The art and wisdom of changing teams | Heidi Helfand (author of Dynamic Reteaming)

27:37So it's a question. There's this idea of a startup within a big company. Everyone's like, oh, it's just like the startup within a big company. It's all the, we have all the resources that we need. There's no less risk, but we can innovate and try new things. Rarely does it feel like it worked out. You're sharing stories where it does. Is there anything you found or any advice for how to actually be successful in this idea of having a team off to the side doing something innovative and different? At Apple Studio we did this. There's a company called SecureDox. It branched off into its own company and it was just acquired, I believe, in 2022.

28:10When SecureDox was happening, I was not on that team. I was on the other teams and I was watching. Again, same pattern, the team was created off to the side. They were given process freedom. They worked in more of a daily sprint style, as opposed to the two -week sprint style that our other teams were doing at the time at Efolio, early Efolio. One, isolate the team or put them in a different area. We could still see them. We were in this big open room, but it was their team area. I mean, we had these like impermanent walls between some of the teams. Like, it was their region, and they claimed it and they named themselves.

28:58And so one, you know, separate location, there's another story in the book about a team that incubated a product idea within Citrix, and they were in a garage of all places. So they were like really isolated, but just put the team in a different region, make it that area. That's number one. Number two, tell other people not to disturb this team. That's key, and hearing it from a leader is really, really important. No, you're not gonna pull them into something else. They're working on this other thing. So, you know, people need to shed their skin of the other things that they're working on. If you take a bigger picture, kind of forest through the trees picture, or you want people pairing and switching pairs, so they're not single owners of the system.

29:42So when they have an opportunity to do something that could be really important to the company, like the one of these isolated teams, they can kind of fade out and not be the only owner that has to transfer knowledge and then field questions for two years on how that system works. You wanna build this redundancy in your teams, right? So that's like, if you really wanna plan ahead, do that first, you know, have that as part of how you operate building this team or going and seeing it switching. Because then it frees people to not be the only owner of a system and chain to a system. And yeah, so isolate them, tell people not to bother them, do pairing and have shared ownership.

30:21So it's easier for somebody to switch into something like this, process freedom. Again, they can do things differently. Ideally, they report up to someone that has, because that really has decision making authority and decisions won't get reversed or they have to go through some complex web of like, is it okay if we do this? Now, you need a clear decision making structure. They saw that at the McDonald's case study as well, which is not in my book, but it's in the Southern Book called Timor. And then that group, having that senior leader that they report into getting the clear lines of communication there is also really important.

31:06So not having this, you know, like heavyweight bureaucracy of, I don't know, quarterly business updates where everybody's like making a slide deck for two years before they go to that meeting, like trying to like relieve the team of things like that and kind of make it lighter. And yeah, you know, And some of these teams, like SecureDox, became like another product, that at Folio, is very, very successful at one point. I think it was before we went public. It branched off into its own separate entity. I think maybe they shared a board member or something. I don't know how that worked. But it became its own entity, SecureDox, became separate.

31:49And then it grew from there. And then it became this wonderful, successful product that was recently acquired. You know, people come and go at companies and companies grow on change and morph and you know, that was like one case of departures, you know, that, you know, it's like that are sweet, right? You're happy for your friends and colleagues. Say, oh, he's gonna be a CTO, it's gonna be the CTO. Like, there's this ad to C, I remember visiting their office in Santa Barbara. You know, it's great to see your friends succeed and thrive and we developed other companies in that way. Awesome. I think it's really nice to hear.

32:29There's many success stories of this idea of a mini -little startup within a company. And these are really good tips. This episode is brought to you by Atrefs. Many of you already know Atrefs as one of the top tools for search engine optimization. It's used by thousands of SEOs and companies like IBM, Adidas, and eBay. What you may not know is that there's a free version that was made with small website owners in mind. It's called ATREF's Webmaster Tools. It's free and it can help you bring more traffic to your website. ATREF's Webmaster Tools will show you keywords that you rank for and backlinks that you can get.

33:05It also performs automated site audits to find what issues prevent your website from ranking higher on Google. Every detected issue comes with the detailed explanation and advice on how to fix it. Visit atrefs .com slash AWT. Set up a free account, connect your website, and start improving it. That's a h r e f s dot com slash AWT. I feel like to me, one of the most important ones you've talked on, this is having an executive essentially sponsoring this team and it's supporting and protecting it versus, you know, some managers just like, now we're going to go do this off to the side. Because otherwise, that one's going to really take that seriously.

33:43Yeah, I think that's really really important. You know, I will also say that, you know, things don't always succeed 100%. I've seen isolated teams within companies where someone has the opportunity to sell something. They talk to their friends here, the engineers, who build the feature for them, but then it leaves something for other people to maintain later, and they weren't involved in the decisions, and it can be a big mess. You know, for all of these patterns, there are like kind of like balconies and basements. You can screw it up too. It's not all, you know, stuff is hard. That's why I like to lean into it and have written about it.

34:24Things take effort. The tree is going to drop the leaves and you guys sweep them up. Everything takes work and effort. We've talked about the isolation pattern. I thought it'd be good to talk through the rest of the patterns real quick and share maybe one or two tips for how to be successful or make it work well or better. Sure. Before you start, actually, I think I missed a nuance and you corrected me, but I think I missed it, which is for the one on one pattern. It's actually describing joining the company specifically, not joining a team. Is that right? Yeah. And in the book, it might be a little blurred because this is like some of the switching in one by one sound very similar.

35:06and they do have some kind of then diagram overlaps, but I'll distinguish them as I talk about them. Cool. So yeah, so one by one, someone joins your company or they leave your company, right? So the tip with one by one is when someone joins, help them build a sense, feel a sense of belonging, and you can do that through not having their first day be them sitting over their own, right? You could have someone have a first pair. There's a chapter in my book about onboarding. This is in the space of onboarding. Also with one by one, when people join, you also need to pay attention to the people who are already there.

35:44Yeah, it's good for them to know when someone is joining the company that it shouldn't be a surprise. So visualizing the hiring and the opportunities is something that I think is a really good idea. It could be challenging for someone if somebody joins and they become their manager. But what if that person wanted to be the manager and then they brought in someone from the outside to become the manager? Right, so you need to pay attention to the new hires that are joining Help them feel a sense of belonging get them to talk about themselves Which is said to increase their sense of connection and retention There's some research in the book the culture code by Daniel Coil which talks about that But then it's also important to coach the people through change that are already at the company, right?

36:33Especially if they weren't involved in the particular decision bringing on this new leader that comes in and brings in all their people, right? So you got to pay attention to to different people. Growing split is a natural thing that happens when you're like start up scale up and growing bigger and bigger. The first team probably goes grows bigger and then splits into two or three. So when the team gets bigger, facilitation and communication tends to break down. So some signals that teams might bring up when they feel like a change might be helpful is the meetings are taking longer. You're in that case where it's harder to make decisions.

37:20It was easier when they were like five of us, but now there are 13, the work becomes divergent. They're working on this one thing. They're working on something else. No one's paying attention in the stand -up so much anymore because this work has diverged. And those are a few of the signals and then someone typically brings it up. If you normalize the idea that it's okay for teams to have input into their future structures, maybe they'll bring it up and decide that, hey, it might be better if we split. Sometimes splitting, though, can create dependencies that weren't there when you were together as one team.

37:57So you inherit other problems, or you might inherit challenges like, all right, the team decides it's more effective if they split into two or three, but we just have one product manager. We just have one designer. We just have one person who helps us anticipate quality challenges. So, you know, it's a lot of problem trading when you do a lot of this stuff. Like anything, you know, you have a challenge. How might we solve it? Lawlers option A, option B and option C. Okay, so this is a grown split. So then, and it's very common, I think, when your company is growing and changing, kind of like that.

38:37Merging is the opposite of growing split. Two or more teams combine together. or at a higher level, a company acquires another company, and there's like emerging that happens. So, merging, I think, is related to when companies downsize or shrink. Things consolidate, come together, or again, when at the company level, companies combine, one acquires another, gets acquired. How that goes down very, but there's this concept called Panarchy that I write about in my book that a lot of these changes, there's changes, at the individual level, the team level, the team of teams level, department level, the company level.

39:20So yeah, some merging. So there's a business decision that the companies merge together and then changes might ensue. So maybe the company wants to get ahead on building and having another vertical in their SaaS company. We acquire the company in upfolio to bring us faster into workflow software for law firms. So we acquired a company based in San Diego and that got us a couple of years ahead. I remember one of the leaders saying that. So again, I wasn't involved in this decision as an IC at the time. So it could be a business decision for merging at that level. It could be that people leave, there are departures And teams and responsibilities consolidate together.

40:08That's merging. So could be that kind of shrinking that we're seeing. It could be that the company is having one leader instead of three. And there's a consolidation in the teams kind of merged together. So it's the opposite of growing split. One activity I do like to do with teams that merge is called Story of Our Team. That's in Chapter 13 of the second edition. So with story of our team, each team makes a timeline of they stand in order of when they join their team and they make a timeline with milestones of when they join their team, when people left. And significant events and things they created that they're excited about and that they're proud of.

40:54And that they branch together with their newly merged team and then it's good for to get a shared sense of history. So you have these teams or companies that come together. They make shared timelines. They share their milestones and things that they built that they're proud of. They tell each other about it. And then they have a sense of like, wow, like we didn't know that. Oh, I didn't know that you have built a system like that. We did too. Or we've never built anything like that. That is so cool. Like, you know, what did you learn from that. We could learn about each other and then we're together like, all right, you know, we're this merged entity now.

41:34Like what's next? Like looking out to the future, so we have the same shared vision. So I love doing that. So there's different tactics you can do before, during and after each of these patterns. Yeah, so that's merging. Isolation, we talked about before, put the team up to the side, give them process freedom, have them report up to a decision maker, tell the other team not to bother them, let them work at the cadence that they want to work out. That makes it easier. If you are doing a short -term thing, you got to work it out with the larger entities so you don't create something in isolation that other people have to maintain.

42:12There's ways that this can be messed up. And then switching. So switching pattern is really tied to learning and development and fulfillment. It could be that you wanna work with other people. Like, you know, forming, storming, norming, performing, Tucklin's model, he forgot the phase called stagnating. Sometimes it feels like we're in a team for too long. We're talking about working with these people. We want a little variety. We wanna work with that person over there. Or maybe we wanna work on a new system. We don't have the opportunity to do that in our current team, But what if we could work on that system over there with those people?

42:49It could totally refresh us. It could be like having a new job within our same company. It could extend the lifespan of the amazing employee in your company, right? So switching is tied to that kind of fulfillment, which is one of the reasons why I made it separate from one by one and tied that to the company. And the other thing with switching is that you could create safety nets in your company through switching. I just wrote a newsletter post about this yesterday because maybe we're going to have some more changes this year. Maybe companies are going to be hiring less. I don't like the thought of companies downsizing or having layoffs or anything like that.

43:33But I think to myself, well, have multiple owners of a system. So not only one person is that tower of knowledge that owns that one system. There's some stories in my book where I interviewed Richard Sheridan, who is the chief storyteller and profounder of a wonderful company called Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They built their company Menlo to have people work in pairs. Not just those software engineers, team members work in pairs and they switch pairs at a regular cadence. And you know that when you're joining the company because you're involved in some kind of pairing. So there's parity from when you're interviewing when you're at the company.

44:14But switching also helps build that knowledge redundancy in your company, a little more about tolerance. So if someone leaves, they don't leave with that all the information in their head. We had that. We had at that first startup, expert city, we had that some single owners of systems. And when they left, it just becomes a challenge in a setback. And at the second, you know, at Eiffelio, we share a founder between the first startup and the second startup. Many of their early engineers from that first startup went to the second startup. Right? So I was 10th at Eiffelio, I was 15th at Expert City.

44:55So we wanted to work together. Right? So it was that, you know, global idea of, you know, switching in one by one or similar. But anyway, at the second startup, we had the chance to do things differently. So we had pairing and switching pairs and test driven development. We had helped to do that, but this kind of redundancy built safety into our systems, especially when, you know, app folio is processing a lot of rent payments. There's a lot of money. There's ACH going through. You know, these are critical systems. So it's very important that things are safe and secure. You know, you don't want to have hazardly switched people around.

45:31You can screw this up. you know, again, that balconies and basements concept. You don't want, you know, somebody over here, they will switch every two weeks and have no say in their team. Like, you can like, you know, there's ways to screw all of this up. You know, but there's other ways to do it well. I remember, you know, when we were at our first team at Opfolio and we did a grow and split, right? Like, it grew and it split into two or three teams. And remember, there was a loss for some of that engineers who wanted to pair program with some of the other engineers and they started a regular rotation themselves from one team to the next, right?

46:12And that brought fulfillment. It brought joy. I mean, they would see each other in the in the workspace every day, but they wanted to work together. It brought them learning joy and fulfillment. And I love that. For those who are like, like keep the team stable in the same forever. I'm like, well, what about that? Like, it brings me satisfaction and joy when I see my colleagues. You know, it's like autonomy mastery purpose. Like Dan Pink's book drive, when people are really like given some agency and the opportunity to work a little bit differently then maybe that, you know, traditional boxed version, you might see on my bookshelf, you know, You can really create not only products that people love, but companies that people love and want to be at.

47:02All these stories of team changes and reorgaming me think about a quote that one of my managers always used to say about reorgaming and changing teams is that there's no perfect org structure. There's only the best idea you have at the time for what the org could be. Then there's the issues with that org that you identify as you're putting in place and then set up processes and systems around to try to catch that. Dependencies, as you said, or overlap of ownership. Is there anything along those lines that comes up of just things you've found of just like, there's never going to be the perfect way to do it.

47:36This is just our best idea at the time. And here's how we deal with the downsides of this approach. Yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom to what your manager said and your colleague there. Because yeah, I mean, as time goes on, conditions change. We evolve and change. We're subject to different influences. COVID happens. We weren't dealing with that 10 years ago. We grow and adapt and morph. We try to get together and make the best decisions that we can or face with challenges. And, yeah, a lot of it is problem trading. We have this challenge today. We decide, oh, there's a few ways we could handle this.

48:20Pros and cons of each solution. It's like the Kata. It's like the Toyota Kata. like grasp the current condition, you will experience, you know, you have challenges. What's the next evolution or the next target condition? How might you get there? And then you're there and you're like, okay, grasp the current target condition. What's it like? What, you know, what are you experiencing? Oh, we might try this. You get to, you know, it's always, we're always transforming from the current state to the future state. So, you know, to that I would ask you, well, Well, how do you want that to be? And how do you want to show up and be as a leader, right?

49:01You want to just be like, all right, you know, gotta get this done. The reward is done by an email and we're just sending it out, you know, or this small team change. And here it is, it's done, goodbye. You know, or is it a little bit where you get people's input, you know? And that in itself, you got a way, you know, what you're dealing with, you know, again. But I like to think about that. Like, what kind of leader do you want to be? Leaders need patience. It's hard to be a leader. It's challenging. But what kind of environment or vibe do you want to cultivate in your teams? And what do you want the people to be like?

49:41You know, I have a degree in teaching English and apply linguistics. and I remember studying like Paulo Freire and other educational problem -plosing methods of education. Right? We have these teams that solve these complex problems and challenges and build these really cool things for customers. Let's involve them in some of the work decisions that are going to be like part of their daily life. I really like that idea. You know, again, it's not perfect. You can't people on everything, especially if they're wide -scale changes that you just can't. Along these lines of doing things badly sometimes, you have this whole section on anti -patterns of reteaming.

50:26I think there's about five of them. I don't know if you have these all top of mind, but if you do, I'd love to hear some anti -patterns. Yeah. Well, one of them is people always think that reteaming is you have a pool of people, and you're assigning them to a bunch of different projects. Like, okay, you'll work 10 % on this one, 5 % on this one, 20 % on this one. We are gonna allocate the resources from our component -based teams into these different projects. I lived that, that we did that in waterfall, like many years ago. You know, but that doesn't really work. A lot of the times the percentages don't add up.

51:01It's very hard for people to multitask and be involved in multiple efforts at once. It's hard for for the brain with all the all the context switching that that needs to happen in that case. So I call that the percentage anti -pattern There's also I probably wrote about it like proof you're poof. They're gone or like suddenly they're here like You know, reteaming or having people suddenly show up and you weren't expecting them or suddenly they're gone And there's no communication around it whatsoever That's another anti -pattern One of the ones I love is this idea spreading high performers this idea But we're gonna spread the high performers across other teams That's an app polio story John Walker was telling me back in the day that Yeah, he he had this thought I mean he did this experiment.

51:49He had this thought that You know many of like we have this one team that was like I guess they were delivering at this cadence that they loved And they were building this stuff and there's this energy and he can almost feel it like let's just spread the people from that team across the other ones and then we'll have that and It didn't work like you didn't have that like it didn't happen and that was a visceral learning for him that It doesn't essentially work, you know, and you know people are like like you know What does it take to be a high -performing team? Right like what what does it take to have that magical team experience where there's that chemistry And the people are together and their stories in the book, Damon Bounds, Ona told was telling me one about how it's like it's a band and we're within off each other.

52:35And like there's a lot of creating this music together. So, you know, John felt like he essentially destroyed that when he split up that team. So that's, you know, the story that inspired that anti -pattern. The reason people are worried about reteams and reorgues is this, a lot of times it's exact reason that you just shared, which is our team is amazing. Why would I don't want it to change? I don't want to split. I don't want to add anyone. I don't want to remove anyone. I guess is there anything else along this line to help people make feel better about? No, this is actually going to be okay and or it's inevitable.

53:11It's not going to last. I think sometimes you have that awesome team situation. It's an enjoyable experience. People are learning. You're looking forward to it every day. You're delivering this stuff that people love. of you're telling people what's going on, you know, you have that matched expectation where people aren't like breathing down your neck, because it's late or something. You know, sometimes you wanna keep that team together. You don't wanna destroy that dynamic. But the thing is, you know, maybe that's a small startup that grows and you need to grow because you have a bigger vision and it needs to be more than these 10 people.

53:47And so, you know, there is sometimes this feeling of loss. Like, this is our company. This is my experience at this company of 10 people, but suddenly we're 20 people. It doesn't feel the same like it did anymore. And it feels different. And people always, they always ask the question, how do we maintain our culture? It feels different than it was before. And the thing is, it is different. And our companies go through stages. The company of today is not the company it was a year ago. The people turn over and change. What we work on turns over and change. The whole kind of world and industry and global events change and put different pressures on us.

54:33And we got to live in this global context. So nothing lasts. And sometimes I have a picture of myself of an earth holding a nice cream cone that's melting. You know, not to be a total downer, but you know, it appreciated when you're on a team and you'd love it and it's amazing. Because you know, these are our lives and you know, we have to have gratitude and appreciate what we have. Because naturally things evolve and change. It's just inevitable. So we appreciate what we have. A lot of us can look back on our careers and remember those times when we were, in my case, skipping through the halls.

55:14because I was so happy and it was like I couldn't even tell you like well why was I skipping through the halls at that moment? What was it? Well, was the people in the conditions you're doing in like the time the era? almost because because yet does change there's a book by its saccharidesis called Managing Corporate Life Cycles. It's one that many of us read for years at Eiffelial maybe the previous company as well the Adidas Institute influenced some of our leaders and you know they influenced us with us and it talks about the different stages of companies from birth and you know there's go -go stage age maturity, death of companies.

55:57These are life cycles. The company grows and changes and morphs and changes. The people and teams do that as well. I have an eco cycle in my book where I talk about that, kind of aging and changing. Then there's your disruption and you have a new beginning. We're part of these stories that are in progress. This is not an unchanging, unmoving entity that we work in. So just be kind. Be kind to each other, enjoy your experiences and learn as much as you can. It reminds me of a advice Cheryl Sandberg shared when she came to the Airbnb offices. Someone asked her, what advice do you have to deal with all this constant change?

56:38Like the quote I shared at the top of the episode of like every six months, there's a massive reorg. Our culture is changing. Teams keep changing. It's constant flux. What is your advice to deal with that? and heard advice was like that is good. The fact that you're growing so fast and having to change is the best case scenario because the alternative is you're not growing and it's much harder and much more painful because the changes are much harder. People get like, oh, you business may go away. So, heard advice is just this is good. Change means things are and growth, growth leads to change, especially hyper growth and that you should appreciate this time versus be afraid of it and think that it's a negative.

57:23Yeah, and it seems like she had such a wide vantage point and could kind of see the forest through the trees of the fact that those companies doing well. Right. This is why we're growing and changing. And I remember one of one of my leaders, CTO John Walker, you know, Epfolio, he told me that once too. He was like, you know, I'd be like having a problem or something and I come to him and he'd always say to me, it's always great to be at a successful company, Heidi. And you know, it's like, well, yeah, like sometimes you don't think about the finances. When you're in your day to day and you have a problem with another person or they come to you and they have a problem with this other person, you know, but in the grand scheme of it, like, how is the company doing?

58:06Like it's really like a critical vantage point that we need to remind ourselves of. But yeah, you know, I wouldn't say all change is always good. Your mileage may vary there. But the general idea that the company is doing while you're growing and changing, you're trying to make things happen, I think is definitely the space I'd rather be in than the opposite. Yeah, and I think it's especially true for people that haven't worked at a company that didn't work out where they think this is sucks and really this is It's like pretty good compared to all the things that could be happening. Yeah, definitely.

58:43We coach and help each other as we go along. Final question before we get to our very exciting lightning round. You used to work with John Cutler, who was a previous guest on this podcast, and he had a question that he wanted me to ask you. He said that Heidi is one of the best listeners I've ever worked with. And so the question is what's your secret to being a good listener? Well, listening is a muscle to build and to always work on. You got to put your attention out, focus on the other person. You know, sometimes like if I'm looking down, maybe I like reconnect and look at them, you got to read body language and other things.

59:23I'm trained as a co -active coach, which involves different levels of listening. So you have level one which is internal listening like if you and I are talking but I'm thinking about like What am I gonna have for lunch? I'm in level one. I've got to redirect it out to you and focus on you So when I focus I'm you as I'm in level two listening I'm like putting my attention out and I'm like really anchoring towards you It's a coaching skill right and then level three is like global listening environmental listening If a marching band suddenly walked behind you I'm going to point that out because it's in my field.

59:58I'm not going to ignore them and bring that up. We pay attention to the vibe and the feel in the room and where we're at. Then also if you're talking about something and suddenly you go like this or you have this kind of said in pain in your neck when you're talking about this one thing, I might notice that you're doing this and like touching your neck because that's information. That's a kind of listening and so I might ask you about that or if the face turns red or You look down or away. It's another kind of listening. So coactive training institute coactive .com is my coactive coaching training So I learned it from them Henry Kenzie Howellson Wow, that is an awesome answer There's like real a lot of depth there.

1:00:52So coactive .com, I'm gonna check that out. So you actually got trained in this skill. Okay, that's great. That'll make people feel better. They're like, okay, okay, amazing. I'm gonna check this out. I'm gonna try to be a better listener through the rest of this podcast episode from these tips. I will say that sometimes I am not a good listener though. Yeah, so it goes. Heidi, is there anything else you wanted to touch on or share before we get to our very exciting lightning round. I don't think so. I really appreciate your questions and talking with you. Well we've reached our very exciting lightning round.

1:01:31Are you ready? Yeah. All right. First question. What are two or three books that you recommended most to other people? Leading intelligent teams is one. and liberating structures is another one. And of course transitions by William Bridges. I also like Bell Leaders Guide to Participatory Decision Making. Is there a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed? I did like the bear, the cooking related show, the restaurant related show, and talks about the hospital, gets into the hospitality industry, I really like that. I was, you know, movies, I, there isn't really one that stands out.

1:02:15I always look forward to being on an airplane to see what movies are playing, but no movie for you. What is a favorite interview question that you like to ask people that you are interviewing? I always like to ask people, well, why do you want to join our company? What is it about working with us that would be exciting for you? like why our company is opposed to another one. What do you look for in their answer that is a good sign? You know, they have some knowledge about what we do, what we build. Maybe they have bring up that they've noticed something on one of the websites or a product launch that we just announced, just that maybe it's part of their story and their career.

1:03:00They're going in this direction and they heard about us and, And they thought, wow, I would love to work on that. Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered today you really love? I'm very into vintage clothing. And specifically, like, real wool, cashmere, not synthetic blends. I was like vintage blazers. A lot of the times where I'm giving a talk and wearing a vintage blazer, I really like the clothing and design and I kind of really really love unusual vintage pieces that I could find. But they do need to, you know, a lot of the fast fashion that's out there today is a lot of these blends with these materials that you've never screwed up, but there's like something special about like, you know, vintage cashmere for example.

1:03:55You have a source for your some good stuff? Is it like eBay? Is it stores locally? Is there a site? Is there something you find out finding some good stuff? I travel around the world and I get talks on routinely at your workshops. And usually I go to vintage and antique stores. I was just in Berlin. I was doing that. I was doing it in London. And yeah, I love thrifting, salvation army goodwill, any of these places that we have in many of the US cities, the humana line of stores that I've been to in Europe and other places, I try to find this small, unusual, antique places as well, my aunts and antique dealer, in Michigan and she doesn't specialize in vintage clothing, but I just love that idea of discovering unique unusual things that maybe they remind you of times in the past.

1:04:54Like maybe you find that, oh gosh, we had that mug back in the 80s or whatever, or in the 90s, things can kind of remind people of other times. So I like that. I think there's information stored in unique items. So beautiful. I bet Berlin has some really cool vintage stuff, really wacky stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of really interesting places to explore and I think it's just So much more interesting than some of the brand new kind of Yeah Steph so Agreed two more questions Do you have a favorite life motto that you often find yourself coming back to or sharing with friends or family either in work or in life?

1:05:40I like asking people how can you be kind to yourself?

1:05:50I use to run a lot in Santa Barbara at Elwood, which is a beautiful trail that you can go down to the ocean. You come back up, it's like a Mesa, more Mesa in Santa Barbara. And I would run and then I'd be like, God, this is so hard. And then I would walk for a little while. And I'd think to myself, well, how can I be kind to myself? I mean, like, what am I doing here? Does it have to be fast? No. Like, I'm here to like decompress and like enjoy. So how can I be kind to myself? Like, I think sometimes I get hard on myself or have very high expectations kind of achieve her mentality. And it's, I've learned through the years that like, it's okay to slow down.

1:06:35It's okay to like, you know, not go, go, go the whole time, You know, so I you know would ask other people that as well like especially if they're they're going through a Challenge or you burning midnight oil or whatever it is like, you know, what about self -care? How do you how can you be kind yourself? Beautiful Final question a scouring your LinkedIn and I saw a quote from the CTO of app folio in his endorsement of you said that you were the unofficial director of fun at app folio is there a story that comes to mind if something that you did at app folio that created a lot of joy and fun for the team.

1:07:16We had these hack days, and I think they do that to this day. So like twice a year, we'd bring people together and we copied and learned from Atlassian. I remember we had calls with some coaches from Atlassian for how did they do their ship at day, or they originally called it FedEx day, changed it to ship at day. We followed their model, and we'd had this, You know, two o 'clock on Thursday, it's two o 'clock on Friday, where we build whatever we wanted, and we'd have a theme, and then we'd have goofy prizes at the end that were like traveling trophies. Like one of them was like a clicky -to -click keyboard that we spray painted gold by the railroad tracks.

1:07:58You know, but people could work on anything. There were teams that formed, we did it with a self -selection marketplace, right? People formed their topics and teams, and one team hid geocaches throughout Santa Barbara. They're there to this day because we registered them with the geocaching website. Another team built a vintage video game machine and it was in the dev room. Another wine like they catapulted, they built this like, is it a trebuchet, but like they catapult this fruit in the parking lot. I don't know how we got away with that, but we were in the early days. Because we did a lot of fun stuff like that and you could work with different people, build these larger relationships, which later makes it easier for reteaming.

1:08:44Because then later if you reteam, you're not strangers with people. So you want to cultivate the community. So we had this department of fun. We would plan the fun in a variety of other ways as well. So fun. Heidi, you're awesome. I think we've helped a lot of people feel better about the endless change that they're all they're going through right now. Two final questions, work in folks, find your book, find you online if they want to reach out, and how can listeners be useful to you? You can go to HeidiHealthand .com or Google my name, and I come up, Heidi at dynamicretinning .com, Heidi .Healthand .gmail .com.

1:09:20You can find me. I'm out there, and yeah, I love to work with companies and teams going through change, and I do that in a variety of ways, teach workshops, do talks, so if any of this This is interesting, reach out. And then do you also consult and work with individual companies or not? I do. Yeah, I do that now. I like to work on a routine or basis or I'll even join us in. So looking for the next one. All right. And we'll link to all this stuff in the show notes. Hi, Eddie. Thank you again so much for being here. Yeah. Thanks so much, Lenny. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts.

1:10:01Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast .com. See you in the next episode!