Leading with Care Through Uncertain Times with Tushar Pandit, CPO at SPINS

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

Kristen: Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership. I'm Kristen 

Mike: And I'm Mike. 

Kristen: And today we have a guest interview with Tushar Pandit. We're very happy to have him on the show. He's a values and culture catalyst people executive with 25 plus years of broad and deep experience in the tech enablement space.

He's been at everything from startups through multinational companies, uh, everything from VCPE, backed privately held companies to publicly traded companies. So he has experience as a people leader in a very diverse set of companies, and he's currently the Chief People Officer at SPINS, which is the leading provider of retail consumer insights, analytics and consulting for the natural organic and specialty products industry. So welcome Tushar.

Tushar: Thank you, Kristen and Mike. I really appreciate you having me on board and, uh, for your kind words that, that background sounds a little too long, uh, but, uh, very much appreciate, uh, the welcome. So thank you for that.

Mike: I'm looking at your LinkedIn. There's a lot of things that say Vice President, Vice President, Vice President, Director. So you have a very impressive background.

Tushar: I mean, I'm

Mike: being. Thank you for being

Tushar: A lot of people have been very kind to me on my journey, so I give them credit.

Mike: Thanks for being here. 

Kristen: And I'd love to,kind of hear a little bit, because I know you've been, you've been in HR, like in the people focused space for a long time, like what initially drew you to that side and what's kept you in it?

Tushar: Uh, well, I, I did not want to get into HR from the very beginning. Luckily as I am going to age myself here. Got the chance of actually, I was studying and always wanted to do corporate litigation. And I got the chance of going and working at a law firm to do an internship. And, that's a beautiful part about internships,to anyone who's ever done them.

Awesome. Anyone who has never done them, it just really gives you a true opportunity of getting to see what the real world is, the reality of, uh, potentially the future. And, immediately I said, yeah, this is not going to work for me. Uh, and I'm grateful that I got that chance. And luckily that was, in the mid 1990s. And HR really was starting to come up at that point in time, from, uh, it was the cusp of breaking away from the classic personnel, was over and this was now coming to be this fruition of, hey, we need more,at least dedicated HR professionals. I wouldn't say seasoned at that point in time, because the seasoning of the profession has picked up since then.

And once I did get the chance of getting into it and,you know, when you are in university and you take that organizational design course, that's when you're like, oh, okay, maybe there's something over here. And that's when for me, the clicker or the bulb went off and saying, I get operations, I get strategy, I get legal, I get finance.

And here you are now focused about the people who at the end of the day, even whether it was back then or, and it still counts today, at least to me, when we say that people are our biggest assets, we truly mean that we should be, even if we are not because a PC and a Mac does not deliver your results. The ideas, the strategies, the results, the creativity is all through the people. And so the people operations team, the HR team actually. Is this little, what I like to call a circumference where we bring in all of the other facets of the business, but yet the nucleus are the talent that exists. And so,25 years later, I still fundamentally believe in that philosophy.

And I'm glad that we do. And I think that more than ever before now, CPOs truly have this opportunity of being that, core strategic leader, even at the, executive team level and the board level. Because there's so much more that is expected of us now than, was perhaps not even the case, up till and until a few years ago.

Kristen: It's obviously evolving quickly. You know, when you talked about it, I thought it was interesting, when the idea of HR has evolved a lot right now, culture is sort of part of HR. And you're expected to drive the culture, not just like you said of the organization, but of the leadership team. Have you seen that evolve more recently?

Mike: You know,I'm seeing the title Chief People and Culture Officer a lot. I don't remember seeing that five years ago. So has that been a new emergence or have I just not been paying attention for the last decade?

Tushar: Well, I would say no, it has been there, but actually it should not be there. I'm probably going to be on the other side of making a comment that many may not agree with. And the reason why I feel that is,we, at the end of the day, happen to be experts in a field. It does not mean that we own the entire thing.

The, and I always go back to Tony Hsieh who was a founder and CEO of Zappos before it was sold to Amazon. You know, the CEO is the chief cultural officer. The entire executive team owns culture. Every single leader is the champion and the ambassador. HR happens to be an expert in the room and we are just toolkit makers.

So I disagree with the chief people and culture officer title. I firmly believe that everyone is responsible for culture. And even as a non leader, individual, you are an add on to the organization's culture. And even without a leadership role, you have a say, you have a position, and you have very clear direction to make this culture thriving because we all are part of this.

It's not only for one. The evolution though, what I do that I'm excited about, and I think Mike, you are,you're heading this way. What I say is that I am finally not hearing so much about HR being at the table and needing to be more strategic because it was tiring. I think it still is tiring. I think Kristen and I said that when we met at the conference, that was one session and it was like, Oh, for heaven's sakes, after two decades, can we please stop saying that?

If we don't have it, a seat at the table, it's on us. We have to start looking at ourselves in the mirror. You know, when I do executive coaching, I mean, that's what it's all about. Yeah. So I'm hearing less of that, which excites me, the change that I feel that is happening is, and it's really coming in through as the fading, I wouldn't say sunset, the fading of COVID starts to really now coming to embrace going into year three is, the Chief People Officer or the CPO position itself is very much that of a chief transformation uh leader as well.AI is really going to now start to, settle in and there are very clear expectations of how are we going to, upskill set the entire workforce quickly, fast, effective. All of us are in the same boat. how are we going to drive performance across the organization, which is also productivity?

How do we help the CEO and the CFO, grow the business organically? The days of unlimited budget, uh, headcount, uh, hire, hire, hire. Those are not coming back. And that's all within the last 12 to 18 months. So there is very much this, in my opinion, ask slash look of the executive team of the boardat this individual holding this position from a people lens and saying, can you start driving the bus versus perhaps being that second or third passenger, which has.most likely been the case for a lot of us, in most organizations.

Mike: That's awesome. So I, one thing you said, you're a toolkit provider or creator. So you see, I love your idea of, you know, everyone, first of all, in the organization drives culture, but especially like the leadership team, every, the CEO should be the, in some ways, the chief cultural officer. Right.

That's the person that,really elucidates the organization's values and that word has been used more and more in companies. And then you see like the Chief People Officer as providing the toolkit for that. What is that? And what, how do you do that? What does that look like?

Tushar: Well, you already touched upon this. Uh, so I, I think that, uh, Mike, you are absolutely, uh, leading, the teams on their organizations. When we talk about values, values are behaviors that are demonstrated. And when the right behaviors are demonstrated or what makes us good, what may is great, that's culture. As culture really started to pick up, in the two thousands.

And then certainly in the 2010s, you know, it was all about kombucha and I like kombucha. That's not a negative thing. Uh, foosball and all of that

Mike: I don't know. That's a value.

Tushar: Yeah,

Mike: Fermentation is not a,

Tushar: It's not

Mike: I like fermentation. I'm a fermenter myself, but, um,

Tushar: right? they're not values, they truly are perks.

Mike: Sure.

Tushar: Values are, what do we stand for? How do we do things? What do we believe in? And how are we going to defend those and or hold people accountable when those behaviors are not demonstrated to reflect the values? It's a perfect scenario, right?

And every team and every organization has this. You have one individual. It can be sales or it can be non sales. 128 percent of plan. But figuratively, there's 20 dead bodies behind. As I said, figuratively, you

Mike: Sure.

Tushar: know. But are we going to hold that individual accountable for Okay. We've got the results, but the how of the results were absolutely detrimental.

So how are we coaching you up to stop those behaviors? And if you're not going to be successful over some point in time, is the business going to take a decision that will impact revenue and when you do, and I've seen this happen, you send a very clear message to the entire organization that results are important, but how is as equitably important to you.

Then itself of the results.

Kristen: Yeah. I love the way you described values, like behaviors demonstrated. That's so simple. And I love the direct tie in, into actual behavior, because I think we've all, you know, been a part of, of companies maybe in the past where the values are put up on the wall and then the things that are actually happening within the company, like what is incentivized, what is talked about, what is focused on.

Actually has no relation back to those values. So I really love that. It's just a simple way to like, how does this actually relate to how we're running this company? 

Mike: I love the bodies. 

Kristen: Yeah.

Tushar: Yeah. And just another further example to that. Also, for your question is, you know, the tool making process that we talk about is and that's how it starts at the talent acquisition stage as well. Right? So when a candidate is getting assessed, he or she is also getting assessed based on the values.

When it is review time, you're also getting assessors there. So it's, it goes back to what Kristen said. It's not about, uh, pamphlets. It's not about words on a wall. It's not about brochures. It's not about, hey, looks great on careers website. We actually have to live and breathe it. We all need reinforcement of that.

And when we all are fully aware of our performance. Our rewards, everything is tied. The values are the nucleus of the organization. Now it removes the excuses and it also removes the barriers. And the reason why I like to say that way, it helps now people to carve the career path thing. That's what people now know, right?

It's not about being as, and we know this, we talk about in workplace environments, being a jerk is not going to get you promoted. Being a professional who demonstrate great values through your results, helping your team is what's going to get you promoted. So what great looks like is now defined and that only allows your culture to continuously thrive because those jerks are very quickly going to know I better change, or I'm going to have to find a new place to be yet.

Mike: I think it goes really, it's interesting. You're also an executive coach. I think that dovetails very nicely together with how you've framed the responsibilities of the Chief People Officer. Right.Your job is to grow the human capital within the framework of the values and the, you still have a goal, right?

Your goal is, the success of the company, but how you get there. The days of the eighties of greed is good. Those, those days are kind of gone. We want a more holistic,approach to, success.

Tushar: Mike and the reason we all need that. And the reason for that is, when we all graduate at some point in time, or as life continues on, we become technical experts. And leadership is a competency that requires development and that's why we all get into this to a certain extent. And when we get to see individuals who go from individual contributor to manager to director and eventually the C suite, I would say most people who are in the people profession have selected the profession for that purpose. That is really, in my opinion, our true North Star. When we get to collectively raise people, when we get to optimize their capabilities. That's where we all get excited. And so, you know, when you have that, you do achieve organizational success.

You do achieve team success because the, how the leader lands with people through his or her own brand is how you deliver top line and bottom line profits. Because people do not want to work for an autocratic, dictator style, hard, driven leader. That used to work at an era that no longer is appreciated.

Now it's about what's the insight? What are we looking to do? How do I care for you as a human being? But how do I care for you as a professional? And how do I help you get to the next stage is also there. So when you have all of this defined, and when all of your leaders are moving towards the same, methodology, Now your results are easier because it's always easy to promote and then replace a promotion. That's where the disconnect happens is when everyone is not in the same mode and there are different leadership styles in play. That's when the challenge is really truly kicking for organizational cultures and design.

Mike: How do you, so you said the leadership, differing leadership styles, most people I know they have different leadership styles. How do you blend that together to, to get the, sort of homogenous value driven culture? You know, I mean, there's obviously like a very, like kind of Type A personality driving, there's people like probably us who are more analytical, who are, I think more and more valued nowadays that over the hard charging CEO, you know, the thinkers, but you're not going to get everybody in the C suite with the same like leadership style. And a lot of people to get there they're very, very driven, you know, focused, I don't want to say aggressive, but they give it, you know, to, to shoulder the responsibility of a billion dollar business. That's a lot of stakeholders. That's a lot of pressure.

The demands of that job generally predicate some aggressiveness in your approach to leadership.

Tushar: And leadership style is not supposed to be consistent. Everyone is going to have their style. What it is though, what is the fundamental, if you want to say, core aspect of a company or the executive team saying, this is the style that will work for us, and this is the style that will not work for us.

It goes back to the same thing of, what do you do with an individual who's at 128 percent of plan? However, the behaviors are the exact opposite to get those results, right? So when you do have a leader who is driven, who is focused, who has gotten a great technical background and experience along with academia to validate all of that. But yet when you go and speak to the people who work for that leader, The brand is a concern. The attrition is a concern. The behaviors are all exact opposite. That's where the entire piece of what is your leadership style and how is it impacting others and affecting your brand. That's where coaching comes into play.

And it's tied to actions. To me, everything, whenever it is coaching related, it has to be about outcomes. And the owner at the end of the day is the individual who makes the decision to be coached. It's not the coach. You know, we all at school, that's what we do. Anytime you are in any sort of coaching, whether you play football, hockey, track, you name it, swimming.

You have one main coach, you have the head coach, but you have a subset of different coaches. Why? Because they are helping you to horn new muscle in order for you to become an expert in that.

Kristen: Yeah. I love, I love coaching for so many reasons. But I think the, yeah, tying it back to actions and behaviors, like all of it, like I often think of leadership style as a, like really like a toolkit of styles where you pull out different ones for different situations and different employees, but you have ones that you default to, and then you have ones that are not acceptable either for your own personal values and hopefully these are aligned with the values of the company, right? And what is and is not. But I love tying everything back to behavior and actions. It's so important. 

Mike: Well, that's sort of our, I'm going to murder this, our raison, our raison d'etre is that leadership is, uh, uh, can be, and is a learned skill.

And I think, from when I was growing up, the image of a leader is very much based on charisma and, you know, that kind of traditional, I want to say charm and charisma. And now I really see it as a skillset that can be learned, practiced, mastered, and then taught. And it's not as much about your personality and it's not really necessarily inborn, but something you can develop.

You know, I think coaching is so valuable. My wife has been coaching me for a while. It's a fruitless endeavor, but we're still trying. 

Kristen: Sometimes it's like covert coaching, but he's usually onto me now. Well, 

Mike: I've seen, people don't, they mistake maybe coaching and mentorship. Those are not necessarily the same things.

Mostly my experience with coaching is her asking me a lot of really annoying questions. Uh, and not giving me any answers and making me, you know, and it's like, can you just tell me what the answer is? She's like, no, that's not how this works. So it's, it's a super useful,

Tushar: It's interesting to hear you say that, that the questions are annoying yet,from a coach perspective

Mike: Oh, they're horrible.

Tushar: That's not meant to be the case at all. Uh, we as coaches and Kristen can confirm this is that we are coming from a place of curiosity, and it is up to

Mike: That's what she says.

Tushar: Get to where you do, we don't have the, even if we have the answers, we're not going to provide because that is not the role. Um, it's really for

Mike: ' Write em down for me. Yeah.

Tushar: But you know, and my, my thing that I, I also say that, and this is where we are. In 2024, getting ready for 2025, it's what I like to call LIC.I like acronyms, so I like to make it simple. So I always say that. 

Kristen: So do I.

Tushar: Uh, I think it's easy, isn't it, Kristen? I mean, people remember things that it's easier and it's a good laugh to have during the daytime.

Kristen: I mean, coaches love acronyms in general, so I I

Tushar: Yes, we do. Absolutely. Because we've, uh, we are all model based as well. At some point in time, there's going to be a model. So we need to have acronyms as Mike shakes his head. Here we go. Um,

Mike: No, it's a cha. It's a, I support that. It's a change in language, you know, as we've gone to a texting culture, everyone knows what LOL means, you know, it's a shared, it's a shared language. And it, the, I totally support that sort of.

Tushar: And the LIC is really to, it's what you just touched on, you know, we live now in this era where it's no longer about data. It's about insights. Because there is a ton, if not a plethora of data available and in all aspects of our life. There is, again, that's what we do at SPINS. We give data and insights about a barcode for a health product, to whatever your interest and your passion is to your uh, search on Google for a better airfare price. You name it, data's available. And that insight is coming to the plate as well. And where we have, the same equal role to play as a leader in any organization is that caring element of it? The care is more than ever needed before and that is for each and every one of us. We all have professional lives.

We have personal lives. We have kids pets parents planning parties. Life is It's complex, it's busy, it's, finite with defined availability of times.I happen to be an early bird and I may be at my desk at 630 in the morning. Doesn't mean everyone else is going to be. Whereas someone on the team may be a night owl and wants to do work at 1030.

And as we were talking earlier, I'm way too old now. I am definitely in bed at that time of the day. That care is, has to be there with the leader. He or she needs to bring the data, the insight. What are we looking to do? Where are we? You've got to think about the projects. You've got to think about progress.

Absolutely. That is not going away. We all work at an organization because we all are there for a purpose. We are in a capitalist society. We have to deliver profit. We have to make sure that stakeholders, monetary and non monetary stakeholders, feel that they are getting an ROI. Those are not going away.

The approach is what is being asked for in saying that care has also got to come in, you know, before you start your one on one. How are you? How are things? How was your weekend? How are the kids doing? That is what is being sought out of a leader and leaders who do not embrace that, who do not embed that into, are going to find it very difficult because people are not okay with not having that anymore.

It's work life management, as I like to call it. I've never believed in work life balance. I think it's too difficult to achieve. I think it's also a buzzword.If I need to be there because my daughter is going to be in the Nutcracker as we're going into the holiday season, that means I'm leaving at two o'clock on those Thursday, book it in your calendar, leave at 1 30. Those memories and events are as equal for you to do, not only to deliver the result, but also to continue on your career path, which is why I call it LIC.

Kristen: I love that. And I love that, that notion of yeah, moving away from work life balance as a concept, because it doesn't really describe it. I mean, the reality is, you know, we, we are married. Like in a marriage, you're never going to be 50, 50, right? Like it's not, you're going to have periods where one person's doing more than the other person's doing more and stuff like that. Just like with work, right? Like you're not, there's going to be periods where your personal life is hitting the fan and you're not going to be able to like perfectly balance it with work and recognizing that really fundamental piece of like, people are human beings.

They're not just workers is like really where it comes down to. 

Mike: I mean, especially with all the flexible, especially with all the connectivity. I'm working all the time. I'm getting text messages all the time. So when I need to leave at two o'clock, I'm going to leave at two o'clock because you're still getting lots of hours where I'm focused on the goals of the business.

You know, then, and it'll, the technology allows us to some degree of that flexibility. Hopefully you're not texting during, you know, the dance of the sugar plum fairies, but, uh, at least, you know, we can work from the beach now. Okay. I'd rather do that. That's better. That's interesting. I've kind of thought that too, like work life balance implies they're like, it's like a yin and yang, right? They're separate. They're not, you know, especially nowadays. So you have to find, you know, an equilibrium where you can exist in both and, you know, not go crazy over the decades.

Tushar: Yeah, I think we all are because we've all come from that, right? I mean, we've come from a culture and an environment where it was Monday to Friday, eight to five butt in seats. I mean, we've gone there, we have gone through the, uh, then, and then, you know, COVID arrived and that changed the whole world. And everyone's like, well, work from home permanently is going to arrive.

Guess what? That's not going to be the case. And it's, but it's always been that, right? We've always said, keep it a balance, everything in moderation. Adults, human beings, workers, leaders, everyone wants flexibility, you know? And I think that this is where we have had to challenge ourselves. When we talk about our talent, we talk about our people.

We've always said that you're adults, you know, and unless it's going to be a one off, we'll address it. But somehow some way collectively the business world took a position where, you know, I need to manage my people and it's like, hold on a second. If we are saying that we trust our talent as adults, we are approaching them that way.

Then why are we managing them as kids? Because that's you wouldn't do that with a professional aspect of it. And so, you know, it's nice to see that this, relationship between a leader and a member. A manager and an employee. I try to avoid those 1980s words is about, look, I've got this give and take, you know, which is a great book by Adam Grant.

And that's what it is. It's about giving and taking, I know it's quarter end. I go to put in the hours and usually people will do that even without being asked because they care for their work. They know their work product is their brand. Then allow them to say, do whatever you need to do. And I still laugh.

I mean, my, I have my team, they'll come in and say, Hey, I need to go to a doctor's office and I just look at them and like, why are you telling me? I appreciate you telling me, go do what you need to do. Doctors are only available from 10 to 2. Like you, you need to do those things. Right? So just do it. I know who you are.

I know what you do. And even without asking it, then it takes. So I think the more we do that, the more we are only going to enhance our relationships and I'm going to solidify them so that it's fulfilling for everyone at the end.

Mike: What makes you an employer of choice too., Employees have a lot of, a lot more flexibility now in terms of where they work, you can do remote work. In the service businesses that I work in, we need them a lot more than they need us. They can find another me. I can't find another them. Being flexible, caring for your team and be like, you know, I had a team member.

She was like, I got an issue with my son. I need to go visit him in another state for 10 days. I'm like, okay, bye. You know, is everything okay in your department? And she's like, yeah, okay. I was like, see you, you know, I trust her to, to run her department. When she's, she's here, she's doing amazing things.

And if I don't trust you like a human being, like, well, I'm going to micromanage like everything about you to get, it's it's a very like Henry Ford kind of model T mentality of likefactory workers in the industrial revolution where you clock in and clock out, and we're making sure every moment of your time at work is productive.

Yeah. They'll go somewhere else. Yeah. You know,

Tushar: Well, absolutely. And Mike, not only with that, not only are they, do we all have choices in life along with the options, but here's the thing that we have to take a step back to a certain extent and also see. That behavior and that style impacts revenue at the end of the day because you're going to have high churn and we all know especially when you are delivering a care and a service for great customer success to be achieved customers want to know that the person that they have been working with or the team that they have been working with is there and every single time you do that, it's just going to.

So it's causing operational headaches. It's causing certainly talent acquisition challenges along with your talent brand. But above and beyond that, now it's impacting revenue at the end of the day, and no one's going to be happy about that.

Mike: I saw it too, you know, in my industries, it'll impact the managers a lot because you'll have a salaried manager that is expected to fill in and cover so much of the labor and time for these, exactly what you said, you're turning over employees and but their leader, their manager will fill and they're only going to do those hundred hour work weeks for so long before they're like, why am I doing this?

Not a good long term recipe, and it might be good for your short term quarterly profits, but every time you have to rehire the same person, I don't know, you have data and insights. Probably you can tell me how much it costs an organization to turn somebody over. It's way more than like treating them like a human being and caring for them and helping grow them.

What are we doing? You know, very short term kind of mentality, and I'm glad to see it changing.

Tushar: And there are studies out there that have been, that have clearly shown, my mentor said that to me when I was, uh, and it still stands with me today, that: always work for someone who believes more in your potential than you do yourself. And when that happens, Yes, it may sound appealing at first, but another opportunity paying you $15K or $20K more is going to make you think twice more than ever before. That relationship with your leader who does not look at you for now, but is looking at you for the next 2 to 3 steps is what will always win at the end of the day. And it is very difficult to find.

Mike: Yeah. That's beautiful though. I love that. I love that. That's why we're doing this kind of this podcast. Right. I love it.

Tushar: I think my first boss, she's the one who said that to me, who's now still very much a mentor. And, uh, and I say that it's true when people see things in you and the potential and they either throw you in the deep end, figuratively speaking, give you opportunities. That's because they know you have it and they are giving you the chance to step up and to fail in a beautiful way, learn from your mistakes, and then making sure, you do your part, and then paying it forward. That's what leadership is all about. This is the journey, especially as the legacy journey starts for us folks are going to start coming to the end of their career paths. That should be the number one thing.

Kristen: Yeah, no, it definitely leads into, yeah. Great leaders create more leaders and that should ultimately be like your purpose as a leader. 

Mike: Well, you have to have, you have to have self assurance or confidence to be like, I'm going to teach you everything I know. And I don't care that you're going to be better than me someday.

Go ahead. You can be my boss someday. And that's fine. You know, but I think, like you said, that's hard to find. 

Kristen: Yeah,

Tushar: It is very hard to find.

Mike: It's the real investment in the longterm success of a company. You know, we don't see that, that where you work for companies for 20, 30, 40 years anymore.

And some of that's good. You're getting exposed to a lot of different ideas, a lot of different processes. In restaurants, we never want to work for the same chef for more than a couple of years, three years, five years max. You've learned everything. You're probably going to learn from them.

Even if it's Thomas Keller,you move on, you acquire new knowledge. But at the same time, like,every time you hire a new person, you're starting from scratch to some degree. You've got to teach them the culture. You've got to teach them the operation.This is where the break room is.

This is where the lockers are. Like it's, and it's, it's a whole process. If we invested more in the, in the farm teams of our leadership, cadre, I think we would do better overall. Yeah.

Tushar: And that comes down to just, you know, doesn't a farmer do that every year to a certain extent? When you plant your crop in the spring, you're hoping for the harvest in six or seven months or three or five years, depending on the crop. If you are, if it's an orange tree, you're going to have to wait for five years if it's corn. And so what do you do? Right? It's the same analogy when people talk about, well, the crazy, everyone thinks that the grass is greener on the other side. And it's like, okay, well, are you sending what I like to say to individuals while contemplating this change? But knowing that it's not career centric, they are perhaps running away from something versusexpecting something better is, are you standing on a patch of brown grass? Well, yes. Okay. So you can purchase the water and control the water. Yes. You can do the same thing with fertilizer. Yes. You can influence how much sunlight you get. So do you think you have the power to make that brown patch into a green grass?

Because if you do, do you feel that you need to go and get that other new challenge? So that is the one aspect of trying to get that in. But again, yes, you should look at different opportunities at some point in time, because there's only so much learning can do in one. Where it does come through is, what you just said, Mike.

And that is, are you committing to yourself? In those same opportunities that were given to you to give those to wherever you go next and especially when you become a leader Because it's not about you then. When things are going well in your team You should be at the lab back of the bus or at the very last line. Let your team get all the credit.

It's not about you anymore And I what I also say is but when Zeus's thunderbolts are starting to hit the the ground because things are not going well, that's when you show up at the front and you take the hits You come back and deal with your team after, but you don't put them to take the heat.

You take that on because that's what leaders do.

Kristen: I love this. I think another, another thing you, you said at the beginning, that I kind of want to go back to was around, you know, not only a chief people officer, like really being the expert not the person who's actually responsible for culture. Like, that's something that should be owned by leadership, but also that, really.

The chief people officer is also a chief transformation officer. And a lot of ways as well,there's an inherent, change is just built into that. I know we were chatting a little bit before we recorded about, you know, the concept of VUCA - volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity and how relevant it is to talk about, especially now as we're recording this a week and change after the U. S. election. Can you talk a little bit more about how is that so essential for, for leaders right now? And how can they really learn to thrive in it?

Tushar: Well, I would say that, the first thing that it is, is that, uh, uh, we can only control what we can control. And as cliche as it sounds, the reality about that is that it is very true. VUCA really start, and it has been around for a long time. It's great. if. If anyone, who is hearing this, does not know, all you have to do is just type in V U C A in Google and you'll get all the research that is coming through.

Howard has been a big champion of that. And a lot of leadership coaches,will also embed that. And it's the, to me, it's really on the two, it's a fuss in the last letter. I'm really a big champion of vulnerability, which is V and then the ambiguity is A. And when it really started to get a lot of attention was when COVID hit. Why? Because it was completely a curveball that no one had expected. And even when the expectation was there, everyone's like, yeah, it's okay. You know, there've been some mini pandemics. I'm originally from Toronto, Canada, so we actually went through SARS. So I'd already started to feel, COVID is actually going to be a little bit of a bigger cake than that.

Yeah. and while we all know it was, it was a global. That completely changed everything to a certain extent, because if we ever, as we talked about actions and behaviors, that is the best example of proof in the pudding for what ambiguity it is. We had no idea what was going to happen. Everything was shut down in the first week of March.

And from there we had to have, uh, how are we communicating, what's going to happen with our people? How are we going to be operating effectively working from home? What if people don't have the right technology? Like it was one thing after the other. And if we.

You all recall, everyone around the room looked at the CPO. That was it because no one else had that. It was like, and CPO was one thing. It's like, what's the risk management? What's the business continuity? It was just things we're getting. And so that has now continued to evolve. So where are we now? As you just mentioned, as we are starting to come towards the end of 2024 and 2025, well, geopolitical is a whole thing that is not going away and it is not going to sing,when, Jamie Dimon, who is a CEO and chairman of Chase amongst many other global CEOs saying geopolitics is number one, because we just don't know as harsh as it is to say when the next war is going to start, because they're happening and they're happening much more frequently. And they are getting bigger and bigger. Second global economic,factors are extremely challenging.

Not only do we want to still talk about inflation, not only do we still want to talk about interest rates. But at the same time now, calling for what it is, at least so far, there is an expectation of new, tariffs or at the same time, new trade agreements coming through inside or regional. So the change is going to happen.

That's an ambiguity. We don't know. Is it going to start right away? No. Could it take a year in making? No, you know, we just don't know what these trade agreements are going to be all about and how much of it is it going to be in the third year? Is it going to? So, but it's happening and it's not only happening from a US perspective or North America perspective.

There are other regional players also in there. The third aspect that I also feel is really coming through is this concept of how people are just managing through a lot of the emotions. That are now not only happening at a personal level, but are very intertwined in the professional environment and where people are getting deeply impacted because it is either tied to their families at risk, their culture at risk.

Their faith at risk. It is getting very complicated and the concern and the worry that I have is that, as we want to protect as many people, we also have to be very cognizant about that, not risking the political correctness so that we fail in the caring piece about it. That's going to be something there.

So to me, the ambiguity is wherethe change leadership is so critical. It's always easier to say, well, let's talk about it. You can't always talk about things either at the same time. And so how do we allow our places, our teams, our people to feel that, you know what, I do need to be able to, say what I want to, but I also need to be very respectful of opposing views.

Where we are not going to agree, but at the end of the day, the expectation is being a professional, always ensuring humanity succeeds is going to have to be at least the mantra we focus with. But to me, I feel that VUCA is going to be coming into more frequent realization. And final comment with that is that also includes our business. No one's thinking about more than a strategy or a plan of more than the next 18 months. We just don't know what's going to happen.

And that's just the norm now, I mean no one's thinking about a three year plan a five year plan. I haven't heard that in a long time. Where you know, how do we grow this business? How organically, because budgets are getting shrunk. That's the reality right. Headcount is also getting very much Every CEO is asking this, how are we more productive?

How are we getting more efficient and how are we getting more effective? And so those questions are going to keep coming back to the CFO and the CPO, and we have got to be able to start putting indexes behind those because those metrics are getting asked time and time and time and again. So there's more of the C coming in.

And that's just going to be leadership now. To me, the next five to 10 years are very much going to be VUCA centric. And you do your very best, but always anticipate curve balls coming around and you try to manage them when they hit you. 

Mike: I mean, that's, that's, as a leader, I will say that's very intense. You know, I am somebody that likes stability and calm and,change is scary. Right. And, and you touched on the emotion of it all. That's a hard way for people to live. It's hard for them to live like that in their personal life.

It's hard for them to live like that in the professional life. We have very biologically hardwired triggers anytime our food or our shelter, these basic human needs are threatened and it feels like they're threatened all the time now by this uncertainty.

Tushar: And it's, you know, that, Mike, to your point though, is that it's not so much of a threat. What it is it's just the part of, life that none of us are a fan of. And how we embrace that is going to be our new development. You know, no one likes change, I was saying this to another peer of mine last week that if we remember in the mid 1990s, there was a great book that came through.

It's a very simple fable Who Moved My Cheese? And if you've read it and if you have not then I highly recommend it because so much of that is happening more than ever before now in our lives. And so, you know the the fun part about all of it as well, Hey, do you remember you were either using a blackberry or motorola and people are like, yeah, I remember that.

Yeah. Yeah Well, you have a sensor or an iphone now, don't you? Yeah, I do. So you actually do like change, but what you do want is you want to manage it. You want to implement it when you are ready. And that is what has perhaps shrunk away from us. And my final comment to that is, what I always say is even when, change that we do not want truly impacts us, makes it scary, becomes a threat, keeps us in the worry mode. I will never, ever, ever lose this hope that humanity will always overcome it. Maybe I'm seeing the glass too full. Maybe I'm wearing the rose colored glasses, but I truly believe that people when given a challenge will always rise up individually and collectively, because that is the one thing that we have within us.

That drive will kick in and we will always overcome it. Somehow, some way we will.

Kristen: I love that. And yeah, I think that's actually a, a beautiful place for us to bring this conversation to a close as much as 

Mike: Well, I have about 35 more questions about change management. I will say, that's a new term that I'm only starting to really hear, recently. And I'm from industries that are a little slower to adopt some of these modern concepts, change management, right.

In a world of uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, volatility,that becomes the new, like most important thing that you can work on. It definitely is a leader, but probably as a person too. How I manage change, oh, I'm not good at that at all. I don't.

Tushar: If there's an inspirational quote that I will leave, with everyone, it is by, Admiral Grace Hopper. You may have known of her, she was the first female admiral in the U. S. Navy. She was the, first software programmer as a female, she wrote the PIC programming language, which obviously many do not use, anymore.

And the key statement that she coined, which is very relevant, more than ever before now is that the most dangerous statement in the English language is, that's the way we have always done it.

Kristen: Yeah. I love that. It's so true. So very true. Amazing. This has been so good Tushar. And I think we, you know, every time we do one of these, I think it just reveals like three more topics that we, we want to dive into more on future episodes, so I feel like we'll have to have you back again to, to talk more about some of this stuff, but thank you so much for being here.

This has been really great. And I think our listeners will get a lot out of it. 

Mike: Very interesting, sir. Thank you so much.

Tushar: No, thank you. I really appreciate you inviting me. I really hope this has been valuable And it's very kind of you, but certainly if you want me, I'd be happy to but if not, I can also understand Too

Mike: Oh, no, we, we have to have a whole change manager because we've just kind of touched on the surface of what that is. Now I want to know how I do that and how do we do that on a personal and then an organizational level. I guess I could get a degree in organizational management. 

Kristen: Yes. Yeah, I think that that's going to be.

I appreciate it

Mike: Thank you, sir. 

Kristen: Thank you so much. And for our listeners, if you want to follow Tushar on LinkedIn, we'll, we will have the link to his profile in the show notes. Otherwise thank you again for being here Tushar and thank you so much to everybody who is listening. 

Mike: Thank you everyone. 

Kristen: The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

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