00:00:00

This was so important in my career. When I had my first child, I thought I was going to quit because I just couldn't. I couldn't figure out the childcare and I was commuting for the city and like, it was just too much. And the HR manager, when I called up to say, I can't do it, I'm out, she said, what do you need? What do you need? Like, just open ended question.

00:00:25

Hello and welcome to The Work-Life Equation podcast. I'm Priya.

00:00:29

And I'm Paul. Today we're thrilled to welcome two powerhouse guests, Laurie Talber Marcus and Angelique Bellmer Krems, two of the founding members of the Band of Sisters.

00:00:41

With decades of experience in C suites and boardrooms, Lori and Angelique are experts in leadership, workplace culture, and what it means to build companies where everyone thrives.

00:00:52

Today we're going to dig into how inclusive culture cultures drive better business outcomes and how the companies that support their people win every time.

00:01:02

So we have this unique opportunity of interviewing both of you. So just feel free to jump in while we're pointing questions at one of you. We'd love to hear from both of you at any given point in time. Laurie, you've worn many hats in your career, from being an executive in several roles to board leadership. What personal moments shaped your drive to champion inclusive cultures?

00:01:26

Yeah, so I think I have always been motivated as. I mean, I loved what I did for a living. I was in consumer products marketing and general management forever. But I was always motivated by building and leading teams and being the kind of leader that people wanted to follow, creating great cultures. I mean, I felt it all along the way. And then what happened was when I got to be the most senior in my career, when I got to be a C suite executive, you know, sort of that job that you wait your whole career to get there and then you realize, oh my gosh, I don't really care about what the email open rates were of the email that we sent on Tuesday, and I don't care how many. I'm not really that riveted by how many place cash coupons we redeemed in the Paramus park store versus a different store, rewriting the story arc of the Strat plan for the 95th time or whatever. And what I realized was the parts of my job that I really loved, I wanted to figure out how to do that as my full time job. So since about 2015, 2016, I've been doing board work, executive coaching, and then of course, the band of Sisters when We wrote our book in 2022, so I love that I get to spend my time doing the things that I'm the most passionate about.

00:02:45

Angelique, One of the things you talk about is performance with purpose. Maybe you could start off by defining what that means and then share how that idea guided your own career and how it shows up in the work that you do as part of the band of sisters.

00:03:03

I love talking about performance with purpose because it was a real pivotal idea that came in front of me about 10 years into my career at PepsiCo. So this is when Indra Nooyi took over as CEO and chairman of PepsiCo, and she was the first one to talk about performance with purpose. And it was an idea that I had never heard before. This idea that it wasn't just business results, that there were other factors and really the consideration of other stakeholders, not just shareholders. And I would say it was an idea that was a little ahead of its time at the time that it came out, because, you know, this was new language. It was. It was new way of thinking. And ever since that moment, though, I was obsessed with this idea of, like, intersecting purpose with business, and not just the company's purpose, but personal purpose. And do I feel like my purpose connects with what this company is trying to do? And actually, years later, when I left PepsiCo and went to BlackRock, it was something that was center to what BlackRock was talking about, which was the evolution of capitalism from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism, and what it meant to have purpose at the core. One thread, though, that I saw throughout this whole journey was it's really hard to do, to put purpose and performance next to each other on equal footing, because performance always wins, often wins. And it's really hard to make business decisions anchored. Anchored in purpose. But I've been on a quest ever since, and it's something that makes me very fulfilled with the band of sisters, that we can actually put our purpose out there and make decisions on it.

00:04:48

And, Anthony, just to build on one thing that you said, I think part of the reason it's so hard is because the metrics around performance are there every hour, every day, every week, every quarterly earnings call around performance. But the purpose tends to be a little bit longer, and so you have to invest in it for the future. You could argue you also have to invest in capital and other things around your business. But I feel like part of the reason it's so hard is because when business results get challenged, it can be one of the first things to just.

00:05:22

Get caught quick, follow up to that. You talked about PepsiCo, you talked about BlackRock shifting from shareholder to stakeholder capitalism. But can you give another example since then, maybe one that's less well known, of where this idea of performance with purpose has gained traction and really helped the corporate culture in that company?

00:05:47

Well, I think you could look at any B corporation actually and say that's an example where they're making it literally in the bylaws of the company to make their impact part of what they're measured on. So I think that that's, it's fascinating because people are quick to judge, like that's not what business is for. And many other people would say, why not? Why is that not what we can define what the goal should be? And I think the, the business roundtable back in 2019 was pretty famous for you know, bringing CEOs around a table going, what are we here for? Like, what are we trying to do? And could it be a bigger purpose? Why shouldn't it be to make all stakeholders benefit? We can define it.

00:06:40

We're very fortunate to be in an industry where I think purpose and performance can come together. Any services, healthcare, childcare, businesses, these tend to be. One of my favorite books with my boys has been ikegai, that whole notion of finding that confluence of what are you good at, what pays you money, what serves a purpose and has an impact. Right. So when you find that, I think you find both internal happiness, but as a business, how cool would it be if you could find those four elements together? But you both have spoken about corporate cultures and how it's difficult. The quarter on quarter norm certainly is a tough one to sort of say these are long term goals. How do you keep up with the short term goals? There have been changes over the years. What are examples of things that have changed positively, but what are things that frustrate you about outdated norms that are still there that you wish would change quickly?

00:07:37

So we wrote a whole book about and interviewed hundreds and hundreds of women.

00:07:45

About micro moments or microaggressions or little things that, that happen in the workplace that you know, all. All from a place of good intentions. You know, the whole thing about unconscious bias is it's unconscious. Right. People don't realize that they're doing it, but it's little things like, you know, calling a woman a girl in the workplace or asking women to take the notes or making bad assumptions about not offering a woman a promotion because, oh, I'm sure she wouldn't relocate. She's married to a banker in New York, she would never take a job in Chicago, right? So we wrote a book. There's probably, you know, 25 to 50 of these little micro moments. And side note, we give, you know, very practical advice for people of all genders, for women, for allies, for bosses of how to deal with that. But to answer your question specifically, I would say one of the things that's positive is I think some of the blatant things don't exist as much anymore. Right? So you're not, you're probably not asking a senior vice president who's a woman at work, hey, sweetie, can you go make the coffee? Right, like, you're probably not getting some of that stuff. Like when we saw. When you go back, if you ever go back and watch Madman Mad Men with Jon Hamm, you'll be like, this stuff was very true to life. So I think some of the big blatant stuff has gotten better. I think some of the things that are still there. And we were, I guess, kind of dumbfounded when we did the research. We were hoping that the things that we had experienced growing up in the workplace in the, you know, the 90s, the early aughts, we hope to find people saying, nope, those don't exist anymore. Not sure what you're talking about. And yet what we found is they still exist. So the blatant stuff probably has gone down. A lot of the small stuff still exists. And then I'll just add one other thing is I feel like in this whole return to office hybrid work, all the discussion around that, which I'm happy to chat about, we hear one of my least favorite expressions, which is we want to go back to Feel like any sentence that starts that way, you're like, nope, nope, nope, nope. Whatever you're going to say next, I actually don't want to hear. Or you know, this is how we used to do it, or we did it this way, therefore that's how it needs to be done. So again, I think big blatant things probably have gone down, not totally eliminated a lot of little subtle moments of unconscious bias. We call them micro moments. Some people call them microaggressions. But I think one that I see more and more, again, is this language around we used to. Or we need to go back to.

00:10:28

I'd love to pick up the whole return to office aspect because return. Go back to the way we used to do things. I mean, again, we made up these things. We made up that the idea is a five day work week and that there's an office and you Go, go to. And there's desks. And like, this was, this was all made up stuff that we can make up differently if it could be made up to work better for people. So I feel like it's just a failure of imagination to think that this is the only way that anything can be, can be organized. And just a quick example of a return to office concept that really struck me. And this wasn't even Covid related, but I was at a company where people who were out on maternity leave were still going through the promotion process. Like, like, like it didn't, you know, and in a company before that, it was unheard of. Like, you know, oh, it can't be done, you know, and here this company had figured out a process to make it. You wouldn't lose any time, you know, going through the promotion process out on maternity leave. And it worked beautifully. And I was like, ah, so it is possible it was just a failure imagination, that it was different before. So I feel like a lot of these things just need to be investigated for how else could we do that.
00:11:48

You know, I just want to stay on this topic for a second longer because you said, Angelique, sort of a failure of imagination. And Laurie, what you were saying about, you know, back to. It's, you know, it's sort of Behavioral Finance 101 that we anchor on things. We have confirmation bias. It's something that we understood. Like in 2019, you went to the office every single day, which of course, even in 2019 wasn't true. And so now when you have these certain mandates, it's actually different than it was in 2019. How do you. And this will kind of dovetail into what we're going to talk about throughout the podcast. But when the six of you get together or have your brain, when you go into a company, how do you help them reimagine what the workplace should be like now? Because, let's be fair, other big changes like getting rid of landlines and replacing them with cell phones, that happened really slowly. This is something that was sort of fermenting under the surface. And then it happened very quickly when everybody was sent home to work, figured out they could do it. But managers haven't quite caught up. So if they're going to really put their people first and really try to build, how do you help them get up to speed and say, look, this is. Here are some examples of ways you could do this better for the benefit of the people that work for you.

00:13:02

Well, I think Lori started saying this already, so I'M going to copy her. But it's this idea of taking things that were unconscious and making them conscious. When you consciously look at a process, a system, a method, whatever, and investigate, like, how is this working for everyone? Consciously think about it, you will come up with other, other ways that it could happen. I mean, I know startup companies, for example, I know a startup company that was always fully remote. This was before COVID They worked perfectly well. They had figured it all out and wasn't because they, you know, they were, you know, they probably had some other constraint that they were trying to solve for, but because they were thinking consciously about how do we make the remote work work, it was successful. So conscious is the first emphasis I would put.

00:13:59

So I want to build in two areas. I feel like this is like I'm going to compliment what Angelique said, then she'll compliment what I said. So you all talked about this notion of failure of imagination, and I think that is the theme for everything. So can you imagine? I mean, Angelique and I both grew up in consumer products, first in marketing. And so can you imagine there's some businesses here and you're just like, no, we can't solve it. We just can't figure out how to do that. We're not going to have a brainstorming session. We're not going to go off site and spend days doing this. It's like, no, it's hard. Like, we just can't do it. I mean, and I feel like sometimes as it relates to people and culture issues, everyone's very quick to sort of throw up their hands and just say, like, oh, it can't be done. Versus if somebody said, you were in an off site, you were in a brainstorming session, you were with your agency and they said, you know, don't leave the room. Here's plenty of M&Ms. And popcorn. Like, don't leave the room, solve it. And so it's almost like we pretend we have like a business brain and then there's like this people brain. And the reality of it is like, no, it's the same clever brain, like, use your imagination that you used to think of the supply chain solutions that happened during COVID I mean, people moving mountains, literally. So think of all the things that people do with technology. And yet it's almost like, oh, we can't use that clever brain to solve people and culture and flexibility issues. So I guess the first thing I would say is, I think if I were doing a word word cloud, I would say, failure of imagination is Such a big theme for me and something that just fatigues me when I think, when I hear it. The second thing, I want to build on what Angelique said about how do we specifically help companies. As Angelique said, part of it is you recognize bias. So a big thing that I talk about is everybody has bias, right? Bias exists for a reason. I'm not an anthropologist, but it exists for all kinds of, like, physiological and anthropological reasons. Right. The shorthand of, like, see a tiger, don't run over and say hello. Right? So it's a shorthand that. That allows us to go through life with some efficiency. So having bias doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means you're a person who breathes and lives. And interestingly, we've spent a lot of time talking about this notion of like a learning mindset. Understand that there is bias and then name it. You know, sort of recognize it, name it, and then figure out what you can do as a person who's experiencing it as a potential ally, as a leader of any gender, you know, in the meeting, after the meeting, before the next meeting. Right. There's a lot of different things you could do. I want to add one thing. Angelique and I. This is kind of a paid political announcement for another company. Angelique and I both sat in on our webinar last week that the Neuro Leadership Institute did, and their founder, David Rock, who's a brilliant man, he was talking about their. A model that they have around bias called the SEEDS model. And Paul, you touched on some of it unknowingly, what they were talking about. So you have similarity bias, expedience bias, experience bias, distance bias, safety bias. All the things that we probably all think about without having named it as cleverly as NLI did. But what they talk about is they go a step further. We've always said, recognize that everyone has bias, name it, and then kind of figure out what you can do about it and try and sort of, you know, experience less of it every day and realize what you can do. They actually take it three steps further. And they say as a person, it's almost impossible to tamp down your own level of bias. And you need to create sort of systems and processes and kind of team language that allows the team overall to kind of lessen the bias. And so I thought that was kind of a fascinating way of thinking about this, about this topic.

00:18:05

Okay, I have to jump in on this. I'm so sorry. But we just peeked out on this, on this webinar, for sure. But they gave such a specific example that really made it come to life for me, which is this idea of investigating bias and putting in systems to address it. The business case for it can be thought of as how do we make better decisions if there's bias in the decisions, we can make worse business decisions. And they use this example of a movie studio looking back at what projects had gotten greenlit and which ones they had missed that would have been good if they had greenlit them. And I feel like it removes a lot of the emotion that sometimes come up when you talk about bias. It feels like it's a soft thing that doesn't really have business impact. When you talk about making better decisions and you could look back at the projects that you've greenlit and not greenlit and said, was there bias in the process that made us miss those things or over assume on others? That just feels like such an obvious way to say this is worth it.

00:19:13

Yeah. And it's like looking back and being almost nonjudgmental. And it's amazing how you can learn from your failures. But it seems like also the perfect place for AI hallucinations and a positive impact of AI hallucinations, which is, AI does tend to think outside of the box. And as humans we have to park our rational brain and think about it. But the notion of our biases coming in the way and also reimagining, what is the art of the possible? One of the things Indra Nui, when she was on the podcast had said, just like she spoke about performing with purpose, one of the things she spoke about was designing life around work. Right. So, you know, she said that the 9 to 5 work construct was an artificial one, which was created during the industrial era. And if school finishes at 3, why would you not like land up, pick up your kids, switch off for two hours, go back to work? And is there an opportunity for us to reimagine and, and redesign work around life? What kind of advice would you give companies around, specifically caregiving supports, mental health resources? Just given today, people have experienced the flexibility, people have experienced the positive of being away and actually splitting a day into like four two hour chunks. What advice would you give to employers as they are thinking about this and what would be easy steps for them to lean into, which doesn't force the two hour or the two day workshop around. How do we do this and how do we convince everyone to get there?

00:20:59

I'll jump in. I mean, one of the things that I would say is when I hear people talking about this topic, it reminds me a little bit of back in the day. Again, as I said, we both grew up doing consumer marketing, consumer research. So when you think about when you do consumer research, have you ever heard of like, top box, top two box, top two, box, one scale, five being, you know, the best for good. And early in my career, I feel like we used to spend a lot of time trying to get the ones to the twos or the twos to the three. And there's no money there. I mean, all the money is trying to get the threes to the fours, and then the real money is getting the fours to the five, right? So figure out people that are predisposed, they like your product, how do you get them to buy, you know, one more, two more whatever, versus people that really aren't inclined to like it to try and come along. I feel like that analogy sometimes I feel like I'm watching like a, this car crash in slow motion. When people talk about, like the workplace return to office flexibility benefits, they spend all their time talking about the people that are trying to take advantage, right? Which, by the way, those people were taking advantage when they were in the office five days, right? And so part of it is think about your fours and what, what would it look like if you could get more loyalty, another year of service, more out of those people, right? So start with like your best, your brightest, your most engaged. If they're a three, what would it take to get them to be a 4? And you combine rather than like, everyone focuses on the ones, the ones that are like, oh, these people, when they work from home, they're going to the gym for two hours in the middle of the day, they're not working, they're wasting two hours a day when they're in the office. I don't know why people think you can't waste time just because you're in the office.

00:22:42

So what about if you started the other way? Start at the top and figure out how to get the best to be even better. So I would love all the conversations to go there. Then I feel like the answer's right themselves, which is, oh, if that person, they want to work X number of days a week from home or, you know, they want, you know, some sort of flex time or whatever it is. The reality of it is those people are not looking to take advantage. They're looking to figure out how they can do a great job and manage their life. And I guess two other quick things I would say. One is the other thing that we do is we tend to act like when people need a little flexibility in their life, that that's going to go on for 40 years. And the reality of it is, I mean, I'm going to cry as a mother of like two grown children. Empty. Nestor is it's such a short amount of time in your life when you need flexibility because you have small kids. And you know, sadly it's also a small part in your life when your parents are elderly and you probably need a little flexibility for that. You know, I worked, you know, I've been working for 40 plus years since I graduated from college. And I think about there were these little chunks again when my kids were small and we were having, having daycare issues, like really like an intense need for flexibility. And then like when my mom was elderly and at a moment's notice, like I needed to be able to leave and go to Hackensack Hospital. The reality of it is in a 40 year career that was such a short amount of time and when people show you care and grace and flexibility, it's unbelievable what it will buy in terms of, I was going to say consumer loyalty, but it's employee, employee loyalty.

00:24:41

Lori probably knows that, what story I'm going to tell. But this was so important in my career. When I had my first child, I thought I was going to quit because I just couldn't, I couldn't figure out the child care and I was commuting for the city and like it was just too much. And the HR manager, when I called up to say I can't do it, I'm, I'm, I'm out, she said, what do you need? What do you need? Like just open ended question. And like I didn't even think to ask, you know, like unless she had said that, I wouldn't have asked. But since she said that, I was like, well, you know, I have to be remote like a couple days a week. And this was back, you know, 2006, so there was no, you know, zoom and you know, all that stuff to make remote work even possible. But she figured it out and I worked remotely for what turned into three years, two children, three years, which like in the scheme of things is a drop in the bucket. Like, but many HR managers would have been like, that's ridiculous. We don't do that. That's not our policy, you know. But because of that grace that they showed me at PepsiCo, I was, I worked there another decade after that and was so loyal for what they had done at the time that I needed it.

00:25:56

Right. Can I just build on that? I have a similar story. So back in 2008, 2008, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And I had just started like two days before a brand new job at PepsiCo. So I'd moved department, started a brand new job, had two brand new bosses. One I knew well, the other one I did not know at all. And you know, Friday afternoon I get my biopsy results. I talked to one of, one of, I was, of course it was a global, you know, matrix organization. So of course I had two bosses. And so I talked to one of them over the weekend and literally same four words, what do you need? He said, whatever you need. And it wasn't like quoting policy to me and you can go on short term disability. But he was just like, whatever you need. He's like, like you're a great employee. Whatever you need, we will make it happen. Second guy I speak to I think was Labor Day weekends. I spoke to him on Tuesday morning and he literally did not know nearly as well. And he said two things. Again, same thing, whatever you need. And then he said words. I think I have put them in the book, I'll never forget them. And he's not like a warm, squishy person. He said, I believe Lori the same like fight and vim and vigor that you used to fight the cola wars all these years. I know it's kind of corny. He said you're going to use that to sort of, you know, like fight for your own health. And he just really stuck with me. But my point is no one quoted policy. Nobody talked about short term disability, whatever. So over the next year and a half where I had six surgeries and five months of chemotherapy, whenever I wasn't like home taking anti nausea pills or recovering from surgery, I was working. And part of it was, it was selfish on my part because it made me feel normal at a time where I felt anything but normal. But I was so loyal to the company. I had been thinking that whole summer before I was diagnosed, I'd been thinking about leaving. There were a couple of things that weren't great. And then basically I just was so grateful to the company for showing me this flexibility that I worked as much as a person could work. And then again I stayed for another three years and you know, I hope people would say contributed greatly during that time. So I think that people tend to look at the cost of doing this, the cost of doing this. What they don't always think about Is what's the opposite of that, of what's the reward when you have people that are sort of, you know, fully acclimated, you know, understand the business, understand the culture, understand the company are leading teams. When you can again get more loyalty out of those people, it's worth more than I think you could measure.

00:28:33

We've talked about this a couple times on this series from stories from people like you who've had the luck of a great manager today, as opposed to 10, 15 years ago. Most any company is going to say we're people first. Nobody would come out and say the bottom line is first, but we're people fourth. And maybe next year we're going to move to people third.

00:28:56

Top 10 people are in our top 10 for now, they wouldn't say that. But when you think you talked about the cost, the opposite. But what is actually the cost to the company for not realizing the importance of giving people grace and support during a healthcare crisis? Realizing, as you both said, that that moment of childcare and elder care, that moment of extreme stress is ultimately finite. What are examples of companies who've paid a heavy cost or what is that cost when they don't really stand up when they say people first, when they don't actually have policies or managers who allow the company to actually put the people first?

00:29:42

It's funny, I think about. I won't name any specific companies that haven't done it well, but I think about kind of on the margins, which is everybody has a choice. Like everybody at some point decides to, you know, sign off for the evening and not return one more email or not return, you know, not return one more call or, you know, do one more edit of something, you know, to make it a little bit better to, you know, not volunteer, not help somebody. Like, everyone makes a choice, at what point you do that. And I think, you know, what we were talking about before is when you have people's loyalty, it's not just that they say stay longer. They stay with an intensity to the work and to the other people around them. And I think when you don't do those things, what happens is, and you hear it all the time, like somebody gets a call and they're going to get paid. And I'm not talking about someone that's getting paid $22,000 a year, where if you got $3,000 more, that would be a huge amount. But you see people who are just like, oh, this company will, you know, I got a call from so and so different company, a recruiter, whatever, and it's just like, I have no loyalty to this company, so I'll just jump. And so I think that the sort of the opposite of the loyalty and engagement that we were talking about is people have no loyalty back to the company, and anybody can offer them, you know, a couple thousand dollars here or there, a little higher bonus, a little bit more of this, and. And people will just jump. So I guess part of the way I look at it is I feel like, especially people of my generation, we love to talk about, like, the millennials and the, you know, and the young kids, you know, how they have, like, no loyalty. And. And maybe that's true, and maybe times have changed that it's okay to leave every 18 months or whatever, but I always ask people, like, just hold up a mirror and look at it the other way, which is what we as executives, as senior executives in company, like, in companies, what are we not doing that maybe would make people want is one longer. Right. So rather than just blame it on the kids, think about what it would take to actually have people want to stay. You can't make people do anything. But what if they wanted to stay? What if they felt like. I mean, in our case, I feel like we're a walking advertisement for friends at work and the power of having friends at work. And so what if. And this is how I felt when I worked at Pepsi, what if at any point, the smartest people I knew in the world were sitting around the conference room with me? What if my best friends in the world were sitting in meetings with me? What if a company that had shown me incredible grace at times where I needed it, what if that were the company? Right. I always knew I could get paid working, you know, taking a job, working someplace else. But what if. What if. What if. What if that were true today versus just if people feel like the company treats them in a very transactional way, they're going to treat the company in a very transactional way?

00:32:48

Yeah, you're triggering some. Some thoughts for me too, Lori. Just like that feeling that you have when you're at a place where you love being there, you love the people you're with. You know, like. Like how that manifests in your work. And I'm sure it's measurable, like how much more brain time you spend thinking about things and connecting with people and making things happen because of the environment that's been created. And I remember hearing about a study that McKinsey did a bunch of years ago. It was related to the Cannes Festival of Creativity. And I think they were trying to make the business case for why these creative accolades mattered. You know, like what, you know, was it just all fluff or, you know, and what they were able to prove was that the conditions of creative success were actually the same as the conditions of business success. And so the things that are required to make people think boldly and differently and innovatively also are the things that make a company successful. So investing in what makes the environment productive and a place that you want to be and love to be, you can measure that in terms of innovation output also. I mean, obviously there's studies that do that, but I think that that's. There was. There was actually an exercise that I heard there were. And this might have been a Pepsi story, but don't quote me, but there were two teams working on.

00:34:15

Is it a good story?

00:34:18

There's a good lesson. Yes. Unknown, unnamed time, but there were two teams working on innovation and one was sort of the A team and the other was the B team. And this A team, you know, the best players, they were given a ton of like senior level attention, you know, and they were supposed to do their work with all this, like, glare on them, you know, in the meantime, the B team was off, like doing their own thing, like, you know, unencumbered by oversight.

00:34:49

And tell the truth, they were at the gym for two hours, weren't they? Tell the truth.

00:34:53

Let's say they were. But at the end of the day, they had the better ideas. They had the ideas that actually launched was successful because like, so then you say, okay, so it's not even like the best people that always make the best outcome. It's the best conditions. So like making those, creating those conditions for creative, you know, or business success is the goal. And the cost of not doing that is not being innovative. Not having the best ideas, not having the breakthrough ideas goes back to the bottom line.

00:35:27

It's also a great reminder that the more senior you get, you feel like the more time you spend on something is going to make it better.

00:35:36

It's not going to make it better.

00:35:37

Get out of the way.

00:35:39

Just get out of the way and let smart people do their own thing.

00:35:42

Exactly.

00:35:44

Or like me, do a podcast so people can actually get some work done. It's a really interesting point. One of the. So we, at least personally I have this theory that if you can reduce cognitive load, right? Especially caregiving is such high cognitive load. You're just sort of balancing multiple things you're thinking about like food, scheduling, camps, all of that while you're Thinking about getting something done at work. So what is, you know, while we talk about flexibility as this really important mantra, how important are actual supports? How do you create scaffolding around people? And have you seen that? And this is more. What is. Is it an and strategy? Is it an or is it an extension? I would really love your perspective just given your broad range of rules.

00:36:33

Yeah, I think it's an and I don't know if I've told Paul this story before. When I first went back to work after my older daughter was born and I worked part time for a year, which again, sort of Kudos to PepsiCo. They didn't really have a formal program. But I, like many first time moms was like, how could I do this? How could I leave this little baby for five days a week? I just couldn't put it together in my head. And they were very flexible. And I worked part time for a year and at the end of the year, it's not the point of the story. I came to my own decision that I was ready to come back full time, that I wanted to lean into my career. I knew that was the inevitability. And I felt like I was kind of, I was neither fish nor foul. I didn't feel great when I was home. I didn't felt like I was kind of sidelined and quote, unquote, mommy tracked at work. But I came to that on my own. I don't know what I would have done if they had made me make that decision, you know, when my daughter was 12 weeks old. But I remember there were when I was looking for a nanny and I knew I would have to travel, work long hours. So we had in home care, which is definitely not a flexibility that everybody has. And at the time the company didn't have the kind of services like Bright Horizons offers where they, you know, they help you with things like this, they offer services that would help you vet nannies and things like that. We were doing it all on our own. But I remember I was down to two different. There were kind of two finalists in my search for a nanny. And just to show how long ago this is, my daughter's almost 31. One was $6 an hour and one was $9 an hour. And sign on now. But for in home live out care, which is the most expensive care you can have, live out in home, right? It's the most expensive. And, and I kind of the, the woman who we ended up hiring, she was, she was the more expensive one. And I remember talking to my Mother. And my mother wasn't this like sage woman who gave great advice or whatever. But I was talking this out with her and she just said she was like pay, pay the for the more expensive one. And she was like, trust your instincts on it. And this woman was, she was 52, she had raised two amazing grown children, had just taken early retirement from a company. And I just felt like she was the right choice. But I was also a brand manager. And so I always joke that I had like executive VP level child care, but I had brand manager salary. And it was one of like the few times that my mother said it and I was just like, you're right. And it wasn't like she, they didn't have any money. It's not like they were saying we'll.

00:39:17

Help you or whatever.

00:39:18

But she was just like, you'll grow into it. And eventually you know you well by the time you get to be an executive vice president, you don't need childcare anymore. Your kids are grown, but eventually you grow into it. And so I think you asked the question of is it an. And I do think you have to scaffold. I'm amazing at people that live in multimillion dollar houses and cheap out on their child care. Like don't cheap out on your child care, it's your children. So I think to the extent that you have this ecosystem where the company can help you in whatever they can help you with, whether it's kind of advisory we had in the later years at Pepsi, I think we didn't have on site child care when I was there, but they did afford us. It wasn't free, but they had a backup child care service for when your kid was sick or your child caregiver was sick. And again, if you have like a strap plan meeting and your nanny is sick, you're not going to bring your kid to the strat plan meeting. I mean, so that was incredibly helpful. And I think if I were to cost these things out, they're probably not very expensive for the company to do, but again or for company to fuel that. But at a time in your life where you need them, they can be so helpful. So I guess what I would say is it's a combination of what the company can do. And then for me I would say take less ones, take one less vacation, wait a year to buy your lake house or whatever. Like don't cheap out on the things that matter as it relates to child care, elder care and other types of family care.

00:40:56

I think if I were to give advice to the companies on like, benefits that they could provide. I would encourage the emphasis on mental health resources as well as physical health. And the thing that strikes me as a very obvious analogy is in sports, athletes get as much mental coaching as physical coaching. Like, it's well known that the psychology of sports really has an effect on performance and yet somehow not as well known that it would matter in the workplace. And I remember thinking that, you know, just even having executive coaching seemed like such a luxury. You know, either the top, top performers or the real problems, like they're the ones that got executive coach. But gosh, what, what if more people had executive coaches? I bet the performance of the whole company would be better. So I, I would figure out, like, if I could go back in time and spend my own money on it, I would, knowing what I know now. But that's a benefit. Mental health and executive coaching, these stories have been great.

00:42:04

You have so much wisdom here. You're talking both from the company level and also the senior executive level of somebody who rose up. But if you're a newer working mom, working dad, if you're a caregiver and you're listening to all of this now, but you're thinking, man, I don't really feel seen at work or I don't know how to even, does my company even have these benefits? Or can I ask? Or Angelique, you're a thing where you're about to quit and it was that HR manager who sort of pulls you back. What advice would you give to that younger mom or dad or brand new caregiver of an elderly parent? What advice would you give them so that they feel more seen at work, so they feel like they can at least ask for the resources or support that, that they need from the company that they work for?

00:42:56

Well, you know, I'm going to start with that famous saying that you, you join a company and you leave a manager. You know, like, it's, it's often the issues you have with your manager that make you go, I'm out of here. You know, like, I can't, you know, and you think that the manager is the one that has to see you and you have to be seen by the manager as opposed to like ask for things. The advice I would give is to look beyond the manager. Like, if you're feeling stuck or unseen by, by your company, which is probably your manager, like, look around you. It's something that I, again, if I could go back in time, I would have done more of like, I learned it like late and Slowly, but I'm a slow learner, I guess. But like, talk to your peers. Talk to the people you admire. Talk to the leaders who are not your manager that, you know, you could learn something. I feel like I came to this, it's actually how I came to the band of sisters is I was feeling stuck post Pepsi years later, you know, thinking about a leadership choice that I had to make. And I was like, I wish I could go talk to those leaders that I loved back at Pepsi, like Laurie Marcus and C. Nicholson. I literally reached out to Lori and Cee and I was like, hey, do you remember me? I'd love to talk to you about something. And they were like, of course, you know, and just like, I thought I was bothering them, you know, like, oh, would you do me a favor? But like, it's, it isn't a bother. Like, I think these relationships that we collect at work are, are the treasures. And it goes both ways. You know, reverse mentorship as well as mentorship and peer. Peer mentorship. Like, we just have to expand the thinking of mentors, I think.

00:44:38

Well, the. And the thing I would add to that, by the way, it was not a bother. The thing that I would add to that is there is nothing that people like to do more than talk about themselves. So in this process where you go out and you talk to people and you ask them questions about their life and their experience, everybody likes to do it. The other thing is the language of work. Like, work is built on trust in relationships. So in the process of doing this, right, you're not like out like showcasing your work or whatever, but somebody will also ask you if you're working at a company, they'll say like, oh, what are you working on? Or whatever. And so it's a way of, you know, you're asking people about themselves and about things beyond just your little world. But in the process of doing that, you're going to build relationships and trust. And probably they'll get to know you in a way that they might not have gotten to know you if you hadn't set up that 15 minute coffee chat or something like that. You don't have to ask somebody to be your mentor and meet with you like every other week for an hour. It can be a simple coffee chat. And I wasn't sure that that culture still existed. And my daughter works for a big corporation and she does this all the time. She's excellent at it. About just like reaching out a good role model. And, you know, it's 2025, it's you know, it kind of still holds. Business is based on relationships. We say it isn't, but it is.

00:46:04

Yeah. That's certainly a moment of reverse mentoring. I wasn't that kind of a role model, Angelique. So when I watch my son network as Bathroom, I'm like, I can learn from that. I can speak to these people. If he can do it, I should be able to do it. But thank you, Laurie. Angelique, it's just so wonderful to have had you had all your wisdom, your voices and stories are really powerful reminders that when workplaces work for everyone, everyone wins. So thank you for the work that you're doing and continuing the story through the band of sisters.

00:46:39

Yeah. And thank you for joining us today on the Bright Horizons Work Life Equation podcast. We really appreciate it. Yeah. I just, I mean, I love the energy and I love the way they bring together shared but different experiences. And what are they doing? They're trying to pay it forward and they're trying to pay it forward to help other people, either in those management roles or help other people who are coming up and maybe are future managers to advocate for themselves or for those managers to sort of look holistic. I love when Lori said in the span of her 40 year career, that period, those years where she really needed intensive help with childcare or elder care, it was really a blip in that 40 year career. And that's so refreshing to hear because I think too many people, you get myopic and you're stuck in that moment, like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? And I think it's great sort of perspective coming from them.

00:47:32

Yeah. And for me, actually, the timeline was a really interesting one. The fact that they are paying it forward and talking about it's a 40 year career. This might be two years in the broader scheme of things. You're giving the employee permission, but you're also giving the manager the perspective, like, look, this is happening, but it's not going to be permanent. What you get is this lifetime value. I love the employee lifetime loyalty and how they sort of related it to consumers. It was just such an interesting way to say, like, how do you move the fours to the fives? How do you focus on the deeply loyal customers and say, how do I improve this for you? You're very engaged. What can I do that's incremental? That's going to keep you here, keep you productive, keep you engaged with the organization. It's a great way to think about.

00:48:19

Employees when you think about it. And then another example, they Give you. You move the threes to the fours, the 4s to the 5, then you're really cooking with gas because the ones and twos are never going to be fully engaged. Well, the flip side of that is when she said that some managers have said, oh, well, if we allow this flexibility, those people are just going to squander their time. Well, those people are already the ones and twos within the organization. So that's not about creating great care policies for them or great benefits for them. You want to create those great benefits for the threes, fours and fives so they stay loyal and productive. And then for the ones and twos in your organization, you should manage them out over time. But it's really creating these policies for your top performers who are going to really move the company forward are essential.

00:49:01

The last thing I will say is that they said, don't go back to the policy. Which is an interesting take saying, as a manager, be human and ask. Which has been a little bit of a theme around, what is the role of the manager? What is the role of the culture? How do you make sure that people think about this beyond the policy to say, what's going to make it work? And that's. How do you scale? That is an interesting perspective because then you make it a policy. I think it almost dehumanizes it. But how do you get the human to ride the.

00:49:33

Yeah, it does. But I guess that's the only part I push back. I've benefited from luck in my career and life and the luck of the great manager. That is so essential. But other people on the flip side, they could get unlucky. So is there a way to put in a policy, a minimum standard? We jokingly say at the company of dads, if a woman comes to you and says she's pregnant, there's one and only one answer.

00:49:55

Congratulations. And then don't say anything. And I was talking to someone the other day and she said, oh, I said that to my manager. Oh, what did he say? He said, congratulations. I think you're like, what are you doing? It could be no worse than that. So I do think there is something for that minimum standard of like, okay, this is what we do. And then you hope that you have. You're really promoting the right people into management and they're great managers and they can go beyond what the state of policies, but at least have, I think.

00:50:21

Have a floor customer expectations and customer delights.

00:50:25

Right.

00:50:26

I'm almost thinking of it as like, there's table steaks and there's the life. So we'll stay with the consumers.

00:50:31

You won't get salmonella when you have this chicken breast. Oh, that's good. And then you'll actually like this chicken breast. Oh, that's even better. To our listeners, thank you again for tuning in. We'll be back soon with more conversations about thriving at work and in life. Until then, be well.

00:50:49

And this podcast was brought to you by Bright Horizons.