play Sales to do.
(47:28):
We got product to build.
We got customers to take careof.
We said what happened to gopublic yesterday?
It's fun and Our customers takecare of it.
What happened to go publicyesterday?
It was fun and we should allfeel good about it.
It was a nice accomplishment.
Back to work, because itdoesn't matter.
It doesn't matter in thecontext of what we have to do
every day.
I'm sure we care about it andcreate liquidity for people.
Lots of wonderful things thathappen.
I'm not against celebrating.
I'm all about celebrating.
Why do we have the opportunityto celebrate?
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Because, because we did these other things really
well for the last several years,so let's keep doing those
things.
Looking back at your youngerself and what you know now, what
do you wish you could tell youryounger self?
Speaker 2 (48:10):
I think probably a couple things.
One is I didn't have a lot ofpatience, I was in a hurry and I
think it's okay to be movingfast, but I think I would tell
myself as part of that smell theroses, enjoy the time, enjoy
the experiences you're having,and I sometimes skip things to
get on to the next, andsometimes I think that's a
(48:35):
mistake a lot of us make.
And life it's not the end, it'sthe journey and really making
sure you enjoy the journey.
And that probably is mostlythen around investing in
relationships, and notnecessarily just like your most
important relationship, but thepeople you know that are just
wonderful.
It could be colleagues, couldbe friends, any number of places
.
Really take advantage of thosepersonal relationships.
(48:56):
That is what life is fun to do.
So that'd be number one.
Number two, and there's noquestion, after the practice
speech I gave you on this topicearlier, I would tell myself to
chill, cool my jets a little bitabout then and realize that the
joy I was going to get in life,the real joy I have, comes from
seeing other people beingsuccessful, and I had to
(49:19):
accumulate a certain amount ofprofessional success and
personal success before I couldstart to do that.
So I missed a lot of years of alot of joy I could have had.
I think I had little snippetsof it.
I'm not a total jerk.
I did care about the people Iworked with but it was all in
the lens of they could besuccessful to make me more
successful.
And if I think I could havejust appreciated them more for
(49:39):
them and been better for them,starting that sooner I would get
a lot more joy.
So those would probably be thetwo things.
There's probably a lot ofthings I would tell myself, but
those would be the.
Those would be the.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
I like it.
The second one, especially whenyou think of giving their best
advice to emerging leaders,that's like a big takeaway that
they can start today.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
Rapid round questions .
You can answer these with oneword or a sentence, or however
long you want.
Sometimes these are our mostinteresting questions.
Are you ready to play?
I'm ready to play.
Okay, it is 2030.
What does work look like?
Work will be very similar towhat it is today in the
(50:24):
post-COVID world Very similar.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
All right, interesting.
No, I should elaborate.
I thought I was supposed to dorapid fire.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
Wait, now, I want to know the answer.
Wait, why do you think it'sgoing to be similar?
Why do you think it's going tobe similar?
Speaker 2 (50:35):
I think we've had a lot of transformational change
going into and coming out ofCOVID and I think the amount of
change in the way we work,assimilate is limited.
We're humans and we have ourpatterns and we have our trends.
So I think we've gotten to thisplace.
I don't think it's exactlyequilibrium, but in terms of our
people going to be in theoffice, are they going to be
(50:59):
remote, I think we're getting tothat zone of where we're going
to be.
I would add, I think artificialintelligence will change the
way we work, but I think it'sgoing to be less impact.
It'll be massively impactful onbusiness, less impactful on
people than I think we realize,because we're adaptable and the
things that get automated andthen we do things as humans that
can't be automated.
So I don't think that willchange as much as some people
are forecasting in the next fiveyears.
Are you an AI optimist?
I'm an optimist, for sure.
Yeah, I definitely.
(51:19):
I have my I call it terminatorawareness of what's happening.
I just don't see it.
I really don't.
Maybe it's my.
I'm an optimist.
I'm also.
My faith in humanity is prettyhigh.
Yeah, I'm pretty optimistic.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
That's good.
There's a lot of really awesomepossibility there.
I'm stoked for it.
I'm stoked for it.
Yeah, what music are youlistening to right now?
Speaker 2 (51:39):
I've been listening to Dave Matthews almost nonstop
the last 10 days.
Nothing wrong with a little DMV.
We had Dave come to an event.
Jane Goodall introduced him tome.
We did an event at DocuSign.
He is the funniest person I'veever been on stage with.
If he was an actor, I don'tknow if you know this before he
became a musician he was anactor.
(51:59):
He's been in a number of filmssince he's become famous, but he
is just the funniest.
He has the driest, quick-wittedsense of humor that I never
would have fully understood,even though I've been a fan for
years and then joined C&M onstage, so Dave was the bomb Best
session ever.
At any event, Get out.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
I always read him as like either really awkward to
talk to or making like reallyuncomfortable jokes period.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yeah, I got the impression.
He seems like a good call.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
So he roasted me in front.
He had the DocuSign employeebase and customers and he was
constantly making fun of me in away that the docuside employee
based and customers and he wasconstantly making fun of me in a
way that, of course, thataudience love oh sure so you
know he knew his audience.
Um, yeah, he's a musical genius.
So you're right, sometimesthere's oddities with people who
are creative geniuses.
Uh, there's some of thatawkwardness.
He's so genuine.
I'll just say one littlesnippet.
(52:49):
We should move past davematthews, but he moved to
seattle from charlottesvillewhere they really got going.
So he lives in in the seattlearea and up until this is about
five years ago, he just movedout of a one bathroom house with
his three children and his wifeand he was just like, yeah, and
driving his 1970 somethingvolvo, he's just a guy, that's
(53:12):
like.
I don't have any heirs.
He's just the same person thatI think he wanted to be ever
since he was probably 20 orsomething like that.
Yeah, he's a treasure.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
See that story restores my faith in humanity.
Honestly Like that's it.
Okay, what are you reading?
What are you reading?
Speaker 2 (53:29):
So I just finished reading something I half read.
It was embarrassing Principlesby Ray Dalio, which is a tome of
a big book.
But the exciting thing that Ijust started reading again and I
think I read it before.
But I'm embarrassed.
I can remember his Profiles inCourage.
It was a Pulitzer Prize winning, jfk wrote it and it's one of
(53:50):
those books that everyone knowsabout, but then you just maybe
never read.
And anyway, jillian got it forme and I saw it at a bookstore.
He's a bookstore and I'mreading it and he's a gifted
writer, in addition to beingsuch a special politician.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
It's also interesting to go back, even if you have
read something way back, to goback and reread it.
All right, here's my lastquestion for you.
What piece of advice would yougive someone?
What's your best piece ofadvice for them?
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Oh, if it's mildly professional advice I suppose
there's other realms, but Iguess this would fit more
broadly is in life the key is tofind I used to be a consultant,
so I like to do everything intwo by two matrices.
It is to find the combinationof the things that you're good
at and the things you like doingand get into that upper right
corner.
And I think the biggest thingthat people sometimes forget is
(54:37):
the things you like, and I thinkwe're naturally drawn to.
We get positive feedback on thethings we're good at, but
finding that intersection of thethings you really love doing,
that's the thing that you needto focus on.
Speaker 1 (54:48):
It makes it really enjoyable, right?
I look forward to it.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Cool, love it.
We appreciate you being with ustoday.
Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (54:53):
Me as well.
I really enjoyed it.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
This episode was produced, edited and all things
by us myself, mel Plett andFrancesca Ranieri.
Our music is by Pink Zebra andif you loved this conversation
and you want to contribute yourthoughts with us, please do.
You can visit us atyourworkfriendscom, but you can
(55:20):
also join us over on LinkedIn.
We have a LinkedIn communitypage and we have the TikToks and
Instagrams, so please join usin the socials.
And if you like this and you'vebenefited from this episode and
you think someone else canbenefit from this episode,
please rate and subscribe.
We'd really appreciate it.
That helps keep us going.
(55:41):
Take care, friends.
Bye, friends.
Thank you.
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