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Inspire Club EP #9 - Jo Moffatt
6 Plays4 years ago
In this episode we talk with Jo Moffatt. MD of Woodreed Consulting and Strategy Director for Engage for Success
Jo has been at the forefront of the Employee Engagement cause for over a decade now. Personally coming at it from a brand perspective.
Host Matt Manners said “Kindred spirits with a passion for changing the world for the better through workplace initiatives, love for the one and only Bruce Springsteen and both history graduates from University, it was a pleasure and privilege to chat with her. You’ll learn so much about how to make an impact at work and Jo herself. Enjoy”
This episode is powered by Waggl – Waggl is an agile and comprehensive Employee Voice platform that measures, and truly improves engagement.
We hope you enjoy it.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Shoutout
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Inspire Club. This podcast is supported by Waggle. Waggle is an agile employee voice platform that measures and truly improves engagement. Again, thank you to them for their support throughout 2020 and early 2021.
00:00:18
Speaker
They say third time's a charm. There's been technical glitches at my end. I haven't actually admitted this to Joe but we tried to record the podcast after the Inspire of them a couple of weeks ago and we just couldn't get it working and I discovered that I had my microphone on mute.
00:00:38
Speaker
I was that tired, I had no idea that that's why Joe couldn't hear me. So apologies, Joe.
Guest Introduction: Jo Muffet
00:00:44
Speaker
And to our guests, Joe Muffet, CEO and owner of Woodread Consulting, and a lot of you will probably know her from her incredible work and passion with engaged success driving that mission forward for, I think it's coming up to 10 years this year, I think. I've long respected
00:01:04
Speaker
and admire Jo from afar from all the work that she's done. And I can't believe we haven't really connected more than we've done in that time. So welcome to the podcast, Jo.
Inspirational Mentorship of Ray Hammond
00:01:15
Speaker
Thank you, Matt. What a sweet introduction. Thank you so much. And how honest of you to admit to the muting of the mic. Is that not the ongoing and recurring theme of 2020? You know, you're on mute. I couldn't believe it. I tried to diagnose the problem. And yeah.
00:01:35
Speaker
Told Amy straight away when I will not believe what I've just done. And then I slept for three days so it was... Yeah, I bet you did. I mean that inspired film was quite some marathon wasn't it? Yes, yes. We were saying one and done but...
00:01:54
Speaker
we're already starting to think about maybe doing something even more ambitious around the world in 24 hours next year. So watch this space. It's a brilliant concept and I really don't envy the logistics of making that all happen. So hats off to you.
00:02:15
Speaker
Well, it's great to have you and Charlotte involved, so thank you very much. But let's get stuck into the first rule and only rule of Inspire Club. Can you please share a story of somebody who's personally inspired you in the world of work along the way and why? Right, yes. I thought, yeah, I can. And this goes back a while. You were saying that Engage for Success is just entering its 10th year, which it is.
00:02:43
Speaker
in March this year, we're going to begin a series of events to celebrate that, a kind of rolling programme of events, actually. And Engage with Success has been going 10 years, so that's a long time. My own business, Woodread, has been, we actually celebrate our 30th year this year. And before all of that, I was a kind of employee. And I've gone way back to an early experience, because actually this was a seminal
00:03:10
Speaker
experience for me as a relatively young member of the workforce. I was working for Kimberly Clark as what they called then a salesman. I mean, that's quite interesting, isn't it? There literally was no job title applied to female sales representatives at Kimberly Clark. We were called salesmen. That's shocking. So I was a salesman and I was going around the country selling
00:03:39
Speaker
Kimberly Clark Kleenex products to retail outlets. Anyway, the person that inspired me was a regional manager called Ray Hammond. I have no idea if he's still around or not, but he brought me in, he seconded me in to do a particular job of work that they had never done before. And it was to try and do a pilot for a telemarketing, tele sales operation. And I did that. And I did that under his wing. It was his pilot.
00:04:08
Speaker
But he was brilliant. He inspired me because he put me forward the things that I would never otherwise have had the opportunity to do. He identified something in me that I didn't even know was there and sort of, you know, talked about me to people and exposed what we were doing to the people that mattered. Upshot of it was that I was invited to do the, and this again, it sounds so old fashioned, but I was invited to do a toast of thanks
00:04:38
Speaker
at the annual sales conference. And they had never had a female do it before ever. And I was the youngest person to do it as well. And I had to do this vote of thanks. I'd never even heard a vote of thanks. I didn't really know what a vote of thanks was, you know. And Ray helped me and he
00:05:01
Speaker
He helped me when I wrote the script with what I was going to say. He guided me. He helped and supported me. But all the way through that secondment, which took about two years, I guess, he was always there pointing me in the right direction and showcasing what we were doing to people. Consequently, I kind of moved up through the ranks pretty damn quick and it was all down to him. And I think that's what a great manager and a great leader does. And I look back on that with great
00:05:29
Speaker
gratitude, but also as a role model for how it should be done. Fantastic. That's a fantastic story and thank you, Ray, for inspiring Joe. What is a vote of thanks then? Indeed, what is a vote of thanks? I wish I could remember what I said. Well, I do remember actually what I said. It was something about, because it was a leap year that year.
00:05:54
Speaker
And I do remember that I took as my team the fact that in leap years, women could ask men to marry them and that we had the right to do that. But the rights don't come. Rights don't come. You don't just have a right. Rights come with responsibilities, too, which God only knows what else I said. But anyway, it was it received a great, great applause. And I had lots of the sort of females
Traits of Inspiring Leadership
00:06:18
Speaker
who were all in marketing, the only women who worked at Kimberly Clark in those days were in marketing.
00:06:23
Speaker
or secretarial. And it all came up to me after, oh, that was brilliant. That was great. It was inspiring. So hopefully I inspired a few in my wake as well. But yeah, it was a long, long time ago, long, long time ago. I bet it's as fresh as yesterday in your mind, though. Yeah, it is. Yeah, lots of reasons. But yes, it is. But the funniest thing is that no job title for a woman in a sales role. You had to be called
00:06:53
Speaker
I can't believe that. I've already made a note of making that quote the clip that we promote around social media, I think, because that's just stunningly bad, isn't it? And that it happened so not that long ago. You don't know how old I am.
00:07:12
Speaker
But it's really interesting to hear because we've just published inspiring leaders. Our first round of inspiring leaders from last year is a new thing that we've tried to do to focus on the individual roles in the organisation. And there are four characteristics that we think create an inspiring leader.
00:07:30
Speaker
And this can be debated until the end of time, but they have humanity, they're courageous, they're great communicators and they unleash your potential. And we had the ability to enter like the C-suite and then the manager level and then the unsung hero frontline level. And reading through them all,
00:07:51
Speaker
It started since the theme started to come out and actually the manager at the manager level they seem to what was being said about them was that they really these are the people that were unleashing the potential of others more another C-suite where I had the courage.
00:08:08
Speaker
But the manager level was that they're the people who are just empowering and opening up the potential of the people around them. And you discussing Ray just sounded like he unleashed that potential in you, actually, which is which is awesome.
Brand Principles and Workplace Culture
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The potential I had no idea was there. Building belief and you know, it's and that stays with you as proven by your story. That's what we should try and keep building these people that build, you know, build belief in others and unleash their potential.
00:08:37
Speaker
But isn't that the challenge of the manager? They're in that difficult team leader, people manager. They're in that really difficult position where they've got people below them and people above them. And they're trying to manage up and they're trying to bring their people on and unleash their potential. And they're sort of being pulled in both directions. It's a difficult place to be.
00:08:59
Speaker
Very difficult and very special people and not everybody's built that way as well so you know it's just an unfair position to put some people in but I could talk about this for hours but we want to talk about more about you. What's your personal why? What drives you on a daily basis? Brands and workplaces and the kind of fusing of the two and anyone who knows me and anyone who's ever heard me speaking
00:09:28
Speaker
will know that I absolutely have a passion for brands, and I also have a passion for making workplaces the best places they can be. And you know, that's not unique. It's not unique. There's an awful lot of us, and particularly I'm sure an awful lot of people listening to your podcast and the work that you do at Inspiring Workplaces, you know, that's essentially something that drives a lot of us, isn't it, to make workplaces better places to be.
00:09:53
Speaker
for all kinds of reasons, you know, that drives me. But the difference for me is that it's about bringing brands to bear inside and use the techniques and the tools and the power that brands have to engage people and that brands have to make our lives better. You know, I have drunk the advertising industry too late, I think, but, you know, it's been, it's proven, you know, we engage with brands on an emotional level.
00:10:23
Speaker
in the external world and in our personal lives. And it's such a missed opportunity not to use those same approaches and techniques and insights to engage our people with the brands for whom they work and use that power of that brand and the power of brands inside organizations to help make workplaces better places to be. We can bring the two things together. Goodness, we spend so much time
00:10:52
Speaker
working. I'm not going to say now we spend so much time at work in the workplace because places have, you know, fragmented somewhat, haven't they? But, you know, our engagement with the brands with whom we work really can lift us and make the working day very, very much more enjoyable and, you know, a better place to be wherever it is, whether it's at the kitchen table or in your bedroom or in a, you know, commercial building somewhere.
00:11:20
Speaker
And I couldn't agree more. I came originally to this world from building advocacy.
00:11:29
Speaker
And that's what brands do, you know, you're building advocacy and the people you're communicating it to. And you know, so you're living and breathing the brand and for all the different benefits that that has. You know, one of our first ever employee engagement award winners in North America was Ford and they had really built a fantastic internal brand, although I think there should not be an external but a brand. And by doing that,
00:11:59
Speaker
The biggest selling car of that year in North America was put down purely to the friends and family scheme because they built such a fantastic brand.
00:12:10
Speaker
people were communicating it out beyond the workplace and it's had real business benefits to that. So I'm a huge believer in everything that you do. And that's why I can't believe we've not had conversations like this much earlier. I don't know. Why is that? I've got no idea. But there you go. We can put that right now, haven't we? Yeah, absolutely. I've put it in the past as well. So moving forward. So what's in your mind? What's the major workplace priority right now and why?
00:12:40
Speaker
Well, if I'm going to be if I'm going to be flippant and talk personally about my, my major workplace priority right now, and I'll start with that and then I'll broaden it out. My major workplace priority is that I'm currently my home office is my youngest son's bedroom. But he's left home. And in fact, it was not used by him as his bedroom for quite some years before he left home.
00:13:06
Speaker
as he worked his way up through the other kids' bedrooms. So this is the smallest child's smallest bedroom, and the wallpaper is Simpson's wallpaper. So my major workplace priority, personally, is to redecorate my home office and get rid of baths. That's a good one. So that's that. But generally, if we talk workplaces in the broader context, I think the
00:13:32
Speaker
I think the biggest priority now, and of course, during last year, it was about reaction, it was about responding, it was about how on earth are we going to deal with this unprecedented? Oh, my God, I used the word, the business bingo word, unprecedented. I put some money in the swearbox for that. But anyway, you know, last year, we were kind of having to get to grips with everything. We were having to think about what we were trying to do and to this sort of seismic shift that happened in workplaces. And I think
00:14:01
Speaker
The priority now, and not saying people don't recognize this, is that it's not about to change anytime soon. So it's about saying, well, how do we start to really proactively and intentionally make sure that we can create and maintain the kind of workplace cultures that we had already been making when we were all working together? How do we really
00:14:28
Speaker
keep that alive and build that. How do we give new starters who've never had that experience, who've never had the benefit of learning the culture through osmosis? How do we give them that sense when they've never met their colleagues and they're working remotely? So I think the priority is saying in how do we maintain and build a sense of who we are, what we're about, what we're for, what our values are, how we behave.
00:14:58
Speaker
when we are scattered. And I think organisations who've traditionally had frontline workforces or remote workforces are probably one step ahead of those who have found themselves being forced into the position of having to deal with a dispersed workforce. But the challenges are the same. But I think that's what we've got to do. We're no longer in kind of
00:15:20
Speaker
holding pattern of mode and sort of survival mode of what we were doing last
Advice on Perseverance and Tenacity
00:15:26
Speaker
year. We now need to be saying, well, look, this isn't about to change any side of time soon. The future is going to be totally different. It's going to be a hybrid. And we need to be very intentional about how we do that and what we do. We can't just let serendipity deliver what it does or what it will. We've got to take control of that.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's, you know, I'm probably about to use another one of those bingo terms, but you need to embrace change now. You can't hide away from it and stay with what you've always done, which was not the path anyway, but especially now you have to embrace it. And here we go, you have to become more agile. So that's the other word, you know, that's very popular right now, but true.
00:16:11
Speaker
So this is probably my favorite question outside of the first rule of Inspire Club. It's the best advice you were ever given, and who was it from? Okay. This is from somebody that I have known a very, very long time.
00:16:29
Speaker
But this advice was given to me actually on a Zoom call over Christmas. So it was pretty recent. So I have been lucky enough to have as a friend for most of my life, a lady called Edwina Dunn. And she is the, was one of the co-founders of Dunn-Humby.
00:16:50
Speaker
who are data marketing specialists and she created the Tesco Club card, all of that. So customer loyalty, you know, goes through her veins. But anyway, she and I were at school together and we've been friends. Cool. And she so she founded Dunhumbi. She subsequently with her partner, Clive Humbi went on to create other businesses as well. But her
00:17:17
Speaker
major thing at the moment is a not-for-profit organization called the Female Lead, which you may have heard about, which is really all about inspiring and uplifting women and girls to their potential. Yeah, absolutely. It's become a massive, massive movement, and really, really successful. And that's, that's, that was something that Edwina developed. And
00:17:44
Speaker
Anyway, she and I were chatting over Christmas over Zoom about business and work and life and, you know, all that stuff as you do. And, and she said, so she's been her, she's run her own businesses for years, as, as have I. And she was saying, you just have to keep going. And, you know, given the, given what we've all been facing in the last 12 months for lots of people, it's been a very difficult year.
00:18:11
Speaker
for people running their own businesses and being self-employed or freelancers or contractors or anybody, many of whom have fallen through the gaps of the government support, it's not been an easy time and it's been challenging to say the least. And the words that she used, she said to me, you just go on, don't you? And it's go on, you just keep on going, you just focus.
00:18:41
Speaker
That was, to me, the best bit of advice isn't quite the word. I was probably nuanced the question a little bit, but it was the best observation on the world of running your business, being self-employed, being a contractor. You just go on. You have ups, you have downs, you have days when you wonder why you're doing it, and you just go on. It's tenacity, persistence, perseverance,
00:19:09
Speaker
other marks that set you apart from the people that fall by the wayside. And I thought that was, you know, that just that go on, just, you know, keep on doing it, waking up, warning and going on. It was a very, very good observation. And I like that.
00:19:26
Speaker
Well, thank you, Edwina. I think that's great advice just for life as well. As people will probably know now, I'm a massive student of history and there's a Churchillian quote for everything, although he's not the flavor of the month anymore. He said, if you're going through hell, keep going. And
00:19:49
Speaker
that kind of reflects just go on and my dad has a poem or my grandfather had a poem that then gave to my dad and I've now got that it's all about persistence as well and you know so yeah I'll send a photo of the the copy of it to you because it's
00:20:06
Speaker
It's really inspiring, for want of a better word.
Productivity and Leadership Tips
00:20:11
Speaker
And in times of trouble and challenges, if you just keep going, it's amazing, you'll get out the other side. I mean, there's that quote, isn't it? I won't be able to do it exactly word for word, but it's about entrepreneurs and tech entrepreneurs particularly.
00:20:32
Speaker
the road of failed tech startups is littered with people who gave up the day before they were about to make it. Oh, yeah, yeah. If only we knew when that day was. And we were talking just before we got on the call, you know, I won't, won't embarrass you by name here, but my, my, my wife had took a, had a very challenging 12 months, was a contractor, had it axed overnight when COVID hit, and then took a job that,
00:21:01
Speaker
really didn't like was below her pay grade and skill set but and it has come out the other side with another fantastic contract but it was been incredibly hard nine months though and I'll be forever deeply grateful for
00:21:15
Speaker
putting the family first. But she just, as you said, went on. And now that the other side, it's just one of those things you've done and got through. And we're going to be trying to upgrade our home office as well. So, you know, she's now working for us as our home office and I'm down with the dogs.
00:21:39
Speaker
So we hope we're going to build something out in the back garden at some stage and have that moving forward if anything like this ever happens again. Thank you to Edwina and for you for sharing that. I think it's fantastic advice. What should we ask? I think, what's one of your go-to productivity tricks when you need to get things done? It's two. My first one,
00:22:07
Speaker
And the one that I kind of use the most is it's literally an old school to do list, you know, literally sitting down with a piece of paper and a pen and writing to do at the top and underlining it and writing all the things out and
00:22:23
Speaker
working through it and physically crossing them off. There's nothing more cathartic than that for me, and it helps me to make sure that I don't forget things. But I mean, it's nothing, there's nothing, nothing clever in that is there at all. But the one thing that I used to find really, really works for lots of other people in the sort of the wider team
00:22:44
Speaker
when people would say to me, but Joe, I don't know where to start. And you can see people starting to get a bit wobbly about the size of their to-do list. And it's what's known as the Eisenhower grid.
00:22:57
Speaker
And it's just such a really, really simple little four box grid. Are you familiar with it? I don't know whether I listened as your lizards will be or not. I'm not. I'm scribbling down Eisenhower grid as you talk. So I'm waiting to find out about this. It's the simplest little thing. So you just draw yourself a little grid, four box grid. And in one corner you write important. And in another corner you write unimportant.
00:23:25
Speaker
and in the other corner you write urgent and then the other corner, hang on, I've got this wrong, haven't I? I messed it up. So bear with me that, bear with me that. So something is either not urgent and not important, urgent and important, urgent and not important, important and not urgent. Right.
00:23:51
Speaker
That's the correct four squares. So everything on your to-do list fits in one of those four grids. It has to by definition. And you simply say, the things that are not urgent and not important, I will just put them to one side. And you may never get there. You may never get to them, but they're not important and they're not urgent. But you focus, first of all, on the urgent and important.
00:24:18
Speaker
And when you're sort of panicking about, well, where do I start? You kind of look at the things you've got to do and say, well, what fits in which grid? And actually, we can usually identify where we should apply our priority. But yeah, Eliza and her grid, really, really simple. And the reason I couldn't remember it is because I haven't got it stuck to my computer monitor anymore. But I used to have a little small one of them stuck with blue tech to the top of my computer screen.
00:24:47
Speaker
In fact, everyone in Woodbury did. And it was there, it was what you would look at and decide where you were going to apply your efforts first.
00:24:55
Speaker
No, it's fantastic. I'm going to go look that up straight after this chat. So nothing wrong with to-do lists. I think Mr. Branson is a massive fan of those and he's done okay in the past. He's not done too badly. I'm a massive fan of to-do lists. I've tried everything to get out of doing to-do lists in my pad and on my paper.
00:25:22
Speaker
I just keep coming back to them. I find it extremely helpful. And then one of our previous guests, Lisa Hager, she said, MIT, the most important task, which is like leaning towards the Eisenhower grid. And I started to employ that each morning going, OK,
00:25:41
Speaker
What's the most important thing? I'm going to do that first. I'm going to go print this grid onto my computer screen too. Thank you so much for sharing that. Now you know it's got a name. I'm loving it, absolutely loving it. I'm learning so much. Thank you.
00:26:02
Speaker
I think last one in the world of work and then we're going to get into some more Joe questions. What's the most important quality in a leader, do you think? What is the most important quality? Okay, we sort of touched on this at the beginning, didn't we, when we were picking up on your series about inspiring leaders and we're talking about the role of leaders or managers, people, people, leaders, people, managers. So we talked about some of those qualities and certainly
00:26:32
Speaker
that the capacity to bring out the potential of your people, draw out the potential of your people, I think is really, really important. But I think that if we were to add to that, the most important quality in a leader is humility, knowing that you never stop learning. I think that that is really important. And to do that, you need to listen.
00:26:59
Speaker
So it's listen and never stop learning and knowing that you never will, I think is a key thing.
The Importance of Critical Reasoning
00:27:07
Speaker
That's fantastic. I suppose you do things you relate to, don't you? So I always try and relate. I can understand when you look at a sports person, somebody like Roger Federer, who's almost 40. There's nothing wrong with being almost 40, just saying.
00:27:30
Speaker
he's constantly trying to improve and he's won everything so many times and there's new ways of doing things and or rebuilding a swing or and you're going where's that where's that come from you know that that drive and so I love the idea of humility and never stop learning so therefore you and you have to listen to to learn I think that's a fantastic trait and one that I don't think we've really heard about on this
00:27:55
Speaker
on this podcast and probably what we've really thought about in our inspiring leader series and we might try and work that into it actually because I think we have listening but humility is a great word that captures a really important essence of a leader so
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, thank you very much for that. So changing up a bit like we always do, you know, you've shared some expertise and insights into the world of work that we're all passionate about, but more on the personal side, if you were a school teacher, what would you teach? Well, it would have to be history. And it would have to be history for two reasons. One, because that's what I've got my degree in.
00:28:41
Speaker
And it's a subject I love and I never tire of. And I was inspired by fabulous history teachers at school to love the subject. So I would love to be able to pass some of that on. But there's an important, really important point in addition to that. And why is, I think the study of history today is probably one of the most important subjects schools can teach because
00:29:10
Speaker
It teaches people to evaluate sources. It teaches people to assess whether they can trust that information, whether they can trust what they're reading, whether they can trust that source. And I am desperately disturbed by the extent to which in our current media climate, our current political world, people seem to be unable to apply critical reasoning to what they're being told or what they're reading. And I feel that if we
00:29:39
Speaker
only taught history more widely and better and rigorously taught people to evaluate their sources, then democracy might be in a better place.
00:29:54
Speaker
Here, here. And again, I'm loving getting to know you more. I studied in history at university as well. Massive, massive history nerd. All my life, my grandfather was a historian.
00:30:12
Speaker
So and I and I've always advocate back when I try and give some credit credibility to the degree I said history actually enabled you to to have a balanced argument and And to work out the pros and cons of things Because obviously it's not that can't really apply. It's not you know a good You can't it's not like a law degree or something like that history, but for what you've said critical reasoning. I yeah fundamentally agree with
00:30:43
Speaker
That's why, for me, it's been such a challenge the past four years and culminating over the past six months. Because history, if you do look back, you can learn lessons. And I was getting very, very scared that we were about to go down the path that we've already been down.
00:31:02
Speaker
and we're not out of the woods by any means, but yeah, I could not agree more with everything you've said and making scribbling notes around critical reasoning as well. Really important that people just look up many different sources and try to work out what's going on between the lines more and more, rather than the echo chambers that we exist in.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah, why is somebody saying what they're saying and have they got an agenda for what they're saying and therefore does that impact the extent to which you should trust what they're saying? All of that kind of stuff. And that does impact the work because I think if that bleeds more into the workplace,
00:31:42
Speaker
It's very hard to not be cliched when you try to be succinct but more unites us than divides us and 90% of the time we agree on most things as people and it's become about the 10% of stuff that people are just trying to make us a bit black and white and yes and no and you're right or wrong and we shouldn't be living like that.
Personal Preferences and Family Anecdotes
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah absolutely.
00:32:07
Speaker
But anyway, for a one word answer, I could definitely have a conversation with you for hours about that. So early bird or night owl.
00:32:19
Speaker
Oh, night owl, really. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm not good in the morning. And we'll never hold you to this because it's an impossible question, but what's your favourite album and what song do you put on if you need to fire yourself up to do some work or go for a run? Well, it has to be pretty much anything by the boss, to be honest, Matt.
00:32:44
Speaker
So I'm a fanatical Springsteen fan. I've been to see him 10 times live and I just love him. And he's the soundtrack to my life. So many of his songs are just absolutely the right song for the moment. So, goodness me, I mean, he did Land of Hope and Dreams at the Inauguration last week, which was the absolute perfect song for the moment. You know, he is
00:33:07
Speaker
He is the ultimate songwriter for the words that fit the mood. So what do I listen to? If I really want to fire myself up, then you can't be born to run.
00:33:18
Speaker
I'm sorry I'm laughing but the boss, in my office that is now occupied by my wife, I have like an A-Zero canvas of the cover of the Born to Run album with the boss and Clarence Clemens. And Ivy's going, do I need to keep looking at Springsteen all day when he's not coming down?
00:33:42
Speaker
So that's fantastic. And Born to Run now goes into our ever-growing Spotify playlist that we'll publish later in the year of songs to fire up whilst working. So I'm so happy the boss has made an appearance. He couldn't not if you're talking to me, but there was talking about that front cover of Born to Run. I know you've been forcing all the memes going around in the last week or so of Bernie Sanders getting onto everything and being incorporated into everything.
00:34:10
Speaker
And there's a fabulous version of the cover of Born to Run with him on there. Amazing. I just would love to be Bruce Springsteen. On that cover, he looks so cool. He's so cool. I tried to get to Springsteen on Broadway, but it was just too expensive. So I ended up watching it on Netflix. It was still incredibly enjoyable. It was a fabulous show, wasn't it? I would have loved to have gone to see that, but it was a bit out of reach.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, he did. Very expensive. What's the funniest thing that's happened to you recently that you can share? I don't know. You laugh all the time, don't you really? If you don't laugh, life is pretty dismal.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, we're laughing a lot about stuff at home, but I think the thing that unexpectedly made me laugh was actually on Christmas night, because we didn't have the same kind of Christmas we normally would have, as I'm sure many, many people listening to this didn't either. And rather than having my, I've got three sons and they've all left home, but rather than have one here at Christmas and the other two couldn't come home,
00:35:30
Speaker
Um, and rather than having them here, uh, we all connected on Christmas night with our respective households. Um, they were there with their girlfriends and us. So we had a sort of three way zoom session and given all the, you know, zoom has become the, uh, the mandatory for communication. And we all talk about zoom fatigue and spending hours and hours on zoom fatigue, uh, zoom and becoming a zoom zombie and all the rest of it.
00:35:55
Speaker
And it was that we had the best laugh I can remember in ages. I mean, tears crying down my face because we were doing games over Zoom and they were ridiculous games. And each boy, each son had come up with a game of some sorts over three rounds.
00:36:11
Speaker
It was just, yeah, it was just hysterical. I mean, maybe it was because it was towards the end of Christmas day and drink had been taken. I don't know, but it was the funniest experience I can remember it. The funniest sustained experience I can remember it for a very, very long time, which are probably on a par with the tears that are streaming down your face when you listen to Billy Connolly, I think. Yeah, fantastic. Words per smile on my face hearing that actually.
00:36:37
Speaker
But household chores, what do you leave hoping somebody else might have to do it? Well, I have to put my hands up and say I'm really not a great person for the household chores. In our household, we did a role swap many, many years ago. So when my first child was born, my husband has brought our kids up.
00:37:01
Speaker
been the sort of domestic engineer, I think we'll call it, rather than house husband. So I tend to sort of back off of those things. But we, I like, there's a philosophy about household chores that I rather like, and that I was introduced to by my husband, Steve told me about it. I'm sure it's just an excuse for him to not do anything. But he cites Quentin Chris,
00:37:25
Speaker
And Quentin Criss apparently was a great believer in the fact that if you left dust for seven years, it would never get any worse. Amazing. It seems a reasonable philosophy to me.
00:37:39
Speaker
I had that question thrown back at me and I couldn't come up with an answer but dusting has just definitely hit the top of the list actually because I can't see it. People will come in and go oh my god how dusty is this room and I genuinely can't see the dust. You are a male and males genuinely can't see dust.
00:37:58
Speaker
Awesome. No, that's great. Favourite film, not the best film, but your favourite film that you can just throw on and watch? Well, my favourite film of all time ever in the history of the universe is The Godfather. Oh, awesome. Okay. Love it. I mean, okay, probably not the greatest exponent of employee engagement. No. Probably a tad command and control, but, you know, I love it. It's a fabulous, fabulous film, always will be.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah. So you're not talking between the first and the second one. It's, it's, it's the original. Oh, no, no, it's the original. It's the original epic film. I got lent that on a video tape from the stock, the guy in the stock room. I was working with the Debenhams years ago where first job.
00:38:42
Speaker
And we'd done a stocktake and I went home at midnight and I put it on. And I just remember being fully awake until half two, three in the morning, just going, this is one of the greatest things I've ever watched. So, best place in the world that you visited?
Nomination for Future Guest: Lorna Leeson
00:39:04
Speaker
Sydney, Australia.
00:39:06
Speaker
No question, love it, love it, love it. Can't be that place. And finally, I've had absolutely fantastic chat, but the last question, who would you nominate for us to go and get onto the Inspire Club? Right, the person I would nominate, because I think she would be really interesting,
00:39:33
Speaker
to talk to and I think your listeners would find her really interesting to talk to as well. And I find her an inspiring colleague is Lorna Leeson. And Lorna began, I first got to know Lorna years ago when we were doing work with Volkswagen Group and Lorna was in their HR team and we were doing internal comms and employer brand and supporting their recruitment campaigns and so on back then.
00:40:00
Speaker
and I first got to know Lorna then. She then went to a logistics company called, who were then called Norbert Dantreson or a French logistics company with big red trucks. They're now XPO logistics, but she was an HR business partner there and we continue to do a lot of work with Lorna in that situation around culture and values and behaviours and employee engagement and so on.
00:40:30
Speaker
She's now actually become a friend and she's actually jumped ship and now works as a HR contractor. But she's a former client, now very much a friend, but also joins us on the Hive. We have a Hive, what we call the Hive of Madrid, which is a little short, not quite a podcast, more of a video cast and short Twitter clips.
00:40:58
Speaker
where we look at a particular topic each episode in terms of how can we help people get through the pandemic from an internal comms perspective, employee engagement perspective, or HR perspective, and we pick a top of each episode to explore with our little panel on the Hive, a bit like the panel that you had on your workplace as far as on last week. Oh, okay, yeah. And Vita. Yeah. Very, very similar. There's usually three or four of us on the panel and we pick a topic
00:41:28
Speaker
And we talk about it in sort of short bite-sized chunks with practical tips and advice. And Lorna is part of that Hive panel. And she's always got something worthwhile to say. She's always got something worth listening to. And she's great fun as well.
Conclusion and Upcoming Events
00:41:44
Speaker
And so I would like to see Lorna Leeson on your podcast in the future.
00:41:49
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, we'll try our best. If you can put in a good word, that'd be great. Awesome. So, look, I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I'm sure everybody listening has done too. Have you got anything else to add before we sign off? No, not really, Matt. Other than to say, actually, when you said you're sponsored by Waggle, that's great to hear. Waggle, we love Waggle at Woodread. We were probably one of the first people in the UK to start using them.
00:42:18
Speaker
And we've been working with Waggles for years now using their platform to really listen to employee voice and to get insights really quickly as to what people are thinking and what people were feeling. So I didn't know that they were sponsoring you, but it's great to hear that they are, because I think it's a fabulous product. One plug for Waggle.
00:42:40
Speaker
Yes, so do we, and thanks again to them. As I say, awesome conversation. I'm glad we made it happen the third time. I didn't have the mute button on. And we'll be back with more episodes of the Inspire Club. Things coming up for Inspiring Workplaces are our awards deadlines, the 24th of March around the world.
00:43:01
Speaker
And we have a lot coming throughout 2021 and 2022 and can't wait to bring that to you. But for now, thanks again to Joe. Thank you for listening and we'll be back very soon. Take care. Bye bye.