Ex-Google HR Boss & CHRO At Oura: Why Most Companies get People Completely Wrong!

When you're building a business that relies so much on problems that get solved by smart people, the human capital is just so critical. And if you're not thinking of HR in a strategic way, and if you don't have the leaders who are capable of doing that, you're just missing a trick. What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to Truth Works, where we dig into the nitty-gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change? I'm Jessica Neal, and I'm Patty McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us. It's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Truth Works. I'm Jessica Neal, your host. I'm here with Jeff Markowitz. Hi, Jeff. How are you? How are we doing? Good. Coming back for more, I see. Yep. OK. Well, we have a very cool guest today who I've had the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with before, and she's very impressive. So I'm glad she agreed to come onto the show. But I have-- and I think a lot of people know this company very well. I'm going to have a little confession that I have to make in a minute. But I have Judy Gilbert, who is the Chief People Officer of ORA. Welcome to the show, Judy. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Yes, me too. And before we start recording, Jeff was holding up his ORA ring, and you were holding up your ORA ring, and then they asked me if I had one, and I-- I don't have one. And I'm going to tell them why now, because I didn't want to tell them why before we started recording. But I'm nervous to get one. I don't want to know. You don't want to know. No. Because then I'm like going to obsess over my sleep, and I'm going to-- you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, and it's what I should know. I should know these things, because it's probably good to know. But I don't know. I'm like the person who doesn't. I don't like to go to the doctor. You know, I don't-- I will go if I have to. Judy, how many-- is that common? Like, is that a common thing with people like afraid to have-- Sure. Yeah, it's a common concern. You get people all over the spectrum. You have people who want every little bit of detail, and the ORA ring is just the tip of the iceberg. And they also want their blood pressure all the time, and they also want the labs, and they also want-- it's part of a whole thing. And then you've also got people-- we've got lots of people who are-- I don't want to know. And one of the-- I mean, so now I'm going to try and sell you. But one of the things that's great about it is it's this tiny little device. It is unobtrusive, and you can look at it on your phone, or you don't have to look at it on your phone. And so you can-- it's there if you want it, and it just gives you a little bit of information. And you can decide how much of that is helpful for you, so that you can make better choices. And if weeks go by, and you decide it's not something you need to look at, that's okay. It's still there for you. Yeah, it's interesting. Go ahead. Now you go. So I'm a big tracker. Although I do kind of go into these phases, like Jessica said, where it's like, you know, I'm not going to be looking every day. You know, my pitch for Aura, and I have to say I'm not associated with the company anyway. And I used Woop and Aura. And Woop is just way too detailed for me. Too much stuff. And Aura is just simply great. There you go, everyone. I love to hear that. There's the sell. It's a tool in the kit. I feel like I need to get one. I feel like women are a big, big customer of yours, right? Big demographics of. Absolutely. And so I feel like I'm an outlier or someday. I feel like I need to get with the plan. I know. We would like lots more people to get with the plan. That would be very good for us, but also for them. So I think it is such an empowering thing to have easy access to all this data about what's going on with your body and with your mind that helps you make better decisions. I mean, you're always in the driver's seat, but it's information that you can use to help steer you. Yeah. No, it's true. And if the listeners don't know Aura, do you want to tell them what it is, Judy? Yeah. We didn't really say what it is. It's the world's best smart ring. It is a tiny little device. You wear it on your finger and it provides you with constant tracking of what's going on with your body. It tracks your sleep, gives you information about respiration, about activity. It's getting better all the time. We keep investing in both the ring itself and the software that provides the insights about it so that users can get information about what's going on with their body and their health. It's not a medical device, but it provides information that enhances those kinds of conversations that you can have with your doctor, that you can get this second opinion on, I feel a little funny what's going on with that. And then it's more data to help inform the decision. Yeah. What do you use yours for? Yeah. What's the thing you like best about? Yeah. I use it as a way to engage with my kids. So I got two teenagers and they are both users and of course since I work there they have to complain about it all the time and provide lots of feedback. But it is it's a nice way to have this baseline to talk about like gee I didn't sleep very well and what do we think is going on with that. And it's this entry to conversation for us about thoughts and feelings and bodies that is just kind of a little subtle thing that's there for us all the time. Yeah. And if I had an or a ring you know I would tell me last night I had to wake up at 4 in the morning because my six year olds little doggy that he sleeps with fell out of the bed and you know and he was yelling mom and he like he can't get he can't get out of bed and get it himself you know. And I don't know about your kids but when my kid ever wakes up in the middle of the night it doesn't matter what the reason is he's screaming my name. It's never. Oh yeah. Mom. It's mom. Yeah I woke up at 4 or it would be like your son. Yeah. Well you can tag that and then watch patterns and that's how it's him again. It's him again. Anyways I would sleep much better if it if it and it's much better now that he's sick than six than when he was little. Right. It does get better. Yeah. So what do you use yours for Jeff? I mainly use it for sleep. You know I just look at my sleep in the morning and see how I'm doing and sort of if I squares are not great it's usually because maybe I had to drink. Yeah. I got to lie. Maybe I had a big meal something but it definitely correlates. Yeah. You know I don't get as much fitness benefit like working out just because I mean I use it working out but I don't the data itself isn't as useful for me anyway and it's mainly for sleep. Yeah a lot of people use it for sleep but it's a great product and I'm going to get it. Okay I will. But let's talk about you Judy a little bit because your background is really fascinating and I think you started at Aura and 23 is that when you? 23 yeah it's been about three years. Yeah so you started there about three years but prior to that you had a very amazing career you spent 12 years I think at Google and worked with with Lazlow and I don't remember what I read but Google was like maybe 3000 or something when you started. And then you months after the IPO so a late 24 it was a. In three years. In three years. Yeah. And how big was it when you left after 12 years? I mean we were well over 100,000 employees I kind of lost track. I mean it was yeah every year was our biggest hiring year ever for over and over and over and over again and we just we just kept scaling it and getting into getting into bigger things and it was a real rocket ship. Yeah well tell us about your career how how did this all happen for you because I know at least most folks that end up doing what we do they don't set out to do it in the first place. No there's no like HR Barbie that you grow up playing with that sets that path. No I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up and when I went to college I wanted to keep those options open and I've always liked learning about different things and making connections between things and finding finding interesting patterns in how the world works and that led me to management consulting because it was a way to continue to kick the can down the road and not really have to pick a career. So I joined McKinsey right out of college and it up going to business school and it up going back to McKinsey and really had some wonderful opportunities to work across a lot of different industries, see companies at different stages, see different management styles and one of the things that I noticed through a number of years doing that kind of work was that a lever that was not really getting pulled was the people stuff and you know this was this was the mid late 90s and people operations was not yet a thing. You know HR was kind of off in the corner and most companies were really being strategic about it even things like you know I looked at. I looked at studies that we implemented. We did all the good analytical work at McKenzie. We put it in a big blue document. And when you went back six months or a year later, excuse me, to see, well, how did that go and what got implemented and what kind of change has been driven? Often, if there wasn't the change that we expected to see, there were some people related thing that was underlying. It was like we were telling people to do one thing, but the incentives were set up for something else. Or we hadn't really done the change management. Or the leadership wasn't right, or the skills weren't right over here. It was just this thread of all these different people related things. And I thought that was interesting. And I thought, well, where could I go to do more of this work? And at the time, there weren't so many strategic people leaders. You could look out in the world and see, there were a few, but it wasn't a thing. So I thought, well, where is people's stuff a line job? And it's an executive search. And so I had the opportunity to join Agon Sender for a few years during the.com boom, which was a tremendous learning experience and a way to, again, get exposed to a lot of different things and help leaders through some of these transitional periods. And then you went to Google. Well, and then yeah. And so it turns out I'm not very good at executive search. And so that was an important thing. So I have tremendous respect for people who are great at it. And I love working with them, but it was not a place where I was going to add the most value. What does that mean, actually? Yeah. How did you figure that out? I mean, it turns out that I tend to introversion. And so if you have a job that is fundamentally about getting on the phone and connecting with dozens of new people every day, that is going to not be a great way to manage your energy. And for a while, the learning from it was such that that brought energy to it. But it just wasn't going to be a long term thing. It just wasn't going to be the thing that I was best at. So that was good to learn. Yeah. But then I had the opportunity to join Google. So it was summer of 2024. And actually, one of my colleagues from Aagan Sunder was doing some work with them through a set of conversations. Because Google was like 2,000 people. They grew really fast, even over that summer, just getting things in place. And they needed some people with more business expertise to bring a little bit of structure to it. And so I had the opportunity to join in the HR department, which I don't think we were people operations quite yet. But my first love there-- Was it love there? Or was it not? He wasn't there. He came on-- I don't know, a bit after I did. But I-- you know, I-- you wrote my performance reviews for 10 years. So we were super closely together. But our non-Gasurie came on at about the same time I did. And so he and I were kind of in a two-in-a-box situation to scale up this enormous recruiting machine that Google needed to build in order to do all the things that they wanted to do. And so our non-had all the recruiters reporting to him. And I was leading the kind of more programmatic work. So things like college recruiting and systems and process and the diagnostic and the analytics of the whole staffing machine to build it up and be able to feed the engineering beast with amazing high quality engineers. But and it still is an engineering beast. Yeah, sure is. Yeah. Yeah. And you left how many years ago? I left in 2017. And I-- in the-- Yeah, that's right. And in those years, I had the chance to do a lot of different jobs and kind of Google grew. It evolved. There were a lot of different things that needed over time. And so I went from being very recruiting focused to different times I led learning and development, led performance management, went over to be the head of HR for YouTube after they were acquired and trying to figure out what the interaction between YouTube and Google was going to be. And then that led to some other kind of HR business partner type roles with Google X and with some of the other parts of Google that eventually became the other baths, once Alphabet, more from being Google to Alphabet. Again, you got to see a lot of different things and participate in driving a lot of that growth. Yeah. Wow. Amazing experience. Fascinating, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then you go to startups. It's a super hard place to leave. But around 2017, my younger kid was getting ready to graduate from the Google preschool, which was sort of a funny moment for us thinking about, gee, what would life after this? After this be like. And there were a lot of really interesting, smaller company and some larger company opportunities at the time and just really thinking about what's that next chapter going to be. And I chose to join a small company. I was really excited about the idea of building something again and getting into that complexity and being part of a leadership team. The company was called Zimergen. And that was kind of biotech adjacent with some manufacturing and just a really interesting combination of business problems. Had some wonderful experiences there. Build up a team, acquired some companies, did some things, took it public, sold it, shot a lot of things down. It happened during the pandemic. I mean, what a learning though. IPO to selling to-- I mean, even though it's sad to kind of close things down, I mean, that's all learning. What were the big adjustments coming out of Google going to a company like Zimergen? I mean, I spent seven years at Google, obviously, later than when you were there. So it was a very different organization, I'm sure. But the learnings must have been start between the two. Yeah, for sure. I think Zimergen was a few hundred people when I got there. So it was even smaller than Google had been when I joined. But that whole idea of how do you build things basically from scratch? And how do you do them at a scale that makes sense for where you are right now? But future proves it a little bit so that you benefit from some of the things that you've learned from having seen the movie before. But how do you find that right balance so that you're not overbuilding for the 10,000-person company when you're only 300? And by the way, the technology is changing in the background all the time. So the tools that you have available to use to do that scaling are also changing. And so staying on top of that is critical. I remember-- I don't know if you had a similar moment-- but I remember when I left Netflix for the first time and was the head of HR at Coursera. And Coursera was like-- Herman. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think we were like 70 people or something. It was small. And I was my first week. And they ended up-- they wanted to fire the office manager. And she missed payroll. And I was like, OK, well, we can probably do that. And then I was-- they had nothing. No infrastructure, no nothing. And they had kind of made her pseudo HR, the office manager. And I let her go. And I was cleaning out her desk. And I was just going through-- I didn't know why, but I started going through them. There were like these boxes all behind her decks, just stacked up, box after box. Started going through these boxes. And it was people's immigration. I didn't think she didn't know what to do with any of this stuff. And she just put it in a box and put it behind her. And none of it had been addressed. And I just remember I started crying. It was like 10 o'clock at night. And I was like, what have I done? [INAUDIBLE] Because you don't realize the luxury that you have at an organization like a Netflix or a Google that is established and things work, information. You don't have to look in a box. You can look it up in a chariast. But did you have a moment like that when you-- Absolutely. And I knew what I was getting into. I mean, you always ask the questions and sort of know what you're getting into. But there are always surprises. There are always things that look shinier from the outside. And then you get in there. And you realize that there are those boxes filled with immigration stuff. Yeah. In our case, it was a file cabinet full of lab notebooks that nobody knew what to do with. And I think they're two figuring out, all right, what are the things where you need to get something that is formal and you need to get a person who's a subject matter expert to do it? And what are the things that you can sort of hack through by putting together some spreadsheets and finding that right balance of how do you make progress in a way that's sort of age-appropriate for the company. And I also think a lot about that idea of you're juggling a lot of balls. And it's OK to drop the rubber ones sometimes, but try not to drop the glass ones. And so figuring out in a new company-- sometimes what's rubber and what's glass is not going to be the same as it was in the last setting. And so figuring out pretty quickly what are the things that are really going to cause the biggest problems that they break. Yeah. That's good advice. So let's see. So then you close coming down and then you go to aura. Yeah. So I tried to retire briefly. I needed a bit of a break. And so I told myself I was going to retire and maybe write a book or something, because who doesn't do that? That's a good advice. Well, it's not out yet, but it's almost done, the book. Yeah, you get to write a book. You got to have a podcast. You got to write a book. You're living the dream? - I am, I am. - Yeah. - And that was great. And it was a time to think about what are the things I like, what are the things I want to do more of and less of and it turns out I missed being on a team that was trying to do hard things and build and one of the opportunities that came my way was was and I had been interested in the product and sort of interested in the company and knew it from a little bit of a distance and the more I found out the more I felt like the company was really at a moment where I would be able to do some good and the reps that I've had at both early Google and then through Zimergen we're going to be things that would you know things that this company could actually use and also a lot of things I was going to have to learn and get to learn at the same time so here I am that's turned out to be true. It's turned out it's played out that way. It has played out that way. I mean I think you know you never you never know what the growth is going to be like you never know how the business is going to develop but we've got you know we've got a product that people really do love very strong technology very strong science behind it and as we put the other pieces in place to make the business as strong as some of the product has been for a long time and allow us to scale that is that's a great opportunity for people like me because it's the business side of things and we can bring those we can bring those skills to bear on on this and really make the opportunity real. Yeah so what was it like day one when you get there. Yeah I think day one is when I really started to realize the time difference between San Francisco and Finland and people have talked about it to the interview process is like this is really hard I was like yeah I've had teams in India I've had team sing a war if it teams in Europe this is going to be fine. But the reality of having most of the company in two different time zones that are 10 hours apart from each other is it's just extremely inconvenient yeah and I think there are some things that we've been able to do over time to turn that into a little bit of an advantage instead of instead of a challenge and if you're organized properly and if you've got people in different places and if you've got clear standard operating procedures and communications. You can do a little bit of follow the sun stuff that is not available to you if you're just in one in one time zone so that's you know we got more work to do there but that's that was an early one of like oh I see I need to be on calls at six every day so that I ever get to see anybody six a m or six p. Yeah it's six a m and like okay so fortunately I have this ring that helps me you know working and turn me into a morning person so that works. What's interest yeah go ahead Jeff. I'm fascinated with sort of this question around the nature of strategic jar and Jessica and I have spoken about it in the past I was a career kind of consultant before I went into venture capital and then I was like, venture capital and then venture capital is not an operating role it's just venture capital and going to Google was sort of the first time I'd ever worked at a company you know the way I saw HR at Google was it was very much a service provider not strategic wasn't viewed as strategic it never reported to the CEO. So whether it morphed into this or it was always the case I don't know but it was always the HR or always battled this being a strategic business partner versus just being an order taker implementer. And so how do you view that within or and how have you sort of polished that way of operating. Yeah yeah I think it is when you when you're building a business that relies so much on problems that get solved by smart people the human capital is just so critical and if you're not thinking of HR in a strategic way and if you don't have the leaders who are capable of doing that you're just missing a trick and there's other companies out there that your competitors are going to do that and so. You know you you ought to take advantage of it. I think that looks very different at different scales and if you get to the scale that Google's at right now the biggest lever might be how do you just make all this work as smoothly as possible and it does become much more operational but I think for companies that are in building stages if you've got too much brain power on what's our benefits platform going to be and how do you do that you're not focused in the right place and you want people who. People who are on the CEO staff or and or whatever those whatever those seats of decision making are who are in the room and are not just focused on the people questions but are really engaging on what are we trying to do is a business and why are these the choices that we're talking about making and then how do we translate that into people strategy and then how do we operationalize it but if it's a pure order taker. You just miss opportunities to have a high leverage discussion and earlier yeah. I was curious I have a question for both of you because I've never been in the HR leader seat when you're considering an opportunity like an aura or Jessica you're working with read. How do you interview the CEO to make sure that they understand the value of the people organization and how it would you think it works best what do you look for. Do you want to go Judy go ahead. I have some questions that I have myself and make sure that I get answered during the during the process. I mean when I think about is this a company I want to join and is this a role I want to take right now my first thing is about the business is this a business that has potential to grow is it going to be interesting like are we solving something that is that is fun and that is important and I can get excited about. Because I know I'm going to spend a lot of time on it I'm going to spend a lot of energy on it and it better be something that I feel like is worth doing so that's thing one thing to is does the business require a miracle for the technology to actually work like are we at a place where this is actually about operations rather than about science or inventing because that for me that's a better stage to be at. And the third thing is is the CEO somebody who is going to take my advice at least some of the time and having those conversations during the interview process and getting into a little bit of sparring about like oh you think that's how that works well let's you know let's talk about that and have you thought about this perspective I can find during those interview processes both with the CEO and then also with members of the leadership team. I can get a pretty good sense of what what is that dynamic going to be like and I just you know I wouldn't be interested and I frankly wouldn't be that good in a situation where what they want me to do is do a really good job of like running payroll and throwing parties like God bless the people who are good at that it's not me I'm going to you know I'm going to and I get it that in the business plan is I hate I don't know but I hate the parties right I don't know everybody. I don't know everybody like them and I hate them I'm like I don't want to go to another party just get some work done I don't know I'm but I'm old and bitter but I think you're I think you're right Judy I think you know I I I knew this you know I knew because I worked at Netflix and I grew up there and it was a place where HR was part of the strategy and and so I knew if I was going to leave there I wanted that. That to be the case and you know when I went to Coursera I think they did really wanted it but they the two founders just they couldn't you know they just weren't capable so I think I got much better at digging into not just the desire because you're not going to meet like a founder or CEO that says these things aren't important they're all going to say that they're important I think the the difference is is that you know to your point like are they. Going to your point like are they going to be open to your advice and your feedback but also are they going to be willing to do the work because part of your success is that they have to do these things they have to live these things they have to be these things because if they aren't then nobody else is going to do them and then you're the HR lady coming around saying come on everybody we talked about context not control but nobody does it at the end of the day. Nobody does it at the senior level so nobody else is going to do it so I think I got really good at like doing that sparring and sort of see what it would be like in real life but really kind of pulling that thread to really get down to the core of well what when when you say that what do you actually do how do you do it how does it play out in your day to day how does it play out in your meetings in your agendas and your strategy because again be it like it or not there a big reason of you being able to be. Be successful in your role and and and they have to be an amazing partner to you how did you test for it to do it or a lot of conversations and you know Tom and I got into a discussion argument is too strong a word but. Debate we do a bit of a debate about about commentation plans and how do you think about using cash and equity in different mixes and. And what if they'd done so far and what's appropriate for the stage? And it was, and for me, it showed me that he, I mean, he was digging in on this stuff in part because he didn't have an HR partner at that time because they'd already had a transition. But so that showed me, okay, this is a guy who's willing to get into the details. He is willing to learn this stuff. He's also willing to listen. And we're not really making a decision here, but that discussion showed me. He cares about it. He's thinking about why it's important. He's doing the leg work. He's willing to think a few moves ahead about not just how do you bandate it now, but what might be the long-term implications of picking one path versus another. And something else that came out during that was, he talks, he goes and seeks out other opinions. And I think that is so important for me. And that's how I met you. For all of you. We talked about compensation. So I think Woody, TZV, connected me with Tom and then Tom, it brought Judy into the conversation. And we had a, we ate three of us at a little chat about compensation. Nice. Yeah. I mean, you want, you can learn from your own experiences and your own scars, but you learn so much faster if you can get other people's scars and experiences into the mix as well. And so having that community is so, so useful. Yes, but what I love about that, Judy, is that, and I think it's something that I tried to do, but you were sort of simulating what it would be like to work through a problem together, right? And not an obvious problem and a hard problem and an important one. And so I think that for the listeners, that's an important thing to do, no matter what role it is, whether it's CHR or others, because the more you can simulate what it's really like to work together, the better sense you're going to have of what it's going to be like in reality. Jeff, I have a question for you because, and I think Judy will want to know this too. You have seen many companies hire cheap people, officers, CHR, what do you, whatever you want to call them. And there is a very high turnover in these roles, right? Is your theory on that? I want to know. That's pretty general because it's so company specific. Yeah. But the organ rejection on these roles is pretty high. So, you know, I did a client many years ago that you learn a lot from all of your clients, some in terms of how they do things I found. This person had hired a senior HR leader. They didn't work out and they came to us to for help. And I said, so tell me why it didn't work out over different kinds of questions. And they said something which I see is fairly common around people leaders is that this person brought their toolkit with them. And they felt that their toolkit would work. It was transferable within different organizations and maybe parts of it were, but it really, it wasn't in this case. And I see a lot of that where I've seen a lot of that. It's like, well, this is how we did it here. And this is our toolkit. And we're going to do the same kinds of things. And then the people function, you can't be that you have to be adaptable and you have to be willing to grow your own skill set, your own toolkit. Well, yeah. And I think you have to think uniquely and critically about whatever business you're in. And you have your building for that, not for this other thing. I mean, it would be silly to think that the Netflix culture is that we could just do that in any company. It worked because it worked for us. It doesn't mean that all of those things are going to work for everybody else. And you just can't have it the playbook approach. You've got to really learn your business and build things that are going to solve problems for your company, for your people. Yeah, go ahead, Judy. I think that's the strategic HR point. If you've got somebody who comes in with a playbook and says, okay, I'm going to do this now, that's kind of cranking the operational side. Yeah. And if you're in a situation that's not exactly like the one that you were in before, you need to be able to read the room and you need to be able to understand one of the business problems we're trying to solve here. And so which parts of this toolkit do I need and which things do I need to find somewhere else because I don't know how to do them yet. Yeah, I think there's another one too, which is, and it's back to the questions that you ask coming in the door and really trying to understand and assimilated conversations that you talked about, Jessica, is I find that sometimes people leaders want that relationship with the CEO to be something that maybe the CEO is just, or the organization just doesn't want, and they think they see it and they think they can turn it once they get in, but then they're not able to for maybe not their own fault, but then they keep trying. And it's just, it's a, it's a misfit. Yeah. No, the chemistry, the chemistry between the CEO founder and this role is just, I mean, it has to be there. And when it's not, it just is very short lived. And it doesn't mean either person's not great, right? I mean, it could be that the CEO's great. It could be that the CEO's great. It just doesn't mesh. And this role, I want to know your thoughts on this too, Judy, because this role has such a interesting element to it because you really are telling the CEO, the founder, the things that nobody else is going to tell them. And there's, there's just this delicate, you know, balance of being the mirror and the bearer of that and and carrying a lot of the weight of all the things that maybe you should tell them, maybe you shouldn't tell them today, but you know, maybe you're going to tell them tomorrow, but how do you navigate that and how do you think about that? Yeah. It's, I mean, one of the, I think of the job as being, it's like the Emperor's fashion consultant and you got to be the one to constantly tell him he's got no clothes. Yeah. But, but it's a repeated game. And so how do you build that relationship and how do you, like, what do you ground that in? And I think it's really important to have it grounded in. We want the same things. We want this company to be a smashing success and I think especially for this role, being able to honestly be low ego and it is not about me. I actually, like, I just want this thing to be successful. Let's figure out how to, how to make that happen. And so being able to have that, it's a funny balance because you've got to have a confidence of, I've seen these things. I've got a big toolkit. I know how to use it. And also I'm super low ego about it. Like that can be a hard balance to carry off. But I think, but I think it's tremendously important. And again, that goes back to, this is not about, you can't have a people strategy that's separate from the business strategy. This is all about what do we need to do short term and long term to enable this business to be successful and how do we do all the people things in service of that? And sometimes, you know, they, they're just not ready for it. You know, you got to know and hold them, know and deflead them. And I think that part of the toolkit too, how do you carry, is this one where you carry it through what is going to be just a little bit of a rough patch? Or is this one that's not going to be winnable and how do you make that decision? Yeah. And you got to pick the hills. You're going to die on because there's so many and you can't die in a mall. How do you both create, I'm fascinated by the way businesses, well, Silicon Valley tech is transformed and it's, everybody always has to be on their best behavior. You have to be really careful walking around organizations. There's a lot of sensitivity in organizations. How do you create a soul for the company while making tough people decisions and running a business and it's not going to be just rainbows and unicorns like an overly sensitive place. Like you're running a business. It asks, it's a business. Yeah. So how do you create soul while running a business? I mean, it helps a lot if there is a soul when you start. I don't see it as, I don't see it as the people teams role to create the soul. I think we can and the leaders can nurture that. You can help it grow. But if you're looking to the people team to create the soul, I just don't think that's the, I don't think that's the structure that's going to do it. It sure helps to have a company that has a mission that people care about and that people see as something bigger than themselves that they want to be a part of and that makes people willing to make little trade-offs around the edges to be part of this bigger thing. So I think, you know, join a company where that is already true and then help to build it. Is that's a much faster way to it than trying to create a soul where there isn't one? Yeah. And I think, you know, I think that's absolutely right. And I think, you know, Javier kind of alluding to, like, I think the pendulum's one, you know, especially through the pandemic to this kind of place where it was very sensitive and things were very heightened. And I think leaders really backed away from being as candid as they wanted to be and, you know, being direct and they didn't want to hurt people's feelings because they didn't want to, you know, they didn't want to jeopardize losing someone. And also they were afraid that they might get in trouble for what they say and do, right? And so I think the pendulum has swung back to a more balanced place, but I also think the companies that navigate this well and continue to have their soul, right? If they had one in the first place and let's face it, not every company has a soul, or they do, it's just not the kind of soul you want to be with. But I think that what companies that struggle with this are not clear about who they are and why they are this way. And then once they're clear, they then behave that way, right? And so it's like employees can decide, right? If that's what they like, great. If that's not what they like, I think it was like, was it Coinbase? They, you know, they, yes, but I mean, it was, it actually, you know, was brilliant. And if you talk to the people that worked there, you know, a year from that time that they kind of put out that manifesto of, like, look, we are this. We are not that. We are this. This is what we care about. This is what we don't care about. If you care about these things, get on the train. If you don't care about these things to get off the train, I think it was incredibly helpful for them. Now, you may say as an employee or somebody that that's not me. That's not what I, you know, want to sign up for. But that's your decision. And I think that that was one of the things that we did very well at Netflix was that we were very clear. This is who we are. And, you know, average performance gets you a nice severance check and exceptional performance doesn't get you a raise. You get to keep your job. Like, that's, you know, that's the goal. And so because we were so clear, that actually kept the soul of that makes sense. And then people could decide. And I think many businesses are not very clear, especially on who they are and why they are that way. And so that's just confusing to folks. And when people come into a company, they've read your culture because everybody has a culture that everybody has a manifesto. They read it. And then as soon as they start, they're looking around for it to be real or not real for the hypocrisy, right? Yeah. And as they see it, they're like, yeah, you said you were transparent. But guess what? You're not. You're not transparent at all. You said you really value high performers. Well, there's a bunch of crazy people right around here who aren't very good at what they do. And so that's not true. So I think, you know, the clarity and then as much as you can, because everything's aspirational, but be that as much as you can. And things can change over time too, right? As companies, it can be different to maintain what is that soul and what is that culture feel like as you keep adding zeros, your numbers of employees. And so, yeah, leadership means, and this is a place where I think in roles like ours, you can have, you can have a lot of influence is noticing what are the shifts that are happening in the leadership and kind of asking questions like, hey, how are we going to make decisions like this? And so that you can kind of signpost that and be the guardian of some of that as it does evolve. Doesn't mean you're driving the direction of it, but you're paying attention to it and making sure that others see it as well. Yeah. We are kind of running out of time. And I want to make sure that we get to an important topic because of course we have to talk about AI because I mean, who is not talking about AI? And we probably talk about it on every episode. So sorry listeners. But but as the chief people officer, and this is, you know, this is something that I think a lot of leaders in general are are thinking about and struggling with, but especially chief people officers, CHROs, they are now the chief AI strategist for the right. And so congratulations on that promotion, everyone. They don't, they don't all know how to do this, right? And nobody's like, cracked the nut on on how to figure this out. And there's a bunch of dynamics of, you know, robots are going to take our jobs and everybody's, you know, and I, you know, so how are you thinking about that at aura and what are some of the things that you are are doing to strategize around AI being part of how the company operates? Yeah. I mean, it's complicated. I'll disclose that we don't have it all figured out. So sorry. Well, nobody does. So there you go. Yeah. But I mean, I think, I think there is tremendous opportunity with it. I wish the robots would take parts of my job. And I'm trying to train them to to do that more, right? And I think we have a, but in the last year, we've really opened things up to encourage more experimentation. I think with a lot of companies, especially ones who work in kind of medical adjacent or personal data involved environments like we do. And especially ones who've got a lot of EU interaction, like the regulatory environment is so scary. That I think for a while that caused us to be not broadly adopting. You're a tool to succeed. It's a big risk. And yeah, yeah. And so we've certainly had teams in a focused way, taking advantage of the technology and learning about it for a long time. But the broader use, like how does my team, my team use these tools? We've gotten a lot more comfortable in the last six to nine months with what might be possible. And I think it's so important. We've got, we've got teams set up within the company to put guardrails out there to just help people make good decisions in an environment where there's so much information and so much change and also so much risk. And so just basic things like here is a safe place that you can put this kind of data. Here is data that you should never use in a system like this. And you know, we're constantly reviewing to make sure that we are going as fast as we can because that's really important. But never putting member data at risk or of course, the goal and where we shouldn't in a medical way. So it's a tough balance, but it's very much on everybody's mind. Mm-hmm. For sure. And then is this like just internally, is this like a shared sort of strategy between like you, the chief product officer, CTO? It is. And we've got a heavily, we were just meaning earlier today, but we've got a heavily cross-functional team that includes several members of the top leadership team, including me. And you know, our head of IT, head of product, head of like commercial lots of areas represented, software certainly, and then then supported by folks with with more focused mandates to learn about this, learn about the regulation, and really be the subject matter experts so that we can make informed decisions as a leadership team based on that knowledge. Yeah. Data-driven decisions. Who knew? Who knew? Those are generally good ones. Yeah, you know, use some data. With the soul. With the soul. Yeah. Well, data without a soul is, you know, not always helpful. So Judy, we have to wrap up, I apologize, but it's been so lovely. We always ask our guest, we put you on the spot, and we ask you to leave our listeners with a little inspiration, something to go off and think about. And so what would you like to leave the listeners with today? I think the idea that to solve complex problems, you need divergent viewpoints. And it's just such a powerful tool. And so for any kind of problem that you have to solve, seeking out people who you know are going to see it differently, to have a little bit of a debate, to hear what they know, it's going to make you smarter, it's going to make you better, and it's actually a lot more fun. So yeah, advice. I love that. That's good advice. And I'm so happy you came on the show, and everyone should go buy an or a ring right now. Judy, I do have one question about these or rings, and the other confession I didn't make, because I didn't want to be offensive, is I want them to have like a bit more diamonds on them. Like, you know, I want them to be a little more, you know, right? You are not the only one. And we actually, there are, there are people out there who have solved that problem. So they're actually jewelry makers who will make ring covers that laying out your, your or a ring. So okay, because I just, yeah, I wanted to like, if I'm going to have it on every day, like I wanted to, like, want to look down and I want it to like, like, blanks or yeah, I like the bling. Okay, so I can get bling. You can get bling. Okay, well, now I'm going to buy one. Yeah. Yeah. I need to get a rubber cover for mine. So when I pick things up, you can get, that's a good thing too. You can scratch. You can do everyone doesn't. Kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, everybody buy your or a ring and follow Judy on LinkedIn. Thank you again, Judy. You've been a delight and just get your rubber cover for your or a ring. Okay. I'm going to do it right now. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you both. You're welcome. Thank you. Nice Judy. Thanks for listening to Truth Works.