09: How to Write a Hollywood Ending with your Internal Communications

Hey there, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of the Confident Communications podcast. I'm your host, Molly McPherson. When people think about corporate communications or public relations, they tend to focus on the external messaging. But effective internal communications is just as important to retain those key team members, but also to get out an even better message about your organizations. These employees are valuable assets to your organization and. And many times go unseen. So often in my work in communications, a client will ask me to craft messaging from the public out facing point of view. And many times I'll tell them, look up, turn around and look at the resources right in front of you. That's your asset. That's your authentic voice and authentic messaging. This week on the Confident Communications Podcast, I am speaking with Victoria Duke of Dew Point Communications about how your organization stories and Hollywood script can help you frame your internal communications in the right light. So without further ado, Victoria, do. Victoria, Hello.

Hi, Molly. How are you?

I'm wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. You and I recently met, and you are one of these people that I met in life that I immediately thought to myself, I need to get to know this woman better. You have such an amazing experience and the fact that we could speak the same language about communication, I thought I need to follow up with her. So thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Oh, my pleasure. I'm so excited to be here and also really gonna be watching my filler words. I want you to know that. Okay. I'm gonna be extra careful, you know what I mean?

Yes. You are referring, of course, to podcast number two, where I discuss the use of filler words. And again, we all do it. I do it as well. It's just knowing that you do it, that's the first step, right?

Mm, yeah. I was thinking about it too, and about how often we do it. Exactly. To be indirect or to soften some of the. Or to make it easier for people to. Especially if you're very direct and I'm very direct. And sometimes it helps to soften some of the language or our messages to make it easier for other people to receive. And that's also part of communication, isn't it?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And communication is such a wide topic. And I know when. So when I originally approached you about doing the podcast and your specialty is internal communication, the follow up question immediately was, well, what can I talk about? But you tap into so many different areas that I want my listeners to understand and learn because you really are a fascinating person. So let's start Here. And I'm going to start with one of the best company names, dupoint Communications, founded by Victoria Dew. So Victoria, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.

So I am Victoria Dew, and I should say I am Victoria Dew, scmp, which stands for Strategic Communicate Communication Communications Management Professional, which is my professional designation and I need to use it more. Sometimes I forget because I'm so used having a very short name that I forget sometimes. I'm the founder of dupoint Communications and we help smaller companies grow faster, smarter through great company culture, leadership and communication. So I come from a corporate communications background both in the US and overseas. And I've worked in a lot of different industries and so I've seen the inside of a lot of different companies. So when I went to build my business, what I really wanted to do was help smaller companies, small medium enterprises to really get their internal communications right. And a lot of that really comes from leadership. And so there's a strong leadership and culture piece that really is important in internal communication. So that's what I'm passionate about.

Well, and what's interesting when you talk about doing business and when people think about just communicators in general and when you shared your accreditation, I have an accreditation as well. Mine is an APR for an accreditation and public relations. But people usually just think about big business and big corporate and it's always refreshing to speak with someone that mentions the middle sized industries or the small businesses. I'm the same way. I don't some of my clients, you know, are bigger, but I'm dealing with a lot of 200 and less employees and we can't forget them. Right.

Well, I think it's also important to remember that, you know, something like 99% of all businesses in America are smaller businesses. They're not big corporates. And sometimes I see consultants who are very eager to work with large corporate clients. And it always sort of surprises me when you have the option to work with smaller clients. Sometimes I feel like, I love, it's always so fun to do projects with clients at scale, you know, to do really big meaty projects. But there's such an impact to be made and especially in this, the area of internal communications. And actually for smaller clients, I call it employee communications or leadership communications because internal communications is corporate jargon. It doesn't mean anything to them.

Yes, I could not agree with you more. So Victoria, let's hop back in time and let's go back before you were a communicator in corporate.

Oh, before, before it's Here. Another lifetime ago. Yeah, because I have been doing this for quite a while. So I've been doing communications for. Oh, maybe I shouldn't say all the numbers because I don't want to deep myself, but for quite a long time I've been doing communications. Before that, though, my first career was actually. And I haven't talked about this until recently, to be honest, because I never thought it seemed important or relevant. And lately I have been. Anyway, my first career was in Hollywood. So I worked in feature film development and production at Warner Brothers and Company. At Warner Brothers, and then in development for a company at Disney as well. And then later I transitioned to writing and producing television shows. So I did that for about almost a decade before I moved into communications.

Well, the reason why you haven't thought about it much is because you hadn't met me. Because when I hear that someone has a background in Hollywood, I think, Bing, they have a million great stories and they're going to have a much, much different angle. It's not going to be as dry as a typical consultant or business person. Correct.

You know, it's interesting. I think one of the reasons why I never talked about it was I thought it would make me seem like I wasn't serious or professional. I thought it would make me. I thought it would sound sort of flaky or like a little too showbiz. And I really discounted the impact that it's had on my career and on my perspective. And I'm only now really starting to see the whole. Tell the whole story. And I can now see it end to end. And it's like I'm so interested in my own career path again. Right.

Oh, that's good to hear. And I don't know if you're like me, but I tend to be attracted to people, you know, to colleagues or if I'm in a room speaking, I always like to bring in current events or rip from the headlines or I always like to tie in a movie or a podcast or a series on Netflix. And I always like people that can do that, that can share that with me. And so the idea for the interview with you on this podcast is I wanted to weave in a little bit of your career and make it a little movie centric, like a movie theme. Are you okay going along with that?

I'm into it.

Okay.

I think it's a great example of finding creativity and taking in communications and taking, taking. I talk about this a lot about taking a kind of references and using them so that they hold some of the context, so that when we're communicating, we don't have to build everything from scratch.

Oh, absolutely. And a shared language. I mean, movies are absolutely a shared language. So I'm going to sprinkle some of the ideas which. With some movies that are my favorites or some movies that resonate with me. So the first one would be Working Girl. Did you ever see that movie with Melanie?

I have seen it once or twice.

Molly, are you someone that could bring a line from almost every movie you've watched?

No. Some, not all.

Would this be a movie that you'd have a line?

I have watched a few. To be fair. This is actually one movie I had seen a long time ago and hadn't seen again until a friend told me it was her favorite. We were talking about go to movies that you watch again and again and again. And I have mine, and she's like, that's. The Working Girl is mine. And I was like, I should probably watch that again. So now I've seen it probably four times in the last two years. But before that I wouldn't have been able to.

Okay, well, it is. It's one of mine. And one of my favorite lines is the Joan Cusack character saying, it's not even leather. You know, when she walks, she's walking out with the gift. But anyway. But working Girls. So let's start right here. Tell me the similarities, and you've already touched on it a bit. Between being creative, you know, your past working in Hollywood, but the similarities between internal communications or just communications and your experience in Hollywood, working in television or film, bringing in creativity to maybe a dry business. But how can anyone do that? Or how have you done that before?

I went to Hollywood, I actually had. Did went to graduate school right after college. I went straight to graduate school because I didn't want to get it. I wasn't ready to get a job. So I went to graduate school and I went to the UK and I did this funny masters called. It was called Text and Performance Studies. So I have a master's in something called Text and Performance Studies, which I, to be honest, never thought would be useful. It was half reading, it was half a sort of literature degree reading all of Western dramatic Literature and a performance component of how do you take what's on the page and bring it to the stage? I really didn't think it would ever be a useful degree. It has turned out to be the bedrock of both of my careers. Tell me how so because of the focus on structure, and I think a lot of times in communications, we talk about storytelling. We talk about it a lot these days. And I think it's can also sound a little airy fairy. However, storytelling underneath it is hardcore structure and strategy and creativity. And that's what I learned. So I like to think of it as the skeleton. For example, in Hollywood, there's a traditional three act structure. So a standard screenplay is 120 pages long and it's structured as three acts. But there are some. A certain number of points in the script that you will be looking for, certain devices, right? So at page 29, the first 29 pages of a script is exposition. We're getting to know the characters, we're understanding their context. At page 29, there will be an inciting incident. Something has to happen that launches us into the second act. And then most of the script is the second act, about 60 pages. And in that are climaxes and midpoints and a whole other devices. At about page 89, another inciting incident has to happen that takes us to resolution. Now that's just formula for every Hollywood script. It's just a structure. So when I worked in feature film development and I have a stack of scripts and I'm looking for a needle and a haystack for something really great, what I do is first I pick it up and I go to those pages. I don't read it for. I don't start at the first page. I go to page 29 and I'm looking to see if there's an explosion or confrontation or something exciting happening on page 29. And then I flip to page 89. Because what I want to know is, is this script structurally sound? Does it have the bones that I'm. That I'm looking for? Because I'm not interested in the meat or the story or the rest of it unless I know that it's structurally sound. That's the same skill that we use in communications or in business where we're looking for strategy. What's the why. Why are we here? What's the big picture problem we're trying to solve? And then we look at. And so I'm always looking for the bones and the skeleton first of the story or the problem we're trying to solve. And then we can put me on the bones. We can layer story on, we can layer creativity on it. But first I need to know that it has bones. And I never realized that. That's how I learned strategy.

That's an excellent example. And as soon as you roll it out, I thought, okay, I hear a formula. I work in public relations, communications. And I create communication plans. When you Talked about Act 1, that is the Act 1 where I act, where I tell them we need to do research and a lot of. A lot of strategies and plans. They forget that first stage. And maybe that's failed screen screenplays as well. If they don't set up the story well to come up with the reason why it's going to fail. So that act one is the research. The act two is let's plan it, let's implement it. And then Act 3 was what's happened. It's the resolution of it. So many plans can follow that same format.

It's true. And it's. I think sometimes we think formula or formulaic sounds bad or hackneyed or unoriginal. And I think that there's nothing farthest from the truth. I think it could be farther from the truth because there's so many ways to tell the same story in different ways. In creativity. And it really is formless through the form. Mm.

Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more.

So creativity. So one of the things I think people put a lot of pressure on themselves about being creative. And in fact, it's a much lighter lift if you're strategic in the first place. If you look and you set up where are my bones? What am I trying to do? What am I trying to achieve? Once you know where all those strategic pieces are in your puzzle, then you're laying creativity. But those bones will do a lot of the work for you if you let them.

Is everyone creative in your opinion, or can they be?

I think everyone has the ability to do creative work or to take in communications. I think everyone has the ability to be more creative and to use some of the tools of creativity to improve their work and their outcomes.

Of course, yes, I think everyone can tell a story. It's just some people can tell them better, but you can work at it too. That's a great example. Another piece of your business that you talk about a lot. When I was doing a lot of research on you and even speaking to you over lunch, you like this idea of the human centric business. You like the word human bringing humanity into it. Now, the only movie I could bring in was just because last week when I was trying to work, I got sucked into a biography on Drew Barrymore and it made me think of ET So that's my only. You know, where an alien comes into the human.

To the human world.

So talk to me about the human centric communication.

It's so funny. I am often I really should copyright it or trademark it. I say often, talk to the humans. I need to go talk to the humans. Or in a consulting where it's like, we're gonna do this thing, da da da. I'm like, well, did you talk to the humans? Which means, did you ask people if this is what they wanted? Did you get audience input? Did you check with people? Did you actually do any research before you decided to do something? Did you get any input from actual people that this was going to affect or that might have a perspect on it?

I don't know if you share this experience with me, but so many people don't ask.

No, they don't.

They just do.

I know, I know. So the mission of my business is proving that human centric businesses do better. And this is because. Well, first of all, I think when I worked in Hollywood I didn't. There's a lot of. You learn a lot of bad habits as both an employer and employee in Hollywood. I'll say. And I didn't know that it could be any other way. And then I went overseas. I lived and worked in New Zealand for many, many years, which is where I built my communications career, which is natively a more human centric, kind, civilized place and culture. And so the way people, the way companies treat employees and the understanding about that social contract is very different. So it is naturally more human centric. So when I came back to this, so I was also spoiled. So I learned bad habits and then I got so spoiled in this really much more evolved working environment. So when I came back to this country and I went and tried to get a job in corporate America, I just thought, oh gosh, this doesn't suit me at all. And I think knowing that it didn't have to be that way, that there's actually ways to run companies where people are treated with respect and dignity, that their lives outside of work are held as sacrosanct and that they have that and that what's understood is that you get better work out of people. People are. We talk a lot in communications and hr, we talk a lot about employee engagement. And in the most clinical terms, that's about discretionary effort and can you get people to work harder. But a lot of it is about people working smarter, being more innovative. And I don't like it when people talk about happiness at work because I think what makes people happy at work is being respected and being given the ability and the flexibility to do great work.

Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. And the human piece. I mean, I've been at the biz for a while as well. I can see, I can track where it changed, what it was like working in a corporate environment in the late 90s, early 2000s is markedly different today than it was then.

What do you think is different about it?

Well, without a doubt, the male, female dynamic, without question. And I think in men, it was just a different culture back then. And here's a complete aside to bring television into it. I was watching the Monica Lewinsky, the Clinton Affair on AE last night. I was utterly fascinated by it. Not just because of the story and not just because of what she went through, but the culture. I kept going back, having lived in Washington D.C. at the time, what it was like to be a female working in that environment. And all of the talking heads were.

Men, men, men, men, men.

And it was really difficult time for women, I think, to speak up. So it's no surprise, you know, what happened to Monica Lewinsky there. But it just made me think about what it was like working in Washington D.C. back then compared to now. I feel that women feel more empowered and men are allowing women to become more empowered. That's one piece.

I think it's true and very similar. Having worked in Hollywood in the 90s, a lot of bad, A lot of bad behavior. And certainly as a young female professional, I learned there were a lot of things I never questioned. I thought that's just the way they were.

Oh, amen, sister.

And when I think now that I think now, you know, I'm ashamed that I didn't question or that I didn't know to push back. And a lot of things we evaluate, evaluating, you know, retrospectively putting 21st century more is on, but. But it's an interesting time. But again, it is, you're right, it has changed very much. In terms of one, that's one of the things in terms of where I think communications can really help create a more human centric workplace and a healthier workplace where people can do better work, which is the obvious. You know, you want people to do better work, be work smarter, faster, more, be more innovative and productive because that's how you make more money. Because for most of us, it's the employees that run your business that actually make you money. So it's a good idea to keep them thriving. And communications can play a big role. You know, there's research that says that an employee that is neglected by their manager is actually less engaged than an employee that is criticized by their manager or receives negative feedback or Has a sort of contentious relationship that it is worse to be just completely ignored as a human in the workplace. That is more disengaging and reduces productivity even more than negative interactions. And I often say, you know, your employees are not like a cactus. They don't thrive on neglect. So that's why the consistency of leadership and commitment, the consistency and commitment of leadership and communicating with people and not committing, communicating to people. Because very often we hear people say, oh, we just need more communications, which often means we need to push more stuff out. We need to push more messages out at people. And that's not communicating with people. Communications is two way.

Yes, there's two way and there's one way communication. Usually the news media, that's one way communication. They're just putting out a story. But the human communication, the two way communication is so vital. Now you mentioned money, so let me just touch on budget for a moment and we're going to time hop again back to the time of the movie Wall Street. I don't know if you remember seeing that movie with Michael Douglas where the quote is, you know, greed is good. Now we don't want to equate greed with a big budget, but let's think about big budgets there. Does a higher budget necessarily mean higher results?

No, I don't think a larger budget does equal better results necessarily. I wouldn't advocate for extremely constrained budgets because then you aren't really giving your team, your communicators the resources they need to be effective. At the same time, I think when you have a big budget, it's possible to just waste more money and trying more things that may or not be effective. There's something about that having constraints around you that actually foster creativity because you're creating guardrails or by creating a constrained environment, you're fighting forcing people to be more creative and to dig deeper, not wider. Right. So we don't have a million of something. We have one really cool thing. So in television we used to call it making $3 look like 5.

I think everyone calls it that way.

Okay, good. I really haven't heard it much since, to be honest. But what do we have that we can kind of, we would say in New Zealand, what do we have that we can tart up?

You know, tart T A R T.

Let's just start that up.

Yeah.

So having a constrained budget gives you an opportunity to find ways to be more creative and to do more with what you have. It's doing better with the resources you have. It's not always just Having more, of course, yes.

And many entrepreneurs, small business owners, they have to think like that all the time. If you do, like a gut check, what do you do when you don't have money? The first thing you do is you think. If you can't spend, it forces you to think. And thinking is what spurs creativity. Now, moving along, if we talk about the idea of creativity and just creating ideas or content where content is king. Okay, now listen for my next segue, the King's Speech. You know, to go back to that degree of yours back in the uk, Colin Firth movie about the King's Speech and talking about King content being king. Tell me how valuable content is.

Content is a really important way that we telling stories in our organizations. I see a lot of communicators getting overwhelmed by the idea of creating content, though, because there's a lot out there already and people feel the sort of need to be constantly producing or constantly creating new content to add to the conversation and to be relevant and. And this idea of more communication is more communication. I think there are a lot of ways for people in businesses, both communicators and everyone really, to use what they already have in a business. The kinds of content that are already part of how you run a business, it can be other documents, can be HR plans or other things that already exist in the business. And a great communicator is an expert at taking some of them I would call found objects. A great communicator is an expert at taking some of those found objects or communications that don't look like much and turning them into a story that's really relevant for employees.

I think the word curate is a magic word now. It's a very buzzy word of the moment when people talk about social media. But whether you're an entrepreneur or you work in HR or communications, yes, there's that stress like, oh, I have to create something, I have to write something, or again, you have to do something. But if you stop and think and focus on what you already have and it's that curation or that mix, that alchemy of what is already working and you can just repackage it into something else, that's what I found in my experience works.

I agree. And I think it kind of goes back to that budget question. You know, it's like getting all the bites of the apple. Taking what. Using the resources that you have and using them really smart. I talk about it as using the whole pig. Right? We don't let any part of the pig go to waste. If we have something, we take everything and we find a use for it, you know, and we can put it in different and we can, we can create different kinds of content with it, but we don't waste good stories. We find every angle of them and we tell them. And that's what I call being a strategic creative. And to me, that's the future of communications.

Oh, I like that. Being a strategic creative. Oh, that's using creativity. But strategically, you have to think about it. There has to be a reason behind it.

Looking at what's the business need or opportunity that you're trying to solve. Because again, back to budgets. You know what is important? We're in business, we're here to make money. So where can we move the needle for the business? Now, there's a bunch of different metrics for what we look at. One of them is that, you know, is actual revenue or profit. But there's other ones too, that are important running a business. A lot of times I see around recruitment and retention, companies are having trouble either recruiting top talent or keeping the talent they have. There's a whole bunch of different common metrics and business drivers that if communicators can help influence those and drive results, make them invaluable to the business. I argue it's very hard to do that unless you are a strategic creative, unless you are both looking at the big picture, looking for those bones. What's the big story we're wanting to tell and having a creative, nuanced way to tell it consistently in a way that's relevant and applicable to the people you're wanting to communicate with.

Oh, that's a great example. Let me touch on a category that you just mentioned. The who, like tapping into people that can help you. So whether you work for an organization or you run your own business, you have employees, you work with employees, or you hire team members to work with your entrepreneurial job. Who are some of the best types of employees or people to help communicate messaging? So in other words, to bring in the tie in, who are the Goodfellas? Also, one of my favorite movies. I could go to that one a million times a year. But who are the best type of people that can help share a company's mission statement, values, or their content?

So there's a couple ways to do that. So one is if you talk about. We're always looking for advocates and ambassadors. Now advocates in a company, we can assign. We can reach out and be like, hey, I'd really like for you to be an advocate for our values. You Know, we're doing some work around this. If you can advocate that means talking to peers and influencing. So we're looking for influencers, really. Ambassadors are chosen by the employees themselves. You can't decide who's really an influencer in your business. They just are. Right. So being able to identify them and leverage them to help you as an ally is a really. Help is a really important skill. The other thing I would say though, in terms of communicating mission, vision and values and, you know, this is a topic I'm really passionate about, is we're looking for values as behaviors. The way that we can reinforce what we. What looks, what good looks like here? What does success look like? What are the values of the behaviors that we want to encourage? What do we not tolerate? What do we reward? So we always want to make that link between values and the behaviors that are demonstrative of those values. So we're looking for people in the business who model that already for their peers.

So speaking of leadership and values, there's a lot of businesses, organizations just over the past two years that are in the news a lot. You know, nowadays that the. There's a discordance between maybe how a CEO is running a business compared to what the mission statement is or what the bulk of the employees want. And I will title this section in the Line of Fire, another, another throwback movie for me with Clint Eastwood. But this idea of a crisis. What can an employee do, say or communicate if their business is going through a crisis? Does their communications change at all?

What a great question. I think crisis communications and internal crisis communications. And it's so interesting because you do a lot of external crisis communications and I've done a lot of internal crisis communications. And employees can be such as, you know, speaking of ambassadors, you know, employees can be such a, an important ally in managing a crisis and they can unwittingly be a real detriment to the business and in getting out of a crisis for a couple ways. And this kind of goes back to a lot of my beliefs around a human centric business and about not treating employees like a cactus. You know, very often when a crisis hits or is coming, the natural tendency of leaders is to batten down the hatches, you know, and very often what that means is not saying anything to anyone. There's this real fear of saying the wrong thing. And so they don't say anything to anyone. However, when, however, when you do that to employees, what it creates is fear and uncertainty and they don't know what to say. And I've seen it a bunch of times, and I'm sure you have. Where an employee gets door knocked or stopped on the street about something, they haven't been kidding. They haven't been kept in the loop about what's happening. Here's the update on the situation. Here's what we're doing. If you're asked, here's what you can say. So because they haven't been part of the crisis management, they are not able to. Not able to help with key messages or to help with the perception externally of the crisis and in some cases can actually make it worse. So instead of. Instead of keeping employees in the dark because you don't want to worry them or you're not sure you can trust them, first of all, if you can't trust your people, you've got a problem. You've got a problem. A deep cultural problem that communications is part of the solution to, but it really comes down to leadership.

That's an excellent point, because sometimes it's the leader, but sometimes it's the employee. Like anyone can truly start a crisis. And in the environment that we're in now, this viral environment, when an employee does it, it's usually unwittingly they will thrust their company into a crisis. I find when it's leadership, it's usually the disconnect in the value system, like they've done something wrong. And again, you're absolutely right. The first reaction is to clam up and say nothing because they don't want to do any more damage. But that is truly the opposite thing you should be doing. Your customers want to hear from you.

You and your people want to hear from you, and they don't. You know, you think about a company that has a big sales force and they're all distributed and they're all over the country or all over the world, but they're out there with their own relationships. They're getting questions. You know, sales teams are the biggest flash point for where you need in a crisis to really be in touch with your people. It's not people sitting at a desk at headquarters because, you know, kind of.

Get them all in a room, but.

Really being proactive with Salesforce. We're out there. Their job is to have tentacles, and their job is to have really close relationships with all your customers. And if they get a question and they don't have a good answer, that's on you.

Right. That is an excellent point. Now, the last piece that I want to talk about is, I think this will relate to people who work within a Business or they are consultants, they work on their own, and they have to call on different businesses or different employees for their business. And you and I happen to talk about this first when we met in. At the conference out in California, and then we spoke about it again at lunch. And you really touched a nerve in me in a good way when you said this, that there is this secret language that you have to understand if you're coming in really, either externally or internally in an environment. But you have to read the room. You have to have this certain sense of intuition. But how do you think that people can learn the secret language of a business's culture if they needed to? Any insight on that?

Again, this is why I think this is such an important area you look for. There are few things you're looking comes back to values as behaviors. So about culture, we often say that it is. If you're a new employee, culture becomes invisible to you after six months. After you're in a company, working a company for six months, you can't see it anymore.

Wait, say that again. Now, is that from a study?

Yeah, I'm sure it's been researched. It's just how I. Yeah, that's just. Yeah, that's how I learned culture.

Okay. So within six months, what, they're indoctrinated into the ways of the business and they don't see it from an external point of view anymore. There. It's purely internal.

So let me say it another way. The way I define culture is how we do things around here.

Okay? Okay.

If you define it as how we do things around here, then there comes a point where you aren't learning those things anymore. It's just how you do things around here because you've learned what's rewarded, what's not tolerated, what gets ignored, how your leaders treat people, how people treat each other, and what time people leave for the day and when people come in. And do you get a side eye if you. If you come in too late or do people sit at their desks for lunch or do they all go out?

Right.

All these things, or who speaks first in meetings and what happens if you push back in meetings? Right. All these things that we're learning in those first six months, and after about six months, that's just the way we do things now. You either like it or you don't. There is a fit for you to be there or it's not.

Okay, that's very interesting. That's very interesting way to look at it. So let's say you're in There what can someone do if they feel that they're out of step with the culture?

This is the, I think big question for the 21st century employees. I think there has never been. It depends on what the problem with the culture is. If you think there are ethical, if you think there are ethical issues or if it's just a culture that doesn't match your own value system. Now hopefully, you know, I'm actually a big believer in recruiting for culture Fit and by that which has gotten a very bad rap because it's seen as recruiting for people like me. I believe that recruiting for culture fit is recruiting people that are aligned with our values. We have this value and which actually is much more diverse and inclusive because a lot of people who understand our values and are a match for our values could fit in. So it actually broadens your talent pool quite a lot. However, if you feel like a company is not a fit for your values, there's two options. You can leave, you can, well, three, you can stay and be miserable, which I personally don't advocate because that's not good for anyone. It's really not good for a business. You become a disengaged employee, which is really just not good for anyone. And there's a third option which I think is the conversation I'm interested in in terms of employee experience in the 21st century, which is being a change agent from within.

Okay, explain that.

There's never been a better time to be a change agent from within. Because companies now, and I see it having come sort of from a very different culture to a US context, companies are finally waking up to the fact that employees are not semi disposable. You can't just hire them and throw them away because you don't like them or because they. Right. Talent is really great. Talent is hard to come by. So you need people. You need people and you need to find a way to keep them so that you can get a, get a big return on investment. It's expensive to hire people, it's expensive to lose people. So how we can actually make the most of the people that we have and help them be engaged so that they can do good innovative work. And the counterpoint to that is how our people can really co create the culture culture, how they can have a voice. And as part of that, what makes people happy at work, having autonomy, flexibility, latitude and being respected. And having their voices, intelligent humans, be respected and encouraged. So if you find yourself in a situation where you don't love the culture, there's a really Great window coming up, I think to be an influencer yourself and look at how you can change it.

And that applies to all generations. When you speak about hiring for the culture fit, my mind immediately goes to a millennial. But it could be a Gen Xer, it could be a baby boomer. And so this will lead into my final question for you, Victoria. I'm going to title this A Star Is Born. And you mentioned the term a 21st century employee. Who is the ideal 21st century employee? Or what is the makeup of a successful 21st century employee?

I think that in every field it's some aspect of being a strategic creative, because I think that's a job that robots can't take. Okay.

Oh, yes.

So when you are strategic, when you're looking at the big, I also think of it as macro, micro. Part of being strategic is you're looking at the big picture. Okay. I see how all the pieces fit together and I'm micro. Oh, I see how this initiative is part of that big picture. And I understand and I can move between those two perspectives quickly. And that's part of being strategic and then finding creative solutions. That resourcefulness, that resilience, finding creative ways to solve problems in that large context, both the big macro context of the business, the drivers, the economy, and the small context of what is the task at hand? What's this project we're trying to do? So I think the command, and I think of that as being a strategic creative. And I think, and it's the opposite of being a linear thinker, and it's the opposite of being on an assembly line where you're just putting a cog, you know, you're just a cog in a machine. It's because it links to being fully human and using all the skills and intelligence and intuition and common sense and emotion that we have as humans, that I think a strategic creative is the robot proof job for the 21st century. And when you add in the ability to tell stories which robots can't do, I think that's the, I think that's the 21st century world of work I'm interested in living in.

See, of course, you worked in Hollywood and that's where you started your career because you brought it right back to the beginning. It's all about telling the story story as well. So if you are a strategic creative, you're using creativity, but you're, you're mixing it with the information that you have, the talent that you have, the stories that you have. So whether you're running your own Business. You work for a business. You don't want to forget the story, you don't want to forget the creativity, and you don't want to forget the other humans to come to your why. Correct.

Sounds good.

Okay. Well, Victoria, thank you so much for sharing your ideas today. I really did want to speak with you, especially now, because what you touch on, again, this idea of being a human centric business or organization and tying that into the real skills that people don't value as much anymore. This idea of storytelling and the creative, I think it's so valuable and really creates a very unique, almost indestructible 21st century employee.

I think that's the idea. I think there's so much interesting work. You know, we've never lived in a time that has sort of greater challenges than we do today. I am hopeful that the pace, because the pace of change is accelerating so fast and I am really hopeful that people's ability to innovate and be creative and solve problems is also accelerating really fast. And I think that this is the way, this is the way to crack that. Whether you're a developer, a software developer, or a dancer or a communicator, I think this is the way that we accelerate progress and heal.

Okay, Victoria, thank you so much. And since this is the end of our story, I will close out by saying the end. Thank you so much, Victoria. I love this conversation because I know how important it is to really look at the way you're communicating with your team members. They are the human piece, that authentic piece of your organization. With so many people worrying about the jobs that are being replaced with automations, the human element is vital for a business's survival. If this is something you've been struggling with, I have help on the way. I'm launching a new training very soon to help you communicate with power in less than an hour. Clever, huh? Be on the lookout for more on the podcast soon. It's the program you need to help you learn how to put away weak language and understand how genders communicate differently and how your body language might be impacting your communication style. That's it for now. I look, look forward to speaking with you again next week. In the meantime, keep communicating.