What Job Is Your Job Doing (Purpose and Work): Jessica Zwaan

0:00Jessie Zwaan: So I want to start with Amy Ross's Newskies research, which says that people fall broadly into three job orientations. One is people that see their job as a job, right? I'm here to get paid and use my labor for money. That's fine. There's nothing unvirtuous about that. Some people see their job as a career. I'm here to do this job because it takes me from point A to point B. Maybe that is more money. Maybe it's opportunities. Maybe it's meeting people. Maybe it's travel. It's some kind of career arc they have designed. That gives them their sense of purpose and fulfillment. That's what work is to them.

0:29Jessie Zwaan: and then some people see their work as a vocation it's a calling it's deeply personal the work that they're doing that is what's driving them and there's no evidence that I could ever find in my research that people perform any differently being in one of these job orientations you could be a high performer in a job orientation or you could be a low performer in the purpose one this is I think where we've kind of ignored research I think for a long time founders particularly but a lot of c-suite teams have presumed if you're not in the purpose section you're going to be a bad performer. You're not going to be motivated.

1:00Jessie Zwaan: It's not going to be easy to get you to do things or like understand the company mission. It's just not proven to be true. In fact, actually, one of the people I spoke to in the book, Hugh Slater, talked to me about sometimes the folks in his team with the most difficult performance concerns can be people that are deeply mission aligned. You're listening to the Modern People Leader podcast, where we go behind the scenes with today's top HR leaders and work experts. We talk to them about how they've gotten to where they're at, what they do every day, and what they see coming next for the future of work.

1:31Hope you enjoy.

1:37Jesse, what's up? I know. It's been too long. Catch us up in the last few months. I feel like you've been jet-setting. Yeah, I have been.

1:44Jessie Zwaan: I'm doing some really fun stuff. Good. It's good to remember that you've been doing fun stuff, although you're jet-setting for a bunch of reasons. I'm not jet-setting to wherever Steven is, but it looks like he's in Star Wars or something right now. For those of you listening into the pod and not watching the video, Steven is in like a purple, blue, holographic disco looking room right now. It looks like he's in like the cockpit of a spaceship. It's the studio. So I co-work out of a, and people have probably been wondering, the few people that watch these videos, I co-work out of, it's where I work is part co-working and part music studio.

2:24and two years ago i think you should i think i've shared this with you i started playing the drums again after like 20 years of not and i owe it to joaquin uh that i found this place which is pretty sick for a musician to like just come up so this is like the acoustic studio and then upstairs there's a digital studio yeah but i like the vibes myself to austin i feel like i'm a proper podcast. You do? You want to come hang out?

2:53Jessie Zwaan: What have you been up to, Daniel? You're in baby town. Well, I feel like we're going to steal our thunder. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, let's do good news stories and maybe I can give you our updates and our good news. And Jesse, we always want for you to go first, so what do you got for us today? Good news stories is, I actually feel like I have a lot of good news to share. We've had some really, really fun, exciting launches coming up at LeapZone, which I'm really excited about. I think that the The things that I joined, which I was excited about talking about, are finally really coming out now.

3:25Jessie Zwaan: We've just launched AI-created workflows within our HRS, which means you can describe a workflow in your HRS and like vibe code whatever workflow you want to see. It means onboarding, it means performance reviews, it means everything, which is really cool. That's like such an exciting launch. I'm really excited to go out there and like make demos and talk about it. So much fun. The kind of things I wish these existed, like, oh my goodness, it's like so fun to see these things coming into the world. And then on the more personal front, I went to a super, super great wedding this weekend in Amsterdam.

3:51Jessie Zwaan: It was so nice to be there with some of my friends. The weather in Europe has been steaming, but divine, really good. And yeah, I really feel like I've just been doing a lot of like traveling around, meeting my team, speaking to people who I love, being out in the world fully. It's just been great. What a beautiful thing being out in the world. Well, I'm going to be in Amsterdam. I'll go next because part of my good news is I'm going to be in Amsterdam in a couple of weeks. please please please please and my my other good news is i tonight will be playing my first like jam session with like an intentional group of musicians that have that want to play with me for a very specific reason albeit a nerdy reason and a reason that will date me if i share the the details but there is a guitarist that is a guitarist and a bassist yeah i'll go ahead so apparently like i had all this latent led zeppelin drumming knowledge and if you know anything about drums or like rock music led zeppelin is known for having one of the greatest legendary rock drummers ever a guy named john bonham bonzo and bonzo died tragically i think he like drank like 60 shots of vodka or something and like dies and that's why led zeppelin broke up and so in like 14 year old steven brain i thought this guy was like so awesome he's a great drummer and it's a very different style than what like what you would hear today and i just was obsessed and so fast forward like 14 year old steven so that would have been 1988 i'm like jamming out to Led Zeppelin in my garage.

5:42Fast forward to three weeks ago, one of the musicians here starts playing Led Zeppelin riff on guitar. And I was like, ramble on. He was like, oh yeah, why don't you play the drums? And I sat down and something magical happened. It was like, I tapped in, my brain had all this like Zeppelin drumming knowledge stored in it. And we ended up playing like five different songs. And so today he plays guitar and bass, but it was just two of us. and so now has recruited his friend jake who is like a proper like musician well they're both proper musicians i'm just like a hobbyist over here so so that is the why i'm gonna be like going nuts on some led zeppelin and tame impala good combo love bit of new yeah yeah like different but similar ish i guess um and we'll see how it goes i get kind of i get really nervous for these jam sessions y 'all i get like yeah i don't know why anything i need to chill but i'm like trying to remember does it pause like is it pause quickly once you're in it like once you start does it like

6:45Jessie Zwaan: the nerves evaporate like i feel like that's like me for public speaking sometimes you know most of the time but i know when i'm not like present for myself or like i'm just not in like a good headspace it because those are the times where it just like doesn't click and at a place like this when there's three other there's like a house drummer there's like three other aspiring drummers that also play other instruments like I usually just bow out I'm like you know what got a couple songs in I'll hand over to Ray he's the badass so but most of the time I come around it's like I have to find a song where I like lock and once I lock in with the guitar and bass I'm usually good because then it's coming from like my inside not my outside that makes any sense.

7:32Jessie Zwaan: Amazing. Fun. Wow. I don't know how I can top that good news. My good news, I guess, is I feel like, you know, in business and really in any company, whether you're an entrepreneur or you work for a company, they're like really busy periods where it feels like it's an all out sprint. And then, you know, you have like the two to four weeks where it slows down, you're able to take a breath, you're able to reflect on the last, you know, four or five months. And I feel like we're going into one of those slower, like more reflective and like planning periods, which is nice. I mean, we did like seven quarters in a row of live events, which is a lot.

8:17Like when you're planning an event, it's like, it's all consuming for the three or four months leading up to it. And the last like month, month and a half is kind of chaos. Plus, you know, we do a lot of other things in the business. And so I'm excited for the next couple of weeks. Stephen's going to be taking vacation for next week and the following. I'm taking vacation in two weeks. And next week, yeah, I'm going to get to do some heads down work and think about parts of the business that I haven't had a chance to even think about for the last four or five months. And I'm excited about it. And it'll be nice to take some time away from the computer and spend time with family and friends.

8:58And, you know, that's part of what we want to talk about today. You know, you wrote this book called Purpose and Work, which was a follow up on Built for People. Two very different books. And so let's just start there. What made you want to write this book? And, you know, for the people that have read Built for People, how different is it? How much compensation risk do you think is hiding in your spreadsheets right now? For a lot of people teams, comp has gotten way more complex than the system supporting it. You got merit cycles, bonuses, incentive plans, approvals, benchmarking, pay equity, transparency requirements.

9:35And somehow, a lot of it is still being managed through Excel, manual uploads, or HRIS modules that weren't really built for this level of complexity. And you know, that's all fine and dandy until there are three versions of the same comp file. or one person becomes the single source of truth or leadership asks why a pay decision was made and the answer is harder and harder to explain. That's where BCom comes in. BCom is a purpose-built compensation platform for organizations managing complex pay programs, especially those teams that I was just referring to that have outgrown what spreadsheets can comfortably handle.

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10:45Jessie Zwaan: I actually love that question. No one's ever asked me that before, and I feel like I've got a bunch of like interviews now about it okay I'll start with the second bit how different is it I think from the experience of writing it it is like a completely different book built for people if you don't know was born out of a blog that I wrote in like 2019 that a lot of people read wanted more information how do I do this I'm intrigued and then I worked with Kogan Page my publisher to publish that book because it was already an operating model that I had like I was already doing this for several years people ups as a product is something that I think I've been doing basically since like 2000 and maybe even 15 just in some capacity it was more of a like consolidation and formalizing of the processes that I'd found to work and an invitation for people to kind of build upon them within this analogy which required obviously there's still a lot of research I still had to research like product management philosophies and principles I've been talking about maybe wasn't an expert on those kinds of things how other people might have been doing this I had to write some case studies I had to do a bunch of things but ultimately like the book was like broadly like me putting my current like ways of working onto paper purpose and work was a completely different thing when I was writing built for people I did have a couple of places where I was being a little bit more kind of like philosophical or like contextual about how to apply things and one of the things that came up was this idea of like well if work is a product and people are subscribing to the product then the product is doing a job right it has a utility what job is your job really doing for you which is a question that my really good friend darts lindsley who runs another fantastic podcast work for humans asks at the end of every single one of his podcasts but i started thinking about that question and i didn't really have a very good answer like i had like my own feeling about what job your job did for you it kind of like spent sent my me off track a little bit so i revoked that from the publication of built for people and then focused that like just outside of my own thinking and i had a lot of thoughts but I didn't have a lot of clarity and I knew this was going to be more of a research book than a practical handbook book and although it became very I think it is very practical but it started like it started from a place of like what's happening in the market how do people do this what does the research say where can I learn about this like what does the future look like how do we adapt to that future and much less about here's work I've been doing here's how you too can implement it and it's kind of funny how the timing for both of these books just kind of been interesting for me personally but also for the world is like built for people came out just when I think people started really talking about the idea of people ups as a product and I don't think I was necessarily the first one to do it or even the first one like frame it in this kind of way but like I definitely think it's one of the I think it's the only book that really came out at that while this was kind of going on so it's like become the kind of place people go to when they want to look at people's as a product purpose and work I don't know will do the same thing but one thing I can tell you is it's very interesting that it's kind of come out at a time where I think there's like mass dissatisfaction and dissonance in the population around work.

13:49Jessie Zwaan: Why are we doing this? What job is my job doing for me? Is this actually helping me do the things I want to do anymore? And like asking much more existential questions because of how AI is being implemented. Amongst other things, economic things, political things, always everything works in confluence. And it's done a lot of things to me personally as well, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And so let's start at ground zero. Let's start at the beginning. When you took a look, what did the research say on this topic? Or maybe if that's not a good entry point to the conversation, share with us the process by which you leveraged research to crystallize this great question you've been asked in a podcast.

14:30You're like, holy shit, what does this mean?

14:33Jessie Zwaan: so yeah this is so funny so actually when i wrote bill for people i did what i'm the editor of bill for people uh the the publication editor at the time had said to me that was like kind of highly unusual was i wrote the book in complete chronological order so i started in the authors forward and then i wrote chapter one and then i wrote chapter two and then i wrote chapter three and she was like this is actually kind of unusual a lot of authors write it in like a like a different order and they don't submit them the way that i was i had like a notion page with like a timeline and a roadmap. I was like, okay, so every week I deliver 1500 words and every X amount of weeks, I deliver two chapters to my editor.

15:10Jessie Zwaan: I get those chapters back. Two weeks later, I review them this week and I don't do writing. So this whole like kind of plan, right? And she was like, yeah, a lot of authors don't do this. They kind of deliver them at the deadline in whatever order they decide to deliver them in. And I was like, first of all, like, wow, I hadn't even thought of that as an option. But second of all, because I get know what I was writing about, that was the only way it made sense to me. I'm writing a practical handbook for work that I have done. It needs to kind of come out of my brain in the way that I would want to read this.

15:36Whereas this one, totally different thing.

15:39Jessie Zwaan: I think my editor actually was really nervous at the beginning because I just didn't submit chapters for a really long time because I was researching and talking to people. So I submitted my book proposal, which is actually a huge piece of work. It does take about six months for me to write a proposal because I'm very detailed. I like have a lot of like competitor analysis and things I'd like to explore and people I want to interview and a bunch of other stuff but then also when I got started I'd still had to like do a bunch of like I did do deeper interviews I had to like find the people I had to like craft the surveys I had to go out and read and I just had this kind of endless reading list of books around purpose and existentialism I read like Camus for the book if you read it I might read it like Studs Terkel and like oral histories and a bunch of things went in so I'm just reading reading reading and at the end of every interview I would say is there anybody you suggest I meet and is there anything you suggest I read send me articles send me books send me podcasts I want to absorb it and I just ended up with this like huge pile of content that I was going through so there was so much and then throughout that it actually got to the point where at the end I had to kind of just be like okay I'm not taking any more content in unless I'm like 100 % convinced it's going to move me in a direction that I need to be moving in because it was just so much interesting little avenues to go down.

16:55Jessie Zwaan: There's a couple of researchers that kind of like come up front and center in what I talk about and authors and like concepts. The first one is Joseph Pines Transformation Economy. That framework is basically the fundamental underpinning of the spectrum by which I think leaders should be thinking about their business on like where are we in terms of how we should talk about purpose and work and fulfillment. What programs should be put in place everything else it's all based on the transformation experiential economy work of Joseph Pine the second person is Amy Ross's new ski who talks about the spectrum of human alignment with what she calls job orientations so do you see your job as a job a career or a calling and I drew on her research very heavily I didn't really adapt it I just kind of like applied it in the framing of Joseph's pines methodology around companies and then the final one I do actually talk about quite a lot is Mark Martin Spiegelman's book that talks about PERMA as a framework, which is how to be happy and fulfilled as a human.

17:53Jessie Zwaan: I talked a lot about applying those kinds of principles in a work setting and how you can potentially do that. So I feel like over the last, I don't know, call it like five to six months, I've noticed this big shift amongst like my peer group. So let's just call it like my 10 closest friends. I feel like as you were saying, there's more dissatisfaction with work than ever before. And it's because, you know, we've been told our whole lives that, you know, we're going to find our calling. And, you know, I'm 32. So I've been working for 10 years. I'm still relatively like new to the workforce, as are my friends.

18:34But a lot of my friends are 10 years in and they're like, well, like, what the fuck? Like we were promised, you know, to find our calling and to feel like the work is meaningful and in the last six months that that like contract with your company has been broken because the world's changed and so yeah I don't even know where I'm going with this but was that something that you heard coming up time and time again in these interviews it's funny you

19:03Jessie Zwaan: say we're less satisfied with work than ever before I don't know about ever before but I definitely feel like I think there's been times in human history where work has been much more satisfying like during the industrial revolution definitely in our lifetimes right I think there's a whole chapter at the beginning where I go so built for people um actually we've had conversations about like the Ulrich model and how I feel about history of HR it's because I did a very big chapter at the beginning of built for people which is all about the history of HR and why that's important when we're thinking about how we change I think just proposing a new framework or a new ideology without talking about what came before it and why that's relevant to the change resistance you're going to see or the frame of mind your customers your employees and teams are going to be in and everything else is kind of you have to understand the history in order to be able to go out and like confidently talk about what you want to see changed and this time is no different I went out and wrote a big chapter about the history of purpose and work and companies like touting purpose messages and fulfillment and you're right for a very long time tech businesses particularly but you know i think it's kind of caught on more broadly in like 2016 pretty much every company had like values on the wall and mission statements and beanbags and snack walls and like we're changing the world and it's like really you are making cloud accounting software that helps print receipts like i don't think you're changing the world which is fine that's okay and it's funny i think that whole momentum this big wave we all got on board everyone was doing it i did it too people listening to this a million percent are like i did that did we do it with the best of intentions?

20:34Jessie Zwaan: Yes. Did it actually work? Yes. I think for a lot of people, it motivated people. Did it actually deeply connect people to the sense of purpose? No, I don't think so. I think it was exciting messaging. It's branding, right? It was branding that was pretty effective for the majority of us. But I actually think what happened is like a lot of things, if you brand it one way and it motivates people to be like, okay, cool, there might be something in this, then they have a bit of time using that product with that branding, they realize, actually, wait a second, I got sold that we're changing the world, but I'm realizing now I probably was wrong to buy into that.

21:11Jessie Zwaan: And also, I just don't think we should be talking about that. And I think that's where we're at now. And I think, you know, compounding with that is like, I don't think we were ever at a place where a lot of company missions should have ever been framed the way they were. And I don't think we were ever at a place we should have been desperately trying to motivate people to be deeply personally aligned with every company mission. We did do it. That's okay. I think it only got worse by the fact that we then had to do a bunch of things that really, really shocked that to its core, even for people that hadn't realized the disassociation.

21:44Jessie Zwaan: And that was COVID. It was AI. It was the layoffs. It was recession. Those things started happening. And all of a sudden, even if you were on the camp of like, no, I think I'm still kind of on board with this, were pretty rapidly decamped and became feeling frustrated yeah I mean now looking back it's like how could you know on one hand it's easy to think like how could I have been duped like how how did I fall for that on the other hand I I think we can also look back and be like oh oh yeah yeah did that we felt like okay like not everything on the internet's real and not everything that my company is telling me is real so so now what like okay so we thought we had this like the this contract unspoken contract where we were really doing purpose-driven work come to find out that it is kind of collecting a paycheck and an extraction of extraction of value and the value the exchange is I get paid companies extracting value that hopefully aligns with something that I can rally behind but like if there is an absence in many cases of purpose and I don't think that this is like we're being kind of extreme in the conversations because I do think there are exceptions where like people are thriving and people are like, or like there's no Kool-Aid.

23:14So no one ever thought like, you know, we're just here to work and we're going to do great work together. And so I think there are places where people are engaged in thriving in their jobs. I think a lot, like we're talking about, are not. And so for those of us that are like in this purpose of vacuum, like what, you know, I'm just curious, like, you know, what is your advice? and like having been so deep in this body of work? Like, you know, what is that equation? What is the modern take on that purpose and work? Great question.

23:46Jessie Zwaan: So I want to start with Amy Ross's Newsky's research, which says that people fall broadly into three job orientations. One is people that see their job as a job, right? I'm here to get paid and use my labor for money. That's fine. There's nothing unvirtuous about that. Some people see their job as a career. I'm here to do this job because it takes me from point A to point B. Maybe that is more money. Maybe it's opportunities. Maybe it's meeting people. Maybe it's travel. It's some kind of career arc they have designed. That gives them their sense of purpose and fulfillment. That's what work is to them.

24:15Jessie Zwaan: And then some people see their work as a vocation. It's a calling. It's deeply personal, the work that they're doing. That is what's driving them. And there's no evidence that I could ever find in my research that people perform any differently being in one of these job orientations. You could be a high performer in a job orientation, or you could be a low performer in the purpose one. This is, I think, where we've kind of ignored research. I think for a long time, founders particularly, but a lot of C-suite teams have presumed if you're not in the purpose section, you're gonna be a bad performer.

24:46Jessie Zwaan: You're not gonna be motivated. It's not gonna be easy to get you to do things or like understand the company mission. It's just not proven to be true. In fact, actually, one of the people I spoke to in the book, Hugh Slater, talked to me about sometimes the folks in his team with the most difficult performance concerns can be people that are deeply mission aligned. because first of all, they're not poor performing out of desire or will. They've got a strong desire and will. They actually maybe have a deep, personal, almost dependent relationship with having this job psychologically. So it can be very dangerous and kind of almost unhealthy to try and give them feedback.

25:21Jessie Zwaan: And also the way that they interpret the company mission is way more nuanced and highly potentially critical of capitalism, usually, than someone that is like to use a job. And of course, that's like one example. but that that's a good example of like just how clear but also you have the other end you might be a working mom who sees her job as a job and is just as strong performing because her job is a job because she wants to get a paycheck because all she wants in the entire world is to send her kid to the best school she's so motivated she will wake up at five in the morning she will go into the office she's there she works hard because she knows that this is the best opportunity for her to be able to do this thing for her family who are you to tell me that that is any less virtuous no one like i i challenge someone to tell me that person you described it sees their job as a job is not someone that i want to be able to like motivate to be on my team it just isn't true and then you go to joseph pines research about the transformation economy and i've talked about this a lot so i want to give it a really really quick little overview on one end you have service based business, which is our jobs are jobs.

26:26Jessie Zwaan: We, you come and give us your work. We give you a service. It's the reciprocal version of like the job orientation. Second one is experiential. We create a workplace that gives you a very, very, very strong experience. That means access to opportunities, access to jobs, access to learning, access to other people. It's a career alignment. And then the third one is transformation. We offer a workplace that transforms you as an individual. you will come in here you'll be magically changed maybe you're working with an artist studio with a world famous artist and you're going to learn how that works maybe you're working in a place that's going to change the world you're at Patagonia you're changing the world you're transforming yourself you're transforming the world around you it's vocationally aligned what you're trying to do as a workplace is just broadly get the majority of your team aligned you're never going to get it perfect and it's not going to be the same all the time sometimes you might be doing something that's really speaking to the more transformation side of the team but critically it gives you the book gives you some guidance of like okay how do I talk to certain people that might be in these different job orientations how do I interview for certain job orientations and like manage performance how do I keep them engaged and then how do I build programs that address the kind of ideal customer profile or ideal employee profile that really aligns with what purpose is for them so if you're focusing on an experiential workplace you really don't need to put that much energy into talking about how your company purpose is changing the world.

27:47Jessie Zwaan: Your customers don't expect it. You don't need to do it. Put energy into creating incredible experiential programs that give them a deep sense of meaning and purpose as it relates to their career. That's what they're looking for. So built for people, you know, my words, not yours. You know, it was more of a textbook like here, here, the here's everything I've learned over the last five or six years in a way that you can recreate for your company. And with with this most recent book, it feels like it was more of a discovery and, you know, as much of a discovery for you in answering that question that Dart had for you, like, what does your job do for you?

28:24And I'm just curious, you know, on the other end of writing this book, publishing it, how has it changed you as a people leader and as an expert?

28:32Jessie Zwaan: Yeah, I think it's changed me deeply as a person as well, by the way. Like, I think my attitude, I think my attitude towards a lot of things has massively changed. I give myself so much more grace and I feel so comfortable being motivated by the things I'm motivated by. I love my job. I love the work I do. I loved my previous job and the work that I do, but now I don't have an expectation that I need to somehow be out talking about the company mission as if it is the thing that wakes me up in the morning. I like the work I do because I get to speak to people like you and be writing books and out in the community and talk about the future of work which I find really like super exciting and interesting I've been interested in it since I was a child it's not necessarily because I love building HR teams although I do like I obviously like the work but it's not it's not that's not actually the thing that wakes me up in the morning it's the chance to do all these other things that I really find purpose in and I'm so much more comfortable talking about that and being open and honest because I think you really need to lead from the front and then I think it's made me more comfortable and bold with one of the things that I talk about a lot in Built for People I really advocate for, which is understanding the motivations of people.

29:49Jessie Zwaan: Like, what do you really want? What is the problem this is solving? I'm much more, I feel like I'm more intellectually honest asking questions and going into that because I genuinely know that for some people, it's just not about the company mission and that's fine. I don't need them to tout or parrot back at me the corporate talking points because I don't live by that philosophy personally anymore. I feel like I have been going through this very similar but different transformation in myself. Jesse, as you were writing this book, I literally was in the trenches and depths of my mind and life and soul trying to reconcile things.

30:37I think reconcile is the best word I can use because it's complicated and it's nuanced. And they're like, depending on the day, some things that were seemed right now seem wrong and vice versa. And it's super fluid. But what I think I had in my life was this realization that like, huh, maybe I had over indexed on these kind of human constructs, these things that we created and that we all participate in. Like, you know, I don't think they're bad constructs necessarily. Well, maybe some days I do. But I think you see where I'm going. It's like these are these constructs and they exist. And I may have placed too much importance or maybe just like molded my life around these constructs versus just like living the life that I need to live because that's what's right for Steven.

31:41and I just assumed that this was happening to me because I just turned 50. And when you turn half a century, it's a weird thing. It's hard to explain and I won't go into that kind of – I'll save that conversation for my therapist.

31:57Jessie Zwaan: I desperately want to go. I need. I have to – I thought I was on my own. It turns out, Jesse, you've been thinking about a lot of these things to the point at which you've written an amazing book. Daniel, your friends are like in the depths. Every single one of them. And, you know, I just think it's a beautiful thing that you always find a way of finding these things that are still relevant, Jesse. And that's why I'm grateful to be your friend and just to be able to like do things like this, like just have a casual podcast with Jesse Svon. And so because like I think this is another body of work you're bringing your audience that is like really going to change the way people think about this like this relationship that has been out of whack for a while.

32:49Like I think, you know, I knew, but I didn't know. I chose to kind of sleepwalk a little longer to continue to sleepwalk. And so and it's OK being awake. And like, you know, it just it, you know, it is what it is. Or it can be more if I choose that, if that's what I want. So I don't know. I'll quit rambling now because I know we're getting close to the end. And I know we only have a few minutes left, Jesse. So with the six minutes we have left with you, I know you've done a lot of these interviews for the book. What's the question that you're not getting, that you're hoping that somebody asks you?

33:26One thing keeps coming up on the podcast, and that's the leave. It's one of those processes that everybody has, but very few get right. And we just talked about this the other week with Kim Smith from Tilt, and she framed it in a way that really clicked for me. Not every employee experiences leave the same way. Some want every detail up front, others feel overwhelmed, and just want you to simply tell them what to do next. But most companies deliver the exact same experience to everyone. It's one thing to have a compliant leave program. It's another to have one that actually works for the human going through it.

34:02And that's where Tilt comes in. Tilt is a leave experience platform that helps teams move beyond one size fits all processes. Using Tilt, companies can tailor the leave experience to each employee's needs, keep managers aligned on coverage and return to work, automate complex workflows like pay and compliance, and give HR the space to focus on support and not spreadsheets. In other words, the tech handles the complexity so that the people team can show up where it matters most as a human. Leave isn't just an HR process. These are life-changing moments that can make or break the employee experience.

34:40If you want to learn more about Tilt, go to hellotilt.com slash NPL. That's hellotilt.com slash NPL.

34:49Jessie Zwaan: I think there's a, I don't know if it's a, maybe I'll give you the answer because I don't know the question yet until I tell you this. Maybe you can, we can reverse engineer. We can do like. No, this is perfect. This is what I'm trying to get to anyway. jeopardy type thing where I give you the answer and you have to guess what the question might be. What is? I think it's something along the lines of like what so I think there's a lot of leaders out there that will hear these. So to your point Stephen before you just mentioned that there are circumstances in which we're doing something that we're kind of we know is probably not the right thing to do whether that be personal or professional we know it's not really the right thing it doesn't really feel quite right but if we go out and we change it it almost means we have to go and be like oh okay yeah all right yeah we did it too like we did it too and i understand there's like a kind of shame a little in going out and making you and saying you've made mistakes particularly mistakes that are like kind of related to like people's happiness on mass like hr leaders take this responsibility like we're creating we're looking after people's happiness and fulfillment on mass but then feel a little uncomfortable when we realize like oh maybe we made some calls that didn't quite do that you know uh so thinking about that is like I think the question I want is kind of like what's holding you back I want to kind of say out to people leaders like if you're listening to that and you're struggling with I don't really want to go out and tell people or change the whole strategy because like it would mean that if they're like really fight for this and argue for it like what is actually really holding you back and the context for why I asked that question is a couple of while I was writing this book I you know I spoke to this woman at a workshop where I was doing some uh kind of like research and talking about the concept of the troop HR event and really similar to what you know Stephen had just mentioned there like she was saying she's been doing racking in her own brain what am I doing what am I getting my career I'm feeling like lost but even more sad is she felt that something in her was broken she's like around me i have all these people saying they love the company purpose it's what wakes them up every day they're telling their teams that and i i think they really feel that way and i just don't feel like that and for years i've been thinking like maybe i'm at the wrong company maybe i've got the wrong boss maybe i'm just broken maybe the thing that's motivating everyone else is just not motivating me and she genuinely believed the narrative so hard that she thought she was the issue like everyone is emperor new clothing each other everyone is out there with the exception of i think some like kind of like slightly egotistical founders understand that not everyone is going to be motivated by your company purpose and there are other things that motivate people just as equally so instead we built this big kind of emperor's new clothes framework of like kind of small manipulations that doesn't just result in you saying things that aren't 100 true and kind of frustrating people it actually makes people hurt it hurts people this is like not the same as going out and doing a performance review rollout that's kind of frustrating that's what built for people dealt with this is going out and telling people everyone gets motivation in this way and you should too and then building the systems that silences dissenters and I think what is holding you back from trying to break that because it's probably hurting you too I would love that we always need a part two yeah I mean I was kind of a mic conversation yeah yeah I I don't want I think that is like the perfect place to end this portion of the conversation because like these are questions good questions to to find answers to.

38:37They're not easy answers because it's like, oh, you know, the likely initial responses that I was about to rattle off, you know, can be scary. Honestly, you know, when you dig a little deeper, sometimes we find things that we don't want to look at or are a little scary. And so, man, I, I've said this before and I will say it again and again and again, Jesse, I really think you're a genius in what you do and how you do it. He says that every time. You've done it again. You've done it again. I think it would have been so easy to do built for people too or built for people part do or AI built for people.

39:21That would have been the easy path, but I feel like you've done it again. You've found something that really needs to be talked about. And I feel like you have this desire to seek out the unknown. You're like an explorer in that sense. Man, I should do all these podcasts every week.

39:38Jessie Zwaan: I need someone gassing me up with more conviction. No, I believe these things to be true. And so I think that gets us to our final tradition in these build podcasts. That's one word phrase close. Jessie, we're going to pick on you. You know this. I think mine is going to be the most cliche thing ever, but it's all we have is every day. I don't know if you know this, but there's like a famous author and Joan Didion. She got interviewed by a journalist. I think I might have talked about this in the podcast. And the journalist said, you seem like a woman of a certain aesthetic. I hear you use your finest silverware every day.

40:21Jessie Zwaan: And she wrote back or said back, all we have is every day. And I think about that every single day when I'm working. every single day when I'm trying to figure out what I'm trying to do with my life. Yeah, I think it's a nice little way to end. I'll say timely. Like this conversation can be more timely. I think a lot of people, a lot of our listeners are probably struggling with these same thoughts and, you know, are having similar experiences at their company. So that's, I'm going to, yeah, timely. What do you got, Steven? I'm going to go with like live your best life, y 'all. We have a finite amount of time here and we should all enjoy what we've got.

41:02And I think our conversation today has been a good reminder of that for me. So I'm going to end there. Same here. Well, Jesse, this was fun. All right, y 'all. Thank you. Bye, guys. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Modern People Leader. We really, really appreciate it. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a five-star rating. it would mean the world to us and connect with us on LinkedIn. We want to know what you think about the show and you can find links to both of our profiles in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and see you on the next episode.