Deirdre Findlay of Condé Nast
How she balances the position and the person.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 179: Deirdre Findlay
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Deirdre Findlay, the Global CMO of Condé Nast. In that position, she’s responsible for all of the company’s consumer-driven revenue.
She took the job in January of 2020, and faced by an industry in transition and a world in chaos, has dramatically grown the company’s subscriber base, as well as the affiliate and commerce revenue. More than that, the company has held onto its new-found audiences, even as we start to leave our homes and reconnect with each other in person.
Like every leader, she’s responsible for producing business results at a time when the employer-employee relationship is being entirely rewritten.
“Let's just say employees have greater control over their career now more than ever, and they're making tough decisions that are about more than just the work. And that's been really interesting to see. And so my hope is that we, as leaders, become much more comfortable balancing the work and balancing people.”
If you’re leading a business that depends on unlocking the power of creative thinking and innovation for your success, you know that talent acquisition and talent retention have always been critical.
Most people think that’s true for one reason. Hire the best talent and win the game.
For many companies, their strategy for finding and keeping the best talent came down to this: Pay them, praise them, promote them, and prioritize them - especially when it came to handing out the best opportunities.
If that’s still the cornerstone of your thinking, you’re already falling behind in the race for game-changing talent.
Today, as a leader, it’s not just the job you’re selling, it’s the journey.
The journey you’re taking the business on.
And the journey you’re offering everyone who works for you. One of self exploration and personal development. A journey to discover what they can do and who they can be.
You’ll still need business plans and financial performance metrics to determine who you need to hire and what you can afford.
You’ll still need visions and missions, job descriptions and benefits packages to open the door to the right people.
But if you want to close the deal and ensure the best of them stick around long enough to make a difference, you’ll need two things that most leaders don’t know how to measure.
Empathy and interest. Which means, as Deidre said, getting comfortable with balancing the work and balancing the people.
Here’s Deirdre Findlay.
Charles: (02:54)
Deirdre, welcome to Fearless, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Deirdre Findlay: (02:57)
Thanks, Charles. It's a pleasure to be here.
Charles: (03:00)
When did creativity first show up in your life? When are you first conscious of creativity being a force?
Deirdre Findlay: (03:05)
Yeah, I think, honestly, for me, pretty young. My mom was a big believer that young girls should take ballet. And so, I started... Gosh, I was probably five years old and I started ballet classes. And I took ballet for years. And that was really the first creative expression, and being on a stage, and really an experience being somewhat fearless, doing something I'd never done before. Frankly, something that I'm not a natural at. Like, I'm 5'3”, and very athletic built. I'm not the typical ballerina build. But I just had fun with it.
And it taught me a level of grace and poise that honestly, I think I've carried with me even to this day. So, I think it started with ballet. And then, ballet, from there, I went into the theater, and I did a bunch of musicals and plays, and I did that throughout high school, which was so much fun. And then in college I decided to be an economics major, and I quickly realized that that was not going to work by itself. Like, I needed something that was a little bit more stimulating, and not so one-sided on the analytics piece.
And so, I started taking art and architecture classes. Hands down my favorite courses at Williams. Hands down.
Charles: (04:31)
Did you like being on stage? Were you drawn to the performance part of it?
Deirdre Findlay: (04:36)
You know, I think the beauty of being a child is you don't know to be scared. And so, what was great about being on stage, especially at an early age, is I had this sense of fearlessness. I enjoyed the acting part of it. I enjoyed being able to put on a persona. Of course, at the time, I couldn't articulate that that's what I enjoyed about it, but it was just really fun to be able to leave my life and go pretend and have this experience that was, oftentimes, very counter to my life. So, I think that's what I loved about it.
And then, I was a little bit of a ham. So, I do think there was something exciting about being on stage, and having all those eyes on me. Which is funny, because now as an adult, I don't get a ton of joy out of that. I do it because I have to for work. But definitely as a kid it was something I enjoyed.
Charles: (05:33)
Where did you grow up?
Deirdre Findlay: (05:35)
So, I was born in New York City. I was actually born in NYU Medical Center. So we lived in Manhattan, and then Queens. And then right before high school, I moved to New Jersey. So, there's a town, West Windsor-Plainsboro is where I went to high school. And it's right outside of Princeton, New Jersey. So, I'm an East Coast gal.
Charles: (05:56)
Were you a risk taker growing up?
Deirdre Findlay: (05:59)
You know, I didn't think I was. I considered myself to be fairly safe in the decisions that I made. But now that I look back on my life, I was probably more of a risk taker than I gave myself credit for. I think a primary example is coming out of... even coming out of college, I went into reinsurance. No one even knew what reinsurance was, but I loved numbers. And I knew I didn't necessarily want to go into traditional banking. But I wanted to do something that was analytical. And, I went to general reinsurance which, honestly, I fell in love with the people and the type of work.
And so that was probably my first risk that I took. And so, 20, 21, 20 years old, made that decision. I think about… coming out of business school. Oh my gosh, my friends thought I was crazy because I had interned at Pepsi, and had offers from American Express, and Pepsi, and Colgate, and all the companies that… that's what you do, coming out of business school. You go into banking, you go into consulting, or you take a job in consumer packaged goods. And I decided to go to Digitas because I was, again, enamored by both the work, this kind of digital marketing space that was really emerging.
But also fell in love with the people. I'm always drawn to both the work and the culture. And I just got really excited to do something different from what all my peers were doing. And honestly, when I look back at my career, hands down the best decision I ever made. It shaped my career. I became an integrated marketer in 2000. There are not many people who can say that. My first job out of business school, I was doing integrated marketing, and it's kind of turned me into a little bit of a unicorn in the marketing space. There are very few people who have spent that much time doing it.
So, that was one risk that really paid off in a meaningful way. And so I guess those are probably the early risks that I've taken. And then, I guess my last risk was leaving San Francisco, which had become my adult home. Chicago, at one point was, and then I left Chicago after spending 12 years there. I moved to San Francisco and spent ten years in San Francisco and had this amazing opportunity to move back to New York to take a job at Condé Nast.
And a) people are like, I can't believe you're leaving San Francisco to go back to snow. And then, b) why would you leave technology to go to old media? And I said, "First of all, it's not old media. The reason I'm going is that we've got these amazing brands at Condé Nast. And what a phenomenal opportunity to take these brands and show how we actually are bringing these brands into the future. We are creating the new media company of the future." Everyone wants content. Content's kind of at the core of so many businesses right now. And I get to be in the front row seat for helping to shape that and evolve Condé Nast into the company that we're going to be 10, 15, 20 years from now, which is exciting.
Charles: (09:19)
I want to talk to you about the journey that you're taking at Condé Nast, obviously, and the journey that brought you there. But, I want to just go back for a second. I feel obligated to ask this question these days. And, actually, I'm curious to get your response, not only to the question, but to actually being asked the question. What kind of community did you grow up in? Were you conscious of being Black when you grew up?
Deirdre Findlay: (09:39)
Oh, what a great question. It's funny. So, I grew up in New York, but I went to private school. And the private school that I went to, I went to St. Paul's in College Point. So, not the St. Paul's in New Hampshire, but in College Point, Queens. And my sister and I were the only Black people in the school. And I don't think I really realized that until someone says something, or a parent says something. Or, you know, I'll never forget... And I would come home and in a very innocent way, say, "You know, so-and-so's parents said that your dad's car must be a company car." And I'm like, "Why would they say that?"
And my mom had to explain to me. It's like, "Oh, because they don't think Black people can drive nice cars, right?" Or, someone calls you the n-word. And I had not been exposed to that. And so, you know, I think, in the same way that I was innocent in terms of my stage, and my life acting as a kid, I think there was a sense of innocence, going into this predominately white environment. And not really realizing that I was different. And then you just have these moments where my parents were really great at being very honest with me and having the adult conversations with me about that difference.
And then, after being in New York, we moved to New Jersey. And I was so excited because the school was very integrated. And I was very hopeful that I would finally have more Black friends and frankly just other friends. And I went to a public school. I went to one of the top public schools in New Jersey, which is West Windsor-Plainsboro High School. And there, because I had grown up in the environment that I grew up, I didn't actually have a lot of Black friends. And so it's very interesting, and it's something I grapple with a lot, even today.
A lot of the decisions that I've made have put me in environments where I'm very much the minority. And it's definitely shaped how I see the world. But it definitely has shaped how others see me. Especially, you know, within the Black community, it's been harder for me to build those relationships. And it's... I'm more focused on it now, as an adult, making sure that I have more balanced friendships. But I would say my relationships, even today, are very much a by-product of how I was raised, and the environment I was raised in.
Charles: (12:20)
So, your feeling that you need to make sure that you have a set of balanced relationships is based on what? What sentiment? What emotion drives that? Or what sense of responsibility?
Deirdre Findlay: (12:30)
You know, I think, when I look at my life, and I look at... There's something about shared experience. And so, even though I grew up in a predominately white environment, there were so many experiences that I've had that are driven by the color of my skin. And it's very hard for people to understand and to relate when they've never been in your shoes. Now, I'm lucky that I have a lot of friends who are very empathetic. But I'll remember... I remember really well, June of 2020, when we had all of the racial issues coming out of the murder of George Floyd. And I was very public about how that impacted me, on social media.
And I did it intentionally. It took me a while, but I had so many feelings. And I was really intentional that I'm going to post about this, because I'm in a unique place where I have so many friends who know, love, and respect me, that don't look like me. And they need to actually understand that the issues that they think affect other Black people, actually also affect me. And the number of friends who would come up to me and say, "You know, we just never really thought about you as being Black, Deirdre. We just see you as our friend and this respected business woman."
I'm like, "Yes, but I'm a business woman who's also Black. And so my experience, as a by-product of that, is different than yours. How I'm treated is different than how you're treated." And I had so many really raw and, I think, enlightening conversations with the amazing people in my life that I felt this sense of responsibility to be able to share that perspective. So that they can see how their day-to-day actions impact other people that look like me.
Charles: (14:29)
This is probably a really unfair question to ask, and maybe it's not answerable, but I'll ask it anyway. What are the biggest ways in which being Black has affected you?
Deirdre Findlay: (14:37)
So, I like to think, well, I don't like to think, but I think the reality is, I've got two things that I think hold me back. One is I'm a Black woman, and with that, whether you realize it or not, that comes with baggage, and preconceived notions sometimes. And then I also look really young. So I'm 48, and no one guesses that I am even in my 40s, much less 48. And so I look young, I'm a Black woman.
I automatically feel like as soon as I walk in the room, I have to prove myself. Right? There's just… I don't start out at a level playing field. I'm starting out from behind. And so I've always worked harder. I've always probably... I think people would categorize me as being an overachiever and not always said in a positive way.
I had a boss say to me after a promotion, I will never forget this, a promotion that was probably nine months overdue, said, "Well, you finally got the promotion, Deirdre. Can you just take a step back and relax and enjoy the moment?"
And I thought to myself, "Would you ever say that to a man?" There's no way he would say that to a man. But there was just this feeling that, haven't you achieved enough?
And, you know, I am an ambitious person, but I work hard because I love the work that I do. But I also work really hard because I know that I have to work harder to be seen and to have my accomplishments recognized. So, really frank, but that's my reality.
Charles: (16:28)
Yeah. No. I appreciate it. How do you feel about the fact that people like me ask the question? Are you glad that people are talking about this more openly? Or do you wish that we would reach a point where we don't have to bring this into the conversation?
Deirdre Findlay: (16:40)
I would say at the beginning, I was kind of annoyed, because I just felt like it was one more thing for me to have to do that was above and beyond. The blessing of COVID, was I had a lot of time with my thoughts in June. And I really challenged my own beliefs, and I said, "You know what, Deirdre? If not you, then who?"
I'm lucky enough to have social media connections, connections in real life, that are different than a lot of other Black people. And so, you should take advantage of the fact that I can reach folks that others cannot.
It requires a level of vulnerability that I don't know that I would've been willing to have 10 years ago, even. Certainly not earlier in my career. But I think you reach a certain place where you get comfortable in your own skin. I feel like I have less to lose. And if not me, then who?
Charles: (17:47)
Do you feel today that you walk into the room at a more parallel level to everybody else? Or do you still struggle with, “Where do I sit in relationship to the other people in this room?”
Deirdre Findlay: (18:00)
I think it depends on the room. I think it depends on the room. I think at work especially, your contributions start to speak for themselves after a while.
I think coming in, you definitely have a lot to prove in the beginning, and I always go into every job with, what are my quick wins? And how do I… how am I really thoughtful about those wins so that I'm setting myself up for longer term success. And also so I'm enabled to take the risks that are really going to enable me to achieve what I need to achieve?
Because if I come in and play it safe, I'm never going to grow and scale the business in the way that I want to grow and scale the business. But I recognize I have to earn that right, and maybe not everyone feels that way. But I definitely go in with a strategy of, okay, prove yourself. Earn the right to then take the big risks that are going to enable you to overdeliver, and overachieve for the business. So I would say, yes, to a certain extent.
Charles: (19:06)
Your acknowledgement of your increasing willingness to be vulnerable, I think, is fascinating, and I think timely. And there are so many leaders at the moment who are talking about their recognition of the need to be more vulnerable. How has your recognition of it and your willingness to go there changed the way that you lead?
Deirdre Findlay: (19:25)
You know, it's funny. I've always been a believer in managing the full person, always. So I think that there's a professional side of people that you obviously need to nurture and develop, and that's really important. But I think oftentimes at work, we forget that we're also dealing with humans who have lives outside of the office.
And I think the reason why I got to that place maybe sooner than most is because, early in my career, I always hid my personal life. So all you knew was Work Deirdre, and Work Deirdre was intimidating, because she was so intense and focused on getting the job done.
And it wasn't until I started to be more comfortable marrying Work Deirdre and Real Deirdre, Outside of Work Deirdre, that I could still be all of those things, really intense about the job, really driven to hit the numbers, exceed the numbers, but that I could also be the kind, fun, lighthearted person that people began to see. And that combination actually made me a lot less threatening, intimidating, unapproachable.
And what I realized is there's real power in being a leader that drives really good results, but also a leader that people want to spend time with, and enjoy working with, and feel valued by. And so me showing who I am as a person made my teams open up a bit more, as well.
And so you have this really nice personal relationship in addition to a professional relationship. And I think that, frankly for me, makes work way more fun for me. But I know it also makes work way more fun for my team.
So that's how I would describe my leadership style, is very balanced. And I truly care about the people on my team just as much as I care about the work itself.
And honestly, what a godsend during COVID, because any leader who was not managing the full person probably lost a lot of people. Because if you think about it, we were in our employees' homes, very intimate environments, engaging with them, often their children and extended family members, pets, you know, you name it, in their living rooms, bedrooms, offices.
It's such an intimate way to engage with employees. And if you don't have that level of trust, and relationship going into it, I would imagine that COVID could've been really challenging.
Charles: (21:58)
And what about coming out of COVID or whatever the new version of living with COVID ends up becoming?
Deirdre Findlay: (22:02)
Yeah.
Charles: (22:03)
Do you think that this is going to be something that becomes a sustainable part of leadership? And do you think people will expect their leaders to show up managing the full person as we get used to being back in the same space as each other, when we don't have that visibility into each other's homes and personal lives?
Deirdre Findlay: (22:17)
I really hope so. I think this is a change for the better and honestly, I think our employees are demanding more from us. You know, they… everyone keeps talking about the great attrition that's coming, and I think frankly, has started to come.
There's a lot of... Let's just say employees have greater control over their career now more than ever, and they're making tough decisions that are about more than just the work. And that's been really interesting to see. And so my hope is that we, as leaders, become much more comfortable balancing the work and balancing people.
Charles: (23:02)
It's going to require a real re-appraisal, isn't it, of the value of the employer employee relationship? I mean, I think you're right. I have said this before on this podcast, but we've been living for such a long time under a set of business practices and expectations that were fundamentally built during the Industrial Age, Industrial Revolution. And it was very hierarchical, and people worked for a certain amount of money on an hourly basis.
And this has really accelerated the change from that, I think, and it's going to be remarkable to see what happens over the next two, three, four years in terms of how business is structured, I think.
Deirdre Findlay: (23:35)
No. I agree. And look, we need to realize that it's additive. Happy employees, that's a good thing. And so I don't know why there's this, you know, I've definitely worked for people who manage through fear, and it's not... it can't be fun for them, and I know it's certainly not fun for me. Why would we ever want to go back to that?
And so I think, the decisions that I have made personally have been to work at companies where I both really value the work and I'm excited about the work, but also really value the people that I'm going to be working with and the culture of the organization that I'm going to be a part of.
Charles: (24:16)
You joined Condé Nast, what, three months before the pandemic hit? Or even less than that, right?
Deirdre Findlay: (24:20)
About that. Yeah. January of 2020.
Charles: (24:23)
So, you would have barely built the relationships with the people around you before everybody was sent home. What's it been like for you, building your relationships with your key team members, running a business, becoming the leader that you are today, in this environment? How have you gone about that?
Deirdre Findlay: (24:39)
Yeah. You know, I feel very lucky that I had, you know, two and a half, almost three months in the office before we retired to our homes. I feel very lucky.
And I think one of the things I learned early in my career, especially when I left the agency side and came client side, was the importance of building relationships first. You know, I used to be heads down, do the work, and everything works out. Well, everything doesn't work out when you're just heads down doing the work. And I learned that lesson in my first job after leaving the agency.
And so the good news is I spent a lot of time at the beginning building the relationships, getting to know the team, and obviously onboarding and learning the business, because I'd never worked in this space before.
So I went into COVID with a healthy, relatively healthy for the short period of time that I was in the office, set of relationships with the executive team and my leadership team, and in some cases, the next layer down, especially on some of the teams where they required me to be more leaned in, in the beginning. So that was a blessing.
I think what makes the job, what makes it a little bit harder for me is, you know, I came on to… I have a CMO title, but I'm Chief Marketing Officer and I'm basically responsible for all revenue outside of advertising revenue. So, mostly consumer revenue. So, I have subscriptions, memberships. I have our box businesses across, you know, beauty box business for a lower GQ box. I have all of licensing, so content, media and product licensing, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some things. So it's an interesting job. It's both marketing, but I'm also running strategic businesses and establishing what the future of consumer revenue should look like for Condé Nast. And honestly, doing that remote, that was the hard part because we are changing the company from a muscle memory of being very advertising led, being very print led.
And I came in in the middle of this major transformation, becoming a truly global company, evolving from the business model of the past to more of a balanced business model of the future, that's much more digital forward, much more video forward, and much more consumer revenue forward, and shifting the team's mindset while working remote. I would say what worked really well for me there was, right before the pandemic, I had walked, my boss, Roger Lynch, who's the CEO of Condé Nast through the vision that I established for consumer revenue. So, I set a very clear North Star, a very clear vision. I created a strategic framework for how we were going to deliver on that. And he had blessed that and said, “Yep, we're on the same page.” And I had already started to socialize that with my leadership team. So, it was perfect. My first big all hands post everyone working from home was to walk the team through the strategic framework. And that has really grounded us, but still the same strategic framework we're using as we're going into ‘22 planning.
So, my advice to leaders is, coming up with that strategic framework very early in your tenure. You go through your 60 to 90 day period of onboarding, really understanding the business and formulating an informed, an opinion on where to go from here, but then put pen to paper relatively quickly, get buy in from your boss and then get the team marching against it. And so that's made it a little bit easier. And then I had the good fortune of COVID actually accelerating some of the key areas of business that I was responsible for. So, commerce, I actually didn't mention commerce earlier. Commerce was a big area of focus for me. And I knew that we could grow our commerce revenues exponentially when I joined the company. And what did we see? I think it was, the quote was 10 years of e-commerce growth in eight weeks in 2020.
So we definitely benefited from that. And once you start to see that momentum, then everyone kind of gets on board. You know, I definitely have people looking at me like I was crazy when I said, “Oh, we can quadruple our commerce revenue in, you know, in X years.” And then once you start to see the numbers coming and people are like, “Oh, I want some of that.” So, that was actually a really good thing. And similarly, you know, when you look at global markets, markets outside of the US are still very heavy news stand. It is a news stand driven market, which means it's more of a print driven market. And so as I was socializing the plan for consumer revenue and driving more digital subscriptions, people were definitely smiling and nodding, but not on board. All of a sudden there's really no news stand.
News stands were essentially shut down. And then I became real popular, because how do we offset the decline in news stand? Well, let's lean into our subscription businesses and figure out what we can do there. And again, started to see really nice momentum, really great wins. And so now we're in a place where we've actually changed mindsets and have been able to deliver bottom line impact for the business as a result of the transformation and the business model, which is a really nice momentum as we're driving into 2022 and beyond. So, all in all, it actually worked out well for a number of reasons.
Charles: (30:07)
One of the things that, as you know, leaders struggle with when they take on a new position, especially when there's the kind of transformation that you're trying to put through is inheriting a leadership team that was hired and put together by somebody else for a similar, but not highly consistent, set of outcomes, right? I mean, you set a strategic vision, it's probably a different one than your predecessor had.
Deirdre Findlay: (30:25)
Yeah.
Charles: (30:26)
How do you go about making sure that either the team you're inheriting has the talent base that you need, or deciding which people need to be brought in and what you're missing and who doesn't fit?
Deirdre Findlay: (30:38)
Yeah. So, one of the other lessons I learned at that first job after Digitas was hire well, hire fast, make tough decisions quickly. And I definitely brought that with me here, but I also am always been very much of a growth mindset. So, I do believe in the possibilities of people and the potential of people. And so the byproduct of that is I tend not to make those tough decisions as quickly as others. But what's been nice about that is when you invest in people, they often surprise you, not always. And I will say that the story here has been one of a lot of pleasant surprises. I really haven't had to make... I haven't made many big shifts at the leadership level. I think the biggest shift has been talking about what we are trying to achieve and making sure that everyone is on board and being really clear about that end state goal.
You know, so we did a five year, long range plan that as a leadership team I said, we’ve got to hold hands and say, “We're doing this.” And if you're not on board, vote yourself off the island before I have to vote you off the island. So that was really good. And then, people ask me what the hardest part of my job is and it's muscle memory. So, the intent is there, and people want to change. And this organization is rallying behind the evolution in a way that makes me really proud, but every now and then you see like the muscle memory kick in and we kind of revert back. And I ask the question, “Why are we going back here? Like, help me understand.” It's like, “Oh, well…” but this doesn't align with the vision that we put in place.
And it's just giving that constant reminder and frankly, the courage to keep going down the path that we've agreed to. So, having the growth mindset has, has served me well. I would say when I look at building teams, things that I care about, I care about raw intelligence, like academic horsepower. I'm not necessarily always hiring for specific craft skills because I do think, it's very much a Google mindset of, you hire athletes, and train them and they rise to the occasion. So I definitely brought that with me. I look for intellectual curiosity. I think honestly, if you are smart and curious, there's very little that you can't do with that magical combination. And then the third thing that I look for are people who are self motivated.
I am not a micromanager. I don't enjoy micromanaging. I can flex that muscle if someone requires me to, but I honestly would only like to do it during short bursts of time to help people overcome whatever deficit that they're dealing with. But I really prefer to work with people who are self-motivated, or you paint a clear picture of what good looks like, and then they figure out the path forward. And they come to you and they need help and roadblocks removed or, you know, want to… I love a good brainstorm, want to have a good whiteboard session. But I think if you lean into those three things, you can build the right team to move you forward. And so far, so good. And now because we're growing and scaling, I have new head count that I get to hire for and that's the opportunity for me to infuse new blood into the existing ways of thinking. So that's been my preference on how to evolve the ship, versus having to make radical changes to the existing team.
Charles: (34:17)
I'm struck by the clarity of the evaluation process that you go through and that you're so clear about the criteria that you're looking for. And as you said, you bring a growth mindset as a default, as a starting place. Obviously there are times where, with the best will in the world, that doesn't work. How long are you willing to invest in somebody showing up in a different way or in a better way before you decide, you know what, just have to make a move here?
Deirdre Findlay: (34:38)
I think it depends. I think if they're really trying and I see that they're really trying, I will invest the time to help bring them there. But at some point, if they're not there, then you just have to make the call. And, you know, sometimes I make the call. Sometimes they actually make the call. And the beauty of that investment is, people don't want to disappoint, right? And so they will often arrive to the right conclusion before I have to make the call. But don't get me wrong, I will make a hard decision if I need to. And if I see that the person's just not willing to try, that decision happens pretty quickly. Yeah.
Charles: (35:17)
What is the hardest thing about leadership for you? What do you struggle with the most?
Deirdre Findlay: (35:23)
This is going to be weird answer, but it's turning it off. I spend so much time in the driver's seat at work and being at the helm, that when I'm not here and I'm in my personal life, it's really hard to turn it off. And so I spend a lot of time actually figuring out how I can be who I need to be in a work setting, but also just kind of have fun and live my life when I'm at home. I have found leadership to be somewhat natural. My style has evolved, but I think if you ask people who've worked with me early on, they always saw me as someone who was taking the lead in some capacity. So that, I feel fortunate in that regard. But where I have more difficulty is dialing it back and being able to just kind of enjoy other things outside of work.
And I've gotten much better at that as I've gotten older. Again, you know, I talk a lot about giving to myself first. My workout routine is a big part of that, I did a nice hour long run, walk this morning before I came to the office and it set the tone for the day. I've had a really good day today. And I find when I don't do that for myself at the beginning of the day, it's just, you know, my days are… it's not that it's harder, but I feel like a little bit of a, “Oh, why didn't I give to myself first?” So most days, I get up, and I give to myself first. And some days, my giving to myself first is taking an extra 30 minutes to sleep, because I really need it.
Charles: (37:16)
I think it's such an important point. And it's probably an area that I haven't talked about enough on this podcast, but it's becoming more and more evident of how critical an area, for conversation, understanding it is. Which is... There are so many leaders... I'm sure you've seen this, too, and probably experienced this, but so many leaders who are victims of their calendar.
Deirdre Findlay: (37:33)
Yes.
Charles: (37:33)
Who are... Right? Who are just falling in line with... They open up their laptop, or their phone, and they look at their calendar and they show up at the next Zoom, or the next meeting, or whatever it is. And it's remarkable to me, how often very senior people don't really know why they're going to that meeting, except somebody asked them to show up and-
Deirdre Findlay: (37:49)
Yes.
Charles: (37:50)
Right? And so their executive assistant, who, with the best one in the world, cannot possibly know-
Deirdre Findlay: (37:56)
Yes.
Charles: (37:57)
With the same level of insight. How do you deal with that? I mean, the fact you make time for yourself in terms of exercising, or working out, and sleeping. I don't know if you know how rare that makes you, at least in my experience. So, how, how do you manage your calendar, for instance?
Deirdre Findlay: (38:13)
Yeah, look, I learned the hard way, I had years of not doing that. And, I mean, honestly, 20 pound weight swings, right? I never felt good. I didn't feel good, I don't think I was as fun to be around, and certainly to work with when I wasn't feeling healthy, and rested. But I definitely learned my way to this place.
In terms of how I manage my calendar, I think the biggest issue with meeting fatigue is, I think it's ego. Like, we want to be invited to the meeting, we want to be in the room. And I've learned to not be as obsessed with the ‘why am I not invited to this thing?’. Or, being okay saying, "Do you need me in that? Do you really need me in that meeting?"
And the line I used with my team, it was funny, I didn't realize how impactful this was until someone repeated it back to me on my team. He's like, "You know, I love when you say that, ‘I trust you guys. You don't need me in the room.’" And I find myself saying that a lot. And it's like, "Look, I trust you. So, you guys take the meeting without me. I can't make it. But just let me know if you need me to circle back, or pull me into a follow up meeting if there's some things we can't resolve."
And what's really nice about that is it actually empowers the team, so that they don't use you as a crutch. I find that when my team pulls me in, it's when they really need me to be there. Or it's something that they know that I care about being a part of. And so...
And then, the other thing, to the calendaring point that you made... As I calendar, not just my work stuff, I calendar my personal... So, my workouts are on the calendar. I try to do one personal thing a week. So, one night a week, I do something that's for me. It is dinner with friends, it's a date night, it is something that is just for me. Otherwise, your calendar can easily get filled up with work things every night. Or just catching up on work. I mean, that's... Let's be real, that's when a lot of the hard work gets done, is after hours, and after meetings are over. And I feel like if I have at least one night a week where I am doing something fun for me, that's helpful.
And then, on the weekends, I try to keep my Saturday sacred. So, I like to work on Sundays, because it's helpful for me to catch up, and get ahead of the week. But Saturday is, like, one day, if I can, where I just live my life, pay bills, do whatever I need to do. Clean the house, whatever it is that I want to do that weekend. So that's also really important to me.
Charles: (40:50)
When you hire somebody new, how overt, how revealing are you about who you are, and how you show up best? I'm always struck by leaders who are... Who have the confidence and the clarity to say to people, “Just so you know, I work out every morning and that's..." Whatever the narrative is. how much do you bring that part of you into the hiring process?
Deirdre Findlay: (41:10)
I bring often. I often bring... Because people will often ask, “Tell me about your leadership style, work style,” and I'm very transparent. And I do talk about working out in the mornings. I do talk about, you know, trying not to bother people after hours. My team knows if I send them an email, or text them after hours, it's really important. And I'm very clear about that, too, that I value their time away from work. So, I'm not going to impose on it, unless it's truly an emergency.
And, actually, one of the things I love about my boss, is I rarely get an email from him on the weekends. And that is definitely different from other experiences. But I know, when I get an email, or a text, that it's important. I always check, right? And I'm happy to be available, but I appreciate that level of respect. And I'm the same way with my team. And so I do think that that's really important.
And the other thing that I do is, even with my team, not just during the hiring process, but regularly, in my leadership meetings, I talk about, "Oh, I had a good workout this morning. Oh, I skipped two days. I might be a little cranky." Like, I bring that level of humanity into our interactions, but then they also bring that level of humanity to their interactions.
I talk about the importance of taking vacation. And when you're on vacation, trying to really recharge. Because if you don't really recharge then what's the point, right? Or being very intentional about when you engage. Like, for me, it's... When I go on vacation, my sanity, is I need to check in the morning, just to make sure that nothing has blown up. And if it's not an emergency, I don't respond. I might read it, but I don't respond, because I don't want to send the wrong message. And then, I usually check right before dinner, just to make sure that nothing blew up during the course of the day.
And I know that if it was something big, someone would call me or text me. But just for my sanity, I have those two moments of check-in. Just so that I can have a fun day, and a fun evening. And I'm very clear with my team on that, as well.
Charles: (43:16)
One of the aspects of leadership that I think is not talked about enough, and perhaps in some cases, it's not really well enough understood, is the leader's unique ability to establish and then maintain momentum. So you've been very clear about the fact you have a clear, strategic vision. You use it as a filter, and a reference, and context with people to keep coming back to, by which to make decisions. How do you measure progress towards that vision? And how often do you measure progress for the team?
Deirdre Findlay: (43:43)
Yeah, great question. And it, honestly, it's somewhat fluid. Formally, we had a quarterly cadence for doing those check-ins which, honestly, was kind of driven by our financial cadence, of when we do a check-in on how we're tracking against budget. And then make any adjustments that we then report back to the executive team, and ultimately the board. Then more recently, we've kind of instituted more monthly check-ins, because by the time you get to the end of the quarter, sometimes it's too late. And you could have course corrected something sooner.
I think one of the things as leaders you realize is, no one wants to disappoint you. And so, everyone wants to try and solve problems without involving you. And so, if you don't have a moment of check-in, sometimes the ‘without involving you’ goes way too long. A couple of instances of that, and I was like, "Look, like, you raising something to me is not a sign of weakness. I would rather help you remove this bottleneck sooner versus later. I will never judge you for pulling me in early as long as you've tried to solve it, and if you can't, pull me in sooner, because I don't want to lose three months of progress."
And so, now, we have this more of a monthly rhythm, which actually works really well. And I think that's what we'll stick with as we move into next year. But, you know, what I love about the way we work as a team is, we reserve the right to revisit, And there's it. And what's been great about our cadences, is now we include... it's more than just the revenue team. We're actually pulling in key cross-functional stakeholders that we actually can't deliver on the goal without.
So, our global product and technology org. They're now in these meetings. Or data org. They're now in these meetings. And that's been really, really great. Not just as a way of driving accountability within my team, but, frankly, driving accountability across the organization in the right ways.
Charles: (45:40)
And last question for you, what are you afraid of?
Deirdre Findlay: (45:44)
Oh, what am I afraid of? You know, irrelevance, maybe. You know, I feel like I do a good job of staying on top of the latest and greatest. But I think about, even just in the last 20 plus years since I've been in a pure marketing role versus a finance role, how much the job has changed. And I am constantly looking for challenges that keep me on the cutting edge. Because I like work. And I like what I do. But I'm very conscious of the fact that if I don't evolve, I'm not going to be able to continue to operate, to operate at the level that I enjoy. So, that's probably my biggest fear.
Charles: (46:33)
Thank you so much for joining me today. I've loved this conversation. And I'm so just struck by the level of clarity and consciousness and self-awareness that you bring, and your willingness to share. So, thank you very much for being here today.
Deirdre Findlay: (46:45)
Oh, thank you so much, Charles. You made it easy. So, you got a lot from me today.
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