How to actually futureproof your career and get promoted with Vanessa Kingori

0:11What is up? I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Hard. the podcast-shaped guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing. Because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

0:25What is up and welcome back to Working Hard. Today's episode is for absolutely anyone who is stepping into a new chapter in their career or feels ready to aim higher but wants clarity on what that actually looks like. I'm joined by Vanessa King-Aury, a woman who has consistently shaped the industries she's worked in. She became publisher of GQ UK and GQ Style, the first woman and first person of colour in that role and went on to become publishing director of British Vogue. She later served as chief business officer at Condé Nast Britain, overseeing 10 major brands, and she now leads the technology, media and telecoms division at Google UK.

0:57Her career has been built on courage, purpose and a very intentional approach to leadership and progression. If you want practical, grounded career guidance that actually translates into action and how to do it, this conversation will give you exactly that. And before we dive in, make sure you follow us on your podcast app. A huge number of you listen on Spotify, but if you haven't hit follow yet, this is your reminder. It hugely helps us at the podcast. So let's get into it.

1:24Vanessa King-Ori OBE, are you currently more working hard or hardly working? Hi Grace, it's so lovely to be. I know, I'm literally straight in. You're like, hello. Hello. I'm like, are you working hard or hardly working? I know, girl, I'm working hard. Working hard or hardly working? I think I am working very hard right now with a view to not feeling like I'm working oh I like that so I I one of my um the voices in my head is interestingly a very prolific photographer called David Bailey and the first time I worked with him years and years ago on a GQ shoot was absolute mad experience and it was so cool to be there seeing how he pulls everything together and he works so hard and he was in his 80s you know and I said to him what are the kind of key tenants of how you work and what drives you and he said work I don't know if it work right and he's like I've never worked a day in my life because I do what I love and when you're energized by something you love you never feel like you have the power to do more and more and more and more and it's something I think about often is that when I am super energized, almost obsessed with what I'm doing, I don't feel like I'm working hard, almost slightly to my detriment, something I need to work on.

2:49And when I know I'm probably not in the right place or not in something that I need to be for a long time, might be a tactical thing, I'm working really hard and I feel it. So I think like hard work is not necessarily the hours put in or how difficult the task is, but more how you feel and how you find it. So it's a kind of nuanced question for me. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's a, I think it is a nuanced question. And I think that the, it is such a wonderful position to be in to love what you do. And I think, of course, that doesn't mean that you're going to love every day. It doesn't mean that you're going to love every second.

3:25But I think what you said there around almost inserting things that you love into your work where you can. I think that one thing I had is for years and years, I tried to optimize for productivity all the time. And don't get me wrong, productivity is very important. And it's particularly important in organizations and, you know, improving yourself in a job and all of these different things. It's also not the only metric. And I think that one thing I measured myself by over and over again was pure productivity. And I maximized my weeks in terms of how much I can fit in effectively. And actually, in reality, that took away a lot of the joy because it meant that I wasn't meeting with anyone in person.

4:01It meant that I wasn't doing a lot of kind of collaborative brainstorming with people. All of these different things that I loved, but maybe weren't the most productive thing to do. Maybe it's more productive if we all do it on our own. We come together, we confirm what we're doing and move away in half an hour. But that took away a lot of the joy out of what I was doing. And I think knowing that is so important because I think that productivity and effectiveness and all of these things are great, but they cannot be the only metric if you want to enjoy your work and if you're in the privileged position to be able to enjoy your work.

4:33100%. And I would add to that that actually, which seems counterintuitive, the number one productivity hack is joy. If you are joyous in what you're doing, you get stuff done. I was going to swear, but we won't do that. You can swear. Okay, you can. You know, like, it's so true. No, it's just like, I mean, Edward and Infull and I, when we were transforming Vogue and it seemed like an impossible task. I mean, there was so much going on behind the scenes. We didn't have our teams together. We were bringing people in and blah, blah, blah. And we would be in that office from insane o 'clock in the morning.

5:12We would meet in the car, talk about work in the car, get to work, do more work, go to lunch together, talk about work at lunch. like stay in the office until 11 p.m go to an event we went on holiday so annoying for our partners we went to marrakesh separately but would have dinners and talk about work and it was not and we were so hyper productive because we were so obsessed and so joyful and so i feel like that we've been told this myth that it's two different things and productivity is purely about sure how we schedule things like how we maximize our time I do think there's huge value in in all of that but I would say for me number one on that pillar not always is how energized am I for that it's the best fuel it's the best coffee you don't feel the time passing and you can squeeze out so much more for a day and bring so many people along with you because it's infectious right that you actually can delegate better.

6:18So I would say that the sweet spot, which is a kind of utopia, right? It's not always possible is when you are really thinking about how energized I am for this task over that task. So one of the things I do when I'm thinking about productivity is the eat that frog thing. So I'm just like, okay, my actual energy is high right now. The best thing I can do productivity wise is do all the stuff I don't like to do. And I am, I'm going to let you into a secret, a horrible procrastinator over things I just am not motivated to do. And I tend to do the stuff that I just love doing when a bit later at night and so on, because I just know it's, I'm fueled, I'm pumped.

7:05So actually I think we've, we've gotten to a place in a lot of the business rhetoric where those two things are seen as like two different camps and I think the next evolution of kind of productivity is to really think about joy and to think about the timing and and if you are time blocking time block the stuff that you know you're gonna you're gonna get done when you're lowest energy yeah and I also think that it's almost as you're saying it's like the joy increases your capacity because if productivity is purely a measure of how much you can get done in a period of time almost that time you're willing to give to productivity just massively increases because you are happy about it I look at look back at the way I was working at university and I was doing 10 ,000 words a week in my degree and then I was running my first business and then I was also you know posting on social media every day doing three YouTube uploads a week like all of this I look back and I'm like, gosh, you had boundless energy.

8:03And I think I didn't. I think I was just so excited by what I was doing. And I think that wherever you can find that, and you're not always going to find that, and a lot of jobs can be really soul-sucking. But wherever you can find that, it's okay to want that to fill more of your days. Yeah, I think it's huge. And I mean, I don't want to labor on this too much, but I also think one of the other things we should think about, and particularly as women, is I think about my energy across a week and a month, as we're lunar ruled. So it's completely insane for me to schedule things that I'm less motivated to the need to do at certain times of the month or the week, because I just know it's just not going to get done.

8:48And one of the big mistakes that I made is, you know, I spent a lot of my time thinking that I had boundless capacity and I was indestructible. Right. And I could push. I'm a push through girl. Get it done. And actually what you find is the reality of our biology is that and it's something that people don't talk about enough is that over the years, your capacity for things you don't like goes down. this hit me like a ton of bricks it's like why could I do that in an hour before and I'm on day four of this being on my to-do list it's like I just don't have the same capacity so you have to schedule those things for the time of day the part of the week the part of the month where it's most likely to get done so I think all of those things I've become way way way way way more nuanced about planning my time so that I feel like I'm hardly working because the joy stuff is dialed up, the need to do stuff is done in the time where I'm most likely to get it done fast.

9:53I really love that. And I think that's something that we can all probably recognise in ourselves and start to tackle. And before we go into kind of more of that side and being able to really develop ourselves in our work and in our careers, for anyone discovering you for the first time, Could you give us a little bit of background on kind of how you got to where you are now? Yes, it's a long and winding road. And I've got to be honest, a lot of it was kind of unplanned and seizing the moment. I am essentially a business transformation expert. I mostly love to do that in the culture space. But increasingly, I've learned that understanding people, understanding macroculture means you kind of understand microculture, culture inside organizations.

10:43And so what I have done is been inside organizations and promoted into big roles at times of big disruption. Right. So I started I actually started in events and I love events and experiential because I love society. I studied sociology. I'm really into psychology. And I think that's the thread of absolutely everything. Team dynamics, how people like to socialize, what people want from work. Events took me into media. I went into the evening standard at the time where print sales of newspapers was being disrupted by online and was able to really thrive there. That led me to magazines. I became publisher of GQ during the global recession and realized that there was a struggle to change and keep up with the advent of social media.

11:47Instagram was just launching. A lot of the people who'd been there for a very long time did not know how to navigate that moment. I ended up being propelled to the top of that organisation as publisher, leading the business for the first time, because I could help the legacy teams there get on board with change, build new business models, build new ways of working higher differently. That went incredibly well, made the company tons of money, which led to the big promotion, which I think changed everything for me, which was becoming publishing director of British Vogue at a time where British Vogue wanted to have the company, Condé Nast, wanted to bring in a very different editor whom I knew, but they knew that the change was so significant we would need a different attitude within the teams, a different culture and different business model and revenue streams, which was undefined.

12:46That went gangbusters, was great. I then became the chief business officer of Condé Nast, which was again navigating a time where overall print was declining. We hadn't yet captured the digital audience, woefully underserved on video, which as you know, as a YouTube girly, was a huge mess for the kind a talent that we had, did a transformation across 10 brands. A big partnership that I set up in doing that was with Google and YouTube in order for them to turbocharge our digital presence, our marketing imprint, and so on and so forth. And then Google ended up poaching me to come in and run their business, their technology media and telecoms business as managing the director, again at a moment of huge change for them as they were trying to change the culture inside the organization around capturing the AI moment, speaking to our clients in a very different way and so on and so forth.

13:56So essentially what I do in my employment and actually via consultancy is help individuals like incredible talent navigate moments of great disruption and change but also help teams build the mindset to go out and kind of work in different ways. I love that. And it's such an incredible career. Thank you. I think it's just so, you're one of those people where you look at your CV and you're like, wow. It's like you just wrote this, just filling things in as like a vision board. It's just, it's so incredible. I thought about you. Please, look at yours. I feel like my career gives away my age and no amount of like great products from the Vogue Beauty cupboard could like.

14:41But it's like, oh, you were there when like online was taking over print media. You're old. Yeah, but look at your face. Do you look at notes? Years of work at Vogue. I've had nothing done. Just great creams. And obviously, because of that, I want to get as much career advice from you as possible. I think that so many people listening to this will agree with me that you have a bucket list career. And also, it's quite clear to see as well how you've lent into a superior talent of yours and been able to bring that to life and bring that to other people and harness that. I'd love to know for most people, particularly people in their 20s, 30s, the earlier stages of their career, what do you think is holding most people back?

15:33The thing holding a lot of people back, I think, is comparison. I think is fear. It's a huge one. And possibly even work ethic. like you have to graft in those early you know this there is no way around the hard work the turning up early the the doing the extra research the giving the extra thought work and um I think that you also have to be um cleverly audacious to speak up and say there might be another way You know, what about if we were to, and I know that can be really, really hard when you're just kind of finding your feet. And so I think fear is a huge one. And I think that the comparison piece is huge and it's growing because of the incredible creator economy, which I think is amazing.

16:35the down one of the many downsides or tons of upsides is we're constantly looking at the careers of other people the lifestyles of other people and you know I'm even part of this you're looking at a heavily curated end point without really understanding the graft that it's taken to get there for compromise um the collaboration a lot of the times so I always say like do not compare yourself to anyone else your only competition is you what you want and what you feel you're able to achieve and how able you are to push yourself beyond what you think you're able to achieve like that's the bar not what you see anyone else doing and I think one of the things that's resonated with me really heavily out of that is that I think we have this gap at the moment between what we are seeing online and what it actually took to get there.

17:37And of course, that's a lot of, I'm trying to fill a lot of that gap by having these types of conversations. But I think on an even smaller level, every single piece you see online of like a day in the life or a announcement or whatever it might be it is most of the time as a result of a huge amount of hard work as you say a huge amount of compromise usually an above average work effort like most of the time but there's nothing to tie these two things together so we're really not getting both of these things kind of put two and two together and I think that that as well as seeing the end goal is also making a lot of people want to jump to that point and therefore not even be willing to take the next step like this is this I don't want to say entitlement because I think that there's a lot of conversation around Gen Z and entitlement which I don't think is entirely correct I don't think it's correct either but I do think that what when something is misrepresented online as even you know unintentionally and it says you know here is where I am and I'm in this role in a law firm or in this role in a magazine or in this role in an entrepreneur that's all well and good but like you probably had to be 20 25 people at every single stage if not more yeah to get to that next stage you probably had to have you might have had that in goal in mind but you had to have a pretty humble approach to where you were going next you needed to be able to learn you needed to be able to sometimes put in more than you were getting out yes i don't think that's being communicated online.

19:17So I do think what that's ending up with is this assumption that A, you can get to where you want to get to in your 20s. B, that you can get there without having to... Extraordinary things require extraordinary inputs. And to do things that other people aren't doing, you have to do things that other people aren't doing. And I just don't think we're necessarily always seeing these two things together, particularly because people are worried about exacerbating hustle culture and saying, you know, all of these different things. And it's like, to get to where you want to get to, I have no doubt you've had some very late nights and you've had a lot of compromise and that's not going to be for everyone.

19:57But it's also unrealistic to say that that wasn't the case. I think that this is a huge point. I'm so glad that you raised it. It's huge. We have this incredible sort of challenging pendulum where I do think hustle culture has become so toxic. And, you know, I'm in rooms with incredible entrepreneurs and business people, and there is almost like a bravado in how little people sleep. Of course. I'm up at four. I'm up at three. I'm grounding it. It's like, oh my God, I can barely drag my, my son drags me out of bed and I'm just like, please. You know, I think that, but on the other side, I do think that you have to think about things in chapters.

20:42I think this is the piece that's missing. I've been obsessing about this conversation in my head because to some extent, I wonder if I'm partly guilty. You know, when you look at my social sometimes, there were periods where it just looked like I was at, particularly in the Vogue years, You know, it's just like at a gorgeous event in a gorgeous dress doing, you know, and the reality was not shown there. The reality was I was running the business, putting on the event, managing the client, managing the team. my guests who were often friends who are models actresses what have you had sat in hair and makeup and chosen gowns slowly for most of the day gone for a massage gone for what have you and I was often putting my makeup on in the loo and whipping the dress on in my office you know and I didn't feel like I could show that because you know I actually didn't think people were interested I don't think it was particularly glamorous and so there is this idea that you can be both and it's super easy it's not easy it's not easy to be both accountable for the success of a moment run a team be there in the capacity as host and business leader and you know do things in the same way as everyone else and so I do think you know one of the things I speak to my team about a lot is how do we tell the backstory without it being too laborious and not interesting.

22:16But I think one of the reasons that people are struggling with this is that it isn't one or the other. There is a groundwork phase, right, where you have to work really, really hard and you do have to hustle if you want those goals. Not everybody does. That's all good. And then there should be chapters where you don't do that what I've learned is if you try to hustle at the highest level for a very long time life stops you you know and there's lots of conversation around burnout and does it really exist of course it bloody exists of course it does we can there are times where I can work I can sleep four hours a night I would not recommend it super energized there's a goal in mind.

23:00But then after that time, I am very, very serious and increasingly serious around rest, switch off, R &R, being silly, being around people who are. And so I'm very deliberate about showing myself as much in a bikini. Like I'm a multifaceted woman. I am not just in the office or at a great event. I'm on holiday with friends. I'm spending time with my family. I'm getting messy with my six-year-old son and I could be in a boardroom and I could be and I think you know and I could be leading meetings and leading business plans or pouring over multiple P &Ls we can do lots of things and I think the story that isn't being told particularly because in a lot of the open source spaces and on social media the advice traditionally has been pick a topic and stick to it.

23:55So if you are a business leader, be a business leader, right? If you're a fun girl, be a fun girl. If you're, that's not who we are. Most of us are multifaceted. And I think one of the things that maybe is confusing about me is that I don't see myself as one thing, because I'm not one thing, right? And I don't see myself as needing to conform to an archetype that has not served a lot of people and maybe never existed. And so I think the best way that I can think about that sort of dichotomy of like hustle culture versus grit and sprint is to think about things in chapter. If this is your sprint chapter and your hustle chapter, do it.

24:41But plan what comes next, right? You need for things to ebb and flow. You need to have the moments where you let your mind be blank, right? You need to have the moments where you have no agenda meetings. I cannot recommend this enough that in spaces where I've had my diary, for example, and my time overly mapped out and blocked, I stopped being a good problem solver. And because I'm bought in at times of change and transition where you need ideas, you need fixes you need to be able to see the things that aren't said if someone's underperforming but they have the potential you need a bit of time to just soak that in you need to just have a walk and talk or a coffee or let's go to so for me making space for like sprint and then slow observe let the thoughts permeate and organize themselves sprint again that's the way that we balance out maybe this idea of toxicity around hustle culture or oh you just leap in and you'll have it all right yeah yeah and it's it I guess comes back to this idea that you can have it all but you absolutely cannot have it all at once that also I have no doubt will have been times in your career where people will have looked at the behind the scenes or if they could have seen every moment would have just been like wow I would love the title but I do not want that and I think that's sometimes what we're missing I also totally agree with you on the multifaceted approach.

26:08And I think ultimately the answer to all of this is that there is not an answer. There is no way where online we can accurately show all of these things. I always say, first of all, I absolutely have contributed to a lot of hustle culture. At the same time, I can't show you where I've got without being representative of what it's taken to get there and what I've done and the hours I've worked sometimes and all of this. That would also be false if I wasn't showing that. At the same time, I'm not going to show you where it's terrible because I'm trying to fight the fires and actually deal with what I am dealing with and so we do all need this social media literacy when it comes to how do I process this person who I look at as an absolute role model and apply it to myself without feeling completely at a loss because I could not be all of those people at once because you're not meant to yeah and I think it's the at once piece I think that people are missing.

27:03I think what people sometimes miss about social media is a, I don't always post in a linear way. This blows people's mind. You're in Africa. It's like, no, I was there last week, but I don't want to put like, you know, I think people take it too literally. And my post today is not representative of what I'll be doing on Saturday or next week and so on. So I think it's just dialing that up that we are multifaceted and somehow that's gotten lost. I think the other important thing is there is a competency tax for certain people where it's very, very hard to show, particularly if you're a first and only women and so on, it's hard to show the gritty hard bits because we're still in the moment of proving that we're competent.

27:51And so there is this horrible vicious cycle, that potential of, well, you know, I remember this particularly in the Vogue years where I had to make a decision on I'm in this role and I want people to know a woman can do it, but I'm also pregnant and I want people to not think, oh my gosh, this is why women aren't suited to that role. And so there's this really interesting thing that I think women in particular are navigating, which is we want to seem polished together on top of things, particularly in the business space. which gives confidence to those who might otherwise doubt us. But for the people who are following us for inspiration, it can be a bit sort of daunting.

28:41And I have to say, it's something I think about a lot. I'm trying to navigate even more. I literally have been having meetings with my team this week about how do we show more of the reality? And you'll see some of my conversations a with the consultancies I do be with my teams um uh are much more around that trying to be a bit more real real and so if someone's listening to this who really wants to advance in their career and is taking all of this in and is saying you know I know where I want to get to and I know that I need to graft to get there what do you think are some of the internal beliefs that they probably need to drop to be able to actually progress to where they want to Oh, internal beliefs they need to drop.

29:27I love that because people always ask about, you know, what mindset you need to build. The overnight thing, you know, every overnight success I know has actually been at it for 10 ,000 hours and probably, you know, a decade or the equivalent of. I think that the idea, drop the idea that you need to be in the hottest space working on the shiniest thing. The most coveted role, job space is often the hardest to prove your value in. So I'm a big believer in prove yourself on the low hanging fruit. And the other thing is that there is going to be anyone right now who has the time to sit with you and impart their knowledge one-on-one in a mentorship type way.

30:29And I know that sounds really controversial, but I get so many messages and DMs and outreach for, will you be my mentor? I'd love to, you know, in the position that you're in now, I think there is this idea that once you make it, you're sort of sat with teams of people around you sort of delegating things off and getting your nails done. and one of the things that needs to be dropped is this idea of making it I get really angsty when people say oh my gosh you're so successful because the reality is I'm always working on something new I'm always working on something that I'm not good at yet because I you know I'm a learning freak so I I never really have the mindset of being someone who's a success because I'm always doing something that is truly humbling me right and I don't have time none of us have time and so the thing that piece around I you have made it and so now it is incumbent on you to mentor people is a flawed way of thinking I think about value exchanges a lot and what I did when I was younger and tried to make it is I understood that everybody was busy and everyone had needs and everyone had insecurities and gaps in what they were doing.

31:55And so I've never had a mentor. I've never had a mentor. I've never had a sponsor, which is probably a mistake. But what I have had are friends and people I harnessed relationships with based on asking them if there was anything I could do for them. So setting up something that was more of an exchange, like reaching out to someone and saying, I absolutely loved what you did here. Here's what I loved about it. Also, I would be a bit audacious and give some feedback. One thing I thought was missing was, right, observation is a really smart way of showing you're smart, right? If you think about the comedians you love the most, the books you love the most, the plots you love the most in stories, they all encompass a sort of detail that shows the creator is highly observant and therefore intelligent, right?

32:58It hooks you in. So instead of being sycophantic, say, loved it. This is why I love you. By the way, I would have loved this, just an idea and you're somebody I really admire and I um you know have xyz in comma I see you have this that or the event coming up not much but if you need any help whatsoever on that event or on that thing bringing it together I would love to help you and if that means I get some time to talk to you, that would be amazing. That's the smart approach. So I've never had a sense of entitlement because my background hasn't allowed it. And so I've never ever thought for a second that anyone would give me a moment if I wasn't giving them something in return.

33:46And I think that is being dialed up now. You know, what I see in the technology space is leaders are no longer sitting pretty. They're having to learn a hell of a lot more. Their time is more stretched. They're having to review teams and structures and business models a lot more, travel more now we're global. They have less time than ever, more anxiety than ever. But what they are looking for is an exchange. So I think that is one of those things that I think was always a little bit of a misnomer but increasingly now is something that is a mindset shift what can I do in order to have time with that person um I think that would be the number one thing yeah no I think that's really valuable and I think that I am always surprised at how many people even in a job application include how much this would help them and their career rather than the other way around and as much as that is fantastic like it should be mutually beneficial when you step into a role it should be something that you want because it's great for your career and the company wants because you're great at it however it's always surprising to me that actually in the application process it's less about well for lots of people it's not but I see a lot of this kind of this would be the perfect next step for me this would be this would do this for me rather than the other way around and as much as I always try and see through that because it might just be a lesson they haven't learned yes I think that's so key it's like well this company wants to get there show them how you're going to help them get there and then they're interested it's no one's interested through just I mean in the most I mean lots of people will be altruistic in some ways most aren't that much so I just think it's I think that's really valuable I think that I think that's super poignant in that it's a youth mindset to think like, well, here's how it would benefit me.

35:44And, you know, I could really use this and so on. It's just like, that's great, but that's a you thing. You're pitching right now. But what I think is really interesting, and this is something that I've been doing a lot in my consultancies, is I also think businesses are getting that wrong with their teams. The number one thing that I see businesses getting wrong, particularly when they're trying to create a mindset shift and a workflow shift in their team, is they say, this is now to employees, right? So you're talking about at the point of interview, that great, it's good for you. Please tell us why you're good for us, right?

36:25When you're a leader of a team of any size and you want to take people through uncomfortable change, and this is something I always tell people to look out for in their managers and leaders, if you're young in a team, is the number one thing I see people do, and they're banging their head against a brick wall, it just makes sense for us to do this really hard thing, reduce the team size. Nobody wants that. No one's going to cheer for that. Do more work, right, is they say why it's beneficial for the business. So I see CEOs all of the time banging their heads against a brick wall. If we don't do this, we are not going to hit Q4.

37:05We are going to lose market share. That's great. But that's not what moves people to shift, to do the hard work, the uncomfortable. Nobody likes change. The human condition is such that we are seeking comfort, standardization, flow as much as possible. So anything, some people are more adapted, some people are less adapted, but overall, we don't like it. I happen to be a bit more adapted because I encountered a ton of change when I was really young. And that sort of set me on a path of being, it's going to be okay, right? But even I, as someone who's pretty adapted to it, don't love it. So when you say to people, you have to do this huge amount of painful stuff so that we don't lose market share to that, they're just like, okay, I'd rather kind of stay where I am, right?

37:56So in the same way, when you're going into an organization, you have to pitch the benefit to the organization of you being there. When you're in an organization, look for the managers who care about what the moment means for you. And I learned this lesson when I was leading GQ in particular. And GQ, I was the youngest publisher in the history at Condé Nast. I was the first woman. I was the first person of color. I was the first, this cracks me up, openly working class person, right? So I was different on every minute. No one wanted to listen to me. And on top of that, month one, again, ridiculous, lesson learned.

38:40I'm trying to shift a heritage team who are highly celebrated, way more famous than me have written books and articles and know everyone in high society and I'm trying to say to them you were writing articles before which you could pour over for months and months and months and months and that was your job and you had lots of time to go we're in a recession now and we're in another digital boom Instagram has just launched I need for you to create digital content I need for you to write articles online that are a different format. They're not going to be as long form. And I need you to do this all in the same amount of hours and in the same job title.

39:22And they're sort of going, no, thanks. That doesn't sound great. Well, we need it. The company needs it because otherwise we're going to fall behind. I'm good. Get someone else to do it. Once I shifted the conversation to a more empathetic one, which is along the lines of your content is so brilliant, it's so excellent, and it's brilliant that at the end of the year you're winning these awards, but wouldn't you love to know more about the data behind who's reading it, when, what helps it pop, what are the parts that people love? If you are able to work with me on this expansion of your role, you're future-proofing your career, but you're also turbocharging the thing you love the most by getting data back on it.

40:10And so suddenly I'm taking it away from the company needs it, here's what we need, to I'm here looking out for you and I'm thinking about all of the other things that you can do next, stabilizing your role and giving you more on the thing that you love, you're passionate about, you're energized and using that. And suddenly we had this, what could have been a coup d 'etat, frankly, suddenly everybody leaning in. And I've taken that with me is that look for the bosses who care about you in the change, as opposed to the company purely in the change. And look for the staff who care about how they can be additive to the team and the mission when you're hiring.

40:55Yeah, no, I think that's so, so powerful. And I think it's a really good management lesson as well. I remember like this almost like eureka moment I had. And I think it was about two years ago and it was before our Q4 and we were just doing a company all hands. And I remember rather than the usual kind of like, I know it's a push, guys, but, you know, we really need it. And like, we need to we need to hit these numbers and they're all achievable. I was I just said to the whole company, I was like, all of you are here for different reasons. Some of you are here because you love the company. I do not expect that to all of you some of you are here because you want to add a fast growing company VC backed company to your CV some of you are because you want to get to an exit all of these things will serve you better if the company is doing well, if we hit these numbers if we get to our next investment round every single one of you for all of those reasons it will serve you better not one of the reasons why you could be at this company is more impressive if we bomb this Q4.

41:54So I don't care if it's because it's for your CV. I don't care if it's, I love that it's because you love the company, but I don't care if it's completely self-serving or whatever it is. Let's do well. Let's make it work for all of us. And I think that is such a huge unlock and you would be surprised. One of the things that was so useful about my jobs is learning about these incredibly hard to reach institutions like a Vogue or a Google. It's incredible to learn those spaces and how they operate. But because I tend to work with external brands and their partnerships with those, then I get this kind of cross-industry, high-level, some of the best and most well-known, most coveted businesses in the world.

42:44And you get to know their C-suite and you see the same thing happening over and over again and success tends to lie in that narrative that you've just mentioned around um like i say putting yourself in the place of other people and having them unite behind a mission based on what they care about versus the the rational the rational argument for the move right on the company basis yeah no that's so incredibly interesting um and i think lots of managers can learn a lot from that because it's really easy to manage people and kind of say please do this like it makes sense it makes me like please do this also it's you know and also the more logical spaces that i've worked in it's just like but everyone can see here's the data here's the graph you can just see and it's just like well that that data is correct but it's the wrong data for that person yeah so coming back a little bit to your career path and i guess designing your career How have you known which opportunities have felt right versus which ones have felt like something that you should maybe walk away from?

43:49I love the idea of designing my career because I have to be really honest, I have not. But that's exactly it. Yeah. Is that like so many people's careers, when you look, especially online, they look designed, they look reverse engineered. In reality, it's probably saying yes to some of the right things, saying no to some of the wrong things and getting it wrong sometimes as well. One thousand percent. I think for me, there have been moments that have been highly, highly strategic and part of design, like the move to Google was very, very much around this is missing. Things are pivoting. I need to learn about AI.

44:26I need to expand these contacts. I need to see how these spaces operating. the only way to do it is full immersion, be inside. I think the other side of things have been I am someone whom when there is a great opportunity and I'm energized by it, I work incredibly hard and I'm ready. I'm ready for what might come next. I think in terms of how I look at taking opportunities, walking away from them is always be ready, willing and prepared to walk away. I think what tends to happen that I've seen is brilliant people running out of energy and not bringing their best selves because they've sort of haven't got anything else planned, haven't got a backup plan, haven't got anything else.

45:16I think that the other thing that is really interesting for me is I think it's incredibly dangerous to look at your job title as part of the definition of who you are. And I think this is a huge thing to be really careful of. My jobs have been one pillar in my career and not the definition of who I am. And even if other people define me as, oh my gosh, that senior woman at Vogue or Google or GQ, that's not how I define myself. And it's not my only thing. And I'll explain a bit about that first part. One of the things that this kind of slightly sort of unwitting thing that's happened with me, which is my key career rises have happened at time of great disruption.

46:17So when everything else is going to hell in a handcart, they go, she can sort this out or fix it or what have you, which is great. It's not easy, but it's really great. But an optimal lesson that I learned in all of these spaces, these big moments of change and disruption are the people who fight the hardest against change are the people whose personalities are their job title. I'm not saying what they do. What you do is a you thing. What your job title is, is a company thing. And so a lot of the internal fighting against change or shift has a lot to do with that. This affects who I am. The people who take it the hardest if they are let go.

47:03And, you know, I have sadly had to witness a lot of people leaving jobs that they have loved dearly, but more than loving the job, they've defined themselves by the brand and the title. That's where ultra devastation comes in. Those people find it really, really hard to spring back. I think the people who are most retainable and who do the best are actually the people who are so sure about what they can offer, what they can do, what their skillset are, but kind of probably have what a lot of people call a side hustle, you know, other things going on, rich lives outside, other revenue sources, right, potentially, or at least other potential for that, they and who don't dine out on where they work and what their title is.

48:00And it's kind of a subtle distinction when you can see the difference if you're really leaning into it. I think it's incredibly important to always have savings. If you can, if you're in a position that you can have savings, that gives you a sort of ease at work if you're employed um that also makes you really retainable you know you're not sort of angsty and like oh my god i don't know how i'm going to you know okay well let's see what's happening let's see what what else is on offer but i think um the other thing is outside of being so wedded to the title and so on is also making sure that you are nurturing your networks outside of your industry and organization.

48:46So again, the most challenging spaces I have worked in and needed to transform are where the teams are so internal facing that A, they don't really know what's going on trend-wise in the world. They don't have their spider tenses aren't primed for there's another opportunity coming here or this might become chaotic soon. And they don't have that incredible feedback loop of, we don't do this here, but I know in this organization or in this industry, should we try that? So I think that keeping yourself networked outside of your job is really important as well. And it's also quite grounding. When I was working across Condé Nast, I would always, things that seemed really problematic inside that organisation, on Vogue, you know, clothes for a shoot not turning up is catastrophic.

49:48If you've got half a day with Rihanna at her house in Malibu, which is really hard to get it to, and everyone will melt down. If you speak to someone who is a criminal lawyer or a doctor, they'll go, yeah, no one's going to die. Why don't you do it? You know, they'll just kind of move from the crisis conversation to the solution where everyone in your industry will go, oh my God, that is bad. So I think that's really important, that wider perspective. Yeah, just perspective generally. And I guess I'd love to know other ways that listeners can really stand out in the workplace in a genuine way because I think that you know you've clearly worked towards so many different opportunities I have no doubt that a lot of these opportunities whilst you've made them happen they also came to you because they saw the way that you stood stood out so whether promotions or poaching or whatever it might be so how can someone who listens to this who wants to build their career how can they stand out in a way that opens them up to these opportunities?

50:55Okay, ways to stand out. I think one of the biggest killers of shining your light is consensus culture. And so it's really prevalent in the UK and maybe the West. And I grew up in cultures where it was all about standing out. Peacocking in Africa or in the Caribbean is a huge thing. And I'm not particularly a peacock, but I think people make their mark through their difference, not through their similarities. And the challenge in British culture and in some of US work cultures and other places are, it's very cliquey and people want to be in agreement with the people in power. So what they do is they inadvertently become yes people.

51:48They co-sign ideas and they back up other people's ideas rather than presenting the alternative ideas or where the challenges might be. So one of the things that I really try and do and I try to do as I was coming up is actually be the friendly devil's advocate, is actually show the people, you know, who are leading on a project, a team or what have you. What if this were to go wrong, but come with the solution? You don't want to be the gray cloud that's like, well, that's a shit idea. But you do want to be the person that says, I love this. I was thinking about it. one of the things that could happen is but I think we could get around it by x be really positive if it if it's a positive scenario but just present new ideas alternatives um add-ons add-tos that kind of thing I think people are scared of standing out and so they work really hard to be like I have the you know I worked in something before and and are um in a space before and the boss loved Taylor Swift.

52:58And she came in one day and was saying in a high-level meeting how much she loved Taylor Swift. And I remember these very, very senior execs running out afterwards and desperately trying to get Taylor Swift tickets, right? Because they wanted to be able to bond with her and say, I like what you like. And I remember just thinking, I'm not, don't kill me. I'm not I don't have anything against Taylor Swift but I'm not a huge fan and saying to her what do you love about it's kind of unlikely it's really interesting I've never gotten into her she's not my cup of tea and I remember us having a much more fruitful conversation about why she hadn't gelled for me and why she gelled rather than being like I like her too yeah well that's the end of that conversation so from an ideation perspective a ways of getting it done try to present alternative ideas.

53:51The other thing that I think is really big in standing out is try and do the things that no one else wants to do. So everyone thinks that their career is going to jump forward by being on the most important project, the biggest, shiniest, most visible project and all of those things. For bosses, there's always some stuff that's like left at the bottom that you're just like oh god I'll deal that I need someone on that but I don't know who it is and it's not profitable yet and the anecdote that I always give there is um and people ask particularly about the GQ thing and being you know in every single one of my roles I've been first and only in somewhere another what they say is but how did you become the fastest person to be promoted to publisher in Condé Nast Britain history and the youngest and all of those things the piece that's often missed around that story is I was not in the hierarchy.

54:52So there's a publisher who'd been there for donkey's years. There was an associate publisher. Below that, there was boom, boom, boom. There's a masthead that ranks the order and everyone sort of moves up in a nice, you know, orderly British line. I'd come into the organization way down the masthead. And there was a biannual publication called GQ Style, which was basically a pain in everyone's butt. It happened twice a year and it snuck up on everyone. There was no publisher on it. There was no team on it. It was the editor at the time who was a huge character and very important pet project. And everyone sort of did it because they had to.

55:33There was no energy around it. And so everybody was chasing becoming associate publisher and what could they do? And they wanted the shiniest things. And I said, why don't you let me run GQ Style and run it as a business for the first time separate to GQ um I would love to be the publisher of that I mean I was like this was pretty audacious I was like a young buck they were just like oh that's not what we normally do but I said I don't need any resource I just need I can bring people along with me but I do need titles for people so if you allow me to give a parallel title to certain people in the team I can galvanize energy around this and I can turn it into a money maker and I managed to for no extra investment turn it into a highly profitable part of the business that then everyone wanted to be a part of because you could suddenly have these elevated titles and go out and meet with Chanel directly and blah, blah, blah, and what have you.

56:40And so I tend to go for the low hanging fruit because there's less of a legacy to kind of prove. And anything that I did was super visible because it was such a low base. And so if you go for the high base things, how do you show your impact clearly? Yeah, I think that's such good advice and not advice that I've heard from everywhere else. And I think that it's, you know, we're told to be audacious, we're told to take opportunities, but you're not necessarily, I think there's so much power in, as you say, taking opportunities that no one wants to take, also being audacious with that. And just, yeah, trying to make good things no matter where it might be and not being too picky about what that might look like.

57:30I also loved in your first point, I feel like the real difference was you can be agreeable as a person and a good person to work with without having to be agreeable in terms of every single opinion or every single analysis of something and we know that diversity of thought leads to better problem solving all of these different things and yet we come into things trying to be this homogenous group of kind of yes men and agreement and I have never I don't think I've ever found anyone indispensable in my team who's a yes man because I have that opinion so I can I will have that I've got that exactly what do you think need other ones I've always tried to build teams of people who have very varied lifestyles backgrounds and so on because their lived experience means they're going to see the world slightly differently They're going to have like find beauty in different things, find solutions in different things.

58:28And I honestly think that group think is going to kill some of our biggest organizations. The visibility that I've had working with some of the C-suites of some of our most known and trusted brands is what's paralyzing them right now in the AI era is the agility that's needed requires groups of people who can say, there's another way. why don't we try this? What about, right? We don't have long periods of time to let things fall to the wall because it was the boss's idea. So one of the things I'm really working with people on is how do you harness these kinds of environments where people are not conflating being agreeable as a person, meaning that you need to be in agreement with everything that comes up on the agenda and every idea.

59:25That second part is literally death right now. I'd love to ask, just as a lead on to that question, if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, great, I'm ready to build my career, I want to make sure I'm future-proofed knowing about the AI industry and just generally how much culture's changed in the workplace in the past 20 or so years and all of this. How would you recommend they future-proof their career and what type of areas would you recommend necessarily getting into? Wow, this is this sort of$100 billion question because we do not have a crystal ball. AI is seismic. And I hear people comparing AI to sort of, you know, various other moments in, you know, the advent of the smartphone or even electricity, right?

1:00:15It's all the industrial revolution. It is way bigger than all of those things. And so I don't say that to scare people, but I do think it's important that we understand that what careers look like now is not going to be what our careers look like down the line. And that's OK. And so I think some of the things that are really important is priming ourselves now for the idea that you will not have one career. And that's OK. everything you learn in every career whether you kill it or you fail or you leave sooner is all data really building up your agility and tolerance your mental agility your ability to learn I think people forget the further they are away from let's say leaving uni or school or what have you that actually studying and learning is a skill and this moment needs means we're going to be learning new ways of working, new technologies, new audiences, whatever it is, there will be newness all of the time.

1:01:22So really getting back to practicing learning right now and also being multidisciplinary. And I think this is such an interesting point because earlier on in my career, it was kind of frowned upon to be multidisciplinary. I remember I was on the mayor's Brexit advisory group, which seems like forever ago now, with all of these incredible leaders. It was a sort of pinch me thing while I was there with sort of like the head of the World Bank. And I was like, hello, hi, I do this fashion-y thing. but you know they we were talking about um sort of different industries and how they'd be impacted by brexit and trying to put forward the case really for um for against brexit to be honest for different industries and we were talking about people who represented each industry and how we could reach out to them and maybe create campaigns and so on and there were a few people who came up and they were sort of going, oh, God, this person's like, I think embarrassing came up.

1:02:34They do so many things. Like, what is their thing? Fucking hate me. Don't put that person in front of me. I was like, this isn't my only gig, guys, you know. And it was so interesting to me that these titans were basically ragging on these people for being really good at more than one thing. The fact that their name was in this circle meant they must be good, right? Because they're recognizable. They are so fast forward to now, I'm scared for people who only have one thing. If you are employed by someone else and that's it, then you're super vulnerable and you're not learning enough. So throughout my career, I've always had a speaker career.

1:03:26I've had book projects. I've had my own side projects, not as necessarily insurance against that job, but the kind of feed loop is completely different. And I never want to be in a bubble. The opportunities that come your way are far more spread. And I think that is going to be the way that we work when you don't know where the next opportunity might be coming from then make sure that you're not just narrow in a lane with blinkers on unaware of of of what else is going on so um i think that's a number one thing yeah yeah agility options multiple interests willingness to learn oh and the final most important thing for this phase is passion.

1:04:18One thing that I've definitely, definitely noticed is AI is going to impact everything positively and there will be drawbacks for sure. We know this. What we do know is the level of change and disruption it's going to cause in every industry is going to be exhausting for those who took the job for money and prestige and exciting for those who are really passionate about what they do and see every new sort of cycle of innovation as oh my gosh we can go deeper oh that's changed the game okay and so I think what you will see is people who previously chose the career because it was a great money you know thing or it made their parents proud or both or what have you, I think they're going to be the first to burn out because it's going to be exhausting to keep re-energizing yourself, starting again, re-looping, adding those things on.

1:05:21If you're passionate about something like the top of our conversation, you'll say, okay, here we go. I love this. So let's figure out another angle. So I think my big, big, big advice is don't take the money job. Take the thing that you're obsessed with and you'll find the energy to use AI and not have AI completely gobble you up. I think one of the really interesting things that you said there as well was, well, you've talked about this idea of passion. I really think the idea of learning comes into passion because I think undoubtedly the better you are at something, the more you learn about something, the more passionate you're going to be about it.

1:05:57Because the way you speak about it, the way you feel about it, the way you feel when you read more things about it, they're inextricably linked. But I think that it's, as you say, the second you leave university, if you went to university or the second if you leave the second you leave school there is this assumption that you are no longer in learning mode and i just think and i think phones have replaced so much of that for us as well yeah and you just have to reinsert it like you have to be religious about reinserting it like my i've and this sounds really wild but i now try and scroll reddit instead of some other social media and purely get my reddit around things like like financial things that I want to learn about, different particular areas that I just want to understand and learn.

1:06:42It might be a new company, it might be a new technology, it might be my own finances, like any of these different things. It's like learning doesn't need to be sitting down and reading a textbook. There is so many, like things like this podcast, there are so many ways to learn from other people and to learn different parts of your industry. And yet we all seem to have this assumption that we need to know what we need to know within this role and then we'll get to the next role and then we'll learn some things there and the next role and we'll learn some things there it's like you need to be learning ahead yeah like what would you need to know in the next role and why don't you know it now yeah because if you don't know that then of course there's going to be some of the things that you learn on the job but like if you don't know that the chances of you getting there are going to be harder so it's like this we hear about upskilling all the time but I think we think of that in a more kind of handsy kind of vocational type way when actually it's not about necessarily just learning to do something physical extra learning it's continuous learning it's always on it is actively seeking stuff out the other thing is um which i find so interesting let's say with the scrolling and people believing that they'll learn through scrolling is you have to hack your algorithm right you you know so the things you're interested in you need to search those things out and you absolutely need to know that you cannot learn truly from social media.

1:08:02It can start a line. It can help you with community. It can help you with recommendations. But we do need to go a little bit more long form, right? We do need to have verified sources because otherwise you're going down a rabbit hole. And I think that it's really important to not just have one source. So for me, social helps me get close to communities I wouldn't ordinarily be able to access. And then I want to know what are they reading? What course are they doing and doing it ahead? The other thing about learning is that I think people overlook is every single interaction is a learning moment.

1:08:44And I say this to my team all of the time. If you're lucky enough to be brought into rooms with people who are really interesting, jot down something that they said that you didn't know and then research that. Right. One thing I'm really, really nervous about with the way our algorithms are working versus how I came up. I'm showing my age again, Grace.

1:09:11It's increasingly hard to learn about things you didn't know you need to know. So if I think about when I was growing up, one thing my mother insisted is that I read the newspaper every Sunday, seven years old, sat there with the Times. But I had to read at least two. One was the newspaper that was closest to our viewpoint. And that felt like the most comfortable read, but also the newspaper that felt the furthest away from who we were. and that was an incredibly valuable thing for me because the best way to engage in a argument or to is to learn about the other side of things you need to know about the opposite of what you're interested in in order to fuel your interest and so I think if you are too um if you're receiving your learning in a very passive second-hand way you're actually not going to be ahead of you know the pulse at all yeah right it needs to be the springboard it needs to be implemented into a week i agree with that so much and just quickly because this is something that you've mentioned a few times network is incredibly important i think that because we're so connected now online people aren't building proper networks in real life and aren't necessarily putting themselves in the right rooms to meet the right people um some rooms they can't get into for sure but there are also lots of types of events that you might be able to go to or however it might be what do you think the best way of is of building a network that's going to help you build your career yeah networks are wildly important and i do worry that people are losing like social skills it's not just that we're increasingly doing more of our work you know from on the screen and so on is that we are socializing less and so yeah I think it's not there are two things one is get out there and get in the rooms like you said one is knowing how to operate in those rooms knowing when to speak when to listen um how to show up how to follow up if you need to and so on so i think the best way of of networking is use the time in the room pet peeve whenever i do like you know some of my consultancies are like public speaking are there's a q a at the end they dm you no no the dm afterwards kills me it kills me because you're robbing yourself of a really valuable, fruitful conversation if you don't ask the question in the room.

1:12:03And you're also robbing the room of something they maybe didn't know they needed to know, right? So if you are in those moments and you have people who are hard to reach, who are interesting to you, use that time. The most valuable times I've ever had with the people that I have admired and been inspired by were in transit to somewhere. If I'm in a car, someone says, oh, jump into my car, we're going here as an intern or someone junior, I'm going to use that time. I'm going to use that time to make sure I have three salient questions prepared. I'm going to use that time or an idea or something, right?

1:12:50How can I be additive to you again. If you're in a room, use that moment. Do not send the DM. Do not. And I say that. So I say up front before I start any keynote, any Q &A, any advice session is I won't respond to you on DM, not because I'm being a bitch. A, because we just don't have time. We don't have time. But B, your boss or your future boss is in this room and they're looking for the people who are elegantly audacious this is your chance to show it it's not only your chance to get information from me but I look into rooms and I say I love that that person asked the first question when no one had who's she who's he I love that they asked a question that other people this might be embarrassing or this might be a silly question ask it anyway and that shows me that that person has the confidence to move into some of these situations that are going to be difficult where you do need people to go have we thought of right so I think it is go out and see people one of the things I find really troubling is when I have teams who are just sat behind a desk sending emails what happened to calling people what happened to going for a coffee you know there's a ton of organizations at the moment who are measuring badge data.

1:14:12They're not in the office enough. If you're in a role that is about partnering with other people, I don't want to see you here all the time. Go out and see people, but use the time you have with them to get what you need, show who you are and make a real human connection. Like we were saying, an exchange. What is the exchange? You would love something from them. You'd love to know something, share something, recommend a book whatever it may be I don't know but um valuable exchanges that are in social settings are the best way to build networks such good advice and because you've given us such good advice can I ask you what the best piece of advice is that you've ever been given oh the best piece of advice I have been lucky enough to be given incredible advice sometimes I am I forget who's in my network you know because if you if you know this if you know people who are sort of regularly on tv or on magazines after a while you've seen them with no makeup you forget who they are um but I think probably oh god I'm really going to struggle with this because I have a lot I really want to do a book of of all the advice I've been given um leave while you're at the top and in every scenario that I've been in I have left at a time where people are how could you how could you leave you know why would you ever leave folk where are you gonna get all your clothes from or what have you because I like to be when things are on the rise and be part of that and I like to pass on the opportunity and if you sit in an opportunity for too long you stop proving why you were brought in why you're there and all of those things and so I try to make space for people and move on to the next thing while I'm still kind of hungry and excited and not jaded I love that yeah well thank you so much you have been so incredible I feel like we could talk for three years I could talk to you forever because all of this is so relevant I think I think everyone's really trying to figure out this new career landscape and how to kind of not just survive it but really thrive yeah and it feels like the opportunity is there yeah it's just how do I harness that and how do I make sure it's me yeah and I think that well I think you've answered a lot of joy and purpose thank you so much thank you for having me I've loved this

1:16:57Bye.