Former LinkedIn CHRO: What Leaders Get Wrong About Culture, AI & Performance

You're listening to One Sharp Sword Cutting through to what Matters Most with outfluencer Dr. Wayne Purnell.

Welcome to One Sharp Sword Cutting through to what matters Most. I'm your host, guide and coach on this journey. Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell. My guest today is Steve Cadigan. He's best known as the architect behind LinkedIn's people strategy. During its hyper growth years he helped refine how talent, culture and learning all scale inside a fast moving organization. Both before and after LinkedIn, he's operated at the intersection of HR strategy and futurism. He's a systems thinker for human capital. I'm excited to have him here. I hope you are too. Welcome. Steve Cadigan.

Great to be here. Wayne. Excited for this conversation?

I am as well. This is, I've been thinking about it since we first met a few months ago and it's amazing to think about where LinkedIn is now and how it at some point decided as an organization. I guess we need hr. Can you describe a little bit about your journey? How'd you get there and how did you land in the senior HR role? The Chief Human Resources Officer role?

Yeah. So go back to 2008. I had just relocated back to the US from being out of the States for about six years. I was two years in Singapore finishing up a few a tour with Cisco Systems running HR for all of Asia. And then I moved to a Chief HR Officer role for a small publicly traded tech company in Canada called PMC Sierra. And I had, just after those six glorious years being outside of the States, had been recruited back into the US by Electronic Arts. Unfortunately, 2008 for those of you that follow this, you know, keep score at home with what happens in the economy. Second mortgage crisis hit and the job that I was hired to do at EA dried up pretty significantly. We were going to be, we had a new CEO, John Riccatello, and he had a very aggressive acquisitions strategy. But when you are going into a real economic downturn, your board gets very nervous about spending money. And so all the cash that we had, we had a couple billion dollars, we were going to go be very aggressive acquiring. Sort of the change of plan said we're not going to do much acquiring. So I was sitting at EA thinking okay, this was going to be really fun. And now the, the deals changed and at the time I got a knock on the door from LinkedIn, which for me was not part of my plan. I mean I was a big company guy. I've been a role player in a lot of big organizations. And my last role in Canada prior to EA, it was relatively small. I mean 1300 to 1800, we sort of fluctuated so, you know, depending on what you think is large. But prior to that, most of My companies were 5, 10, 15, 20. Cisco was 40,000 people. So I was really intrigued by the chance to do something different and something new. And if you're in Silicon Valley, I mean, come on, you want to bite at the apple at least once to try to go to a pre IPO company. And LinkedIn said, hey, would you consider being our first head of, of human resources? And I was kind of not really sure if that was the right fit for me. I didn't know much about LinkedIn. I didn't know. And nor did anyone, by the way, on the leadership team forecast the successful run that was in front of us, including the board, including the founders. You know, it's like, okay, we got something interesting here. And so I walked into the interview fairly suspicious around, okay, I'll give this a shot. But you know, I'm not sure this is really what I want to do. But I was intrigued by the IPO potential journey, right? And I walked out of probably two days, met 20 people, a rapid fire process which seemed really aggressive to me. And then they later told me, hey, we were about ready to offer someone the job. And then we met you and we had to go really fast because we'd had all these candidates in play. And then when we met you, they, they told me later, hey, you were the one. So we wanted to move really quickly. So after I interviewed with about 20 people, I couldn't sleep for a week. I was so excited. I like, oh my gosh, this company's gonna, is going to be a difference maker. I mean, I really, I saw a glimpse through the keyhole of, you know, them having a chance to solve something that really irritated me. Like I saw LinkedIn, you're not going to be able to hide if you're a bad leader. You're not going to be able to hide if you've bad culture. And LinkedIn was going to expose that. And I thought, this is great, I want to be a part of that. So ultimately got, got the offer and decided to take, take a leap, you know, into something that I'd really never done before. And I would soon discover that, you know, walking in thinking, how hard can this be? You know, building a company, it turns out incredibly hard, you know, especially because I'd never done it before.

So, I mean, you had quite a bit of Systems thinking behind you. And you also had human capital, culture behind you. Right, Right. So hr, so coming in, it's like, here's this brand new playground, right? How exciting. Like these days we're seeing, you know, here's a startup, there's a startup, this is what we're doing. And it's, there's so much new, it's almost, it's almost expected. Like, and you know, LinkedIn was so different than any of the, of the other social platforms when it came out that even I think users were like, do we?

Don't we? Do we?

Don't we? Sure, we'll try it. But I think from the inside, it must have been incredible. You know, how, how much of the systems did you get to mold and where did you put your imprint on culture? Like, was that from the beginning or did you have to get a sense of what are these guys like the board and the other, the other executives on the executive team, what did they have in mind as a culture for this organization?

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question and there's several parts to it. Let me step back and go back in time because I'm having, you know, very vivid memories of what that experience was like. So I like that. Like most, I think like most companies that I've ever been around, LinkedIn was very suspicious of human resources. And like most leadership teams, I think they knew more of what they didn't want than what they did want. So I would ask them, you know, what does great HR look like to you? And they said, well, not this and not that and not bureaucracy and policy and saying a lot of no and creating all kinds of, you know, ways to block us from being successful. And so I'm like, so, you know, I had X Google, I had X Yahoo, I had X Oracle among the leaders. And there was a lot of, we haven't seen this work in a way that we, that we think it should. But so when you would ask, well, what does that look like? Like, well, we don't know, you know,

doesn't that feel like failure at the, like from the outset? Didn't it feel like, well, okay, I mean, I'm getting a lot of no, don't do this. Like, wasn't it, wasn't it hard for you to go, well, okay, like, you did have to tease out from them, okay, there are a lot of no's. There are a lot of these are distasteful. Yeah, what do you want? At the same time, you do have to balance compliance. You do have to balance ethics. You do have to balance both federal and state law. Like, right.

And, and, and, and you've hit your. You've hit the nail on the head around the real dilemma of most successful human resource executives, which is that nurture and compliance always in conflict. Dual role that you have to play. Right? And people don't want to be reminded around some of the compliance issues, and they see that as a barrier. And HR has become a very easy target for what I call immature leadership. You know, here's what I saw, Wayne. I saw an opportunity. I saw an openness. Okay? It wasn't like a hard no, like we, you know, you're a necessary evil. It wasn't. That wasn't the feeling I got. It was like, show us. You know, like, you know, we've got some of these frustrations. We've got lots of organizational dynamics that seem to be dysfunctional. We don't know how many layers we should have. We don't know what the org structure should be. We don't know how. How to design this. Um, and I've never designed a company from scratch, but I've seen a lot of systems work, and I've seen a lot of systems fail. And so, you know, some of that muscle memory I thought would be helpful. And I think what they saw in me was that I wasn't coming with a playbook, right? I was, I was coming away. This is the way it has to work. I was coming with a. Yeah, I'm, I'm an open system. Let's design something together. And I love that.

I love that.

And that really. Listen, HR is very. If you really strip it down, HR is two things. It's credibility and judgment. And if you're not credible, no one cares about your judgment. And if you don't have good judgment, you will never be credible.

And so it really is of humans like.

It is, it is, but it's especially true when you're at the intersection of every difficult human interaction in the company, right? You're framing the beginning of every relationship through recruiting. You touch everyone. You impact who's promoted. You impact what the salary budgets are. You impact, you know, all kinds of things that. And so I call it the business of trust. Like you're in the business of trust. And so I think what. What they got a sense for was, all right, we're not sure about hr, but we think we trust this guy. And they had vetted me because I knew a lot of folks that I'd worked with at Cisco who were close to the founders, especially Reid Hoffman. Reid had done a lot of diligence and said, hey, you know, we don't want someone that's going to take us down a rat hole of HR policy. We want someone who's a constructive partner. And I think they got the word okay. Yeah, I think he could be the guy. So that was sort of, you know, that's where we started. And listen, Wayne, what was really phenomenally terrifying and exciting at the same time was I had to rebuild or build HR from nothing. So literally, day one, I walk into the executive meeting and there was a fight around performance management. Should we do performance reviews? And if we do, how often? And if we do, should we have ratings? And if we have ratings, how many ratings? And if we have ratings and we do it, should we share the ratings with the employees? And then should we do stack ranking? Should we not do stack ranking? And here's something that I think is so refreshing that everyone, no matter what your discipline is, should have the opportunity at some point to do, which is strip down your profession down to the studs and build it. And so that, that was such a frustrating conversation. But I'd never been in that point before because when you're in a big company, you're tuning what other people built before you. Rarely are you reconstructing it from nothing. And here we are. So, so we had these great debates. They were heated and they were contentious, you know, and the Google people are like, we need seven decimal places ratings. You know, we need to be really precise. And the Yahoo people are, yeah, but don't tell the employees what the are. It doesn't end well. And you know, everyone had had all these different experiences and so we worked on many things. Performance management was the first one and tried to build an organization that we felt was good. And I wasn't saying this is what it has to be. And this was the first time they saw what I was about. They're like, Steve, what should we do? And I said, well, we should do what you want to do. That's what we should do. You know, what do you feel is right? Because every decision we make has consequences.

Right, right. I, you know, when I do consulting with organizations, I start with values. And it's like every decision needs to be made based on the values and from the values grow the vision. And so your question of, well, what do you think we should do? Is, it's like it's a values based question. I think also, you know, I'm putting myself in that position. If I were like Rebuilding or starting anew. It would be, what do you want it to do? Right? What's the outcome?

Right.

We're doing performance management. Do you want to just rate it and file it? Do you want it to actually support your team members? Like, to grow them? Do we have a growth path? Like, yeah, where are you headed? So kind of.

That's funny you mentioned that, because now, now I do remember. My first reaction was, well, maybe we shouldn't even do them. And they were shocked, like an HR person. I was like, yeah, I've seen performance reviews. I said. I said, let me be honest. I've seen performance reviews do more harm than good. And I think we've lost our way. I think most people just do them because they feel they have to. And there's no thought around what's the purpose being served here. I said, I think we do it because we believe it's tied to delivering high performance and that good communication, good feedback result in better performance. I said, but, you know, I've also seen it really destroy people. Managers, especially are terrified of having to deliver real candid feedback. So that won me a very big victory right from the start. I was like, well, I don't want to do it. I mean, if you don't want to do it, I don't care. I don't want to do it. And they're like, what? You're the HR guy. I was like, yeah. And they're like, oh, okay. So. And that sort of brought them, I think, into sort of like, oh, he's not going to tell us because they're ready for a fight, right? And I'm like, there's nothing to fight about. Like, I don't. I don't. I don't feel like we have to do it if you don't want to do it. I said, but if we don't do it, you will need to accompany me to the board of directors and tell them why. Okay? Because they're going to want to know you're hiring all these people. How do we know that you're holding them to a high standard? How do we know that you're, you know, putting good rigor in delivering great outcomes? Because I guarantee you, the board's going to say, what's your performance or your process? And are you managing the low ones out? Which, sure enough, they. They would ask that a few months later.

That's amazing. And. And this is great. I don't know if you remember in our conversation, I. I held a leadership role in. In. In Whole Foods, pre, Amazon, So many, like over a decade ago in hr.

Right.

And so it's like all of this, and here's this unwieldy thing. And. And the goal is, how do we help people? What you said was holding people to a high standard, but also to. To believe that standard is tied to high performance. I think that is so important just for, like, it could be as a business owner, to think about what creates high performance in your business as an individual, what creates high performance in yourself? What are the standards you're holding yourself to? And I think when you. When you think about that for yourself and the people around you, you level everybody up. Everybody must level up. Right? And. And those that aren't in it or willing to do it, they're. They become pretty evident.

And if. And if. If you can really invest in thinking about this early on, I think you will build a much better foundation. I mean, it's one of the sayings in HR is that the best way to drive out high performers is to tolerate mediocrity and low performance. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And so, you know, and that's really important. And I don't want to be in a company that always is firing people, because that means you're not either managing well or you're not hir well. I want to be in a company where the people who aren't cutting it self select out, you know, rather than have to be ground down. And so, and, and that, you know, that was one of the things that we shared with the board was you're like, well, how many people are you letting go? And we had a few Netflix people. And I don't know if you know much about the Netflix culture, but it's pretty hardcore. Like, hey, we hire the best, we pay the best, and if you're not the best, you're out. And so we had some of that perspective. Two members of our board were on the Netflix board, and they were really like, are you getting out the bottom 5% every quarter? You know, what are you. What are you doing to do this? And we're like, hey, firing 5% isn't the ultimate. You know, And I always had this long conversation with the CEO. It's like, hey, what do you want that Netflix culture? Because I don't like it. Feels like people looking over their shoulder, am I going to get hit by a sniper shot? I was like, that's not what I necessarily want. Do you want that? He said, no. I said, okay, well, then why don't you speak up the next board meeting? Because they're Coming at me and you're Mr. Looking at your shoelaces. Let's be aligned on this one. Because if we build the culture right, the, the people that aren't a right fit are not pulling their weight. They see it and they move out, they move on, you know, and that's more constructive rather than having to go through a long performance management cycle.

Yeah.

Most of the time. Right?

Yeah, it. Sure it is.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. I love, love this. So what do you, what do you think? You know, you've, you've done quite a few things since LinkedIn and now you have your own company, which is kind of cool. What do you think leaders in general still need to know or misunderstand about? About, like, it's going to be broad, but about talent in general. Right. Like, how to see it, how to nurture it. Like, what do you think is still misunderstood in terms of leadership in general?

Okay, that's. I'm gonna. Thank you for the alley. Oop. Let me, let me take that. I believe that if you ask any business leader, what is the number one way that you create value in your organization, hopefully the answer is people. That's how we create value. So what I like to ask leaders is, so if that is.

That's a gold drop, by the way. That's like I, I love to interrupt during, during interviews. It's like, if you miss that, it's like the number one. Right. It's like.

Right, right.

The number one way to create value in your organization is through people, not what you're saying.

That's right.

People help you produce. Right. So I love that. That's great.

So if you, if you believe that to be true, and, and it's sort of a rhetorical question trail that I walk leaders through. You know, how do you create value? Create value through people? Okay, so if people are how you create value, is that the most important business priority for you? Is it the first thing you talk about when you're together as an executive team? Is it the first thing you talk about when you're in the board? Is the first thing you talk about in your. All employee meetings, or are you talking about what the quarterly earnings are, what the new, you know, engineering roadmap looks like, what the competitive landscape looks like? Because what I hear most of the time from leaders, and, you know, to answer your question, this is what I think they still get wrong, is people are creating the value. But that is not where the focal point of leadership time and attention is spent. It's on peripheral pieces rather than directly. And this is. We didn't get everything right at LinkedIn, but one thing that we got really right was that people strategy wasn't the number one operating priority. It was the number one company priority. Okay. We knew for us to succeed against very big threats from Facebook and Google, like they could reinvent our business model really quickly. And most of our traffic was coming from a Google search. So Google knew exactly how many people were coming to our website. Right. They knew our traffic. And we knew if we didn't build our model and our moat really quickly, we were in at serious risk. So we had to hire really, really fast and hire really well, really, really fast. And that was a big, you know, that was a big focal, focal point for us. And so. And how do you do that when you're doubling in size every year? We went, the first three years for me were 400 to a thousand, a thousand to two and two to four. That's insane. And it was international growth, which is even more complex. Right? 17 new countries within four years. And so the only way you do that, I mean, it's like full contact, full participation. And this is what it looks like for those of you that are having trouble imagining it. It's the fourth quarter, you're not meeting your sales targets and you've got a lot of openings for sales positions. Your sales leaders are not closing deals. They're hiring people. That's what it looks like. Okay. And their deputies are stepping in to their shoes and trying to fill the regular sales, you know, day to day job. Your board members are pulled out of board meetings. If we need them to close a senior candidate that we're struggling with. Right? That's how important this is. We would close down the, the, the company for days just to recruit. Okay? We would say all you're doing today is pounding your network. Now think about this way. And this is a really, this is a funny story, and it's a bit embarrassing in retrospect, but it's a true story. At one point when we were really struggling, I mean, here's where we were in 2010. We're a company whose biggest revenue was a recruiting product, whose biggest operational shortfall was recruiting people. Okay? We were not succeeding. And our offer decline rate was unacceptably high. Okay? I'm talking like north of 70% for technical hires. And I mean, the CEO told me one day, like, hey, Steve, if our customers knew that we don't know how to hire, like that's not acceptable. Failure is not an option here we have to be not just good at this. We've got to be outstanding at it.

Yes.

And, and so. And we're LinkedIn, by the way. And so finally, you know, one of the things that turned the corner for us is like, hey, we're a professional network. We're the professional network. Shouldn't we be the greatest place professionals have ever worked? Like, isn't that our birthright? And that was a moment of truth for us. And here we are, you know, five, six years old. And when we finally woke up to this realization, and why did we wake up to it? Because we were struggling, because we were hurting, we were failing. And I'm telling you, we didn't have a lot of resources. I mean, Google could outpay me every day of the week. So could Facebook, so could Apple. And so we had to get real clear, like, what problem are we solving? What assets do we have? And why would someone come here? And when we got clear on the problem we're solving is helping people find their dream job, that is a worthy problem, and we should be a dream job for the people who are working here. And so when we got those two together, what we're solving for, for the customers, what we're solving for for the employees, and that symmetry was. I can't. I can't explain how powerful that was. It was just, I can't undersell. It was so powerful because now it's not a poster on the wall. Career transformation. Come here. We will transform your career. Come here and help deliver career transformation for people on the outside. Is that something you want to do? Or do you want to go over to Facebook and help kids develop their short attention span capability and learn how not to do their homework and proliferate fake news? I mean, what do you want to do? You know? And so we got real clear on this and was a, it was a difference maker for us. And it's silly in retrospect. Like, we're, of course, we should have been a great place to work. But when you start thinking it through, like we're LinkedIn, we better be phenomenal. And it wasn't my idea, but it was me pushing my leadership team. Like, guys, I don't have any assets. We can't pay people more. We don't have better buildings. We don't have childcare centers. We don't have sushi chefs. You know, we've got crusty buildings and a mediocre comp package. Like, we got to do something here, right?

So how do you make it out? How do you make this, you know, we don't have much, but we're going to be great. How do you make that happen? Because that's a, that's like

every, every

entrepreneur goes through this and every business every so often finds a pain point of, oh, we're like, we're actually not that great a place to work. I wonder, you know, it. Can we reduce turnover? Can we, how do we get better so with limited resources, because no one's, I mean there are a few companies out there, but you know, very few people go, we have, you know, we have limited resources, right? Where that most people will, will talk about the limited resources. Yeah, they want to be good, they want to be great. What, how do you do that? What did you do specifically that made people go, wow, yeah, you know what? This is a great place to work?

Yeah. Well, first, you know, I'm a big believer in Gladwell's tipping point philosophy, which is it's a hundred things that you do. Okay? So there's no magic bullet here. That's the first thing. If you're looking for one, it doesn't exist. What we got clear on was asking and answering a very simple question. And this is really for those of you that feel what Wayne was just describing, that challenge of, you know, we are a tiny little fish in a big ocean and they're sexier, more deep pocketed, you know, competitors for talent. Ask yourself this question, why would anyone want to work for you? That's the question you need to ask. Because when you answer that, it reveals your culture, it reveals your identity, it reveals your differentiator. Why would anyone want to work for you when today they have so many other choices? Okay. And that question led us to answer, we're solving a problem that matters and we, we need no budget to develop a world class culture, okay? That just takes commitment, okay. And so we can control that and we don't need to outpay and we can't afford to outpay. I mean, Google literally was making more profit in a day than we would make in a year at that time. Okay, that's, that's, and by the way, they're buying my product to recruit against me. Okay, that was another irony. So if you ask that question, why would anyone want to work for you? It really starts to reveal, you know, things like, well, what assets do we have? And you start recognizing not everyone is going to want to work here. And that's okay, you know, and if you try to convince someone this is what a lot of entrepreneurs do, I think, and it, and it backfires. Try to convince everyone that they're a perfect place, right? Or, and I do this exercise with entrepreneurs. I do workshops around the world on this one. And I ask people, okay, let's go around. And everyone, we're gonna do a pitch contest. Why would anyone want to work for your startup? Okay. And here's what you hear, Wayne. Because we're nice. Because we like people. Cause we have beer on Fridays. Cause we have good investors. We're gonna make a lot of money. And I said, you know what I just heard? I heard, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, beer Friday. You know, everyone says the same thing. So what is unique? What assets do you have that differentiate you in a very, very crowded marketplace for opportunity? And, and that's why, you know, you get clear on what's unique about you. What problem are you solving? What assets do you have? So important. Yeah, so important. And it's so, so fundamental, right? And I used to, I never asked that question my whole career. Here I am sort of, you know, I think I was one of the older ones on the LinkedIn executive team, sort of, you know, in my, in my late 40s. And I never asked that question because I just assumed, oh, you want to work here? Because we're good, we're smart, we're talented, we've got a great product. You know, all the basic stuff I never really took the time to invest in. What are the real unique special attributes that we have? Because I'm telling you, every organization has them, but you may not be as aware of what they are as you could be.

This is phenomenal. I have two questions for you. They're. They overlap. They're not, they're not sequential. So I want to know from your perspective, okay, because you've seen, you've seen global companies at this point and you know, Cisco, EA, LinkedIn, what makes a world class culture? That's first. And second, can you talk a bit about the difference between fast and adaptive

and. Sure.

And, or if they're overlapping or, you know, like those are words that come up all the time, right? It's, you gotta move fast, but you've also got to pivot, you've got to be agile, right? So, so in building a world class culture, are you moving fast? Are you building in agility? Is that a trait you look for? And so that's where I said there's overlap, right? So what do you look for in, in a world class culture? Because if you're able to say that, then, you know, those of us Listening to you are able to go, oh yeah, I can grow. Oh, I have no idea. Like touch it or not touch it. And then, and then, you know, the world is moving so fast. How do you stay agile? Or do you not need to move as fast? Or. So just your thoughts on, on that. And I wanted to throw them both out there because I think they mix really well.

Let me start with a story first because I am beyond proud of the culture that we built at LinkedIn. But let me tell you where we started. I had a leader, I had a CEO who had been his first CEO. He had been shaped working in the film industry for Warner Brothers and then for Yahoo. And he said, literally said to me in the interview, if I ever see a culture poster on the wall, I'm gonna throw up in my mouth and I'm gonna rip it off. He was like, I, you know, this is a, this is, he wasn't saying this, but this is what he was saying. When I see a culture poster as a leader, I feel that's a setup for me. Someone's going to look to measure me unfairly against a set of things and hold me to something that goes, oh, you, you, you're not being transparent or you're not being honest. And, and he'd seen leaders at Warner Brothers and Yahoo espouse a culture and then act the opposite. Okay? So he was not sold. He's seen more harm than done. And so here's where I want to start answering your question. If you are not sold that culture matters, please do not tell your people that you think it does. Okay? Please don't, because you're going to do more harm than if you, if, than if you said, I think culture is great. And then you do the opposite. Like, if you're not sold, don't tell people you think it matters. Okay?

Yeah.

So that leads me to the number one, I believe element that's going to define an outstanding world class culture is a leadership team that really believes it matters. Okay. And is the role model for living and breathing that. Okay? So, and I'll give you one example from LinkedIn of how this played. Our sales leader was more in front of the executive team on culture than any of us. And I don't know about you, but usually the sales guy is the guy that HR's gotta watch. Like, hey, hey, he's running in the margins. Not true. At LinkedIn, when he would have a sales kickoff, it was not about, here's the bogey for this year. Here's your number. Here's what we gotta hit. Here's stretch goal. He's like, we're gonna talk about the values of this company. He was. And think about it, every one of our field offices was mostly sales, okay? So when you've got that leader who's driving it, who's believing it, like, I wasn't selling, hey Mike, you, do you believe on the culture? He was like, no, this is so important to us because this is who we are and this is in our DNA. And so if you've got a leadership team where HRs got to be selling leaders, that culture matters. It's not going to work. It's not going to work. But if you've got a leadership team that says, this is how we're going to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace, by being an outstanding place where people have their best career, okay, now you've got leaders pulling in the right direction.

Okay, this is, this is great. So leadership, in order to build a world class culture, leadership has to really

believe that a culture matters and ultimately own it. They've got to own. It's not, it's not, you know, be good listeners to the HR leader. No, they got to own it and they got to really believe this is the North Star, that we need to differentiate ourselves and build a great company.

So, so before we go to fast versus adaptive fragile, my I, I want to shape this with this question and that is, what do you do when you have a leader that just is like, well, sure, culture matters here, hr, go fix it, right? This, this pocket of our business is a little ill. Go, you know, go heal that and we'll be fine. How do you, how do you handle leaders that are dismissive of a more global vision of the organization?

Yeah, I mean, it happens all the time. Listen, those opportunities are wonderful for there to be good lessons and good learnings, right? It's like, I don't want leaders that are always agreeing with me. I want ones who are pushing back and ones who are like, not sold. And it just, you know, it leads to a really healthy conversation. Like, what is it from your background that makes you feel that this is a waste of time, you know? And what you find out is they were force fed a bunch of crap that they didn't believe in. I said, I said so listen, when we talked about the values and the culture and we all agreed as a team, I don't remember you objecting to anything, you know, I don't remember you saying anything. So I'm going to give you another chance. Now, is there something that you think is a joke. Is there something you think is worth, worthless or not important? What is it? Let's have that. Let's have that discussion, you know? And do you want to do that in front of your peers? Because three weeks ago or last month or last year, and we talked about this, you're like, thumbs up. Yeah, we're all in. And so now you're passive aggressive. Me, like, so I'm. I'm like, let's play ball. Like, you're not. This is not trivial, right? Like, you know, so let's. Let's have a. And. And maybe something that you think is a joke. Like, so I'll give you an example. We had. Among our values, we had humor, okay? Sense of humor. Really important, because it's. For me, it's the ultimate depressurizer in a highly tense situation. But there are some people, like, really? That's lame. We have to have humor and our values. That's pathetic. And so we debated it, right? And so this is what this is. You're going to have leaders who are just passively agreeing. That's dangerous. Okay? Sniff it out. And so what I will do is I will say, hey, Susan, or Jerry, You're. You're awful quiet, you know? It's really important that we're all on the same page here, you know, please. And you're invited to attack this thing. Is it a piece of garbage or not? Right? And so that's. You gotta have those conversations in. And not in ways that are going to put people on defensive, like, say, hey, you know, I've seen. And, okay, we can change. So one of the things that we changed in our values was open and honest was a really important one for us, okay? And one day I'm walking through the halls and I'm seeing these two engineering leaders screaming at each other. And you can guess what they said when I said, what are you guys doing? And they said, we're being open and honest, you know? Right. So get out of our face. HR guy said, well, maybe we need to tune that from open and honest to open, honest, and constructive. Okay?

So nice.

We. We all reserve the right to get smarter. And so we want to tune it, but, you know, I don't. We don't want these values to be like a rule book, you know, where everyone's getting measured. That doesn't feel comfortable. We don't want rules and laws for everything, Right? We just want common sense, you know, and that's why keep it light. But that. That's where I'll go. So let me pivot to the second part of your question because I think it's a great one. Listen, we have, we have a real broken way that we talk about culture. In my point of view, think about the words that we mostly use when we talk about culture. Pillars, stable, foundation. Words that don't connote organic beings are really the essence of a culture. People are always changing. We're always changing. And so when we talk about pillars, it almost means that our culture should never change. Right. Like, this is who we are and will never change. And that is a big fallacy, I think, in the world today. Like as you said, the companies that are winning the every executive search firm that you asked today, what are the number one skill that executives are looking for? It's adaptability, it's agility, it's a willingness to unlearn and learn new stuff. And so when you start talking about your culture and you lay that down to your employees day one at orientation, like, this is immovable. It's raw rock, it's, you know, hard marble. You're doing yourself a disservice, you know, rather than say, hey, listen, this is a culture that's evolved to where we are today. But the reason we're hiring you in here is to help us continue to evolve that culture and make it better. Right. And put your fingerprints on it. And so this is something that we, we revisit every year, every six months or whatever. And we wanted to make sure that it feels right to us, you know, and so that's, it's funny.

Just, yeah, leaders create the culture whether they know it or not. Right. So I mean, the, the key is be deliberate. What culture do you want? Is it one of non involvement? Is it one of, like, you know, I'm going to make you guess it's a gotcha place, you know, like, oh, yeah, do create something good. But that's not it. And it's like I've, I've actually been in organizations where senior leadership is like, yeah, I know you were working on this project, but that's not what we wanted. That's not what we had in mind.

Yeah.

And so it's a gotcha culture. Gotcha, you know, you did wrong.

Exactly.

Versus knowing what the values are and really embodying them. And I think, you know, it's not HR's job to demand that other leaders and then, you know, next level leaders and middle managers and supervisors embody these values. It's. Right, it's, it's like embody them from the Top. And people level up to live them with you.

Right.

And if not, if you're not showing up every day in that space of curiosity, of openness, of, you know, the. Of humor. Right. It's like.

Right. Yeah.

You're not.

If you, if you invite that. I like. I like how you said that earlier, Wayne. It's like if you invite that, then you invite ownership and, you know, and care in that. And rather than resistance or. I feel like I'm a prisoner to the things that I didn't build. And this is, this is the hardest part, I think, for a lot of people in big organizations. Like, somebody came down from the mountaintop with these tablets. It wasn't me. And I don't feel like I got a chance to shape this in my image. Right. And, you know, you finish a new higher orientation, study up on the culture and do that. You know, I've worked with a few organizations where they evolved to the point where we don't tell you what the culture is during new hire orientation. What we're going to do is we're going to send you on a field trip, and after two months of being here, you're going to come tell us what the culture is and you're going to tell all of us what it is based on, you know, what you see and how people behave.

I love.

And that is the ultimate litmus test. Right. It's like, it's not being told what it is. Like, what are you experiencing? Because you're absolutely right. Is. I'll say this to a lot of leaders. Say, do you have a culture? No, we don't have a culture. Oh, yes, you do. You absolutely do. You. You, who you share information with, who's invited to meetings, who's not invited to meetings, you know, who's promoted, who's not promoted, who got fired, who didn't like, you've got your culture. You just.

How much gossip is allowed? How many. How many after meetings happen after the meeting?

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

This is, this is interesting.

The.

I, I have so many questions, and I, I think as we're approaching the end of our time, in this particular interview, I would love to have you talk about, you know, if, if you're at a place in your organization where you're about to scale, because most organizations are either that I'm. That I'm working with, they're either starting up anew, which means they're about to scale, or they've been in business for some time and they're, they're seeing great opportunities on the horizon, which means they're about to scale. So for any organization that's at this place of wow, we're going to make a big leap because no, I don't think any organization goes, well, let's just get through today and then we'll get through a week and then it's like, no, let's grow. So for any organization that's, that's in this scaling place, what, I don't know, three top ideas do you have for, for both leaders as well. I. So here I was going to say leaders as well as team members.

Okay.

And, and the reason I paused myself there for a second is because I believe everybody's a leader. Right. Whether you're on the leadership team or not, you're being watched and people can model you. So for any team member at any level, and even if you're a solopreneur, like even if you own your own small business, at some point you've got to reflect on what am I putting out there. So the questions I have for you are what top three points should anybody in that position keep in mind for their, what I call the next big. Next what? For their next iteration?

Yeah, a couple things, mostly hovering around communication and understanding. Okay. So the more complex you are, the greater the opportunity for misunderstanding. So let's just do a simple formula in my head which I've never really articulated but I've always sort of operated on it, which is for every 2x that you grow, you need a 2x your communication. Okay. So and you know, if you're, if you're going from 1000, 2000 way different than a hundred to a thousand, like way like 100 to a thousand. Very, very hard. 1002, not as hard because now you've built the muscle of growth and people thinking 10x. To the extent that you can avoid email communications, please do. To the extent that you can keep live. Now this really gets challenged when you're in multiple time zones, right. And multiple countries and you've got language and time, distance, tax, strive hard to really hold on to that in person live communication. And I'm not just talking about one way. Here's the news, here's our quarterly earnings, here's the new products that we have. Here's the, here are the new hires this month or whatever I'm talking about every other week. Make it live and avoid the long emails where you're covering so many things because the long emails get received like this. Oh, that's really long. I'm going to read that later. Right later doesn't come. Okay, now. Yeah, right. And so, so that, you know, the, the three things that you've asked me to do, they're all going to be on communication. So number one, double to triple your communication and people are not going to understand, not just the, the rhythm, but. And then make sure you're checking what I call signal carry through. Okay? So what we would start to do when we got bigger at a few organizations I've been, is we start doing things called skip levels, which is CEO and I would go meet with a team without their, without their managers in the room. So what do you think about the new approach to blah, blah. Then people be like, what, what new approach? Blah blah, blah. And we were thinking, oh, we talked about that two weeks ago in staff meeting. Guess it didn't, didn't get passed through or, you know, it was Dr. So I want to see what the carry through is, okay? And, and then it's just, and then you have to really continue to do that with, you know, throughout the organization. A great, a great thing that we, that, that I've seen work really well is when you're hitting That,000 to 2000 phase, okay. Or you're, you're, or you're really growing is make your leaders deliver classes to your employees, okay? Because this is another thing. It's just growth inertia. The amount of time that your frontline staff interacts, sees, engages with senior leaders is going to diminish as you grow because they're going to be pulled in other directions. Fight that as much as you can and create intentional moments where there's a chance for you to get that feedback. So we did something called Leaders teaching leaders at LinkedIn, which was brilliant. It was so good that our CEO wanted to, he wanted to get a patent on it where we would say, you know, because we had a bunch of people finally who'd been there eight years, like, hey, we need some classes. You know, we need to learn some stuff. And so I go to the CEO, say, hey, we need a learning budget. He goes, we don't have any budget for that. Figure it out. And I was like, okay, well then you're teaching the class. CEOs teaching class. CFO, head of sales, head of marketing. So all the executives, we would teach a class or two a quarter. And, and I would tell my leader, like, teach whatever. I don't care what the subject is. You get up there and you show the managers and directors something you really care about. And here's what would happen. We would get together for staff meeting the next week. And a leader, you know, our CFO came back from Australia and he taught a class and he goes, oh my gosh, there are some superstars down in Australia that, you know, I didn't know were there and I want to hire this person for my team or hey, remember we told them that we got to stop doing that policy. They're still doing it in India. I was just there, you know, so that level of awareness, level of contact, accelerates your trust. Okay. And it keeps that trust there because when there's distance, there's a great, you know, propensity for distrust to grow. And this is what you have to fight when you're growing is, you know, that, that distance that you have between your leaders and the organization as much as you can.

I love the leaders teaching leaders. That's actually how TED talks evolved.

Right.

A group of leaders got together and they were like, we could talk about anything, Technology, engineering, design.

Ted. Right.

And it was, let's keep it brief. We're going to just teach each other.

Yeah.

And, and they, you know, it started as just a gathering of people who wanted to learn from each other and they would start to teach each other. And that's, it's incredible. Right. So leaders teaching leaders. I am a huge fan of that. I love that. Awesome. So 2x3x your communication, keep it in person. You said, make sure you're checking the signal carry through. I call. That is the message you delivered, the message that's being received. Yeah.

Right.

And then, and then each like, keep like it. It means that the value of ongoing learning is a thing which is phenomenal. It's really great. Time has flown for me at least. I really appreciate you being here.

What,

what concept or thing that you thought we might talk about did we not get to talk about? And what would you like to, you know, are you inviting people to connect with you? I'd love for you to, to talk about what you're doing, your organization and, you know, if you can do all that as kind of a wrap up, that'd be amazing.

Sure, sure. I don't think we can have a conversation about, you know, the cutting edge of the world of work and leadership right now without talking about our relationship with artificial intelligence. So let me just make a plug for this. This frontier of AI is not like other technology implementations we've done in the past. This is bigger, it's more encompassing. And I'm seeing too many leaders use the same playbook of let's use AI to go faster. Do more and cut costs. Okay? And that's focusing on the bottom, not focusing on creating new markets, creating new opportunities and creating new value. I implore every listener on this podcast to see AI as an opportunity to help your employees shine, not replace them, to help them be able to do more, be more capable, more impactful, and for you to create new growth for your business and for your employees. Instead of, let's find how we can use AI to grind them and replace them. Okay? That's not the world that we want, I don't think. And last thing I'm going to say on AI is most of the AI product creators are delivering foster children to us. They have not put rules, guidelines, any. That's on us. Okay? So don't wait for them. Don't wait for, you know, Sam Altman or Mustafa Sulaiman or DeModio over at Anthra. Don't wait for them. They're not gonna. It's on us. So we have to be much more owners of this tidal wave. But please, please see the, see the top line opportunity, not the bottom line opportunity. And it's counter to how we've seen technology in the past. So I'll say that.

But that's really, that's really important. It's really important. Thank you.

It's my focus for, for this year and ongoing and we. You have to have a philosophy of AI, you and your company, you need to build it and you need to build an AI council, an ethics. So it's like almost every project, you want to have that food label that has nutrition for, you know, calories and pro. Like, is this AI? Is it good for our culture? Is it good for our employees? Is good for, you know, growing our business. I think it's the way I look at it. It's been a pleasure to be here. Like I said, we could talk for probably three more hours in the interest of the adult attention span is probably five minutes. So we've exceeded that already. But if, if people want to get in touch with me, continue the conversation, please find me on LinkedIn. It's very easy. I hear it's a pretty good platform. Yeah, I've got a website, steve cadigan.com. i've got a book, Workquake, came out a few years ago. I think it's.

Wait, wait, wait. So, yeah, so like many authors.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, throw away the title. Like, okay, so, so work Quake. You've got to slow it down, right? Like, yeah, right. You're, you're, you're offering this to. In. You're inviting people to check it out. First of all, Steve, S T E V E. Right. So Steve Cadigan. C A D I G A N. So that's how you're going to find Steve Cadigan on LinkedIn and then your amazing book called Work Quake.

Right. One word. Work Quake. Right. Leveraging the aftershocks of COVID 19 to build a better model Working. I feel that's a great playbook. If you're frustrated that this employer employee relationship's not working, whether as an employee or as an employer. I try to offer some different ways of thinking about that and in the process of updating that, but I feel really like that book is really relevant today, even though it came out in 2021, 22. So. So please check it out. I have a podcast too that comes out weekly called Workquake Weekly. So check that it's 10 minutes or less. Very, very quick snippets around something that came out. I've been diving into recently the disappearance of internships and entry level jobs as a big hot point for me. So. Yeah. But again, thank you so much for, for having me and for being such a great host. Wayne, it's been a real pleasure.

Oh, it continues to be a pleasure, Steve. This is, it's, I've been looking forward to, to having you here. So again, my guest, Steve Cadigan. You may find him on LinkedIn, LinkedIn and what a great platform. And you may find his book wherever great books are sold. Work Quake. And I invite you to look for Steve's podcast, Work Quake Weekly. Excellent, Steve. Again, thank you. Really great.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, you do very good. This is one sharp sword cutting through to what matters most. I'm Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell, your host, guide and coach on this journey. I look forward to seeing you here again next time. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for listening to One Sharp sword Cutting through to what Matters Most with outflancer Dr. Wayne Purnell. For more information, please go to onesharpsword.com.