032 : Developing a Culture Worth Staying For with Cindy N Gordon
To scale your business successfully, purpose needs to precede process. Values constitute the foundation of any organization, upon which the structure is built. Every company has a culture by default. The direction that the company takes depends heavily on how its leaders choose to shape that culture. Throughout the lifecycle of the business, particularly as it matures past the startup phase, the question any leader needs to ask is: “How do I create a culture that is worth staying for?”
From heading professional development at the established McKinsey & Company to most recently serving as Chief People Officer at the burgeoning Policygenius, today’s guest has had a great deal of experience leading teams both in startup and corporate environments. A common factor in the success of both workplace ecosystems is that of a mission which is being overcommunicated among the people as the culture of each company evolves over time. Such overcommunication allows teams within any organization to become accustomed to change. A company culture like this not only allows its people to survive, but to thrive.
Cindy Gordon and Steve Chaparro discuss the importance of knowing your people before conducting performance reviews, addressing systemic cultural debt, staying true to your organization’s values, and understanding the different priorities of startups and larger companies.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Lessons learned over the years around attracting high-caliber talent at Mckinsey, Oscar, and Policygenius
- Why purpose and vision should take precedence over process and policy
- Reducing the level of cultural debt that exists in the workplace ecosystem
- Scaling startup cultures
- Companies that continue to thrive in spite of 2020’s various challenges
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
About the Guest:
Cindy Gordon is an advisor at LifeLabs Learning and PeopleTech Partners, and a mentor at First Round Capital. She also owns her own wardrobe consulting business. In today’s episode, she discusses various lessons learned during her time as the Manager of Professional Development at McKinsey & Company, then as Head of People at Oscar Insurance, and most recently as Chief People Officer at Policygenius.
She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a Minor in Nutrition at Miami University.
Sponsor for this episode:
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures from being controlling to being collaborative. If you want to know more about I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at CultureDesignStudio.com.
Full Transcript: Powered by Otter.ai
Announcer
Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Steve Chaparro
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures, from being controlling to being collaborative. Now, here are some of the things that I’ve learned.
Your creative talent demands a co creative culture in order to produce their best work. But there’s a problem. So let’s see if we can recognize some of these signs.
There’s no framework to move your culture forward. You have high turnover and low morale. There’s increasing toxicity across all levels. There’s team engagement and satisfaction that are on the decline. There’s a misalignment between the employer brand and the employee experience. And there’s poor communication about expectations, and values. So if you want to learn more about how I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at culture design studio.com.
My guest today is Cindy Gordon, most recently the Chief People Officer at Policy genius, a New York City and Durham based tech startup with a mission to help people get the financial protection they need, and have them feel good about it. Cindy has helped them scale from 20 to 400 people, and the company has been voted one of The Best Places to Work for the last three years. She is passionate about helping organizations, teams and individuals navigate their own path. And we’ll learn a little bit more about that today. Cindy, welcome to the show.
Cindy N Gordon
Thank you so much for having me, Steve.
Steve Chaparro
Well, I’m glad that you came on board. I mean, we’ve been chatting for a little bit, we had a conversation in preparation for this. And I’m excited for folks to hear about your story about your recent role at policy genius and pretty special topic that we have prepared for today. But first that Cindy, share with us your professional journey, what that’s been like?
Cindy N Gordon
Sure, and I’m going to go way back. But I promise you, I won’t spend the whole time talking about my professional journey. But I’m going to start with where I was born. So I was born in Korea. And I was adopted into a transracial family at the age of six months and grew up in a small town in Ohio. I think what is unique about my experience, and has shaped where I’ve landed today, and perhaps my entire journey is I was one of few people who looked like me and my hometown. And part of surviving as a child was to observe the behaviors of others around me and figure out how I how I could integrate.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Cindy N Gordon
And that’s not meant to be a sad story. Because I think what grew out of that experience was a passion for understanding the behaviors of other people. And so I went to college in Ohio, and I studied psychology, and then a number of other things to zoology and nutrition. And I think the underpinning there was to figure out how I could work with people and help them understand something about themselves. And I didn’t really know how it was going to manifest itself.
But then I moved to New York without a job and others going to work in philanthropy and or fashion and realized very quickly that that was not going to pay the bills nor my rent.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Cindy N Gordon
Neither one of those individually either. And so I went a different route. And I went through a staffing agency, and I got a job and HR and benefits at McKinsey and companies well, and what was interesting about that was working with, with people, I got to work in HR and be exposed to a lot of people and help them sort through some insurance and benefits questions. And when they think about planning for protection. And after that I spent five years and benefits in HR.
And then I moved over to recruiting within McKinsey, one of my team members had moved over and I was very intrigued about what it would be like to work on the front lines and to talk to candidates and attract them to the company. So that was an exciting five years in recruiting where I started out doing undergrad recruiting and then moved over to postgraduate recruiting, and I’m running a team and then another opportunity opened up on the professional development team. And what was exciting about that was that’s everything that happens after I brought somebody on board as a recruiter. So what actually happens and how do you help to shape somebody on path at the company. Or beyond the company.
So I moved over to the professional development team and a component of that role was coaching. And I spent five years doing that. And that’s very truly found a sweet spot, sweet spot, passion area of mine and helping people navigate their way. And one of the consultants I worked with, had moved on to an inshore tech startup to serve as an advisor. He was a, an MD, and an MBA.
Steve Chaparro
What a combination!
Cindy N Gordon
I know. And then he was moving on to get as JD and serve as an advisor. And he had reached out a few months after moving over to be an advisor for the center tech startup, and asked me if I was interested in throwing my name in the hat. And that was with Oscar insurance. And I wound up joining Oscar a interviewed with 14% of the company and they asked me many of the same questions. And I realized, Oh, I can, I can have some impact here and help them design, more calibrated, hiring process and talent development process, and program. And so I spent almost two years at Oscar I was the 80th hire there. And then in a year and a half’s time, we scaled to 550 people across multiple locations. And that was that just started my addiction to the startup world.
And then I had stayed in touch with two other consultants from McKinsey. And we would touch base here and there as they’re starting to build their startup. And they reached out after they closed the Series B round to see if I was interested in being their head of people. They were in the teens in terms of headcount, but that was a value proposition and itself to invest in a people function so early. And so I joined them as the 20th hire, and that’s Policygenius. And I’ve been there since and it’s we’re now 414 employees as of this week, and I’ve been there for four and a half years. And it’s been quite an exciting journey. And I understand the value of investing in a people function very early.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. And I we’re gonna we’re gonna get into that as one of the questions to kind of explore is, you know, investing in the people function and what that means. And it’s not just, it’s not just a checklist of things to you know, you know, okay, we hired for that role, but it’s actually a strategic part of scaling the culture. So, at your role, I mean, that that what was interesting is you’re part of this behemoth consulting agency, being McKinsey. It within that context of, you know, the caliber of people that McKenzie, attracted, and then scaling up at us at two startups. What were some of the, the the lessons that you learned about attracting high caliber, high talent, high performing talent at those firms?
Cindy N Gordon
Yes, I think McKinsey had so much infrastructure in place, and they truly spent a lot of time over decades, investing and people practices that really, when I look back a publicly took for granted, being a part of that, that infrastructure and joining scrappy startups is allowed me to better appreciate all the work that they put into place to make it a people first organization, whether that’s on the client side or internal to its employees. And so I think I was able to get my quote unquote, doctorate and people practices during my 15 years at McKinsey, and it wouldn’t have any other way. And if you look at my team that I worked with at McKinsey, in the professional development side, a lot of them have moved on to be heads of people. And it’s very interesting to see how that’s manifested itself. So I think there you can see it already built up its own employer brand. It was just the place they had great relationships with universities and postgraduate schools. And the brand almost spoke for itself. So we had a lot of inbound candidates relative to the number of hires that we were making.
And by the time I had joined Oscar, it was already a name that was garnering a lot of like traction and attention in the startup space because it was the first of its kind to be, it was a healthcare insurer, and they were trying to disrupt the industry. So it had already gotten a lot of attention and the insurance space as a disruptor in the healthcare space, and then the broader tech startup space because if you think about when it started in New York City, it was during the earlier phases of the tech, Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley phase. So when I joined Oscar, people had already heard about that. And it was only growing. And again, you had, I had an experience where the employer brand was already there.
When I moved over to Policygenius, because I joined so early, it was my responsibility to help design the employer brand, right. They were teens in terms of headcount, when they were talking to me. And, you know, they’re still in a fledgling stages of building like product market fit across the number of verticals in the insure tech space. And so that was a transition for me and thinking about, oh, what happens when you have to sell people on a company, and they haven’t heard of it yet. But what I learned really quickly is, that’s the easy part, you can if all you have to do is explain the mission of policy genius, then people quickly understand why we’re doing what we’re doing, and they can jump on board. And then what follows is what’s most important, and it’s creating a really holistic and comprehensive, but also efficient and effective hiring program to give candidates insight on what it’s like to work at a startup, some of them coming from bigger industries. And then also giving the hiring managers in the interview ORS insight on whether somebody is a good match for the role that we’re trying to film. And so it was a different construct from the outset and my time, building up the people function at policy genius. But it was good to have exposure in one area where everything was already built, versus what I needed to do at policy genius and leveraging my learning from two other great companies.
Steve Chaparro
So speaking of leveraging your learnings, I, you know, when you come from a place like McKinsey that has the infrastructure that has the employer brand already set in place, years of and decades of, of, you know that employer brand as well, as you mentioned, Oscar already had certain systems in place. And you’re coming to now policy genius where literally everything has to be built from the ground up, you don’t have the benefits of scale, you don’t have benefits of of years of groundwork, what are some of the first things that you focus on, you know, being that first people person at a tech startup or even just any startup? What were the things that you focused on first, because I’m sure that there were many things that you thought that you could work on.
Cindy N Gordon
And, you know, working for two former business consultants at Policygenius means they’re there, they already had OKRs in place, I think, probably before they even started the company. And so it was, it’s great to work for two people who know how to run a business and have have advised a lot of other like large companies on how to run businesses.
So when I joined policy genius, they actually handed me a file, and Excel, of the things that they wanted me to start on. And one of them was launching 360 performance reviews. And I could have launched 360 performance reviews, but part of my joining the company was to get to know everybody who was already there, which numbers were small, so it was easy to do. But I wanted to make sure that every thing that we were carrying out on the people side of things had a purpose to it and not just a process because 360 performance reviews are the output of of how somebody’s doing, but if you don’t have the purpose in place, and if you don’t know what you’re measuring people against what those expectations are. And you could actually erode trust between managers and direct reports.
So my, that some other things on the list were like putting comp leveling structure in place, you know, building a calibrated set of hiring plans, and, you know, a hiring process, and loved all of that. And those were absolutely things that we needed to build out. But I started with asking them, what is it that you value at the company, because if we go back to the company’s mission, and we understand what you as co founders value, Jen and Francoise, then from there, we can build all of our programs that are people practices around what it is that you value, and that’s what looks different at each company. And it’s based on the people who are running it their vision, what behaviors are rewarded, what are how we make tough decisions.
And so we went off site to work on values and Jen, our CEO, had already put together instead of values when they started shipping product and they launched the website. And so we took what existed at that time as three paragraphs of values based language to come up with some tangible phrases that could resonate with people, whether it was people we work with, externally, at the company partnerships with vendors, or insurers, or, and the talent that we’re attracting or that we already have in place. And so, I don’t know, we spent a half a day. And we came up with six values, and they’re not superfluous words that hang on the wall from me to answer questions like this, they actually started weaving those six values into all of our practices. Before we launch trip reviews, we actually went from values to then creating skill development rubrics, that will then those six values, and some of them were behavioral components and others for more skills based based on like what we value one is problem solving.
For example, it’s a heavily weighted competency. And so one of our values is work the problem and but we have another one that’s called note that says no chuckleheads, and that’s where you don’t want to steamroll people to get to point B, getting to point B is one thing, but how you get to point B is also a huge component. And whether somebody is being collaborative and team focused or self centered, and so we will those into our skill development rubrics got rolled those out to all of the employees, so they understood what was expected in their roles. And then we rolled out reviews, because now they know what they’re measured against performance wise, versus, hey, we’re going to roll out these reviews. And you still don’t know how you’re being measured. Maybe it’s that janky job spec that was thrown together when you were hired as employee number one or two. But we put some more color around at first. And that helped to build a foundation of trust before we rolled out other things. So that’s one example. But the values have served as our foundation and they’re still in place, we still leverage them heavily in my four and a half years of the company.
Steve Chaparro
Now, it seems, you know, just by based on what you’ve shared with us that that was pretty deep culture work that was done from the very beginning. And obviously, you know, knowing that the two founders in their background, there was a very intentional reason why that was the case. And employee number 20 was it was head of people in culture, that was probably a pretty uncommon thing in the startup world, I would imagine.
Cindy N Gordon
Yes, I think back then, which feels like ages ago, I know it was only four and a half years ago, but and startup world that can be dog years. But I think it is where to invest in a leader to run the function. Sometimes she’ll like people focus on immediate needs, and usually that’s scaling up the business. And so they’ll immediately focus on trying to hire a recruiter or somebody to focus on hiring. And so to think, more broadly about developing a more, more programmatic, I guess, developing a programmatic platform to invest and hiring and retention is a big thing. So you don’t have to back into and reverse engineer what already exists. Because culture will exist at a company, whether you choose to help to shape it or not just it’s something that’s organic, and it’s such a nebulous term. But it can really go a long way. Because if you think about one thing that I’m super passionate about too, is reducing the level of cultural debt that exists in the workplace ecosystem. And the way that you do that is investing in strategic people functions early. And again, oftentimes, companies find themselves in a reactive state, and then they’ll bring on somebody when they realize, Oh, crap, we got to respond to this. And we’re seeing that even more so now. And 2020, with the number of world crises just been placed upon us, and the, and the workplace where the workplace now is home for for many people, and there are a lot of Blurred Lines there. And so there’s even more of a focus on on the people function and supporting human beings in the workplace when there are a lot of Blurred Lines. So I think that’s really important because the cultural depth to which I’m referring is, if you only build an execution oriented HR function at a company, then oftentimes they’re relegated to admin and hiring and firing.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Cindy N Gordon
And there’s just so much more if you think about that. experience that an employee level somebody can experience which actually starts before jobs, but even goes live, but there should be continuity all the way through to whether that person eventually becomes CEO or moves on to another company. It’s, it’s the employee experience, just like you think about the customer experience. So if you think about it in that way, then you need somebody who can take a 20,000 foot view on how all that whole ecosystem comes together.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, that’s very interesting. I think that’s a common story that I heard also at Airbnb, we had Mark Levy on the podcast as well, he was a former Global Head of employee experience. And he, he wanted to take the shift from HR to more of employee experience, but that was working in concert, with the marketing in the sales team in terms of the customer experience, that those are all just different facets of the same value of delivering an experience. You know, that was extremely intentional, and that was transformative and things like that. So it seems like that’s the approach that you folks are taking as well. But to your point, in the world of startups, that’s not probably very common and describe a little bit more about what you’re saying about systemic cultural debt within HR is exactly what is that debt occur? You mentioned a little bit about just the functional side of legal aid, you know, compliance and benefits, and not enough. So describe that to us a little bit more.
Cindy N Gordon
Yeah, and I don’t think cultural debt sits within HR. I think cultural debt is something that is just systemic to companies themselves. And what we’ve seen over the past few years, even with the me to movement, and more widespread publicity around what companies are doing well, and what they aren’t doing, and we’ve seen quite a few articles on that front. What we’re dealing with is companies, not necessarily treating their employees well, right? It’s about productivity. profitability. And you can’t really scale the success of a company without human being. And so the more that we focus on building great people, first companies, the more likelihood there is for you to reach those companies to retain talent. Right now, the average tenure for startups, for example, is two years. That’s really short.
Steve Chaparro
Why is that do you think?
Cindy N Gordon
I think it could be a number of things. And it’s not all related to cultural debt. But I think that is a piece that shouldn’t be ignored. Some people because companies are evolving so quickly, some people are good at building. Some people are good at crossover about operationalizing and strategizing at the same time. And then there’s the later stage startup that’s more around building efficiencies for scale. And so different skill sets are required. So that’s one thing. And so some people outgrow the company, or vice versa, the company grows them. So that’s one piece.
But there’s this other piece where that I’ve experienced, I’ve done hundreds of interviews of candidates and this point at my past two startups where people are looking to go to a place that values people.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, yeah.
Cindy N Gordon
And because I’m hearing that from candidates, that means they’re leaving something that could have been great in terms of a company’s mission, or what it is that they’re whatever it is that they’re doing that brought them there in the first place. But if they are walking away, because they don’t feel valued, then Leann, if that’s the case, then we can change that. And we should also expect because of my earlier point, around different stages of the company, and skill sets, matching those, we should expect there to be turnover. And so that can be healthy. But we don’t want to contribute to regrettable turnover.
And so if we understand that, sometimes the company or the people will outgrow each other, what can we do to better develop our talent enough where they will either want to stay or if they move on, they won’t have all these micro triggers at the new company that they’re joining that then the managers and the people team and the leadership might have to like, spend some additional time course correcting, or like, I also think what you’ll you’re seeing is a lot of people going moving toward this gig economy structure where they start doing freelancing because they don’t want to work for a company anymore because they’ve been burned. And so if there’s something there around, we can support each other more, and the ecosystem by really valuing people, and I think if there’s any beauty that has come out of the world crisis this year, it’s understanding how we can Support human being.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I love the both of the points that you made about sometimes, you know, it’s it’s word is a word is a, a an individual fit in the lifecycle of a company, right? You know, if they’re builders, if they’re implementers operators scalars people that are more of a growth mindset, you know, they they have a specific skill set that applies to a specific stage in the lifecycle of a company. I love that idea. And I have found that to be completely true as well. The other idea, and I think the more the sad reality is, that many times if one, I think it’s two things, one, the individual will come into the company with baggage from the previous company, and, and are looking to find a savior job, but they brought that baggage with them or to the company, the hiring company, will sometimes have let someone go or that person left because of a bad cultural context within the company. And anybody who comes into that toxic context will be deemed damaged. Because it’s not the person that’s, you know, that has is the problem. It’s really the culture, I think it’s not a one size fits all diagnosis. I think it’s sometimes it’s both. Sometimes it’s really, but that happens. And I think having the the courage and the vulnerability to really take some hard looks at how things are working to really understand what is the context? And I really do think that that’s the context that many companies need to think about is how can they create a culture that is worth staying for? And not just stained for from the survival context, but actually thriving context? And those are some things that we can think about.
Cindy N Gordon
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, one thing that people don’t talk about is just naming the obvious. Change, and evolution is not a bad thing. But if you don’t talk about it enough, then it can come off as a surprise. And then people will automatically equate that is something like negative because it’s catching the by surprise. And it a lot of companies that are growing quickly or evolving because they need to that can be good. And so what I’m trying to my I guess my point here is over communication is also key, especially for scaling companies. Because you might not be five people sitting around a table, generating an idea in a scrappy environment, you might be hundreds of people or thousands of people, and what does that look like? So every employee at the company knows how the value of what they’re doing in their role ties back to the company’s mission. And if they don’t know how that ties back, then there’s a disconnect. And then they’ll quickly start questioning why they’re even there.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Cindy N Gordon
And their roles. I think that’s the big thing, too. And it could be for a number of reasons, which is why it’s important to understand upfront what a company values. And then to make sure there’s enough structure and programming built around that to put it into practice.
Steve Chaparro
You mentioned the term scaling culture. And he and I, yeah, I mean, you’ve been part of two tech companies that have definitely skin, I think you advise other companies as well. You know, you know, when you’re at 400, it’s going to be very different than 20. Right there. As you add layers and layers of leadership, as you have people that come in and out of the company, for whatever reason, good or bad reasons. There’s an impact on the culture. What are some some lessons that you’ve learned about, you know, how do you scale culture? What are some interesting thresholds that you have to go through? How do people react even to positive changes in that scale? I mean, I know three a lot at you, but just what are some things that come to mind about scaling culture as at a startup?
Cindy N Gordon
Yeah, I think the age old triad of trade offs of speed, cost and quality come into play because most startups are trying to get off the ground really quickly. And arguably, all of those things are equally as important for any business. But as I mentioned before, over communication is key. And that’s one thing that can get can slip through the cracks as a company sales because you’re bringing more people into the mix, and people can get used to what it looks like to be a few people in the room. So that’s one thing.
I think, understanding longevity and not just hiring talent that can serve immediate needs, like not just thinking about what do I need right now, but like, Can I invest in somebody who can get us from right now, to whatever our longer term plans are? So they can serve as multipliers for the company. Because co founders usually can’t clone themselves. They need to find people who they trust to be able to do that for them over time as the company scales.
And then I also mentioned before getting people accustomed to change and evolution, I think that’s huge. Because if people get too stuck in being agile and adaptable to change, or like against those that concept, then that can really block the speed at which a company can move. So, you know, I mentioned costs, I’ve mentioned speed and quality, but and then you think about cost. earlier stage companies are like trying, usually trying to get an idea off the ground. as it evolves, usually, there’s, there are hopes of being able to invest more and something. But that can play a role, too, if you think about different stages.
So what I’ve seen more broadly, is early early stage founders are working to convince talent to take a bet on joining the company, right, they’re trying to get product market fit a minimal minimum viable product off the ground, and they need people who are willing to take a risk. And so that’s what it looks like in the beginning. And that’s what we talked about very early on in this chat around employer branding. You got to convince people that you’re you’re building.
After that, it’s identifying the right people can actually zoom in and out and build from scratch, but also be scrappy enough where there’s no job that’s too big or too small for them, you’re just running, and you’re flying and building that plane at the same time. The other analogy I use is building a muscle and bone at the same time, then I think the next phase is where founders need to let go of some pains.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Cindy N Gordon
They’re used to building it, it’s their baby, but then they got to let go, because they just invested in hiring some people to help them. And there’s this article by first round. That came out a while ago now. But it’s still one that’s largely referenced, which is called letting go of your Legos. And it’s a really good one to look up. But that that can be hard. It’s a it’s a transition. And but you do you need to let go because you can’t do everything anymore. You can’t do everything anymore as founders because your company is growing. And so like, how can they shift so that the founders have to ask themselves how they can shift from leading from behind and supporting the people that they’ve brought on versus hanging on to their baby. And then there’s a point where more reporting layers have to be run to the full?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Cindy N Gordon
It’s no longer a flat organization, and then you’ve got a deal, what sub egos are people who are adjusting to a shift and a stage of a company, right? And that’s what we were talking about before and different phases. And that might be where you see attrition. And some of it’s probably good. Some of it might be bad. Who knows? It depends on how you’re laying it out, too. And then, like, few co founders need to ask themselves, how can you remove yourself from being that single point of failure. And I have the operational role to, again, leading and then managing an exec team or a management team to serve as your multipliers. And maybe they’re both. And then you get to the later stage where arguably, co founders, as executives become more focused on relationship building, and employer branding, and, you know, strategic thinking for continued growth of a business. And, you know, there are lots of ebbs and flows to that over time. But usually, when you start running a larger company, it’s all about the people relationships.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, that sounds exhausting. It sounds exhausting for you know, I’m putting myself in the founder shoes of you know, on one hand, you know, the way your founders, you know, the ex-McKinsey folks who already had an idea of some of the things that needed to be put in place. So there was an initial thought binder that they gave you, of things to think about. And then as you go through the different sort of growth thresholds, things change. I love those that that just that sense of one, you know, we need to over communicate, and I feel like in a sense, COVID has given the rest of the world a little slice of the startup life because that need to over communicate the need to adapt to this changing context, the need for people to be adaptable in what their job role is because I have so many people that are I’ve talked to in different industries in different domains have said, you know, my job description I got hired for is like out the window right now because we’re in crisis management. And it seems like there’s a lot of lessons that folks can learn from the scrappy startup world in that regard.
Cindy N Gordon
Absolutely. That the idea of navigating through ambiguity, and there’s still so much we don’t know about how COVID is going to, like, evolve, as we approach the winter time and what they might be predicting. And it’s, it’s interesting, because you can plan, plan, plan plan, but when everything sports, what those plans are, it’s a true test of the the like wherewithal of an organization and what’s in place. But we’re all like just trying to do our best.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Cindy N Gordon
And we’ve definitely been faced with challenges across the board.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, we were talking just before we started recording that my challenge for today is when my plans for today go right. And it’s that alone, it can be exhausting and frustrating when things don’t go as planned for each individual day, let alone, you know, the future of a company. So those are some serious challenges that I think, well, in that regard. What are some, you know, I don’t know, if you have individuals in mind, or just attributes of individual of leaders that are thriving. In this context, if you thought of anybody that you know, that you look to and say, Man, the way they’re leading the way they’re showing up during this time, it’s, it’s amazing
Cindy N Gordon
The first company that came to mind is Ben and Jerry’s. Um, I think, and this is what, like, less hyper focused on COVID. But more around the anti racism movement, we’re dealing with so many more recognized world crises. At this moment in time, some that have been have existed for decades upon decades, to be quite honest, and what has been so motivating, and the way that they’ve communicated is that they’ve actually put a like a statement out that is action oriented, and really speaks to their company’s values. And, yeah, like, I think that’s helped to generate even more background on how they’ve grown as a company and what they value, and how they, who they employ, why they charge, what they do for their ice cream, right, it all goes back to social impact driven purpose. And that’s just, that’s amazing.
And if you think about what is happening right now, in the world, people have limited options, you’re being stripped away of a lot of freedoms and choice for safety reasons on the COVID side, and it this world of isolation and lack of choice, and distraction is actually surfacing more of what people value. And that’s a beautiful aspect of what we’re dealing with if we look at all the crap that we’re dealing with right now, but if people are more so understanding what they value as human beings, what they value in the workplace, what could that do for the future of work? It might actually be a good thing if we can get our stuff together if companies can get their stuff together. Yeah. So I tried to remain optimistic about all of this. And I like that question around companies that have really shown up. I’m not sure if I answered that explicitly. But I’m gonna Jerry’s respond to a give kudos to
Steve Chaparro
weigh in, you raise a an awesome point in that in this current context. We are in this swirling storm of multiple considerations. We’ve got COVID we’ve got the economic impacts of COVID and the the social awareness, social impact of racial injustice, and all of those things. It’s this perfect cocktail of, of situations that companies that can rise to the occasion and be a bright light and example to other companies. Obviously, we’re gonna we’re gonna flock to those examples. Well, I appreciate it. Cindy, this has been an awesome conversation. I feel like literally we could go on and go on rabbit trails on any one of these things. And I look forward to, to staying in touch, you know, even off the recording to talk through some of these things. Because these are pretty fascinating things if people want to reach out either to learn more about you learn more about the culture at policy genius. Where can they learn more about that?
Cindy N Gordon
So you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m Cindy N Gordon. So that’s a good place to find me. And if you’re interested in a job at Policygenius, we are hiring out the wazoo. You can go to policygenius.com and check out our jobs page. We’d love to get as many applicants as we can.
Steve Chaparro
Wonderful. I appreciate it. Cindy, thanks so much for coming on the show
Cindy N Gordon
Thank you so much.
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