Dianne Frommelt is the Chief Product Officer for 15Five, a company I am a longtime fan of. They’re on a mission to create high performing, highly engaged teams, and to create a product that helps everyone who uses it to be and become their best selves.
In this conversation, we go deep on the types of practices that can infuse your values into your team’s rhythms. We talk about what it looks like to craft a strategy and navigate roadmapping conversations, outcomes thinking, how to approach taking on leadership of an existing team rather than one you get to build from scratch, and much more.
And if nothing else, you’ll walk away from this episode with a great set of practices to try that will help you and those you work with feel much more connected and have deeper, more trusting relationships with each other.
Enjoy!
And if you have a moment, I’d love it if you could give me a little feedback via this SurveyMonkey link. (It only takes one minute.)
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Links & resources mentioned
- Dianne Frommelt: LinkedIn, Twitter
- 15Five
- Podcast: Best-Self Management
- Resources mentioned
- People
- Neil Degrasse Tyson
- Laura Garnett – see episode 24: “Find your zone of genius and never fear a job search again”
- Marty Cagan – see episode 31: “Empowering product teams to do the best work of their lives”
- Rich Mironov – see episode 5: “Building a thriving product organization”
- Josh Bersin
- Anese Cavanaugh (intentional energetic presence)
- Books
Transcript
Transcripts may contain some typos. With some episodes lasting ~2 hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!
Andrew 00:01:34 Dianne, welcome to the show. How are you today? Thank you. I’m great. Thanks so much for being here, you know, right before we hit record, we were just chatting about strategy strategies. One of these words that everybody knows, but nobody knows. And I know it’s a world that you’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about lately, and I’m just really curious a what are you learning in real time about how to do this well and about how, how not to do this? Because I think it’s like one of those things that we can all help each other do this better.
Dianne 00:01:56 If somebody brings up strategy, one of our leaders at ADP, Don Weinstein, he has this great expression, which is there’s the difference between strategy and bullshit is execution, right? So if you can’t figure out a way to execute on your strategy, then you’ve really just got like a nice big pile of BS. So that I always think about that whenever I think about strategy and I think we overcomplicate it right? Cause it’s, it’s as simple as what are the steps that we are going to take to achieve the thing that we want to achieve. And how do we do that in a differentiated way? I mean, that’s the way I try to simplify strategy because otherwise, like I said, I feel like we totally over-complicate that. So in sitting here and having lots of conversations with our senior leadership team about where it is, we want to go in 2021, you know, now from a business perspective, I have a much clearer picture of where we want to go. It’s like, what are those steps that we have to build within the product? What are the customer outcomes that we want to affect? What are the problems that we want to solve that are ultimately going to get us there? And that’s at the heart of what we do as product managers, right? Is align those problems that we know customers are facing the problems that they are actually willing to pay to solve. That takes the business in the direction where we want to take it. So yeah, that’s it podcast over? It’s that easy.
Andrew 00:03:11 Drop that mic. Yeah. That’s funny. I was, I was having a conversation with somebody yesterday about this and I love this frame. She gave me this. So this is new to me as of 24 hours ago. And she was, she was talking about this idea of built-in tension between what we want and then what we need. And we always, at least speaking for myself, I’ve always viewed that tension as a problem, right? It’s like, dammit, there’s this difference between this vision that we want and we’re excited about. And then like what we’ve got to do in the next three months or whatever period of time and this, she gave me this sort of reframe that I wanted to share with you that I thought it might be, maybe it’ll be useful where she’s like, yeah. What if you look at that, that tension, isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually the creative constraint that is going to like open a doorway to aligned growth. How might you get what you need in a way that’s fully aligned and taking you to the direction of what you want. So it’s not always like the world we want, like kicking that can down the road.
Dianne 00:03:59 It’s definitely a difficult one because what we think we want, isn’t always necessarily aligned with where the business wants to go. And I think sometimes that, that is the tension that product managers feel. And sometimes they don’t feel heard, right? Because you’ve got a senior leadership team that’s saying like, we’ve got to go down this road and product managers who talk to customers every day saying, well, no, no, no. Like we really need to go down this road, but that’s not the road where the business wants to go down. So definitely experienced that tension at 15 five. And like, we have really good conversations about that. We actually have just had a whole lot of, uh, talking over our senior leadership retreat last week about getting members of our senior leadership team, a lot closer to customers, having more frequent regular conversations with customers so that what the product managers were hearing from customers and our senior leadership team is hearing is aligned.
Andrew 00:04:46 Let’s start with the basics for anyone who’s not familiar already with 15 five and, and performance management and best self-management particularly just what is that just for the listener who doesn’t know that already
Dianne 00:04:56 15 five is a product that provides continuous performance management, employee engagement and a set of tools for managers that really allow managers and employees to become their best selves. You know, our mission is to create high performing teams, highly engaged organizations that is all sort of in this wrapper of, um, of what we, what we call best self management. So really the roots of 15 five or what we call the 15 five check-in. And it was a process that was actually conceived by, uh, Yvon Chouinard, who is the, uh, the CEO of Patagonia. And he wasn’t with his teams, right. He was off traveling the world, you know, climbing mountains.
Andrew 00:05:36 It was like how we kept tabs on things when he was like rock climbing and you know, Argentina. Right,
Dianne 00:05:40 Exactly. Exactly. So how do I, you know, keep track on what’s going on with the business? So he developed this practice where every employee would spend 15 minutes providing him an update on what are you working on? Where are you blocked? How are you feeling about things this week? And then the five comes from managers, you reviewing that he would re review each of those reports, he got from his team members and it would take him five minutes to review those reports. So it was this practice called 15 five. So David Hassell, who was our CEO, he’s about eight or nine years ago was a fan of this practice. And he developed what has started out as the 15 five check-in. And then from there, we just really grew into being, you know, a full suite product, uh, for HR leaders, you know, to help them with performance management, like I said, uh, employee engagement, but we’re really not focused on what a lot of, uh, products are in, in performance management, which really is this process where you set goals at the beginning of the year, you kind of forget about them.
Dianne 00:06:36 And then the end of the year comes along and you dust off those goals. And then you, you know, managers and employees are kind of giving a summary of, um, how we did against those goals for the year. And we come up with a parts rating and we sort of move on and that’s not the objective in 15 five. We want a performance review process within 15 five. That is really about self discovery for employees about helping managers and giving managers tools to, um, help develop their people so that when you do have a performance conversation quarterly or mid-year, or, you know, at the end of the year, it’s not about, well, you’re, you’re, uh, a three or you’re a four, or, you know, you’re exceptional or, you know, meets expectations or needs improvement, right? We want those conversations to be more about how you can get better about how you can develop and how you can become your best self. So that’s really sort of the cornerstone of 15 five.
Andrew 00:07:31 I first learned about 15 five, I don’t know, two years ago and kind of was an instant fan boy. And by the way, I will only give a shout out and we’ll link to this in the show notes. Uh, they have a fantastic podcast called the best self management podcast that I have absolutely binged. Uh, anybody who’s into this show is also going to like that one. So I will link to the show notes, please go listen to it. Absolutely love it. It’s really good show. And I’m not just saying that I legitimately love it.
Dianne 00:07:53 I listen to it. I do.
Andrew 00:07:54 It is. It’s one of the things that I really love. And I admire this so much in anytime I encounter this in a product organization or a startup or, or really anybody who’s trying to make a certain change in the world is that many companies you encounter, or they love to talk about the big vision and how they’re making the world better. And that has become such a parody of things about like we’re improving the world through this, you know, fill in the blank, the tech crunch, mission statement, generator thing, but what I really enjoy, and I, one of the things that I know it’s like my gut check for when it’s authentic is when I see that it’s not just about the vision, but it’s about the people, the vision supposed to help. And the way I often look for that is that it’s about who can your customers become, right?
Andrew 00:08:31 It’s like 15, five is a, is a tool. That’s not just a tool. It’s like, actually there’s a sort of an ideology behind it. There’s, you’re trying to change how people run their teams and lead their organizations and be, and become their best selves. And I just, I just really wanted to underscore that for the listener that like this, as you think, listened to this whole conversation, keep that in the background that this is really about a customer sort of transformational journey. And that’s a really thing as like a North star. That’s what it looks like to do it well. So I just wanted to give you guys a shout out of that.
Dianne 00:09:00 Well, thank you for that. Yeah, that’s actually, one of our values is create customer transformation when David Hassell and Shane back half, and Nazar on a Vive who started 15 five, they didn’t want to just build a product. I mean, they really wanted to build a company that was different that really cared about people, not just in their work life, but in their whole life. And by doing that, you know, people are going to show up better at work when you really care about them and giving people tools to really unlock their potential is a heart of everything that we do. So it’s one of the things that attracted me to 15 five, right? It’s not, it’s not just a company it’s, uh, when I, when I started researching 15 five and, and understood what they were about and the culture that they have, it’s, it’s honestly like no place I’ve ever worked. It’s really, it’s pretty. Yeah.
Andrew 00:09:42 Yeah. Now let’s talk about that a little more. I’d love to hear, because I think your journey from ADP, what had you make that call to say, you know what, I’m going to take the leap from this really well-established company to this, this sort of upstart in the space.
Dianne 00:09:54 So I had been at ADP, I think at that point for about 24 years on and off, I started out as a, uh, as a software engineer, coding, COBOL mainframe back in the nineties and sort of wound my way through, uh, the space of HR and payroll and benefits and kind of ended up on the, on the product management side. I was happy there, but kind of feeling like I was getting a little bit stale, but it’s like when you’re in a 70 year old organization that has really, really good performance, you know, financial performance and, and it’s got a lot of tenures, like you build really long relationships with people. It is really hard to walk away from, you know, and the financial stability, of course, it’s, that’s obviously a hard, I got two kids, one in college, like that’s hard to walk away from.
Dianne 00:10:37 There was something missing in terms of the types of products I wanted to build the type of culture that I wanted to be part of. And it always wanted to work in a small organization. It was one of the tough things when you work in a big company is it’s just, there’s a lot of red tape and everybody’s very well-intentioned. But when you’re trying to build a product where you use lots of shared services, there’s lots of coordination across teams that are, you know, sitting literally across the country. Uh, it’s just, it’s hard to get anything done. It’s just really hard. And yeah, we were successful and we did a great job, but it’s just, it’s, it’s hard to be a product manager, a really large organization. So I started looking and I said, you know, if I’m going to leave ADP, it’s going to be for a product that I really, really care about.
Dianne 00:11:18 It’s going to be for a very different kind of culture. And I really would love to understand what it’s like to be in product, in a growth company. Right. And it’s something that was a lot smaller. So this opportunity popped up for 15 five. And like I said, I kind of, I started researching the product it’s sort of in my wheelhouse because at ADP, I had worked on, uh, talent management and performance management for a long time. And, uh, so I started researching them and, and understanding what they were doing. And I was like getting to understand more about David and sort of his, his background. And it was realizing that they were approaching this topic in a really, really different way and feeling very close to, I was feeling about the way that HR should be looking at this, looking at this topic. And then when I started to learn more about their culture, I got really excited.
Dianne 00:12:00 And in fact, what I, what I did was you mentioned the podcast while I was in my interview process, I happened to be traveling a whole lot. And I saw, I was like on a plane, like probably every three or four days. So I listened to literally every podcast, I think at that point they have maybe 18 or so episodes that were out. I listened to every one of the podcasts. Think it’s a great way to get to know people too. Right. You feel like, you know them. Yeah, exactly. So having David and Shane in my head, and they just shared lots of stories about things that they did at 15 five, like by the time I was like three or four podcasts in, I remember saying to my husband, like, I don’t know what I’m going to do. If I can’t join this organization, I’m going to be pissed.
Dianne 00:12:35 Exactly. Like I just, I resonate with everything they say, like, I’m really feeling like this is the right place for me. But of course in the back of my head thinking like I work for a Relic, like I am not what they’re looking for. Right. I doubt like the last person they want is a VP of product for like, from a 70 year old company. I’m sure they’ve got like a, a line of, of good VPs that have come out of startups that they would want to hit. They’re gonna be a lot more attracted to than me, but I forged ahead. And, and, and here I am. Yeah. So I had a great conversation with the team and, and the first thing that just really got me excited about 15 five in my interview process was my first round of interviews was not with anybody in the senior leadership team. It was with the team of product managers. So I met with one product manager first, and then a team of four product managers. We did like a, you know, a panel interview and that spoke so much to me that they cared so much about their opinion, that they were the first round of interviews. Then I met with David and he shared his vision with me. And it was all history after that.
Andrew 00:13:30 Boom, there it is. You, I want to ask you about something. There’s a buzzword that I’m trying to get my head around, that I know is sort of encompassing the space that 15 five plays in the future of work. And it’s one of these terms that are the surface. You’re like, Oh yeah, I get it. And then as I sit there and I think about it for a minute, I don’t get it. And I don’t know what it means. And I’m curious, like when people ask you that, what would you say that means, what is the future of work? How should one think about that?
Dianne 00:13:53 Yeah. Josh Berson actually has a great article about the future work. And I think he’s done a couple of talks too, but I mean, I there’s my hope for what the future of work is. And then there’s like, so I mean, obviously, you know, remote having a remote workforce is, is here to stay. Right. I think when we were thrown into this tizzy back in March, you know, we all thought, well, you know, this will be for a couple of months and then like really quickly within the first couple of weeks. And we started to realize, okay, like, this is, this is not just a couple of months. This is going to go on for a while. And obviously now coming on the back end of that, you’ve got so many companies who are saying like, no, we’re just going to go with a remote first workforce.
Dianne 00:14:29 So I think that that’s a reality that’s here to stay. And you know, I think another trend that we see is we talk to a lot of customers that just, they just really want to take care of their people, right? We’re all under a tremendous amount of stress. People trying to work with their kids, being at home, people being worried about social injustice. And, uh, there’s just a high sense care that companies need to have for their employees. And I think it’s, it’s now more than ever. And I really think that relationship between managers and employees is also, you know, more important than ever because I’m not, I’m not walking the halls and having water cooler conversations with people anymore. Right. I’m having very limited touchpoints over a screen. And like that your relationship with your manager is your lifeline right back to back to the company.
Dianne 00:15:16 So I think that’s one of the realities that that’s, that’s here to stay. And, and that’s one of the reasons that 15 five, that we’re just so passionate about upleveling managers and giving managers tools that they need to be there for their employees. But the technology is not a silver bullet, right? There’s also a lot of, I think managers used to be the person that sort of manage the work right. And they were super tactical and figuring out what people needed to do. And, and the re the other reality of the future of work is we’re all in network teams, right? So I like me personally, I know I have a team of nine product managers. I don’t work with each one of them day in and day out. They’re working with their squads, right. With their, with their agile teams. So I’m not directing their work every day, but I need to be a coach.
Dianne 00:15:58 Right. And I need to be sure that I’m providing them with the support that they needed. I’m there to remove obstacles. So the role of the managers is really, is really changing a lot too. People are working on dynamic teams today, like the org chart. It really means nothing, right? Because that’s not where the work is actually being done. The work is being done in New York chart, right. The work is being done in these dynamic teams that might come together, do some work and then break apart. And as a manager, how do you support that? And how can you assess performance for someone that you’re not working side-by-side with, um, all day long. So there’s just so many dynamics that are changing right now, and we’re trying to support all of them. And I think the expectations for employees are changing too, right? So two generations ago you started at a company and your hope was that, you know, you were going to be there for 30 years and you would get your gold watch and retire.
Dianne 00:16:47 Exactly. That is not how people approach work anymore. Right. I want to work in a place that’s where I’m doing work. That’s meaningful to me where I have a certain level of autonomy, you know, where I believe in what we’re building it’s, um, or, or, you know, I believe in the work that we’re doing or the services that we’re providing. Right. I think, like I said, I think the expectations for people at work now are so much different than they were a generation or two ago. So that’s, that’s definitely another trend that we see too. And companies are also looking for people that want to have that growth mindset, right. That really understand where their strengths are. Really know, like we use the thing, Laura Garnette. Yeah. She was a guest on the show. She’s great. Right. I haven’t read that book. That’s a big, that’s a big 15, five bucks.
Dianne 00:17:28 Most 15, actually. She was on the show and I discovered her work through the 15 five podcasts. Oh, that’s so funny. Yeah, because she was on, I think one of the early days of the podcast, she was maybe not everyone necessarily uses that term zone of genius. I do think that that’s something that companies are looking for now too, is understanding what your strengths are. How do I align you to where your zone of genius is? Because that is where you’re going to get into the flow of work and where you’re really going to thrive. So I think lots of companies are catching on to this, and they’re understanding that these things are really important to employees. And, you know, I think some are a little slower in, uh, in catching on, but I think these are trends that, that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Dianne 00:18:07 So when you talk about like the future of work, those are definitely the things that we say. So these are like the tenants of best self management, right? So growth mindset, zone of genius, psychological safety, intrinsic motivation, and, and positive psychology. And I would say what we’ve made part of our values at 15 five, this is relational mastery. And I think that’s something that we really live and breathe is as part of our culture. And that’s like providing candor with care and having clearing conversations and things like setting agreements in advance. Those are the foundations of having good relationships with people. And those are things that, that we kind of live and breathe. Relational mastery
Andrew 00:18:41 Sounds like a big idea. Talk to me about that. Yeah.
Dianne 00:18:43 Relational mastery, in my opinion, like it is at the heart of good working relationships. The way that we get a, a good relationship started. So you’re new to 15 five, and you have, what’s called a best self kickoff, right? So this is a compensation that you have with your manager, and there’s a questionnaire that goes along with it. And you answer a series of questions and your manager answers the same series of questions. And it’s things like, how do I like to receive feedback, right. What’s the best way to work with me? What do I believe my strengths are? Where do I think my zone of genius is? It’s also a conversation about role clarity, right? So I understand clearly what the expectations are and setting agreements with each other. So we’re, we’re agreeing about, you know, this, this is how we’re going to work together.
Dianne 00:19:27 Like, Hey, if I send you a Slack message over the weekend, I’m just getting something off my plate. You don’t have to answer, right. It’s like those kinds of agreements. And it’s about a four hour deep conversation. I report to David House, our CEO, and I had, he carved out four hours for me to have, have this conversation. Um, and since then we’ve actually put this in the product. So it is a, it is a product. So you can, you can customize it with your own questions or you can use the questions that we use at 15 five, but it sets the foundation for a really great relationship. And then we also use that as a tool, if we’ve got new team members that like, even if you’re, you know, a, a ten-year 15 fiver, you might be going to maybe a new squad, or maybe you’ve changed roles.
Dianne 00:20:05 Now you’re going to go to a new team. We suggest that you have a best self kickoff so that you’re talking through roadblocks that might happen before they happen. You know, if there’s any concerns about role clarity, we all kind of, you know, come to agreements about how we’re going to work together. Sometimes, you know, if we bring new squads together, like the squad we’ll do a best self kickoff together as a squad, and they’ll sort of set the norms and agreements for their, for their roles. So that’s sort of at the foundation of it. And then, you know, you asked me about, uh, clearing conversations and this is something that’s super important as part of our culture. So if you have a disagreement with someone, if you’re holding some sort of tension with someone and, you know, maybe you’ve had a conversation that was a little bit acrimonious, you’d take a little bit of time.
Dianne 00:20:44 You both sort of think about, you know, what might be the issue and you get together. And the most important part of a clearing conversation is that you assume positive intent, right? So yes, maybe I said something to slight you, or I said something in the wrong way that has offended you, but that was not my intention. And I, and, and you can rely on the fact that I know that, that wasn’t your intention. And we’re going to have this conversation about what happened, knowing that we had the best intentions going in, and that we’d likely all want the same outcome, but we’re just approaching it differently. And we’re going to, we’re going to talk through that. Sometimes it takes more than one clearing conversation. That’s that’s happened before, right where we just really are butting heads on something. And, uh, we’ve got a great, uh, people ops team. And sometimes we bring in somebody for our people. I’ve seen him to kind of help us navigate these conversations, but we are adamant that those conversations need to happen because holding those tensions and, uh, having that lead to, you know, gossip and sort of backdoor conversations about people is not productive. It’s really draining. And it’s just not the way we operate.
Andrew 00:21:46 I think it’s safe to say you and I are both, you know, fully bought into this different way of working and probably everybody at 15 five as they wouldn’t be there. But I imagine that you encounter a lot of people who don’t get it, or they’re just like Dianne, like, what are you talking about? What do you do about that?
Dianne 00:22:00 It’s funny because when I first joined 15 five and was explaining to people outside the organization, you know, like friends of mine, people calling me, Hey, how’s the new, how’s the new role going? Right. And sort of explaining some of the practices and some of the things that we do. It’s like, I think everyone worried that maybe I joined a cult like that just doesn’t sound like corporate America. Right. That’s not, that’s how the Americans, but it’s funny because you know what, 10 months, and now, and I feel like, how do you not work and have these practices? Right. And it’s like, so clear to me now that especially working in large organizations where people, sometimes you’re working with people that you haven’t really formed good relationships with. Right. So it’s like, how do I navigate through a difficult conversation about we disagree on priorities when we don’t have a foundation for like a good working relationship? Yeah.
Andrew 00:22:46 There’s no background of relatedness. No, no. Like foundation of trust.
Dianne 00:22:49 Exactly. Exactly. So like, I can tell you a funny story. So when I first started at 15 five, the timing of my joining the organization was great because 15 five has an in-person full company retreat once a year, obviously 20, 21 that may or may not happen with COVID, but it is a practice that they’ve done every year since the beginning of the company. So I joined a week before the retreat. So I was able to meet everybody in the company within my first two weeks. So sitting in one of the presentations at the retreat and, um, our VP of sales came in and, um, you know, he gave a presentation and, you know, sales guys are right. He’s like ramping up the room, like tons of veterans. And the thought bubble over my head is like, all right, frat boy. Right? Like, I, I know his type, right.
Dianne 00:23:33 I put him in that bucket. And later that night, we happened to be sat at the same table for dinner. And another 15 five tradition that we do is something called table questions, right? So there are six questions that typically shamed at who’s our chief culture officer. He writes the questions and during dinner, everyone goes around the table and answers these questions. So this gentlemen, or one of our VPs of sales answered a question, it was an ending. The question was something about your legacy and you want to leave as your legacy. And he just talked super passionately about his kids and how he wants to be there for his kids. And I was like, I totally misjudged this person. Like I have how this person in like a completely different light and had we had like a normal, what I would call work dinner. Right. Which is like official conversations about work or, you know, like watching on Netflix and not having like these deep personal conversations. I don’t know that I ever would have taken sort of frat boy out of my perception of him.
Andrew 00:24:31 It makes perfect sense. I’m also really curious about, you know, 15 five has been a remote company, I think either for a long time or since its inception. And so by now, 15 five is Ninja level at things, and many practices and ways of working that a lot of the world is total newbies at leading a distributed team yourself. What are some of the practices, you know, the day to day, week to week rhythms that you all employ to really stay connected. Right? Cause it’s a, it’s one thing to build that foundation of trust and have that amazing dinner in person. Right. That’s great. But then, you know, you have the months of not being in person. So how do you do that?
Dianne 00:25:02 Yeah. It’s tough. You have to be very intentional about building in time to have personal interactions. Right? So one of the things that we do, I do this with my team, our leadership team does this, I think lots of other teams of 15 five do this. When we start a meeting, we always start with some kind of question. So it can be as simple as a check-in where we share what we call our intentional energetic presence. It’s from a book written by, uh, on East Cavenaugh. And it’s this, you know, it’s basically, how am I feeling today? How am I showing up? And it’s a scale of one to 10. So a lot of times we’ll start with, well, what’s your IEP today? And if it’s not above a seven, you know, what, what can we do for you to help you get you to a seven?
Dianne 00:25:44 Or what do you need to do for yourself to kind of get you to a seven? So as we just start with an icebreaker, right? So like, we’ll have like a person who’s in charge of questions for that month. And that, that person will just ask a question because if we don’t, if we just come on to a call and we just jumped right into business, there’s just no opportunity to build those relationships. So that’s one thing that we do, everything that we do that people just can not believe that we do this as, as a practice is we have three weekly company-wide meetings. The entire company gets up and call for a half an hour. We do Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And, uh, each, each of those meetings has a different tone and a different purpose. So we call them boosts, right? So it’s really boosts everybody’s energy. Everybody get, everybody rallied around something. So typically is, is like a business update. You know, we get it, we get, uh, an update from somebody in the, in the rev organization to understand like, how are we doing against our numbers? David takes that opportunity to sort of reinforce strategy and, and like kind of, you know, sharpen up as to where we’re headed. And it sounds like
Andrew 00:26:44 Also there’s like total transparency around those numbers, which is very interesting because a lot of places don’t do that.
Dianne 00:26:49 Oh yeah, good. The good, the good, the bad and the ugly. Right. So when we’re doing really well, we celebrate that. And when we’re not like it’s full transparency and we talk about it and we talk about what we can do better. So yeah, that, that’s, that’s really important too, is to, is to, to have that level of transparency. And then, you know, Wednesdays, we typically rotate and it’s different department. We’ll do an update and, you know, do celebrations in terms of like achievements that have been made or things that have been done. And then Fridays, we do what we call question Friday, which is, it’s so much fun every month. There’s a different question leader. So for that, we’re responsible for coming up with the questions and we ask a question and Shane makes sure that that question is insightful and has, uh, has a purpose that you’re trying to get out of that question, what you’re trying to learn about people from that question.
Dianne 00:27:33 And then we go into breakout rooms and typically it’s like 10, 12 people. And everybody answers that question. And you just get to know people on such a personal level. Like at time it was like, what would you tell your 18 year old self? You know, we’ve had posters of like, especially during COVID, you know, people were asking a lot of questions of like, how are you surviving? Like what, what was your, like one was, what was your favorite restaurant that you haven’t been able to go to that you really miss and why do you miss it? So stuff like that, it’s just, it’s just an opportunity for us to get to know each other. So it’s all of these practices that we have where we’re being really intentional about keeping these relationships solid, that it just carries on into everything else that we do.
Andrew 00:28:08 How much time does that take? Because I think it’s a lot less than people think
Dianne 00:28:11 It is. So our, our boosts are only a half an hour, so it’s a half an hour on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Fridays are optional. You know, you don’t have to come to question Friday, but, but most people do. It’s difficult for us to, because we’re in so many different time zones. So we have Europe, we have folks on the East coast, in the U S and folks on the West coast of the us. So, uh, we, we do it at noon Eastern time, which is a little late for people on, in Europe. And it’s a little early for people on the West coast, but that’s another agreement that we have is that, you know, we, we try to work on Eastern time zone as much as possible and people who are not on Eastern time zones kind of stretch a little bit and we work around that and make that work. So, yeah, so it’s like an hour and a half a week, but just so well worth it to just keep everybody connected and focused on, uh, where, you know, where we need to keep everybody focused.
Andrew 00:28:58 And when you think about like how many other meetings that takes off the calendar, it’s probably a great ROI. Like, you know, there’s so many wasted, terrible meetings out there that like, if you just got rid of those and did this instead, you you’d probably come out way ahead.
Dianne 00:29:10 Well, in the absence of information, people go negative, right? So if we weren’t talking about our numbers and we weren’t continuing to reinforce strategy or announcing when we’re making strategic changes and why we’re making them, people are sort of hearing about that, you know, through like the cascading from their manager and they hear it from their manager, it’s not the same as hearing it direct David or, you know, hearing it, you know, some something from Shane, it’s just, it’s, uh, it’s worth every moment that we spend on those.
Andrew 00:29:36 I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about more of not 55 as a whole, but the product, how you’re leading it. I think you’ve done something that is a very difficult thing for a product leader, which is that you came into a fast growing organization and you took leadership of a group that already was formed, right? You didn’t get a blank slate here. You inherited a really great team. It sounds like, and, and a really strong set of principles and cultures, and also sort of things like that, which are the one hand fantastic. Right. Really sets you up in the team up for success. But I’m also curious about, because a lot of people I know, I think would struggle with that, uh, feeling like they couldn’t put their spin on it or make their Mark on it because they were quote unquote inheriting somebody else’s vision. How did you think about that? Like, what were some of the decisions that have shaped your thinking about taking leadership of this organization and how you want to shape it?
Dianne 00:30:20 Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. And, um, I had a lot of confidence because of the way the interview process was handled, because I’ve had several meetings with the product managers. I was really confident that we were all on the same page, right. And the vision that I had for product organization aligned really well to the kind of product organization that they wanted to be part of. So yeah, it is not easy to inherit a team. I’ve done both. I’ve built teams and I’ve inherited teams. And it’s super unfortunate when you inherit a group of people that you maybe wouldn’t have hired, but really fortunate that that was not the situation here. I, I inherited a really, really strong team and because we had so many deep conversations before I joined, I was really confident that, that we were on the same page and we’ve just forged like a really great working relationship.
Dianne 00:31:05 They’re just super open to trying new things. The reality though, is like, even though we’re not a massive organization, like when I was at ADP, right. Of like, you know, hundreds of product managers, you know, there’s, there’s other, it’s still hard to change. Like we can’t run a dime. Right. So, you know, we, we were talking a little bit earlier about continuous discovery and how do we get out of this mode of like planning a roadmap for an entire year that we all know come Q2 of next year is gonna look completely different. So like this roadmap that we built is probably crap because we’re going to learn a whole lot. And how do we get in that mode? And, you know, 10 months later, and we’re still in this like planning a full year mode. And, and we’re really working through like, how do we change that? And like I said, it’s hard to change that on a dime.
Andrew 00:31:52 I strongly empathize is what you’re describing. I have personally spent a lot of time in the last month on roadmapping, like even multi-year roadmaps. And I’m just like, I’m reminded very much. It has to Brook, uh, for people to read if product roadmaps, relaunched, are you familiar with this one?
Dianne 00:32:06 I haven’t read it yet, but it’s, it is on my list
Andrew 00:32:09 Is that there’s sort of two big camps here. One camp has been beautifully championed by Marty Cagan, which is, you know, screw roadmaps. We all know they’re bullshit. Just have a strong vision and then do OKR. And if you do that well, you’re going to be golden. I think that’s probably a good way to do it. Then there’s the other environment where everybody still depends on roadmaps. And I think this book, which I’ll be interviewing one of the authors, he, Todd Lombardo for the show is really, really useful. If you are going to be in a roadmap culture. Like if that’s, if that’s not going away, I think this is a really, really resource for people. So check out that book, product roadmaps, relaunch, I think you might really like it. The product teams I’m leading right now, there’s a lot of stakeholders involved. I think the biggest thing that’s helped me do is navigate that process and really start to add in some clear terminology. So we were talking before we hit record about some of the struggles of doing this right. And one of the ones I think you were saying is like, it’s really hard when you have, for example, somebody from the sales organization, who’s like, Hey, what’s the roadmap. I got to know what I can sell in six months, nine months, whatever. And it’s like, how do you navigate that? How is that going for you so far? Like what I’m curious, maybe we get in here and break some new ground.
Dianne 00:33:12 Yeah. I’m actually kind of surprised. This is the first time that Marty Kagan’s name is going to come up. Right? Cause we, we sing it at 15 five. Most of the product teams sings from the Marty Cagan handbook. Although we haven’t completely been able to get there. I want to get where he, where he talks about, which is everything you just said, right? Create a really strong vision, have product teams that are provided with a strategy and a direction that they need to go in and have a strong set of outcomes that they are trying to go after. And then trust that you’ve hired super smart people that are going to talk to your customers and figure out what those outcomes need to be and ideas around those outcomes. And let them go build them with really clear set of KPIs that you’re going to use to, uh, to measure those.
Dianne 00:33:53 So it’s, but it’s tough because you’re right. I mean, the reality is you’ve got, uh, account executives and SDRs who are on the phone with prospects and they want to be able to talk about all the things that are coming and, you know, every customer is, and this is another reality in B2B software, right? Because you’ve got customers that are coming to you with an RFP, with like the, the boxes that they want to be able to take off. And they’re comparing your boxes to your competitors boxes and who takes the most boxes is, is who’s going to win. And it’s really hard for product to be able to predict like, yeah, this is, these are the boxes that we’re going to be able to tick over the next 12 months. Like it’s just not realistic. So what we’re trying to pull off this year is coming to the table with a, again, a strong vision of this is where we plan to be by the end of the year.
Dianne 00:34:41 And this is where having great designers helps, like being able to literally draw a picture of, of what that looks like and the problems that we plan to solve by the end of the year, having a very crisp vision and plan for what we plan to do over the next three to four months, and then a slightly less crisp, slightly more vague plan for what we plan to do over the next three to six months. And then really just, these are the things we’re exploring in the latter half of the year. So we’re still in that process right now. And I keep at every leadership meeting where roadmap comes up, I keep teeing up this idea that like, you’re not going to get a list of features. You’re just, you’re not going to get a list of features because that’s just not what we’re going to deliver.
Dianne 00:35:25 Right. We’re going to deliver, you know, really clear set of outcomes for the first half of the year. We’re going to tell you the things that we’re going to be exploring for the second half of the year. And we’ve got to really sort of figure out how we get sales to talk about that. And I think having a really tight relationship between product and in our case, it’s, it’s our revenue organization that owns both sales and customer success, having that really tight relationship so that we can be talking about them, the things that are coming and give them the confidence that when we say we’re going to do something, we are actually going to deliver it because we wouldn’t have put it on the roadmap. If we didn’t have a ton of confidence where that roadmap that you may have gotten before that had this thing that we were going to do nine months from now, like, did you have confidence in that because confidence in it when we put it on the roadmap. So I think again, that that’s where that having those, those good relationships and having trust and having your RD organization only signing up for something when there’s a high level of confidence that it’s actually going to be delivered and having sales sell to just that is, uh, is the trick. And we definitely don’t have to figured out, but we’re, but, but that’s the path that we’re on.
Andrew 00:36:31 Yeah, for sure. I believe Marty calls that, uh, you know, I think he calls it high integrity commitments, right? Like there’s certain things where we got to do the discovery first, but then once we do feel confident, then we will make a real commitment to it. One of the things that’s been interesting just on this topic specifically, I went into the same thing like a month ago when I started reading that book and talking with the author with that question where I’m like, wait, I drank deep from the Marty Cagan gospel. I like, I think he’s right. So how do we square the circle? And as I’m exploring it, I’m not a hundred percent on this yet, but it seems to be working in practice is there’s a, I think it’s an issue of terminology in the sense that, and I think this is what Marty’s talking about in the book.
Andrew 00:37:04 And I look forward to asking him this, but most people, when they use the term quote, unquote roadmap, what they really mean is project plan. They are looking for like, tell me what I have in hand on November 6th next year. And it’s like, I’m sorry, I can’t do that. But what we can do, and this is where I think actually these two sort of different camps actually ended up coming together and agreeing is when the roadmap becomes almost like a prototype for your strategy. And it’s saying, okay, I’m not going to tell you this specific list of features, but I’m going to have, like, here are the big themes we’re going after. Here’s the big problems we’re solving when it’s at that level. And it’s really more of a document that’s communicating strategic intent. That’s where I sort of find these two camps sort of coming together and re reuniting because it seems like that’s in my experience so far more of what sales for example is looking for is like, cool. You know, I, I can’t, I understand you can’t promise me feature X next Tuesday in 18 months. But if I understand at least where you’re going, I can sell against that. How does, does that open anything up or
Dianne 00:37:57 Totally. And I, and I think one of the advantages that we have is our sales team is really, really good about getting customers to explain what their problems are, right? So if a customer and they all do this, right, like I said, before they come with their checklist, like these are the 27 features that I need to have. Our sales team is great about saying, okay, well, you, you mentioned that you want to play engagement and you want it to do these five things. Well, what is it about your strategy that will help you get there? And they really are very, very good about digging deep and helping understand what problems customers are able to solve. So, because they’re able to do that and they’re sort of translating those tick boxes into outcomes, and we have a roadmap that is really based more so on outcomes. And like you said, problems that we will eventually solve. I do think that’s where these two things can kind of come together. But if you have a sales organization, that’s just like, they’re selling to the checkboxes. It’s really an uphill battle. That’s why I said, I feel like because of the relationship that we have with our sales organization, because we have an organization that is inclined to talk about customer problems in that way, that that’s where it all comes together.
Andrew 00:39:01 Two other tricks that I’ve learned, I haven’t had the chance to test them myself, but just conceptually, they seem like they make sense to me in particular, I I’ve really learned a lot from a guy named rich Marinoff, who I had on the show really early on, who I just think is one of these, like just total. I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley call him like the product mensch. He’s just this really generous, wonderful guy. And two things he talked a lot about were one was, I believe he calls it, forcing the XR conversation, the exclusive or conversation at the executive level. So forcing the XR conversation is this idea that everybody thinks you can just keep adding to the roadmap, but that’s, that doesn’t really work because we only have so much time, so many, so much energy, et cetera. And so there has to be the trade-offs conversation and it’s often the product leader’s job to say, okay, well, if we’re adding that, what else is changing?
Andrew 00:39:43 Like what are we taking off? And, and forcing the trades is, is sort of one big, uh, tactic, I guess you can, you can call it. And then the second one is something he talked about cultivating a relationship with your counterpart in the revenue side of the house. And often a problem for B2B teams is like the special, right. The sales special. And so he talks about this trick of where he would give them. Basically he would look at the incentives with them, with the sales leader, and then they would also have like an agreement that they got like one sales special a quarter, but it was like, literally he gave us the, the VP of sales, like a, he called it the magic bullet. He gave them an empty bullet cartridge, and they had to come through him and hand him the bullet cartridge for requesting that special. And then they got it back the next quarter. But unless if, but like, so that way, the next time it happened, they would look in their desk and they didn’t have the cartridge anymore. They’re like, damn it. I used my special for the quarter. So I don’t know. There might be some tricks there.
Dianne 00:40:31 That’s great. That’s great. I have to say we’re, we’re really lucky. Our chief revenue officer, I would say he’s probably one of the more product minded rev ops people that I’ve I’ve worked with. Right. Because sure. Like we’ve had occasions where, you know, we, we recently sealed the deal with like one of the largest customers that we’ve ever had at 15 five. And there was one particular thing that we, that they needed that we didn’t have on the roadmap. And it was this conversation of, okay, do we scramble and get this done to seal this deal? And it was big enough that it absolutely made sense for us as an organization to pivot and do that. And it happened somewhat early on in my tenure. And I didn’t want to give my team the impression that I was going to be one of these product leaders that was just going to sort of like rollover, right.
Dianne 00:41:14 Anytime in the ReadWorks said, Oh, we, you know, we need this thing. So it was, you know, it was, it was the decision that I wanted to make together as, as a team. And like really made sure that my team was on board with doing that because I’ve been part of some of those organizations where it’s like, you’re, you’re constantly chasing the unicorn. And like that deal, that deal needs this thing. And that daily thought thing, and every time you’re just completely thrown off any plans that you had. And, uh, it’s just, it’s just not, not the right way to, to run product. So I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have to come up with some sort of token for broad MacGinitie who’s our, uh, our CRM I’ll have to come up with something for him. So he gets one virtual token. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, it’s like, Hey, when you’re a product manager, you say no way more than you say less, right?
Dianne 00:41:59 Like, yeah. I met her a lot of people that come from other parts of technology and want to be product managers. And, uh, that’s one of the things I tell them all the time is like, you, you gotta be comfortable with saying no, cause you’re going to say no a lot more than you say yes. And if you’re saying yes to everything and nothing ever comes off the list and it’s chaos, it’s just no way to, to run a product. So how do you coach people through that? To me in, in making those decisions, it’s all about data, right? It’s all about, yes. You think this is the most important thing, but I’m going to assess the value of the thing that you want versus the value of the thing that we’re already doing.
Dianne 00:42:46 We will make the decision based upon the thing that has the higher business value. And what’s more aligned to the customer problems we’re trying to solve. And what’s more aligned to our business strategy. So if you have a good framework for how you’re making your prioritization decisions, it’s a whole lot easier to say no, because it’s not just, well, I don’t like you. And I’m saying no, because I like that team more than I like that team, you know, sorry, customer success. We like sales more like, no, right now our strategy is, you know, to acquire customers in this segment of the market and to go after these specific problems and what they’re asking for aligns to that. And, and we can, we can see the value and there’s revenue numbers that are attached to building the certain thing, because we’re going to reduce our losses by X percent, if you’re not using a framework like that to make your decisions, then yeah. You just have chaos.
Andrew 00:43:34 Yeah. And any sort of prioritization framework is better than none. It almost doesn’t matter which one you’re using.
Dianne 00:43:39 I just feel like as long as it’s based on data, like it’s hard to argue with. Right?
Andrew 00:43:43 Yeah. Yeah. The other thing I found is that people seem to really, really care universally across cultures about procedural justice. Even if they don’t get their way, if they feel like they got heard and the process was fair, usually it’s okay. And in one way I found that’s helpful is like, you can sort of point to something and say like, this is the process we are going to use. Like, it’s this, this is how we rank things. And then they’re like, okay, well I, you know, and then it like externalizes it a little bit and it’s kind of feels less personal. Yeah.
Dianne 00:44:08 Well, one of the other things that we’ve been talking about a lot lately is, uh, what we call do less than obsess, right? So we, we catch ourselves as an organization as just the product team, as an organization. We catch ourselves all the time with like the next thing that comes in the door and the next good idea that comes in the door and, Oh, we should do that too. And, Oh, we should do that too. And next thing you know, it’s, uh, right. Your, every everyone’s just overwhelmed. So having that as a, as an agreement that we all have with each other, that we are all going to try and do less than obsess. It’s easy for me to turn around and say, well, no. And, and, and here as well, that’s really difficult. And a lot of product managers probably don’t have. The reality of is that our team uses our product. Right? Our senior team uses our product. Every employee in our company uses our product. And everybody’s got lots of great ideas. And most of the, and everybody’s got things about our product that drive them crazy, having conversations with our CEO about, yes, we know that this thing drives you nuts, but customers don’t complain about it. So it makes for interesting conversations.
Andrew 00:45:11 Oh, I bet. Well, I want to go ahead and close out here with a couple of rapid fire questions, short questions. Your answers can be however long you feel. The first one that I like to ask people is what is the thing that you would say, you know about?
Dianne 00:45:22 It’s not really one thing. It’s another thing. It’s the thing that I know best. But I think that the one thing that I’m really good at is taking a big, gnarly, hairy issue and just like really kind of pulling out like the, you know, the threads on it until you really get to like the heart of what the issue is. Right. Cause most times when, when there’s some sort of issues, especially in, in what we do, the issue never presents itself as to like what it, what it really is. I think I’m really good at just like, sort of like peeling that back and sort of figuring out, Oh, okay. Like here’s the thing that we really need to solve. So I don’t know if it’s like the thing that I’m good at, but I think it’s the, the one strength that I have,
Andrew 00:46:00 I was going to ask you, especially considering this as a, this is a big thing at 15 five, what’s your current understanding of like zone of genius?
Dianne 00:46:07 Yeah. So this sounds so for a product leader, my zone of genius is strategy. Like who’s, isn’t right. If you’re in you’re in our role, but I do think it is being able to articulate a vision and understanding of the vision and being able to in very plain English, explain how we get there and having that resonate with not just people that are in the product team or even in, you know, the designer engineering team, but explaining that in a way that it resonates with a full organization, getting people excited about it. I would consider that my, my zone of genius.
Andrew 00:46:40 Awesome. I love that. Yeah. And just a quick shout out again to Laura Barnett’s work, we’ll link to that episode in the show notes, which is a it’s good stuff. I found it very, very useful. So I hope everybody listening, checks that out. The next one is, uh, you know, what does a quote or a saying or a phrase that’s important to you, you know, that you return to often and that speaks to you. And what about it speaks to you?
Dianne 00:47:00 So I’m a big fan. I follow him on Twitter, Neil deGrasse, Tyson, you know, the, the physicist, right? So he’s hilarious on Twitter by the way. So like super, super entertaining. And I I’m an admirer of his because he can take such a ridiculously complex set of topics and make them not only understandable but entertaining. Um, I just think that that’s like, that’s like pure genius, if you can do that, but he has a quote and it’s, I’m probably going to fumble this, but it’s something like the nice thing about is it’s true. Whether you believe it or not. And I think in life that applies, like, I think, especially in today’s climate, it applies an awful lot, but in terms of what we do, it’s the conversation we were having before about data. It’s like, these are facts and these are the facts, whether you want to acknowledge them or not, these are the facts.
Dianne 00:47:46 And I just think that’s like such a wonderful way to sort of view the world because there are, there are things that are just truths. And I think it’s kind of unfortunate that we are in a world where it is people dispute truth. And it’s hard to know what’s true, right. If you’ve seen the social dilemma on Netflix, like that’s the primary theme in that, right. Which is people don’t even know what’s real anymore. And we’re all being fed lots of information and it’s hard to parse that out. So it’s like that quote kind of brings me back to this, the concept of just grounding yourself in facts and seeing the world from a fact-based point of view is just kind of how I, how I like to approach my job.
Andrew 00:48:22 Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, if you think about one of the things I believe is that the, the it’s the questions we’re asking that drive a lot of our behaviors and the results that we create in our lives. And so I’m curious, given everything we’ve talked about, is there a question that you would have the listener start asking themselves on a regular basis, whether that’s daily, weekly, whatever, what’s something you think would make a demonstrable and positive shift for them?
Dianne 00:48:45 How am I showing up at work? Right. Who is, who is the person that I want my coworkers to see every day? Right. And just, am I showing up in a positive way? Am I showing up in an open way? Am I open to change? You know, am I, am I being adaptable? You know, am I truly viewing my coworkers from the frame of, you know, uh, assume positive intent, right? It’s, it’s, it’s in how we show up. And if you’re a leader, it’s in how you show up for your team and the words we use are just so important. Um, it’s uh, and, and our demeanor is so important when we’re leading teams. So that’s something I try to think about every day is like, especially, you know, days, like we’re not feeling so great. And how do I show up today? And, uh, sometimes I’ll just be super honest with people and be like, you know what, like my IEP today is probably about a four and just kind of just, I’m just going to lay that out, but that’s where I am today. And it’s funny how a lot of times, uh, if someone does approach or start out a meeting with a really low IEP, there is the sense of like, we’re going to, we’re going to help this person. We’re going to help lift them up. And, you know, as soon as you walk away from the meeting, you’re like, all right, I’d actually feel better now. Like I started at a four, I’m probably better at eight now. Like, um,
Andrew 00:49:54 Yeah. Or at least I feel heard, which helps. Yeah.
Dianne 00:49:57 Yeah, exactly. So I was like, how, how am I going to show up today? Whether I’m like at a 10 and I’m feeling great, or, or a metaphor
Andrew 00:50:04 Trick I like to do sometimes not so much on that, like the IEP thing, but if it’s like a, like a one-on-one with somebody, or I do this for myself, like when I do the genius habit every week, uh, when I do like her spreadsheet and stuff, I’ll give it to like a one to 10 rating. Right. I’ll say, you know, how, how am I feeling this week? But the trick is no sevens because seven is the fence. And so it forces me to confront, like, what was it, a Sixers and an eight, try try playing with that. If you haven’t like to 10, no seven.
Dianne 00:50:28 That’s great. Oh, I do. I like that because I, you know, it’s funny you said that. Cause I think about all the times that I, I did probably say I was at a seven, it was one of those days where I’m like, eh, like I’m not really sure how I’m feeling.
Andrew 00:50:39 Cause then you’re like, well, no, damn it. It’s a six. And they’re like, all right, it’s a six, why is it a six? So, you know, so anyways then one thing I’m always curious about is the influences that have shaped us. Right. And so I’m curious, who, or what would you say has really, really influenced you and the way you show up?
Dianne 00:50:55 I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in my career to have worked for really, really good leaders. Like from my first job at ADP, like back in the mid nineties, all the way on through and I’ve, and it’s funny, cause I see in myself, some of the traits that I’ve, I’ve, uh, adopted over the years from some of the leaders that I’ve had and you know, I think that’s why that, that manager relationship is so important. Right? And, uh, there, you know, the old saying of people don’t leave companies, they leave their managers and it’s, it’s really, really true. Just like quick, a quick story. When I was at ADP, I got the opportunity to work with Marcus Buckingham because, uh, uh, ADP acquired his company. He’s a thought leader in the world of performance management and executive coaching. And first break all the rules that, that was his first book.
Dianne 00:51:40 And I read his book many, many years ago and was like completely, um, onboard with a lot of what he had to say. And then come to find out that ADP was acquiring this company. And then I got the opportunity to work with him, which was like, awesome. But anyway, he does this exercise where, um, we did it at one of our senior leadership meetings, big group of people. And he had everyone draw a circle on a piece of paper and it’s, that’s your boardroom and your boardroom table and write down all of the people in your life that love you care about you are important to you and want to see you succeed. Right. And write down who those people are. And then after everyone did that, he had everyone stand up. If you, you know, put down your, you know, your daughter, right.
Dianne 00:52:18 Stand up. If you, you know, if you put down your son or, you know, and then of course there’s the people that are important to us, how many people put their, their accountant? Of course, nobody raises their hand. How many people put their doctor, nobody raises their hand, how many people put their manager. And of course just about a manager that you’ve had before and almost everyone raises their hand. Right? So it’s like the person who takes care of your finances is not important to you. The person who keeps you healthy is not important to you, but your, a manager, you put in the same group of people as your mother, your sister, your wife, your husband, that’s how important that relationship is. So when you think about how you show up for your teams, think about that, that they’re putting you in that category. That relationship is just super important. And like I said, I’ve been really, really lucky to have some really good leaders, uh, through the years that have influenced me and have mentored me and many, I still have like close relationships with today
Andrew 00:53:11 That person you’re referring to for yourself…How have they shaped you?
Dianne 00:53:14 She’s just, first of all, she’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in my life. And she’s just a really practical person. And I think like I’ve, I’ve inherited a lot of that pragmatism from her as she’s also a person that taught me to, to set my boundaries, that she has this expression that she’s used all the time, which was, it will take everything you have if you let it right. Which basically means if you don’t draw that line for yourself of where work ends and your personal life begins, you’ll never find that balance. And there will always be another reason to spend another hour on something at work. So that’s for you to find where that balance is. And I give that advice to everyone on my team. Like, it will take everything you have if you let it, so take that personal day that you want to take because I need it. Right. So that’s really kind of how she’s shaped me. And I’m like really lucky that she’s still in my life.
Andrew 00:54:09 That’s fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. So first of all, day, and thank you for being here. Thank you for doing the work you’re doing and, uh, for everything you, your teams 15 five is doing to, you know, transform the manager and teammate relationship, because as you just alluded to, it’s important just in closing out, what would you like to leave the audience with and where can people find, find you or 15 five online and follow what you’re up to?
Dianne 00:54:29 Yeah, so I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter, but, uh, you can, you can find [email protected] and like you suggested before, I would definitely recommend the podcast. Uh it’s um, David and Shane, and they also have lots of great guests and super inspiring conversations. So I would, uh, encourage everybody to check that out.
Andrew 00:54:48 Awesome. Well, thank you so much and keep up the great work.
Dianne 00:54:50 Thank you.