#18 - The Evolution of Legal Ops with Bob Mignanelli at Haleon

What does it take to run a high performing business? Strategy, finesse and a lot of advice from people who've been there, done that before. I'm Mary o'.

Carroll.

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Hello everyone. Welcome to Pearls on Gloves Off. I'm your host, Mary o'. Carroll. Today with me is my friend Bob Mignanelli who is COO and VP for Legal at Helion. He has overall responsibility for the legal department's operations, centralized contracting function and the provision of legal support to the company's technology and procurement teams. If you think you've never heard of Halion, you're wrong. You have. It is just the new name for GSK Consumer after it spun out last year. Halion is actually the largest consumer healthcare business in the world, so you definitely know bestselling brands like Sensodyne, Poliden, Panadol, Veraflu, Advil, Centrum, Tums, Chapstick and countless others. Before Halion, Bob spent nearly two decades at Pearson, an education, publishing and assessment company where he was most recently Senior Vice President and COO for Legal and AGC Technology strategy and operations. And before all that, Bob held various positions including corporate counsel for a tech startup, regulatory consultant for Arthur Anderson, and attorney in private practice in Washington D.C. welcome Bob. It's so wonderful to have you here today.

Hi Mary, it's great to see you again and thanks for having me.

Well, I love to see the legal CEO own BP Tuttles for Legal Ops, so thank you for always carrying that flag for all of us.

Oh no, I appreciate it. And it's super important, I think for us as an industry and us as a function to be able to carry that title. And for me, I, as you and I have talked a little bit about it, I work for an extremely progressive general counsel who allows me to carry that title and actually gives me the autonomy and really the bandwidth to operate within that title. So for me it's been a great ride. And it's having the title is not just a title, it actually really is reflective of the opportunities that I get to have every day and how I get to help steer the department of.

Exactly. And that's so important. And we have a lot to talk about today and I'm going to jump around a bit, but I definitely want to talk about your journey at one point. But one of the main reasons that I really wanted to have you on the show is because we both feel very passionate about the need for this role to be more strategic and to transition into a strategic one. And what does that mean? And we've discussed Legal Ops has grown a lot, right, in recent years in awareness and popularity and scope. And I think we've reached a pretty important and critical juncture where the future of this role is really going to depend on where we as a community take things next. And there's, of course, a part of the role that is really operational. It's tactical, it's a supporting role to the department, and that's important. And I believe you do have to start there in a lot of ways. But then you really have to quickly pivot after you've successfully set things up to run the day to day, to start positioning yourself as that true partner to the leadership team and to be driving the priorities, the strategies, the direction of the department. And I think that's what you and I both mean when we say, quote, unquote, strategic. But I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth. Tell me how you're seeing where we are as a profession, what it means to be strategic to you.

And I think you're absolutely right. The profession has really grown in size and in maturity over the last five, eight, 10 years. And it's always been around. It's just, it never had a label, it never really had coalescence of bringing these activities together. But I think you're absolutely right. It's really, and I was thinking about this before I got on today, there are a lot of tactical that we must do as a legal operations team and department. And those are really the foundation of what we bring to the department and bring to this. I always say to my team and my peers across legal and anybody who listen to me, quite frankly, is one of our key drivers in legal operations is for me is take the sand out of the gears. I want my legal professionals, all of them, to be able to deliver legal services 100% of the time to the company, to help drive its objectives and manage risk. And I look at our teams as taking on all of those tasks the same to the gears that I don't want my legal professionals doing so we can add that value. So you're right that the very basics of outside counsel, management and contracts, management and project management and technology roadmaps in the States and all of those things, we have to actually do this. But for me, when I think about all of those, those are just pieces. Those are all pieces that should roll up into a strategy that we as the leaders of these departments are driving in conjunction with our chief legal officers or general counsels for the business. So for me, I always think about it when I start every year, every quarter, as we sit down my GC and really think about where are we going to go in the near term and then the midterm and the longer term, what's our strategy? How does our strategy line up to where the business is headed? What do we need to do both from a strategic perspective and then a tactical perspective to help drive that strategy, all while making the lives of my legal professionals better. I want them to be able to come in and not to have to worry about administrative tasks or where do I get a project manager or how do, like, oh, we found this technology, so how do I get it? All of those tactical things feed into the strategy. But I think for us, and you and I have talked about this a lot, is our profession of legal operations is really at a junction. And I think we as leaders really need to decide how do we want to lead this discipline in the industry for those who will come behind us. I've been practicing law a very long time. I've had the benefit of being in the legal operations field for not quite as long. So. But it's really about where do we want to take this? And I think we're at a crossroads. We can go down a path to say, well, we're really just an administrative group or an operational group that sits over to the side and we'll do all those tactical things to help the department and maybe help the business a little bit. Or we can do all of that, which is one part of what we do. And then the really important part, which is help not just drive strategy, but help formulate. And it's not just with our chief legal officers, but it's with those other parts of the business that we often interact with, whether it's tech and finance and procurement and hr. It's really, I think, up to us to put ourselves out there, take the chance. We have to be a little brave in this, to stick our heads out and lead. It's leading within legal, but also leading through the building of those relationships and becoming a respected leader throughout the organization. You want those folks that you, your teams work with on a day to day basis that are outside legal, say, you know what, we're putting a project together. Let me call Mary because I know that not only is Mary leading legal operations and driving strategy for them, what a really good partner she is for us. And so let's get her to use a very cliched statement, let's get her at the table. Well, we want folks to think of us like that.

That's right.

It's up to us to do that. It's up to those who sit in my role or who are heads of legal operations or who may be double hatting in some other role, whether it's chief of staff and head of operations or deputy general counsel, head of operation. We have positional authority.

That's right.

We have organizational authority to do this. It's up to us as to whether or not we want to take the initiative to use that to help drive the profession to where I think it should go.

Yes. And a couple of really important words that you use there. Take the initiative. We all say we want to seat at the table, we want to be more strategic. But then people sit around and wait for that direction to come to them and no one is going to tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, please come join us for this strategic planning conversation. Like you need to look out. And we have a really unique role in that we are working so cross functionally with all those partners. So in addition to being in the leadership suite where you're hearing where the company's going and where the legal department needs to go, you're also involved deeply with all the partners across the company to know what's happening from a finance perspective, from an it, hr, like all these things that you can bring together, we're really uniquely suited to drive this strategy and to have an opinion. So like you said, we have to take the initiative to suggest, to propose those things.

And I think you're absolutely right about where we sit in the organization. Legal departments are really the connective tissue that run throughout the organization. And you just mentioned, we, if you think about everybody we touch that we come in contact, you just think about your week. I've spent time just in the last couple of days with finance, with procurement, with tech, my HR folks with chatting with some of my peers who spend time with the leaders of our general managers of business units in the regions. We touch everybody. And those touch points, we have a choice to make with those touch points. Are we simply reactive to those touch points or do we care and feed them and do we take the initiative to build out those relationships and to your point, put our hands up, I mean we shouldn't be shocked. The worst somebody can tell us is, is no, we can put our hands up and say, hey, I'd like to join that strategic planning meeting. Or I think I've got something out in a very nice corporate way, or maybe not so nice way. We may be told, well, thanks, we'll get back to you. But then you say to yourself, well, why did I get that reaction? Do I need to do more on the relationship building side? Is there something else that I need? Leverage. But I think more often than not, folks will welcome us in. And I think they do that because they realize we have more to bring to it than just a legal viewpoint. Because if you think about what we do, it's, we're legal operations, we run operational and strategy groups, and I always look at strategy and operations. I've tried to move away from describing my group as legal operations and it's hard. There's a lot of inertia out there with that term. But I think about my team's strategy and operation, whether that's the official label or not, that's what we do. So how do we then take that mindset and bring it to the rest of us? Because we do a lot of things that aren't exactly legal in nature. Think about what we do. We redesign processes, we help drive technology, we run projects. All of those are business attributes and tricks which give us an insight into the business and it allows us to bring those qualities to a broader cross functional team with the legal lens on it. And by doing that, the perception changes in the organization. It's not just, oh, they're illegal, I gotta go check with them, they're illegal. They understand they can help us drive objectives and balance risk, but they also have all these other skills and traits that make them great team members. And we want them there at the start of a project so that we get a better result. I know it's not about winning, but we've achieved something that probably six, seven, eight years ago, many of us may not have thought possible.

It wasn't even a goal then.

Right When I first started with legal operations, probably like everybody else, I took it on in addition to other things that I was doing. I've always maintained a legal practice inside the company. But that's just from a personal perspective. I've always wanted to do that, but I took it on in addition to something because I think we all did. We saw a need and we said, hey, I want to work with that team. I'm interested in that area. I'm really interested in running budgets and finance and doing strategic planning or I've got a real interest in technology or how we've got this Outside counsel program where we get all this outside counsel spend. How do I help make it better? So we all got into it, I think, from an adjacency. And back then we probably weren't thinking. My ultimate goal here is to help drive strategy and work with teams across the company. I think we all realized that pretty quickly that we could because of the things that we were doing right.

I think in all of our nature, in coming into a role like this, you have a little bit of looking for issues and then just fixating on. I must fix that. Right. I need to get my hands on that and do something about that. So when you get involved in so many parts of the company and trying to showcase the value of legal, you start to think about the bigger picture. You start to say, now it's not just a legal department issue. I'm seeing. Now I'm seeing a company goal, a company issue like, let me help think about how to achieve those things. Again, you have to take the initiative. You have to push forward.

I think you're absolutely right. And all of us get into this because I think we're problem solvers. I also think there's a trait in all of us that we like to build things. For me, I really like to build things, whether it's service centers or teams or solutions, to help drive the business forward. Because we all leave a legacy. We're all going to leave something behind from every place that we go. And I think we all want to leave it better than we found it. We want to do it. And it's not driven from an ego perspective or anything like that. It's just to your point, we see problems. We're like, well, we can fix that.

Exactly.

Stand up and say, we can fix that. Now, that does take a little bit of ego or confidence, however you want to frame it. But I think that's in all of us who do this, live in this world and do this job and are part of legal operations and strategy teams. It's because we want to make things better. Didn't then we would just leave it the way it is. Things will run. You and I both know that legal departments will run. Lawyers have been practicing law, whether internally or as outside counsel the same way for the last hundred years. The legal professions have moved very quickly along the sort of advancement curve. But I think we're changing. That's something else that's in all of us. It's not only do we. Do we have this desire to make things better, but I think there's a piece of all of us that we know we're changing and we're willing to do that. We're willing to stand up and say, hey, follow me on this journey. I've got this idea and this is where we can go and this is where you can take it. That takes a fair amount of courage, especially to stand up in front of a GC or slash clo their teams, your tech group, go run the gauntlet on a technology architecture or infrastructure review or investment review board, your finance team, to go ask for money. And how do you build that business case? And more often than not, when I talk to people, they're successful in doing it. In those instances where it doesn't go our way, we learn something from it and then we can come back.

That's right.

And also those instances give us, I think, some perspective on, okay, should I start small? Should I start medium? Can I go something audacious? Yeah, try to drive that. You always hear when we go to conferences or we get together as teams of professionals, I always tell people, start with the easy ones. I mean, I know it sounds super basic, but it becomes that sort of that flywheel effect. And it builds our credibility and it builds our courage and it builds our stature in the organization and then we're able to do more. And we need all of that because the headwinds, getting this stuff done from a change management perspective and whatever budgets, tech, all those other things, we know we're going to hit a lot of headwinds. So to be driven by some of those successes we've had previously, I think in those sort of dark moments where you're like, oh, why did I get myself in this? Because I have those. It's like there are days where I'm like, the never ending journey. Today is not a good day. And the never ending journey, but it keeps us moving. And it keeps us moving because we know that what we're doing is the right thing, it's the best thing for our enterprises. And I'm not very good at this, but when we look back to see what we've done, it's impressive as to what in a cop. And I'll admit I'm not very good at the look back. I'm always like, what's the next thing? Where are we going next? I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by a group of professionals that will check me out.

You're in a very special situation where your GC has your back. You've worked together at various companies now, but you and I have been at events and Conferences together where we're talking about this topic and everyone's saying, well, I don't have that kind of gc. I don't have a seat at the table. I want to be more strategic, but nobody sees me that way. What can I do? And I'd love to hear your thoughts. What I often tell people is, again, you have to take the initiative. You're not going to get invited to the table, but maybe every quarter, every end of the year, do that. Look back, here's what I'm hearing. Or let's just say you mentioned earlier, what if you ask to be part of the strategic planning meeting and they say for some reason, sorry, we don't want you to join that. My response to that would be like, okay, totally understand that. How about you and I sync afterwards and you can give me the feedback or the download of kind of what happened and what the strategic initiatives are at the company level. Take that back, have another sync and have your presentation about. Here are the top three initiatives that I think we're not currently working on that we could. And here are the things that we are working on. Does this feel right to you? Let's talk about. Are these the things that are keeping you up? Does this sound like where we should focus our efforts to have the biggest impact? That is a strategic conversation that starts to get you working on the right things. So what kind of advice do you give the folks that come our way?

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I've been extremely fortunate. For almost the last decade, I had the privilege to work with Bjarne Tillman as on my general counsel at Pearson from 2014 until the time I left, and then here at Halion when I came over in 2021. I do have a unique situation, and it's not lost upon me that I'm very fortunate with the situation because there's a lot of trust that's been built over the last decade. We view the world, I think, in this space very similarly in where we want to go and what we want to drive. But I also recognize that not everybody has that. So how do you get there? Because we have side accounts. And I do hear people say, I'm having trouble getting traction with my general counsel. I'm having trouble. Or I have my general counsel, she has my back and she wants me to go do these things. But then I'm having trouble getting traction with her leads.

Right.

Yeah, exactly the lt. Because that's really. That's really the team that you need the support from because they'll help you drive through. So I think you're absolutely right. I think it's. For me, it's a couple of things. One is about relationships. Build those relationships across those people who have both direct and indirect power to help drive decisions and who have influence. But the other two is identify where you see pain errors and think about solutions for those pain areas and where if we develop a solution for a pain area or it may not be a pain area but just maybe an opportunity that somebody sees and then go have those conversations with those stakeholders and say look, I noticed this or we're working with these three folks across the department, we keep seeing this issue pop up and we can help solve. What do you think of my solution? Get their buy in. Because as you and I both know, bringing people along the process instead of dragging them with you is really key to driving your success in this. And then again you'll start to see, you'll get small successes and they'll start to see you as somebody who's a solution. And then the risk becomes you become a victim of your own success. Because once one person sees it on the LT that says okay, married or she did this awesome project for Jane and her IP group, now I'm going to go ask to see if they can help me with that as well. And it becomes starts to pick up speed, you start to gain momentum. But I think you're absolutely right. When you're having trouble breaking into those groups or getting the seat at the strategy table, then you start small and you do it with individual stakeholders. You start to develop projects and then they start to see your value success and then the invitations start to come.

But that's right.

It's hard because it takes a fair amount of courage and initiative and ambition and you've got to be ready to be told no and not get discouraged. And I think for me that's one of the biggest things is I often tell people is don't get discouraged. Just think of a different way to come at it. And it also might be timing. I think timing is really important with initiatives and trying to help drive things. You may have an awesome idea, it may have incredible benefits, but you may be living in a macro environment inside of your company where the timing on it just isn't. You may have teams that are shifting around and just doesn't work right now. That's not an indictment on your project or you or your initiative. It's just where we live. So be resilient, be flexible thing.

Yeah.

Be able to move with the Things and also know your audience, know the environment that you're living in, know the audience across your stakeholders and who can help you drive decisions and know those who are going to be resistant. I actually like to find the people who I think are going to be the most resistant. And I work with them just as much because they will point things out to you that you don't see. Because we all have blind spots. Yes, these projects or these initiatives are the end that we think they're awesome, but there are babies, so little blind spots. So getting that feedback from both sides.

Yeah. The timing thing you mentioned is so true. I mean, I can think of so many times in my career where I felt so strongly about a project and initiative, something that we had to do, even gone through making a proposal only to have it not only shot down, but just like, no, don't even bring that up again, ever. And then what, four, five, six years later it starts to happen, Someone else brings it up and it becomes like the top initiative of the year. At no point do I go, told you so. You start to realize, yes, I was early in bringing that up. I was right in that there is a problem that we need to fix. But the stars were not aligned. The people weren't in the right place, the company wasn't ready. The timing is so critical. The stuff that you have to set up to get everyone ready. And maybe that's change management, maybe that's just natural course of business.

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. Point that you just hit on as well is your leadership. All of our leaders have different things that are important to them.

Yes.

And different things that drive them and that could be intrinsic to them or that could be coming from their C suite or the board or what's really important there. Sometimes we don't see that, but objectives change, leadership changes. What's important to may not be important. Like you said, time passes. And if we all think about our companies and our businesses, four to six years ago, everything looked, probably looked very different for us. And then today we're in a different environment. So an idea that was you may have been early with about four or five years ago now makes a lot of sense and you can drive to it. And yes, I agree with you. We can all say I told you so in my mind, but probably.

Well, and even before we hit record on this, you and I were talking about an initiative that you think really needs to happen. And you're like, you know What? I have 10,000 other things that need to take priority right now, so I'm going to get to that, but I can't do it right now. So, again, it doesn't mean it's not a great idea and it doesn't need to happen. It's actually quite critical. But everything else needs to be in place.

And you're absolutely right about that. And the one we were talking about, I think the important piece about that is we all should be looking a few years out. So true. Yeah. The initiative you and I were talking about, I think that will come to pass in another year or two. But I'm starting to have the team start to do some planning for it now. I think another critical thing for us who sit in these roles and the teams that we have the privileges to lead is that we should be forward thinking. And it doesn't mean that forward thinking always has to materialize into a project for now. But how do we start laying the foundation for where we want to go? Which comes back to our strategy.

Yes.

Which comes back to, I know what I need to do this year. And the closer we are in time, the more tactical we typically are because we're executing on something that was already developed and put in place. But how do we start to think through it? So the project you and I were talking about, that. To me, it's. For me, I'm looking at an overall strategy in my technology space in how does that piece of it fit into our digital transformation that we're trying to take the Helion legal and compliance and cosec departments through? How does that slot into it and maybe a couple of years in my technology estate to help drive that initiative so we realize that transformation out on the other side. And I think it is really important for us to stop and create space because it's always very hard for us to create space for ourselves to think. But how do we carve that out and stop a little bit and say, okay, if I had a crystal ball, where do I want to be in three years and what do I want this to look like? And then just start to lay that. And sometimes we may do a lot of research and work and we don't use it for a long time, or we never use it, but at least we've done it. But when it comes to time to get ready to go do something, as you and I were talking about, I want my team to be ready to be able to go to my procurement teams and say, we want to do X. Here's the landscape that's out there. We've already done all the research. Here you go. And get this RFI RFP out in the street so I can start to drive this initiative.

Exactly. And for that reason, I mean, let's talk about tech specifically. That's why with this changing landscape and the changing technology in front of us today, it's so important to stay on top of what's happening in our industry. What are the developments, who's coming out, who's doing interesting things. And thinking back to my years at Google, even if we were not in a space to buy something, I was going to get out there and see what are the latest developments from the big players. Who's doing things that are interesting, how are other companies thinking about this and that. The idea of the art of the possible. There was maybe not a appetite for putting that technology in at our company at the moment. But then fast forward two months, you sit down with your head of compliance and the head of compliance goes, I now have a new initiative and I want to spin this up this year. And you can't start from scratch. You need to kind of already know what your options are, what's going on out there, what the best practices are. So yes, staying sharp and talking to the community and being out there is really important.

Yeah. And something else you just mentioned too is the art of the possible. We always need to be thinking in those terms. And yes, we can't sit around all day, we're blue sky thinking because then we would never get anything done. And then ourselves having to go do something else. But that I think is another component of creating time and space for ourselves to think about what that could look like. And that art of the possible leads you back down to those strategic, more tactical things in the short run. Because if you start to think your way through, if this is really where we could go, what should I start doing today? And those may be smaller things that can then arc us out to maybe a grander vision. And that vision will always be a little different than we think it might be today. It's so easy to get caught up, and I do it all the time, get caught up in the day to day sort of churn. But if we do that, we don't give ourselves the privilege, the right to stop and think a little bit. Then we look up in six months of going and that takes us away from the strategic and that's always the balance. And I think one of the other things too then, and I've really learned this, is that we all have teams to a degree. Trust those teams. You hire really competent super intelligent professionals, let them go do, let them help you create the space that you need as a leader to help drive some more of that coming back to the strategic piece, help drive some more of that strategic piece while they're helping not execute the plans that they've helped you develop because you really should bring them into that part of it as well.

So that's an interesting comment because you and I both came from places that were bigger organizations with bigger teams and a lot of the folks that are struggling with how do I transition to be strategic, have either a small team or no team. They might be the only person. And when that happens, it's very easy to get bogged down with the day to day because there's no one to offload that to. And some of the advice that I give is every initiative, every tech, every project you put in place does make things more efficient, does eliminate work for a lot of people, but it might actually increase the amount of work and maintenance for the legal ops team or the legal ops function. Right. So you always have to set the expectation that once this is launched, I don't get to just walk away from it. Now I have more stuff to maintain and so I don't get to step out. So setting that expectation that you're going to need some budget, some headcount, some outsourcing of running the day to day is really critical to enable yourself to go work on the next big thing. And that is again a conversation that you have to initiate and talk to your leaders about. If I embark on it, putting this tech in place, if we put this new process in place, someone's got to maintain it, someone's got to administer it and if that's me, then I don't get to work on the next big thing. That's a choice that you all are making and it's not a great use of my time. So have those conversations.

Yeah, I think those conversations are super, super critical. We tend to be like sponges. So it's very easy for us to put something in place and oh, now I now have to keep absorbing rid of it and we all run out of band. And I think another piece of that is as you develop those initiatives and the business plans around those initiatives, showing the return on the investment and the potential savings, whether that's hard savings or it's more soft savings and capacity generation, or being able to move tasks into utilizing automation or things like that, moving tasks into the tech and freeing up time, there's a return there. Some of that return needs to be reinvested into the legal ops team. So don't be shy about saying hey, this is going to drive a benefit of X hundred thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars. Happy to return some of that but really should be looking to reinvest some of that to help keep driving that forward. And the other thing too is I found at least about getting initiatives off the ground and getting them implemented. Running them is another story. Running what you've built is to that point we were just talking about you. Do you need folks to help you do that? But I've also found that there are no shortage of folks who will put their hand up to help when we get an issue off the ground. You don't want, as I say, too many cooks in the kitchen. But I found that bringing folks in from the legal teams or the other teams with inside the department to help drive it gives them a sense of ownership, helps them feel that they've participated in getting there, gives us diverse opinions on where we should be heading with something and makes our lives a little. But it also it reduces a little bit of the resourcing load that we might need. And be careful. It's always hard to build the bridges and running over it. It's one of those issues. So I think there are creative ways for folks to do this and it's hard when you're just one person in a legal operation partner than you're trying to handle everything. But I do think there are ways creatively to do resourcing whether it's pulling from inside the organization or making that investment case of maybe it's not hiring a full time person to join you, but maybe to your point it's using a strategic partner in the industry on a part time basis.

Right?

There are ways to collaborate and get this done.

Yeah. There's an amazing rise of companies now that are offering legal ops support, managed service, flexible staffing, whatever you want to call it. But there's a lot of resources out there now. You just have to talk to others and figure out how they're using it. Bob, do you have the chief of staff title in your role? I'm curious. Or is that part of your role or function, do you think?

I do not. So I think the chief of staff title is used in different ways in different companies and I've seen it have be used in a way that is equivalent to the title that I carry. I've also seen it have a more administrative context to it.

Also true. Yes, also true.

So the chief of staff title is probably trying to figure out what it wants to be metaphorically out there. But no, I don't care. I actually prefer the Chief Operating Officer title that I'm fortunate enough to carry. For me, I think it's just more indicative of what I do. I think it's more indicative of the responsibilities that have been given to me both from a strategic and tactical perspective on in participating in the leadership role being part.

That's exactly right. And I'm glad you have highlighted the distinctions of how people define that role. The reason I ask is because often people will say, oh, GC will say, I'm thinking about hiring a chief of staff in addition to my legal ops team because I want the strategic person to be in my circle and then have legal ops run the day to day stuff. And I always say the best practice for me, and I'm curious what your thoughts are on this is that it's actually combined into one role. If we're defining that as the strategic person and the tactical getting stuff done execution team, the chief of staff who is often a individual contributor. Right. They don't have a team can't actually get anything done strategically because they don't have a team to execute. They don't have project managers, they don't have the cross functional alignment and they end up leveraging the legal ops team. So in my view the best practice is actually for that to be all mushed together so that your legal COO is the person who's in the suite coming up with the strategies, the initiatives and managing the team that actually owns and executes all that. I think you are actually the perfect example of the embodiment of that role as you've described everything that you do. That's what you and your team do. So Bjarne has done a great job of setting that up really well. Would you agree?

I would agree. I do think that you want those two components to be brought together. I think it's most effective to have person who is helping drive strategy also be responsible for and have the capacity to execute on the operational pieces that will bring that strategy to life. And I think it comes back to the definition of the role because again, I've seen chief of Staff roles defined in all sorts of different ways. Yes, some are exactly as you described. They have the responsibility for both helping the GC create and articulate strategy and it really is done in collaboration and not in lieu of your gc. I mean your GC or your chief Legal Officer, they are going to set in drive strategy and somebody who sits in my role I participate in that. I like to think I participate in that to a pretty material degree. But it's also the rest of the leadership team, her direct reports will also participate in the belt with that strategy. Having the ability to do that and being the leader that has the team to execute together. I think you're absolutely right. To me, that's the most effective piece of it. You bifurcated. It does become difficult because you then have typically an individual contributor or somebody who has a smaller team then coming in and trying to work with legal ops to say, well, this is what I want to drive, because I think these should be the initiatives that help drive the strategy. And then you may have a very senior legal officer who said, well, I understand where we want to go and I agree with you that we need to execute against that strategy, but I think we should do A, B and C. And then you may or may not have this tension that you have to go back to your CLO and ask her to referee. So I do agree. And I think the differences in titles and what they do, what they stand for, it's really just an indicator of our profession is still maturing. We're still on that curve. But regardless of what we call, whether you call it chief of staff coo, I think to your point, having one person with the responsibility for both is really critical. I think that's best case scenario. I recognize that it may not be reality in a lot of places, but for me that is probably the best way to do it because it, to your point, it gives you continuity across the not only the strategy development, but the execution of that strategy and having the resources and the teams to draw.

Yeah. Bob, it's been so great talking to you. I'm so glad we covered this topic. I can't believe the time has just flown by because I intended to go through your background and your journey and talk about a whole bunch of other things, but obviously we didn't get to that. But this is such a critical conversation that I am very grateful that you came and took the time to talk about this with me. And are there any parting words of wisdom for those struggling to move into the strategic role?

Thanks for having me. Mary, we've talked before. I do think this is a super critical topic for us and where we are in the profession. So it was my privilege and pleasure to come to join you today to chat about this. I think the parting words of wisdom, for whatever they're worth it would be believe in yourself, believe in your abilities, take the initiative, don't Be afraid of people telling you no, but be willing to put yourself out there. We all sit in these positions because somebody in our respective organizations thought that we had the intellect and the skill set and the ambition and the drive to do this. You have a license to do this. Now, how you exercise that license, you'll need to balance that within your own organizations. But take that license, drive value, come up with awesome ideas, put them out there. And I think if you do that, you'll find that people will gravitate towards you, whether it's inside, legal and all those relationships you have outside of your legal department. And over time, it may not be immediate, but over time you'll become a respected leader in this area and people will come to you. And it's always hard to start, but I guess the short is believe in yourself and just go do it. And for all of us it's released. For me, it's sometimes, am I overstepping my bounds or. That's right, just go do it and do it nicely and be collaborative. And I think if we do that, the results will come and we'll get to the place that we want to be.

Such great advice. Just get over the imposter syndrome and believe in yourself and take the risk. Bob, such a pleasure. Thank you for being here and to all our listeners, I hope that you enjoyed this show. I know I learned a lot from it today. So talk to you soon.

Thanks, Mary.

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