293. Only Two Job Titles: How to Flatten Your Entire Company (And Why It Works), with GentleForces Founder and CEO, Danni Mohammed

0:00I want you to meet Danni Mohammed, founder of Gentle Forces, a creative and innovation practice that works with some of the biggest brands on the planet. And she does all this with just two job titles. We have practice leads and practitioners. I hate job titles. I think they get in the way. Here's what's strange.

0:16Leanne:You'd expect a company built on creative chaos, on deliberately making people feel uncomfortable, on riffing and rethinking and tearing ideas apart, to feel pretty intense to work in. The team have talked about the space being really calm, really easy to connect with co-workers, really open, really welcoming. We've got people that I'm proud of that have been here since the beginning, so nearly five years. And they're here and they're talking about the future. And I think they're really proud that they've been part of something that is, you know, that they're building that's different. So today we're asking, what if the traditional job title structure isn't defining your people, instead is actually the thing that's holding them back?

1:02Leanne:Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al and I'm a business owner and we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Dani Mohamed has spent her career at some of the world's most recognised creative companies, Saatchi & Saatchi, Veeden & Kennedy, Adidas, WPP. This is all before founding Gentle Forces, now five years old. Along the way, she's been described as having night vision, the ability to see possibilities in the dark that others simply can't.

1:37Leanne:And the structure she built at Gentle Forces is genuinely radical. There's no layers of creative directors and account managers and heads of this and that, just two titles. and are caught just so calm, her own team keep using the same word to describe it, even though the work itself is deliberately, productively chaotic. So after this quick break, we'll find out why Dani chose just two job titles, how she balances creative chaos with actual client delivery and whether her model could work outside the creative industry. Don't go anywhere. You know that feeling when you've decided on a content strategy.

2:11The brief is written, everyone's aligned and you realise someone still has to sit down and actually create all this content. That someone is you and it's due tomorrow.

2:19Leanne:That someone is often me. But luckily, Bree's assistant can help. It works right inside HubSpot, drafting campaign copy and blog posts and emails, all in your brand voice. It's grounded in your actual customer data too. So you don't just create content, you create content that converts. What a line. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

2:46I'm Dani Mohamed. I run and founded a practice for creativity and innovation called Gentle Forces. And we're nearly five years old. There's a lot of different things about this particular venture involved in compared to previous ones. One of the ones I noticed was that you don't seem to like job titles. If I got it right, you've only got two in Gentle Forces. Yes, two in the front end. We have practice leads and practitioners. I hate job titles. I think they get in the way and many of them can limit potential. And I think also on the flip side or on the other side of it, it can feed ego. And actually what we're there for is to do some great work.

3:36And that's what we should be focusing on. I believe the two job titles are practice leads and practitioners. Now to the untrained ear, that sounds like the same thing to me. So what are the differences? So we work in the creative and design industry and innovation industry, and we're coming up with ideas, we're problem solving. And so really, it's about our craft. So we have strategy, design and creative are the sort of three main disciplines that we provide as a service to clients, whether that's brand strategy, brand transformation, that sort of brand building, creative concepts, campaigns, content, design identities, entities, all that sort of stuff.

4:16And really, anyone who's doing any of that is a practitioner and they're practicing their craft, right? And then practice leads are basically just more experienced and more senior and have more accountability. So they are responsible for advancing that discipline. So if you're a practitioner, then you just listed off about 11 different things that a practitioner could potentially do. So do you ever have practitioners practitioners who go I don't really know what it is I do because my job title is practitioner no we have so you'll be a strategy practitioner a design practitioner a creative practitioner so they know what they're doing so it's more about the fact that you sort of not necessarily hierarchy but you go okay am I right in thinking that a practice lead would be mainly client face whereas a practitioner would be sort of more many working on the work is that the division No, both are working on the work.

5:09Both have access to the client. It's the practice lead that is more responsible and accountable for the project and the discipline. So we've all seen Mad Men and that's what we imagine your industry is like. I'm sure it's very different than what it was 70 years ago. But with Mad Men, there was a direct progression upwards. So you've always got another job you can potentially be going for in terms of promotion. Do you not find that it's a little restrictive if you've only got one place you can go? Once you're a practice lead, there's nowhere else to go. What have I misunderstood about that? Yeah, no, it's a really good question.

5:49It's something I think about a lot. Because, you know, we have people, you know, people coming into the company, people that have been with us since the beginning for five years. But really, you're talking about progress. And I think progress, yes, promotions are important, but how often do they need to happen? And, you know, compensation is progress. So that still happens. And they know that happens. And also we're talking about bringing in, you know, we're in 2026. Oh, my gosh. And we've heard loads about Gen Z need to be managed differently and all this sort of stuff. So status is less of a thing for the younger generations.

6:38Yes, it's still important. You know, we're all we all have egos. but it's more you know what else can your job and your company you know the company you work for bring to your your daily life right so the flexibility that's incredibly important not getting burnt out you know a lot of younger people think about their mental health increasingly more so which is a good thing and you know not prepared to sort of do what it was that we did before. So if things are changing, why are then, you know, organizational structures still the same? I guess is the question. You've worked for some major, major, major agencies, like you name it and you've probably worked there.

7:24But if someone comes in from one of these agencies, they just pick one out, the AWPP or something like that, they come in and they're intervening for a job. Does it confuse them that they don't have this job title thing? Maybe, but then they're not right for gentle horses. So we've had people that, you know, we're basically talking about tradition versus modernity. And there are people that, you know, the industry is great in so many ways and the industry is not great in so many ways. And people are realizing that and changing that in the way that they think they can contribute to that. And those that come along that have perhaps only had a very traditional career ladder or experience, they perhaps might find it more challenging to sort of interview or join Gentle Forces if that happened.

8:20But really it's about mindset. They might have had a traditional background, but maybe they're showing that they've got more of a growth mindset or more of an attitude that suits, you know, the modern practice of where we're going. Without naming names or throwing anyone under the bus, what is it you'd like to see changed in the industry, something which seems like you're doing at the moment? There's still these invisible structures. And then we're pedestalling certain types of people, leaders or disciplines. And I'm just not interested in that. I'm interested in how can everyone reach their potential?

9:00How can we collaborate? How can we get to great work, whoever you are? Because why, you know, without sounding too abstract or sort of ethereal, but, you know, we're all human and we all have potential. That's basically, I think, you know, Nike talk a lot about that in their world, but it's true. So why are we placing restrictions or limits or walls or, you know, barriers in the way of people's potential? and we're a people business and it's human ingenuity, it's human creativity. That is all of us. And then there are certain craft and skills, you know, some that are perhaps more designers or more conceptual or more strategic, whatever it may be.

9:52But, you know, I don't think anyone's really challenging that. I mean, I'm sure there are some out there, but we walk into this mad men set up perhaps, you know, and they would have had all of the levels, the, you know, the account man, the account, you know, director, the managing director and so on, the ECD, the creative director, all, I mean, they would have had so many levels, including the secretary who would have been female. But, you know, that was, what did you say, 70 years ago? So what are we doing? So I'm, I think I'm just seeing a better way and just doing it and seeing how that goes.

10:35And of course, it suits some and of course, it doesn't suit others. But it suited a lot of people that have stayed here and even new hires who probably, you know, you think they're going to go and get the next promotion to a creative director or something. But they come here and or a head of creative and they come here in the creative practice lead, you know. But what they value is the independence of the company, the culture, the team, the openness, all of that. So that's incredibly important as well as structure. But it's how you are wanting to be structured to serve your output and serve your clients.

11:18Your approach probably makes some of the more traditional companies a little uncomfortable. but I've heard you say get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Is that what you say? Have I got that right? We are problem solving. We are coming up with creative ideas, creative thinking, strategic, you know, flips or reimagining brands. That takes a sort of level of creativity, a level of discomfort. Of course it does because if everything is comfortable, If everything is fine, I mean, there's nothing fresh about that. It's probably been done 20 times. So it's really important that we're interrogating, we're pushing ideas around, we're riffing, we're challenging each other respectfully where and when it needs to.

12:15But when I think people hear challenge, I think it sounds like a fight. It's not at all. It's more just being able to feel that you can question a thought or build on it and have that dialogue. I think in some companies, people are too scared to say anything, too scared to sort of fail. We've heard that a lot. And so really, I'm just trying to create an environment where it's more open and more direct, I guess, more, more, you know, there's more discussion around the thing. and that's what clients are paying for us is to get to the thing and when i say the thing i'm assuming you know what i'm talking about the idea the the magic the the solution um the you know the concept whatever whatever the it might be but they're they're paying for us to to get to that and that's the hard work that we've got to do so this is segwayed perfectly into my next question so if you're embracing the chaos of creativity which sounds amazing but you also need to get to a deliverable to the thing to the idea for the client how do you stop it just becoming essentially like a kindergarten where everyone's got amazing ideas but nothing actually gets done that's why you need to balance chaos and order so you know um i think one of my old bosses at Widen and Kennedy actually used to say I was the queen of frameworks.

13:43And my current, my managing partner here, Nathan, he would say, you know, yeah, you have the chaos and then suddenly it gets a bit too out of control and then you apply the order, the control perhaps. And so they both, So again, I sort of come back, maybe it's as we're talking, it's this intuition, it's being more human, right? So there is always two sides to us, right? You and I are both masculine and feminine. I have a masculine side, I have a feminine side. you know they're in in life there's there's chaos and order you can't have one without the other so it's just about you know acknowledging that in your process otherwise I think what you get to and in some places I've worked at or even in some places I haven't worked at there's too much order and that's where you get the generic output and then in some there's too much chaos and then they can't deliver at a level of scale right when you're working with really big global brands which which we do and so it's allowing for that creativity to happen allowing for that strategic thinking to happen for me I think about you know my background is strategy and I think about that as you know it's actually quite creative but the leaps that you can make um strategically so So, you know, strategy, you probably think of consultants like, you know, BCG or McKinsey or Bain, and it's all very logical.

15:16And that's great. But you also need to apply the illogical to make that jump. Otherwise, it's all sounding, you know, you're working on a brand in a category and you're doing that logical process. And then you're working on another brand in the same category next month. I mean, it's the same, isn't it? so you need to apply some tension some friction you know you need to you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable to be able to to take those those different um trajectories in your mind or with the with the team that you're working with could you talk us through what it would look like if we were sat at the table with your guys and you were putting together a project and it's chaotic and then you pull it towards order is an example of a project you can think of i would say every project right because this is our process so really we you know you'll get you'll get a brief and we're interdisciplinary so you'll have the core team across strategy creative design and client partnerships sitting around the table and we're basically just having a conversation and it's very you know some people might have brainstorms or you know some people might you know just give it to the the first person in the part of the process in which case that would be strategy and they go and sit in a room for back in the day was five weeks now maybe it's five hours but still they would be isolated to to think about that on their own and so you're not you're not being able to sort of hear different perspectives and sort of make those connections So we're basically having a conversation in this room, for example, and hopefully laughing.

17:02That's really important. And, you know, there's no end goal at that point. You know, we're just instinctively trying to find what this thing is, understanding what world it plays in, how it can, you know, show up differently in that world or how it can have a distinct point of view in that space. And we're just throwing a lot of things around. and then probably client partnerships will get involved and say right okay you know or we'll have another meeting and it will be another session and then we'll start to sort of divide and conquer and do do what we need to do um so yeah the the project plan and the you know the deliverables and all of that that's the order that that comes in um but yeah it's it's quite I feel it's almost yeah I feel very comfortable playing between the two poles in one session and I'm trying to my role really now is is a facilitator of that or a conductor of that and how I can you know help the the practice leads to do that as we go forward but to be honest I think anyone can really do it and it's really building muscle and experience in the in the room.

18:22So we've got this idea that I've put in my head is like democratized chaos. So there's like a huge table. Everyone's got amazing ideas. This is cool. My instinct would be there needs to be one person who's got the final say on creativity and the final say. Does that happen or is it against or democratized? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think the easiest way to sort of explain it is diverging, converging. So we need to open up and expand our minds, our thinking, expand the brief right I would say nine times out of ten a brief comes from a client and sometimes briefs don't come um but the and you you know you try and understand it together but a an ask or a brief will come and the actual solution is not what they they've asked for in the brief um is the one that gets signed off it's a bit like you know when you buy you're looking for a house and you're like I need the house to be this this and this you know let's say Victorian with a back garden and you end up buying a new build penthouse apartment instead you know you think you want those things and then so you know that is the reality and so we're expanding the brief we're actually you know we're we're understanding the parameters or the the tent poles of it and then we're sort of trying to solve solve the bigger thing and we do it a lot in collaboration with client with our clients we have to it's it's their brand and their business they know it best um but then you know the first couple of sessions we don't need to make decisions right we're still diverging but when we need to make decisions it's the practice lead of that discipline so if it's strategic project the strategic practice lead we'll make that decision if it's a if it's a creative um outcome the creative practice lead will make that decision so with all this chaos sounds like a cool place i would love to work there but it also feels like somewhere that if you're not careful you could get burnt out because you've not got that order i mean have you ever seen that do you do how do you deal with that yeah that's really important i mean we're seeing that across industry aren't we and you know before i talk about it as um as a as a potential reaction to this we are seeing it out there and we're seeing you know do everything more for less we're seeing you know the the geopolitical situation that's obviously having you know having a burden on us the at the post pandemic this is really really important and it's it's a bit I I liken it we work a lot with um sports brands we actually founded with um building H &M move from scratch so building um a sports brand for H &M globally really incredible project um and you know in sport you work really hard and then you recover you know there's this like you know the the mindset of I'm not saying we work really hard in that sense but you're you're you're figuring something out you're you're you're in that chaos but then you can't do that You're not doing that sort of every hour.

21:34You know, there is the balance of chaos and order. And then there's quiet time for the order. And then, you know, someone needs to work on the deliverable. So it's, as I said, it's a balance. It's not just chaos. It's chaos and order and diverging and converging and just knowing where in the project that needs to happen to get to the solution.

21:54Leanne:I don't suppose you've got any good podcast recommendations. Do you know what I do? and coincidentally, this podcast is on the HubSpot Podcast Network. Who knew? The audio professional. We're going to come to that. This old marketing is hosted by Joe Polizzi and Robert Rose and it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio, Leanne, together. The audio destination for business professionals. Where all podcasts, good podcasts live. Exactly. Joe and Robert are two of the most well-known experts in the content marketing space and they talk about the latest content marketing trends and discuss how businesses can use content to attract and retain customers.

22:26Lovely.

22:26Leanne:Yeah, I've actually been listening. Each podcast show features a discussion of content marketing headlines. We like headlines. Love them. Rants from Joe and Robert on what's going on in the industry. We like that too. And this old marketing example from the past that we can learn from. It's always useful, entertaining and never more than 60 minutes. Yeah, I love the recent episode about alternatively influential. These are the micro-influencers who have real impact, but they don't have massive follower counts. Listen to this old marketing wherever you get your podcasts.

23:00From a personal point of view, if you're embracing this beautiful chaos at work, which is controlled chaos, but still chaos, then in your personal life, do you prefer things to be ordered outside of work? Very good question, Al. My husband will probably be listening to this. It's funny. I'm definitely more chaos than he is. but overall we actually yeah we're very quiet at home um and yeah I think you know it's just a different expression of your um of yourself so you've got the concept obviously of extroverts and introverts and again it's binary right when we talk about boxing people in things and then there's I think back in the day it was ambivert and now it's was it outrovert or something but I am both um I can be very you know it's about as we all know introversion is you know when you need to recover um on your own and you you get energy from being alone and extroversion is you get energy from others and you know other stimulus I I need both that's me personally Some people in the team, very introverted, some very extroverted.

24:22At our AGM end of last year, I did a, how shall I say it, a sort of movement exercise around chaos and order. And we all, I mean, this is where I'm probably a bit mad. but you know it was like okay everyone now behave like chaos right and people were just in their body doing whatever they were doing right okay now order and we had two groups and one was chaos and one was order and then we switched it around and then we had then we just discussed what what did that feel like and a lot of the people who are typically orderly was like oh I felt like there was a freedom of thinking and I did you know and an expression and ideas and then the people that were typically chaos were like yeah it's quite exhausting so again you sort of need to there's pros and cons to these things and you you need to just find that balance it's always about the tension and the balance and you know it's my responsibility and also the the practice lead leads who are in the leadership team to make sure that as a company and as um and all the you know the people that work here we're managing that i want to work at your place this sounds amazing you mentioned the word interdisciplinary i think before when you're describing that table full of people i want to know first of all in a creative agency or creative practice what does that mean and secondly let's dive a bit more deep into how you get all these different people and teams working together as one?

25:56Interdisciplinary. You've probably heard of multidisciplinary where basically you are working on your specific discipline and you're collaborating. Interdisciplinary is you're working on your specific discipline, but you're working together to create something new. And so, you know, I think typically in organizations, we might have a lot of I've seen a lot of silos and you know the objective is to collaborate right but I really see the benefit of when you're again it takes it takes a lot I'm sure you're gonna we're gonna get on to how hard this is as any and change is hard right and I'm willing to do it and I'm willing to see what comes out of it for people individually and and for the for the company and for for the people we work with but yeah interdisciplinary is um working together to create something something new and that's what we're here to do you know so if I can enable that process if I can enable that those conditions and if I can enable that structure then we're only going to make better work so let's imagine that you were crazy enough to employ me um i'd love i'd love to al i'm not sure you'd leave your podcast so so i came up like as a copywriter self-taught you know read all the stuff um i do i'm quite proud of the copy i create however if i was sitting at a table and i've got someone who is from a different, from a slightly different area, and I give them my copywriting, and they start criticizing and pulling it apart, in a nice way of pulling it apart, my ego's going to be bruised.

27:49I'm going to be a little bit like, hang on a minute. I'm the copywriter. You're the creative. I don't know any other job titles, but you're the person who does this. How are you resolving that conflict? I'm guessing you don't employ me in the first place, but imagine you do have that conflict. How are you resolving it? As I said before, like the culture is open. and so one of the other things that I think is really important and we're you know we're we're just like any other company like this but we're trying to get better at is well we're probably not like just any other company where is feedback right and I talk about feedback as a gift and you know we need to be able to to discuss I mean you know this is not about picking unpicking what you've written uh al if we're if we're here having a chat about this but we're not no we're not about unpicking what you've written it's it's more higher level than that it's the idea that you're getting across and then you'll go away and refine it so it's less about the you know the craft that is required and only a copywriter you know can do no an art director is not necessarily going to be able to do that but what we're discussing is you've written let's say you've written a brand manifesto for a new luxury brand or a new skincare brand or something, but it's not just your words, it's the strategic, you know, positioning of it.

29:19It's the creative transformation of where we're going to take the skincare brand and you've written the words. So really you're working side by side with a strategist and the creative practice lead, let's say, who's conceptually trying to, you know, see the potential of it. So yeah, it's not, it's not the micro part of it. It's more the bigger, the bigger thinking. If I did a word count for the word practice in my notes I've got here, it would come up far more often than any other podcast brief I've ever done. You seem to really like the word practice. I've got down here, we've got practice leads, practitioners, practice weeks, you call of a practice, not an agency.

30:02What's this obsession with the word practice? Again, coming back to what we do, but it's not, it's not fait accompli, right? It's not done. And so practice, you're practicing, you know, you, you're keeping developing, learning, growing, adapting evolving expanding you have to there's no ceiling right or there's no and that's you know again links back to structures of okay the ecd knows everything or the creative chairman knows everything no they're still learning and i'm sure if if some people who had those titles were here they'd probably agree so it's really about expanding opening deepening our practice and how can we do that in our in our day-to-day jobs and you know practice weeks being something we do every quarter to step outside of the the business as usual and you know very much inspired by architect practices I I think that was you know I love I almost wish I'd done enough I mean there's various degrees I'm sure we wish we'd done when we were doing the degrees but I really love that's that feels to me pretty interdisciplinary which is I mean of course architects have their own um discipline and and craft but you know my my cousin is a phenomenal architect and you know you've got to be very good at maths you've got to be you know so you've got mathematical you've got to be you know visionary to come up with the idea and you know you've got to to have the skill of drawing and putting the thing together so so they're very what would typically be quite competing skill sets and I just love the idea of bringing that together in a lateral way so it never occurred to me before that it's a nuance of English I suppose but an architect practice you wouldn't say an architect agency you would say an architect practice so and it sounds like I'm really flogging this horse but I just want to understand what is the semantics between practice and agency yeah great question um you know for me agency has been around since whenever but you're really as an agency the work has been outsourced to you and you are supplying something, right?

32:43That could be one definition. Another one could be, you know, has connotations around it in our industry. And I think there's, for me, there's been so many connotations applied to things that just don't feel right. They don't feel inclusive they don't feel progressive and so and they feel quite fixed and so I feel like we've all got an idea of agency whereas it was really important for me when setting up gentle forces and and as we go about things day to day that it's an expansive space that it's somewhere where people are going to grow in many ways and going to learn and they're going to develop their craft they're going to hone their craft and you know which I'm just like anyone else I've got to turn up to work every day and I want to enjoy what I do and I want to keep learning you know there's yeah I'm in my early 40s I want to I want to keep learning and I think everyone else does as well I suppose the irony is that agency implies free will but actually the traditional agency model is that you just go in you deliver work and you don't have free will free will I love that idea and you know we're hybrid working here no one's checking on anyone on you know whatever they're doing it's really you know they're accountable for their product for what they're doing in their projects in their discipline and with the team and that is cultivated in culture and it's it's not easy and but it's but it's done and now or it's being done and now the culture holds up so obviously as a founder you establish a culture and you lead by example and you know the company is really a reflection of you I guess I guess that's what founders um are right whichever company you founded but at some point for that to become scalable it needs to work without you right or it needs to you know be imparted and so I'm very proud of that which is the culture holds itself and and it and it evolves you know and so on I just want to ask you about this night vision that I believe people have described you as having this night vision what the hell are they talking about this is when I was working at WPP actually and and we we founded a creative accelerator right so for those who don't know WPP is and I'm sure a lot of a lot of your listeners do that's a huge holding company a huge communications and creative and and technology holding company and you know it's like a big what do you call like aircraft carrier or big tanker and so you know we set up WPP Black Ops and it was basically looking at so one of their biggest clients Crotter and Gamble sponsors the Olympics and it was for SK2 which is a huge Japanese skincare brand big in Japan and China and even the US and it was sponsoring Tokyo 2020 which then became 2021 and you know the the typical way wasn't getting the types of creativity and ideas and I would say chaos that the that the CEO of SK2 wanted you know he is he actually loves chaos this this guy who now works somewhere else and um so we you know we we basically ignored that setup and and then created something else and you know this was thinking about how can we bring people in from outside WPP to to create something and how can we you know and from within WPP and just set up something new and it was incredible We launched with six female athletes, including Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time, and Japanese athletes and Chinese athletes, which are huge in their respective countries.

37:09And it was a huge animated anthology that was launched around Tokyo Olympics. So I'm not sure that would have happened otherwise. And was that the seed of Gentle Forces practice? yes and no i would say there's been seeds you know it's almost what we've been chatting about in this podcast which is you know my experience over the years and what's felt restrictive and what's felt um enabling my own um my own approach to life i guess all of that but but yes it it happened probably two uh it was two jobs before i set up gentle forces after that i was at adidas headquarters but yeah i think they all they all um connect to each other don't they you are groundbreaking in a lot of a lot of ways you've been you've been described as having night vision described in fact i've got so many sound bites from you i haven't got time to put them all in this is all different this is all breaking it and rebuilding it so what went wrong when you did that a lot i mean for any startup founder you always get everything wrong at the beginning you know A lot of time was wasted, I think, because you're sort of setting up to do something new.

38:31So we're talking a lot about whatever it is we're talking about and that wastes time and time is money. But then some brilliance comes out of that. so it I would say you know when you're regardless if it's a practice or not I think for any startup founder you always look back and go gosh that was a big thing there wasn't it that could have been done differently and you know a lot of it will be to do with um you know there's no processes at all and so that's not efficient but the whole point that there's no processes is because you've been able to set something up you know it comes it comes in both ways but I would just say you know we're really coming into our own the last couple of years the first three years were very challenging we were founded in the pandemic we you know had one huge global client it was a bit of an anomaly I imagine like founders set up just eating baked beans out of their bedroom you know what I mean whereas we we had a huge we had huge trust in yeah I had a I had an ex-client from Adidas Simon who set up who had the task of setting up this new sports brand at H &M and he called me and he called me I think I was the second person after he called his mum and so that meant well I didn't know this at the time but you know that was huge and the trust to to build something you know for me to build something to solve that need.

40:14Jeff Bezos is kind of renowned for maybe oversimplification but Jeff Bezos is renowned for saying brand is what how people describe you when you're not in the room how do you think your team would describe working at General Forces if you weren't in the room? I think we did a survey actually last week, the other week. And what I was seeing coming up was sort of calm. It's a lot of calm. I think we were talking about what's it like to work in this space. And just coming back to your question about being comfortable with the uncomfortable, it was really important that this didn't feel corporate and uncomfortable, but that the space felt comfortable and, you know, no harsh lighting and, you know, more natural materials and different spaces.

41:06So the team have talked about the space being really calm, really easy to connect with, with co-workers, really open, really welcoming. I heard all of those words but then in terms of working at Gentle Forces I think they're I think they're proud I think you know we've got people that I'm proud of that have been here since the beginning so nearly five years and they're here and they're talking about the future and I think they're really proud that they've been part of something that is you know that they're building that's different and i think they can also see that you know a lot of people want to come and work with us and so you know that that makes them yeah feel feel good as well imagine i have an accountancy firm right and we're not well actually you do call them accountancy practices but imagine i've had an accountancy firm we're going to be working on very different things and ideas and you we don't want chaos we want very much want order but do you still think the two job title idea would work in a business like that?

42:15I would say it's possible. And I just want to sort of take a step back to sort of ask ourselves, you know, when everything, when everything is changing around us, right? It's like that film, Everything Everywhere All at Once or whatever it's called, but I think it won an Oscar or something, but everything is changing, like everything. So I, I would say, why are we not open to changing first or embracing that change? And so, you know, let's take an example of a manufacturing firm. I don't actually know what the titles are, but why couldn't you have plant leads and plant, you know, workers? I mean, another term probably, I'm not okay with all of that.

42:59But really, you know, we're just talking about doing the work that we're doing. versus and you've got younger people coming through right younger people coming through it's a different world it's a different generation and so you know we're not adapting at all so arguably is it more risk that there's a company uh approach that's two titles or is it more risk to carry on with the status quo so imagine someone's listening to this and goes yes the two job titles I love this but they've currently got 30 job titles how would you coach them into starting to reduce that down to two I don't think it's about two I think the number two I think it's about what is their main output what is their main focus what kind of culture do they want and you know for me I want a culture of everyone learning evolving adapting and being open and practicing you know and making great work whereas you know there's 30 job titles the funny thing is sorry just coming back to that thing that i just said about the risk where's where's more risk the funny thing is we are seeing world over regardless of industry right industry agnostic we are seeing streamlining consolidation you know efficiencies which what does that then result in redundancies and so do we need the 30 levels probably not so that's what I'm saying about you know how can we optimize refine build for the work that we're doing and build a structure around that and and you've kind of got to be quite bold to do it in a very established organization but it is totally possible and it may be that you go from 30 to 15 but without you know this is a whole other thing in terms of redundancies and all of the rest of it but it's I'm not saying make redundancies I'm just saying you know how can you transition into something that works better for the company we've just seen Kimberly Clark you know acquire Kenvu, who used to be Johnson & Johnson.