 This episode of the podcast is supported by Audible. You can download and listen to the world's best storytelling. I use it all the time to inform work. You can listen to audiobooks, original series, and more on their free app. To get your free 30-day subscription, which includes a free book, click on the link in our show notes and enjoy. Hey, folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had a great lady called Sue Uniman come in and speak to me on the podcast. She's currently Chief Transformation Officer at MediaCon and she's author of a bunch of really cool books, the latest one being The Glass Wall, and she's currently writing another one. Not sure what the title is, but it's on diversity. And so we had a great conversation. We looked at whether the current initiatives on diversity are working, how they're measured, and what we can do to make them work better. Really cool conversation. Hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Cool, we're live. Sue, thanks for joining me. Well, thank you for having me. Pleasure, pleasure. All the way from North West London. Yeah. All the way. All the way. Come all the way from Charlton Hill. Nice. So I know you've written some interesting books and all that stuff and I wanted to talk really for the chunk of the podcast about diversity and where we're at, what's working, what's not, what we can do and stuff. But before we dive in, what is your background? My day job is I'm Chief Transformation Officer at MediaCon, which is the biggest media planning and buying agency. Biggest and best, I say. Biggest and best. Of course, Media Planning and Buying Agency in the UK. So we have clients like Direct Line Group, Tesco, like Sky, Cancer Research, Universal, Theatrical Movies. So a big range of clients for all different types, actually, NCS. And I've been there for a ridiculously long amount of time. So I joined a tiny company called the Media Business, which was a buying shop in 1990. So it would be 30 years. Wow. Next summer, obviously I was a child. Of course. I joined, obviously. Oh, yeah. Straight from uni. Well, I believe, you know, still at primary school, I think it must have been, surely, surely. No, I wasn't, I'd been around, actually. But the company just grew and grew and grew and then we were acquired by a company called MediaCon and we've now grown. So when I joined, we built about 44 million pounds worth of billings of buying clients money and now we're 1.9 billion in the UK. So it's a lot of organic growth and it's a global network. So I've stayed in the same place for a very long time. Must have changed. But it's changed enormously. The jobs sort of technically changed enormously. I mean, our role is to grow our clients' business and that was true in 1990 and it's true in 2019. And our role within that is to really understand people and consumers and understand how to make them kind of all in love with clients' brands and that hasn't changed because people hasn't changed. But the techniques that we use, obviously, are so much more complicated and diverse and include creating content and search as well as placing advertising. So the role is to make sure that MediaCon in the UK and also our clients are ahead of all of the changes and transformations that they need to be. Cool. And have you always done transformation? No, I took that title in 2017. Before that, I was strategy and planning. But probably my thing was always about transformation really anyway. So we now have, Jeff is our very good Chief Strategy Officer in the UK and I'm Chief Transformation Officer. So we work very closely together. Cool. How did you get into it all? Oh, that's a good question. I was going to do law. So I graduated with a history degree. I had a place to do a law conversion course at the Inner Temple. And I had a year off in between. I got bit bored and I got bored. I was making cakes at a cafe in Oxford called Georgina's. Very good at making cakes, actually. Nice. Is it still around now? Georgina's is still there, actually. And when I left, they did ask me to make a stock for them and they put them in the freezer, but I don't think they can still have some of my cakes. Amazing. Are you still baking? I still bake. We need to see you on Great British Break-Off or something like that. Well, yeah, maybe. Don't know if I can stand the stress of the tent. But I just got bored doing that and I wanted to earn a bit of money and so I got a job in advertising. And then with the first pay rise that they gave me kind of six months after I joined, I could afford to leave home. And if I'd done the law conversion course, I would have had to stay living at home probably for another two or three years. And just at that age, it just felt like a no-brainer. You're ready to? Yeah. So I absolutely just fell into advertising. And it was a very different industry. It was very madmen like when I joined as well. We've seen real disruption of the industry by the media or independents, which is where I joined in 1990. And now I have probably one of the best jobs out there. Nice. That's awesome. But I could have been a judge by now, probably. So you know. More fun? I don't know. You must have had a really fun and great career doing what you're doing. Well, yes, I love what I'm doing. But I think, you know what? It's not any way. I think the job. I think how much you enjoy your job is to do with the culture of the people that you work with and the culture of the company. And my experience has been that a lot of people ask for advice about what careers they should be going into when they think a lot about their choices. And my view is that your work-life balance, your job satisfaction completely depends on the culture of the company you're at. And it might even be in some companies, the team. Yeah, very true. That you're within that company. And I don't know if, you know, because it's more your area of expertise. But you kind of don't know that till you get there. So businesses can talk all they like about their culture and the fruit and sweets all day long. But it's actually about how kind people are to each other and how much they help each other. And if it's a sort of culture where you get ahead by pushing down everyone else. For me, that was not a good culture to be in. That was more of the experience in my first advertising agencies. And when I joined the media business in our media comm, the culture is about helping each other to succeed. And that actually is what makes the job fun. It's great. You never know until you join. The funny thing with interviewing is it's really like speed dating. And as you end up, so you meet, I don't know, X number of people for an hour. They make a judgment on you. You make a judgment on them. And you decide to spend five days, basically your whole life with them. I mean, when you're deciding to get married, you don't decide after one hour, right? You go out with them, but you don't want to get married, you can, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a funny thing. Yeah, it's suboptimal as a process, isn't it? Yeah, 100%. I mean, you can use psychometrics and all of these And people do, but I'm not sure any of that makes... It gives you a better chance of making more... But you can't psychometric the company you're joining. So that works perhaps on the candidates, but yeah, you don't get to go, can I psychometric the people that I'm going to be working with, please? No, you don't get the opportunity. And it's not until things go wrong or you go through tough moments, when you're really in the trenches with someone that they're real kind of what they're about comes out. And more and more, when I meet people, senior execs that are thinking about leaving or you kind of delve into what their motivations are and always people-related, if someone's changed or they're not going on with their team, those kinds of things. That's what people say, people leave managers, they don't leave. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Over and over again. It's funny, like a lot of people think people move for more money, and the money's much further down the list than people think. It's always the people aspect and the culture and stuff like that. So as well as me being, having been at MidiCom for a long time, I've probably got about 25, 30 colleagues that I've worked with for more than 20 years. So there's a lot of people that are still hanging around, which again is a sign of, you know. Yeah, there's a lot about the place, definitely. How did your book and your interest in diversity and stuff come about? Well, it's connected really. So I'd written a previous book, which was about marketing called Tell the Truth Honest is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool, which came out in 2012. And in about, must've been about 2014, 15, I started thinking about writing another book. And originally I was gonna write a book that was a follow up to the first one to tell the truth. So I went to my then Amir boss, now my global CEO, who's a man called Nick Lawson, who I've worked with for 29 of those 30 years that I'm coming up to. And I said to him, first book was published by an American publisher. I wanted to do a follow up about our clients. So I said, you know, would MediCom consider self-publishing that for me rather than taking it out? Cause it's gonna be more of a PR piece than a critique or a scope is. And he said, just to my surprise, he said, Nick said, he said, yeah, he said, actually we would, he said, but I've been thinking about you and that's not the book you should write. You should write a book about women and work. And when he said it, my initial reaction was, well, I don't know, Shara Sandberg's just published Lean In. I like bits of Lean In, but it's very much a book for extroverts and I am very much an introvert. I mean, I do my best, but I'm, you know, by nature an introvert. And if I'd read that when I was in my early 20s, I honestly would have just gone back to bed and, you know, called the covers up. It's like, it's so Lean In, put your hand up, do this, do that. So I thought, well, you know, I don't agree with all the advice in it. And it's also quite American. And you know, she's got this amazing, she goes, you know, phone your contacts list. Well, you know, who's got that contact list? So I thought about that. And then I looked at MediaCom at the time. So my UK business at the time, we had quite a small ex-co, senior ex-co, of which I was one. And four out of the five client-facing people on the ex-co were women. And three out of those four were working part-time because of having kids, including me. And, you know, it was a highly competitive business undergoes enormous competitive kind of, you know, scrutiny and attack if you like. People are always pitching for our clients because we've got lots of clients. But also, it's 24-7 business. I mean, if we have told a client that a spot is definitely gonna go out and Britain's got talent and it doesn't go out for whatever reason, no client goes, I'll tell you what, I'll wait till 9, 9.30 Monday morning before, it's like, we're on it the whole time. Christmas day, boxing days, someone's, you know. So if I think if you'd said to most organizations, so what we'll do in that kind of businesses we'll have four of the five top people will be women three out of the four of them be working part-time, it's fine, isn't it? Most businesses would go, no. Now it had happened at MediaCom organically. Everybody had been promoted from within. Everybody had just worked their way through up through the ranks. And I just looked at our competition and then I sort of just kind of looked up, looked up, looked around. And about the power of it. Yeah, and looked at everyone else and looked at some media owners, the media owners that we work with and that kind of senior level of women wasn't anywhere. And it so happened at the time that my CEO then was Karen Blackett, who's now our chair and WPP country lead and also advises the government on diversity and inclusiveness and is on, helps Megan and Harry with their charitable trust. And she is not only a woman, she's a black woman who's a single mom. It is sort of isn't possible that given the number of women that there are in the population that all of the talented women had happened to rock up 124 Theobalds Road. I mean, I'd like to think so, I'd like to think we're very good but it's kind of statistically not possible. So I went to my co-author, I'm going to wave the book, regardless of Catherine Jacob who is one of the very few women CEOs of media owners. So there are a tiny handful of women CEOs that media owners, she runs Pearl and Dean, the cinema company. And I said, what do you think's going on? And she said, I don't know what's going on. Why is media can't be different for everyone else? So we set out to find out. So we went, just started interviewing people. We've got Quant Search in the book as well. Awesome. And we ended up with The Glass Wall. Nice, nice. And how long did it take you to compile everything right here and? Well, the longest part of the process was finding a publisher. So I was very aware that you couldn't self publish. But I wanted to work with a publisher to edit us and kind of give us discipline and it took us a while to find profile. And so probably during the year that we were looking for profile, we were doing the interviewing and kind of forming our point of view and our perspective. And then takes about six months to write, pull everything together, finish writing it and then publishing is quite slow to another six months to write. So about two years in total. Amazing. And this was all UK focused kind of interviews? No, mostly UK. But we have stories in the book from around the world, America, kind of Australia. And the research is the UK, the quant research is UK, US and Russia. So we did working populations of those three countries to make some comparisons. Nice. So are the current diversity initiatives working? I mean, the gender pay gap went back year on year. So from the first year to the second year, it actually went backwards overall. And what's happened since the book was published? So what's happened? Just to remind of it, so it was published in... 2016 is an enormous amount of raised profile for diversity and inclusiveness. An enormous amount of initiatives. But actually, I can announce that we've just been commissioned to write a follow-up. Amazing, amazing. With Bloomsbury Publishing, which is very exciting. Congratulations. Thank you, very excited. We're now writing it. So everything's... So your material is... Everything's material. Absolutely. It's about what needs to happen next because I don't... Empirically, if things are changing, they're changing very, very, very slowly. And I think in some examples, they are actually moving backwards. There are trends. So although everybody is thinking and talking about diversity and inclusiveness much more, there are mitigating trends going on in the work environment that are actually not helping with senior women being promoted. And I think there's a lot as well of emphasis on this is the job of HR, whereas in any good culture, it's the job of everybody in management. Before I started writing the book, if someone said to me, MediaCon has been very successful. It was a tiny company when you joined. We've had exponential growth since then. Why is that? And my answer would have been diversity, the diversity of senior management. And not only diverse in terms of how we look and where we're from kind of of origin, originally, because we're, you know, and indeed, LGBT, all of that kind of thing, but also diversity of thinking. And one of the things, one of the things that we talk about, people obsess too much about cultural fit. And what happens if you are an employer and you're looking for someone to fit your culture, is that you get the same culture of putting yourself over and over again. It limits diversity in the hiring process for sure. And we talk instead about Avengers Assemble. So the idea that what you want in a great team is you want who are different, but who can work together, you do not want a room full of incredible hulks, but an incredible Hulk and an Iron Man and a Scarlet, which great. And that's what had happened at Media Commons. I think that's why it was successful. Without trying. So it wasn't contrived, it was... It was organic. But I think when you say without trying, what we were trying to do was win. And so because we were so competitive winning pitches and things, because we were so competitive, we said, let's employ the people that were talented. And one of the first things that I did, first press interviews we go for the book for the Glasswall, was with Joe Good on Radio London, who's brilliant. And she had an email flooded in as a question. And she said, the email said, look, you've said, Sue and Catherine, you've said that there's a Glasswall for women at work. And I can explain a bit about what that is, if you like. But she said, wouldn't you agree that it's a concrete wall for black women at work? And she said, did you know in this email? I said, did you know there's only one media agency run by a black woman? And I said, yes, I do, because that's my, she was in my chair. That's one of my bosses, Karen. And I sort of thought about it. And I thought, but, you know, we didn't promote Karen because she's a woman, or because she's black, or because she's a single woman. We proposed to her because she's really good at her job. So does that mean that if she'd worked elsewhere, or if I'd worked elsewhere, we wouldn't have got promoted despite the fact that we were good at our job? Because the thing about gender diversity, and there's a lot of intersectionality now, which makes some people lean back because they feel it's too complicated to deal with. But the thing about gender overall, encompassing women of color, and women who are lesbian and disabilities, et cetera, et cetera, is that women are not a minority. And yet we talk about them in the workplaces, though they are. And yeah, nope, there's about 30 million of them in the UK. And it just beggars belief statistically, given that women have been, had a full share in the workforce for 60 years, that none of them have organically risen up to the top anywhere else. And so what you're saying to sum up, the current initiatives that people and firms are doing just start working. And then what you're seeing now is... Well, they're working a bit. A little bit, but nothing outstanding. And then I see it, and I don't know if you see it, but I see now a bit of a backlash towards these diversity initiatives. A lot of the time white men who feel that they've been marginalized, they can't get the promotion, they're not getting on the short lists and stuff. Do you see, are you seeing much of that? Yeah, so I think there are two, I think if you're a straight white man in the workplace at the moment, there's two sorts of reactions that are around. One is largely the good guys who are going, I really want to do something to help. But let me tell you, the risk of me saying or doing the wrong thing is so high now, it's career destroying. I'm just gonna sit here quietly and wish everyone well, but I'll shut up, shall I? So that's one thing, and that's not helpful. And then the other thing, particularly bearing in mind that it is still white men who hold the roles who are powerful, they have the power, is the men that are kind of upset and worried and frightened, who are feeling like they're not wanted, who are having a very bad day on International Women's Day, which is now massively celebrated everywhere, because they're feeling like nobody wants them, who if they miss out to a role or a promotion to a woman, you know, obviously I have no idea what's going on in every instance, but it may be preferable to think that you've missed out because you're a man, because you weren't good enough. I don't know, maybe that level, but then the more important level is like young people, right? Like grads or school leavers, so just people in society. And so the big danger you find in this backlash, it's at all levels, it's people that, I know if I look at my social circle, maybe I'm too optimistic about it, there's no sexism or racism or homophobia, people have friends from everywhere and we don't really care, you know? But it obviously gets into society somewhere. And I think the danger with some of these initiatives, which haven't really worked so well, is that you don't really want it getting in at the early age. You want people to feel, because the whole point of this is it's about fairness, right? So equality means... It's about inclusion. The inclusion initiative shouldn't leave out straight white men. Yeah, it should be inclusive of everyone. It should be really clear. That's even if people feel, and there is a school of thought that goes, oh, well, look tough, suck it up, because, oh, you've got to compete with the other half of the human race. Well, that's just not helpful. And what do people think is gonna be the reaction to that? And yeah, no, certainly, I know a couple of women who've got teenage sons. And one of whom in particular said to me, he came home from International Women's Day at school and said, that's the worst day I've ever spent. He said, nobody wants people like me. And I've had another story about a very... This is a public school young man who was doing a kind of law degree who was at the point of tears because he thought he had no prospects, which is, again, not what happens if you talk to anyone who works in the legal freshen as a woman, that's not the picture. And so, and look, I read something today. This month is an anniversary of the first college of surgeons for women in America. So it opened up in the 18-somethings. I can't remember the exact date. And the man who ran it, because it was a man, naturally, said, well, there's around 40,000 surgeons operating in America today. 20,000 of them have got to make room for women, right? Okay. Is that what happened? No. How many surgeons are there operating in America today? No idea. More than 40,000, right? So it's not a zero-sum game. It's a growth business. And if you are in business, you will grow if you take a proper approach to diversity, right? So it's not, well, there's only room for so many people on this board. It's, let's grow the board. Let's grow the business. Let's add diversity to it. I mean, the interesting statistics, I think, and there must be some new ones about to come out are the footsie board figures because they've been celebrating the growth of the number of women as a proportion on those boards, but most of those women are non-executive directors. So I think it was 30% was the last figure, which was last year on the footsie 100. Do you know what the, and that was up from 2015 when we wrote the book. It was 26%, so that's grown. 2015, the number of executive women on, so actually working for the company on the footsie 100 was just 2%. Guess how much many there were last year of executive women on the footsie 100? Probably very similar. It was 2%. It had popped up to 3%, I believe, during 2016 and then rattled back down again. So the interesting thing I think here is then you've got, so you've got two things. So clearly whatever we've been trying to do recently hasn't worked so well. Well, it's working slowly. It's slowly. And in some areas it's not working. It's sort of, it's alienating some people. And it's alienating some, and that's always a curious thing. Like a lot of people try and justify diversity by making a business case for it. Really, it's like, it's society's better if society's fairer. That's definitely true, yeah. I've always found it interesting why people are trying to make a business case for it rather than just a case for a better society. So that leads you on, and I'm interested to talk about the measurement of diversity because it's quite one-dimensional, which is interesting. But to start with, if it's not working, what should we be doing differently? I think it's really simple. I think it's about, it's a cultural issue. It's about inclusiveness. It's about belonging. And we're writing the book at the moment. So I've got 75,000 words to write by the 31st of March. They're not all written yet. So with my co-authors, Catherine, and also Mark Edwards, because we thought, because this book is aimed at men as well, definitely, we're gonna have a man join us as an author. And it's, we're still working through our arguments, but I think it might just be really simple. It's about ensuring that it's everybody's responsibility. So outsourcing it to a head of HR. I think that's the schoolboy era. A lot of firms do outsource it to people, even outsource it to headhunters. Oh, you get blamed. So not you personally, but I will get told the headhunters couldn't find anybody. So I get asked, and this is, and this kind of goes against my own values. And I'm into equality, inclusiveness, et cetera. When I get asked specifically to find a certain type of person, it goes against what I believe. Because you wanna find the best person for the job. No, not the best person. All I care about is that the individual and the company match. And it works well. And they stay for 30 years and they do a great job, right? Don't really care. But is anything ever gonna change if nobody takes, if nobody goes looking for? So I think personally, for my own view, the measurement, the way that diversity is measured in the public domain is two one dimensional. It's kind of like, you know, people measure their health on, you can't measure your health on calories and weight. It doesn't tell you anything about how healthy you are. So a lot of the time in diversity, it's measured numbers and pay. It doesn't really tell you anything about what's going on in society. And hence, we haven't really seen a huge amount change. And you see a little bit of some people in society being alienated and, which is not a good thing for society either. So for me, really the big thing is stigma. So if you look at, you know, if you look at who looks after the kids, for example, I'd say, I don't know what their actual stats are, but let's say it's 95% of the women in a relationship look after the kids. You mentioned it yourself. You didn't mention any guys, but you said three of your, including you, of your leadership team were part-time. I'm assuming that three were women. So we do have some men now, but at the time it was only women. Yeah, and even now it's women. And so, you know, there's a big stigma attached to guys looking after kids. Still. Massively, you know, if I go to my school reunion and the guys are like, what are you up to? I'm a stay at home dad. You can imagine the reaction. Paternity leave and paternity pay is not equal either. No, and men are not taking it. They don't take it because of the stigma. I mean, I had a friend, two friends, or one friend of mine who was able to take six months, six months paternity full pay. So the economics worked out for him and his wife. And he said, look on people's faces. And in fact, his boss said, really? Are you sure you want to take some, you know, you want to take that long? It might affect your progression opportunities, your career, you know, all of those types of things. So for me, if you really want to kind of really get down into it and make it fairer, because for me it's about a quality of opportunity rather than a quality of outcome. Quality of opportunity makes for a really fair, open society. And if I have the opportunity to stay at home and look after my kids if I want to, and my wife has the opportunity to go and pursue a full-time career if she wants to, then I think we'll start to get to a better place. Okay, so what does that mean for, and I saw the reason that people make business arguments is because it's within the remit of business to change that. Society feels like a very big nut to crack. Do you think it's a... So interestingly, I read in our trade press today that the government is tendering for a campaign about getting rid of the gender pay gap. So it's going to be some sort of creative advertising campaign. So I was just thinking about it. So I think you're almost thinking you need behavior change or cultural change for the whole of the country. Definitely, yeah, because I think at the moment it feels like contrival. Like, you know, when someone asks me, okay, so I want, so when I submit a long list, and sometimes companies in the UK ask me to sign up to this. So if I don't produce X number... A 50-50 list. 50, it's even split also with BAME or FIMA, whatever it might be. The very fact that someone's asking me to contrive my list doesn't really make me feel comfortable. And also I can't think why it's, it's not a fair way to go about hiring. And so I think there's better things you can do to get the same outcome. And the outcome should be a fair society. Quality of opportunity. You know, it's very different in Scandinavia. You work this. So everyone always says, if you want a husband who's going to support you in your career, marry someone Swedish. So maybe it's cultural. Maybe it's upbringing. I think there is a cultural. There's a lot. I think my point is there's so many things that go into it. And it's not so one-dimensional. It's like health and fitness. I might be like considered overweight on the BMI scale. Actually, you know, it's all muscle. I'm super fit. My cardio is amazing and my heart rate's great. There's just a lot of things that go into it. And so I think with measuring diversity, it needs to be multi-layered. And then once you start really understanding what's going on in society, then you can make society fairer and better. The thing with the quality of outcome, which the conversations tend to end up leaning to is you never achieve a quality of outcome ever. It will never ever be achieved because people have different strengths and traits. And, you know, we start on the 100 meter line and you're quicker than me. You're going to beat me. Genetics, training, whatever it might be. Well, I mean, certainly something that somebody said to me, he's like a non-executator of a number of boards. And he said he was interviewing for a CEO role for one of them. And it wasn't a question of a 50-50 split list. The shortlist was through one in one man. But he noticed as they went through the interviews that all the, for the opening question, which is, what have you done that you're proud of? Nice easy opening question in the last two, three years. You know, everyone, well, everyone should have an answer for that one. He said, the women were going, we did this, we did that. And the man was going, I did this, I did that. And he realized, and it's only in the conversation with the rest of the panel afterwards, that he had therefore discounted the woman's agency in it because she'd said we. And it was the other women on the panel who went, no, no, no, no, that's just how women talk. And you almost kind of, and he said, he wanted to ring them up and go, you need to say I. And, you know, I think there's a sort of meme for the book which is kind of, you know, when a woman says we, she means I, when a man says I, he probably means they. Yeah, yeah, no, you're right, you're right. And those sorts of things. You see, I think you can as a, in your kind of day job, that's the kind of thing you can. We can coach people. Coach and help people. And we do, yeah. I mean, so that's why I think, you know, you've got to go right, even to, you know, my kids are at school, they're super young and I'm trying to teach them these kind of things where I had to communicate effectively, how to learn, how to think. It's a real, that's a real glass wall thing though. So the reason we called it the glass wall and not the glass ceiling as far as gender was concerned was because the glass ceiling implies it happens towards the end of your career, when you're like reaching the top. Whereas the glass wall can happen all of the time. It can be your first day in a new job, it can be a change of boss in your current job and things have changed. And it's a communication barrier. It's a, you think you're speaking the same language that you're, but you're not. And one of the biggest ones, as far as gender is concerned, and I don't know, obviously you're little girls, but I think this seems so strong in women versus men and everything's a spectrum, right? But it's the showing off thing. The little girls just still don't get encouraged to show off in the same way as little boys do. And however you behave as parents, you know, yours are very little, they're still your little girls, but they're about to go off to, you're also about to go off to big school. It's like, it's not all your influence anymore. It's the big soup of culture. And I mean, to this day I work with women who would do anything for their business. So they will work weekends, they will say, no, no, no, don't give me a pay rise, give it to the rest of the team. They will, you know, support the company. And the only thing they won't do is show off about their work. And when you say that to them, they get quite upset because in terms of fairness, women seem to have this deep innate thing of, but surely you should notice if I've done good work. And the answer is, is your boss is busy. And if he's a really good boss, or she's a really good boss, then you're right, she will notice. But if she's doing a million things and in today's economic climate, we're all doing a million things, then the thing that sticks in your head is that person, and largely often it's traditionally a man who's going, yeah, no, I solved that huge problem. Remember that huge problem, I solved that, whereas women are kind of just going around solving problems, but not shouting about it. Yeah, no, it's probably, yeah, probably true. But then the other thing is, and you see it in my girls, but it's important to develop people's strengths. A lot of people focus on these weaknesses. I so agree with this. Should be shouting, or just, you know, make sure your strengths are amazing. Yeah, I totally agree. Practical strengths. So much training is improve your areas of weakness. I've been on so much training to improve my areas of weakness. And I realized at a certain point that they weren't improving at all. All that was happening was that the energy that I could have put into my areas of strength, which are many, I have to say, was being wasted on trying to sort out areas of weakness, which other people had strengths in. And again, it's that hideous sort of idea that everybody's got to be the same rather than complimenting each other instead of competing. It makes no sense, does it? No, absolutely. And in a good team, you have different traits and strengths and so forth. But people like to control things and they like people that are like them. And I understand that as well. So I do understand how, you know, if someone were to go to you, and obviously it's your business, but if someone was to go to someone and go, Pete, we're gonna promote you, but you've got to find a number two who's as good as you and then we'll promote you. And then Pete is naturally gonna think, well, I know I'm really good at my job, right? Because they're promoting me. So if I find someone who's exactly like me, it's just brilliant, isn't it? Because so there is that part of human nature as well. And to say to Pete, right, the thing you need to, the very thing you need to do is employ somebody who's the opposite of you. It does, it's not very human nature in a way. No, people like people like themselves. You can't get away from it. There's a great book by Daniel Kyneman called Thinking Fast and Slow, which is really good. Very good, very long. Very long, complicated, great to say that you've read it, even if you haven't, I have. But anyway, the point is that we're all, we're all buyers, right? Yes, it's all buyers. We can't help it with human. And that's how the world works. Yes, it's the, I like his analogy of, we think we're the Oval Office, but actually we're the Press Office. It's kind of like, not that actually the Oval Office meant what it does now, what it, when he wrote it, but. Yeah, no, it's true, it's true. We're jumping to immediate decisions. Yeah. The other interesting thing I see also is, and again, I'm gonna sort of go back to stigma. Because I think it's a really... Stigma's an interesting point. Yeah, a really, really key thing. And you're talking about it with regard to men. Both. So I'll give you some examples. Some men on paternity and looking after their kids for sure. I think if we, because there's an awful lot of men that wants to look after their kids and be a stay-at-home dad. And there's a big stigma, let's be honest, in society towards that. And it doesn't happen so often. They do it, brilliant. Are you watching Motherland? No. Oh, you and your wife have to watch Motherland. Really? At least it's so funny. But one of the dads is a stay-at-home dad. Right, okay, right. And they do how he fits in and doesn't fit into the other mothers very well. It's very funny. Oh, what's that? And everybody that I know that's watched it goes, they've definitely based it on people I know. I've got to watch that. I've got to watch that. The few, because there's not many, the few stay-at-home dads I know. And we're talking about strengths. They've met a partner who didn't want to stay at home in a car for the kids. And they are outstandingly doing well in their career. And said that the team has enabled it. Amazing team enabled it. There are a few of those around, much more than probably for our parents' generation. For sure, yeah, yeah. But it's still, I don't know. And so, and I'd like to see that more. There's also a lot of stigma towards women, from other women. It's a client of mine. She's an HR director. She has, I think she was two or three kids and she was dropping, she was just finishing maternity leave, dropping her youngest kid at school and the women who were at the gate. There weren't any men. Said, oh, do you want to come for coffee next week? And she said, oh, no, I'm going back to work. And one woman turned to her and said, I'll pour you, doesn't your husband earn enough money? She's like, actually, I want to work. And so I think it works both ways. Like a woman should, or man, should be able to go and work if they want. They should be able to, if economics and all this stuff works for them, be able to stay at home. Because in a lot of families, both people need to work. Let's be honest. In the real world, yeah. Like in the real world, you can't just be a stay-at-home dad or a stay-at-home mom. So it's all dependent on the circumstances that you're in. But do you know what the problem with all of this is then? And it's probably going to be a big theme of the book, is it's about kindness. So people do not assume the best intentions of each other, which is a lot of where the, I'm trying to say the wrong thing comes. Well, if you assume the best intentions, if you have the best intentions, we should be able to forgive each other for occasionally getting things wrong, because we all get things wrong. But equally, amongst that friendship group, and I was at the, my kid's school, I was one of the few working mothers in the class. So I understand that, because also you miss out on some of the network stuff that actually you need as a working parent anyway. You know, I had, I made some very, very good friends and I lent on my friends who weren't working very heavily, heavily more than I had any right to and they were very kind. But there were other mothers who were a bit kind of, yeah, a bit dismissive or even perhaps envious. But that's how it exhibited itself. And the other, if people were more actively kind, I mean, you know who your friends are, right? But the other aspect of that is what happens. Essentially, if you are a stay at home mother, of course your job is to make yourself redundant. And the five, 10 years when you're needed in a different way from kind of like when they're three to when they're 13, it goes so fast as a mother and so slowly kind of, you know, if you like for the kid, but career-wise that's a long time out of the workplace. And I have also, now that my kids are grown, I've seen that as well. And I've seen actually highly educated, very ambitious women when they had their careers who then stopped their careers, then go, what do I do now? And actually if they had to work, they would be on the checkout, you know, little or whatever, getting on with it, but not having to work, not being needed for school runs. And that's actually a big emotional cost in your life as well. Yeah, absolutely. And I've seen that difficulty as well. So there's an awful lot at play there. Yeah, and just like on the diversity metrics, I think it's important to make sure it doesn't hurt us because ultimately you end up isolating and tallying differences in society. And really, I mean, certainly now you have Brexit and the country seems so divided and stuff. You just need to be careful it doesn't prevent us from realising how much we all have in common. Yeah, I think that's very true. Which is kind of with the priceless thing. My big thing about culture at work as well and in society in general is if we, you know, I think we all agree that it's not very nice for people to be made to feel other or made to feel different or embarrassed or, you know, excluded, but we don't all do something about it. We have all been a bystander in our lives. And if we all today, right now, from this podcast, all agreed, I will never be a bystander again. I will speak up for other people. Then we would get that change that you're talking about. And that's within all our power, actually. Definitely. What a beautiful place to end. Thank you very much for coming in. Please let me know when the book is coming out. Do you have a website that we can... We have not created a website for the next book. There was a Glasswall website, but there are... Glasswall is on Instagram. OK. Oh, cool. And I am on Twitter at Suyou. Perfect. So I tweet more than I Instagram post. Tweet more than you gram. Yes, I tweet more than I gram. But at Suyou, I am for updates and news about the book. Awesome. Thank you so much. Really nice to meet you. Good to speak to you. Thank you. Hey, folks, thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.