 Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had a great chat with one of my favorite people, Karen Graves. She's a board level insurance professional in the city of London and had a fantastic career. And we spoke about how she got into insurance, how her careers developed, some of the challenges she faced. We also had a little kind of sense check around where we are with sexism and so forth in the workplace in the city. There's been quite a lot of controversial things that have been going on, articles, emails, all these things. So we had a little discussion around that. And then we talked about transitioning to a portfolio career at all levels of one's career. So we talked about how the markets changed and the importance of having a mentor. Hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. We're live, Karen. Thanks for coming in again. Oh, thank you very much for having me back. That's right. You're my first person I've had in twice. Hey, I feel like I need some kind of medal award or something. I've made you a lovely cup of coffee. Well, Meera made you a lovely cup of coffee. But it's been good. Our first one's got loads of, loads of listens. We've got, we released it on YouTube now. So we've got like over 1.1, 1.2,000. It's not bad. Yeah, it's good. It is good. It's just growing now. So it's awesome. I think you're one of the few companies I've seen that have really used this sort of technology and ability to reach people really effectively, actually, if it's honest. Thanks. I think you see a lot of people broadcasting stuff, but I think you're creating a sort of a bit of a, a certain type of bubble around what you do. And I think that's really cool. Thanks. It's really fun. An edit call out, whatever you put on things, because I shouldn't have to say it's cool. No, it's fine. Because I was, I was, I can meet on a Northern line. Okay. And I can never, I never get a chance to read a book. Yeah. So I've ended up like not reading anything. So then I started listening to audiobooks, then podcasts. So the Joe Reagan experience, which we just spoke about was my favorite. And then I thought, why not just record myself? And then, and then most of my friends laughed at me. And then they started listening or they said they did, but I'm not sure if they actually do. And then some of them asked how to do it themselves. It's really easy isn't it? So easy. And you've upgraded your kit here clearly, but you can start out quite, quite easily. So we were just, we were last time we came in, we just sat on the couch and we had a little lapel mic each and we chatted, which is quite cool. And now we have these cool little arms that you can like move it forward and back and we've got upgraded the mics. You get a bit carried away with the tech. Do you? Well, yeah. I think one does. That makes you anyway. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But then apart from that, it's just a laptop. That's great. So it's cool. So we'd love to hear how your career has developed and how even just to go right back, how you even chose and decided what you wanted to do. Okay. So we probably ought to put this into a bit of context really, I think is that might explain why I made some choices or didn't make some choices. So I've been in the insurance market, like London market for nearly 30 years now. So when you say, how did you choose your career? I think back in the 80s, I'm not sure that insurance was a career that was necessarily highlighted as a career choice. If you were outside of perhaps Lloyd's itself and had connections within the underwriting world or the broken world, it wasn't something that you thought, well, I'm going to go work in there. So I fell into it by chance. And it was, and it remains to this day, a really interesting and vibrant industry. And I prefer it now than I did back in the 80s. I think the markets changed. So whereas I didn't choose insurance or reinsurance as a career, I've been very fortunate to work in this market and meet some great people. But I think today, it is a market of choice for young professionals, young people leaving school, college, whatever, to come and find what they can do within our industry because we have changed incredibly by the kind of skill sets that we need and we will continue to change. And I think that's what I enjoy most about the market these days is how we are hopefully a market of choice and hopefully remain a market of choice for young people of all different backgrounds to come and find a career even though sometimes we don't get the best press in the world. It's tough though. When I was at university and someone said Lloyds, I always thought Lloyds Bank. Oh, that's right, yeah. You never think of Lloyds of London. That's right, apostrophe. Lloyds of London and Lloyds Bank. But yeah, there is that confusion. And that's where I think sometimes we're our own worst enemy. But I think we have a lot more to talk about these days and the way that we do things and the level of professionalism that we require and the kind of skills we require from actuaries, risk managers, finance people and in particular, the tech side is developing. And I think we need people with a whole different range of skill sets than we used to do, than we used to need. And I think that's changed our industry for the good. True. So how did you find out about it? Oh, I just fell into it. So I started temping somewhere when I left university and just thought, well, this seems quite like good fun, actually is what I thought. And in the 80s it was fun. It still is fun today, but fun in a different way. It's very vibrant. And the one thing that has been continuous through all of that is the fact that it still remains a market where you can talk to people face to face about what you're doing. And I think while technology may take over in terms of how we replace risk and how we manage risk, I think there is still that ability to have face to face conversations that keep you in touch with the community. And also, it's such a, it is quite a small world. So you end up meeting people and knowing them for a long time because they move from company to company as you do, but you're always in the same kind of industry. And that's, and because it has that people driven aspect to it, you end up being in contact with them. So I kind of just fell into it really. And then so, okay, well, why not give this a go and sort of started out on the company's secretarial side and moved into compliance. Spend a bit of time in an underwriting box at one stage. And then you sort of find your way through your skill sets really. And I would probably describe myself these days as a generalist as a good thing. I'm gonna say that's a good thing. I'm not an accountant or an actuary or so on, but I've got a lot of knowledge about all areas of the business. And I think that's quite valuable when you're looking at an industry that's changing. So that's kind of how I sort of fell into it really. And then sort of you wind your way through your, it's never a straight line. And so you kind of wind your way through that and work your way through things that, life throws at you along the way. And end up spending nearly 30 years without realizing it. Crazy. When you say, how long have you been in the mix to feel really old, but you get to suddenly find yourself here thinking, well, actually there's, it's been a great ride so far, but there's still a lot more I would like to do. Definitely. And so when you say just winding back for those that don't know how the insurance industry works, the cool thing about insurance is it's all in the same square mile of London. Yeah, it is a sort of a triangle really. It's all in the city, but within in the city, there's sort of a, almost a triangle shape of where underwriters, brokers and middle-loids being perhaps the epicenter of that, where everybody likes to be. And so that makes that community much stronger. Yeah. Because unlike other industries, a lot of other industries are a bit disparate. You know, they're like based in different parts of the country of the world. And actually, I think we're unusual in that within the industry itself by being located as we are. Definitely. If you look at Paris somewhere, there are insurance companies clearly there, but they're not in that same kind of space altogether and having that connectivity that you see every day as you walk out your office for a breather, a break or walk to catch somebody. And that just adds, I think, to the vibrancy of the market. Definitely. Maybe that's the reason it hasn't developed or embraced technology as quickly as other industries might have. And I think that there's a lot to be said in that. I think you're right. And I think not just from a tech side, I think there are other implications about the benefits and the downside of being in that kind of bubble in close space. And we can perhaps talk about, I think, those are my view of that as we go on, because I think there are massive benefits for it. But then I think tech as well as other areas, we kind of limit ourselves with that. But we can talk about that when it comes up, if you want, a bit later or now. Love to. No, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. Okay, so I think one of the things I found is my career has developed and you had some questions for me and you said, how has your career developed? And it has been not always that planned. And I think if I was gonna give advice to anybody and they wanted to take it, it is worth some time sitting down and just trying to work out what you want to do within the space that you enjoy. I don't think I did that enough. That's partly because you're working in a space that's quite time pressured. And your life can be quite time pressured while on a personal side, if you have a family or whatever you may doing. It's worth sitting down and taking some time to plan and think about what you want to do. And it may feel a bit self-indulgent, but you can do that anywhere. But I think it's worth having a direction because at some point you will find that you need to know where you're going, if that makes sense. And sometimes you can sort of drift along. And also from my perspective of being a woman in the market, sometimes I wish I'd made more direct choices than just go with the flow. So what do you mean looking for a new job or changing company or? And also thinking about things and listening to, I think that you sometimes have to listen to your gut instinct over your head actually. And I've probably stayed too long a couple of places where I should have been more proactive and had more confidence about going out and seeking something else rather than just drifting. Sometimes in action is a great course of action. But sometimes I think you need to be more proactive and have more confidence in yourself about making a decision when you know that you ought to. That's true, yeah. I think that's, and that's having confidence. And I think sometimes as I see in the market, sometimes young women in particular were not that confident about our skill sets. And we just need to know that if we're 70% right for something we can have a go at trying to find it, not wait until we're 80, 90% certain that we can do something. That's true. The beautiful thing now. It's a bit of a generalization book. No, no, it's history. I mean, there's some of the traits, female traits, definitely. But the beautiful thing now with technology is that you're able to find out what your peers are earning. You're able to know about jobs because everyone puts it online. So you know your worth in the market. And so that's useful. That is really useful. That's an interesting aspect that the one I hadn't necessarily considered is that when looking back as to when I probably should have been more proactive and focused about some things, the outlets for doing that are very different. And the ability to be able to sit on the train or even at your desk sometimes, not that I did that clearly, but sit at your desk sometimes and just look around to see what's out there, what other people are doing, what the trends are. All those things are much easier to understand now in your own personal space. So that's an interesting driver about doing that. So I think we should use those a bit more. Definitely. And I think that then comes back to working out what things are important to you as a hesitate to use personal brand. But I do think it's important that you work out what your values are, what red lines you may have if you have any. And then make sure that you operate going forward in a way that you have integrity. I think that's really important. I did a, we did like a little course for some school leavers at Lloyd's, actually. And I did a life plan with them, which is quite interesting, but most people don't ever do a life plan. And all that is is just a document that you write with your goals, how you're going to get there and how you're going to measure them. And it takes like two minutes. And I think that's the point, isn't it? These things don't have to take days or a week. It can just simply be something you sit and jot down on your train journey or in your lunch hour or something that give you a sense of yourself worth and how you might want, things you might want to develop into or where you want to aim for. It can also be flexible as well. It can, yeah. And also, if I look at my own, I mean, do you know, now I've had like two, probably two careers, let's say. So this is my second career. And so most people I think nowadays, you know, the thing is you go to school and you do your, let's say you follow like a classic path in inverted commas and you do A-levels and you go to university and then you get a career. It's always like set out. You kind of know the route. You haven't really got to think about it. But the minute you're like out in the real world and you look around and you're like, wow, there's so many different things you can do, you almost get completely lost in too much choice. Yeah, I think that's one of the, I want to enjoy using interns, set them off on their career path and one of them said to me last year that they're being told that there's nothing that they can't do. You know, that everything is open to them. They just need to go out there, but they don't get any guidance as to what that looks like and they can feel lost in an area where there are so many choices because there's no direction given. It's a real fine balance between knowing that you're not limited by social mobility or opportunity or whatever that you can do stuff these days and find ways to get there. But also depending where you are, that view of, well, I can do anything is also quite limiting because you just don't know quite where to start in planning your career. So my advice would be to sit down and just, jot down some thoughts about what your skills are, where you want to go, the kind of industries that you like. If you're in the insurance and re-insurance industry, there are so many areas to consider these days that I think there's space for everybody within that and there's skills that you just need to sit down and think about it. And I didn't think about that enough probably, but I've spent a lot of time navel gazing now. So would you, if you had your time again, would you have spent more time like planning or your career or would you? I would have done. I think I would have spent more time. That sounds very grand, doesn't it? Planning your career. I would have spent more time being proactive about taking opportunities, I think. And that requires some planning. Yeah, yeah. So that's what I would have done. I wish I'd have sat down and just thought about where I was heading rather than just letting, just sitting on somewhere, going for the ride and ending up somewhere. Sometimes you do that because you find yourself in situations. Personally, whether it's, you know, you have a young family or whatever it might be, looking at carers, you're caring for other people within your family. That you just, it's sometimes very easy to let things drift and then to try and take that back and have some control over your own future is often quite difficult to do because that requires a bit of time. True. Despite that, you've had a fantastic rise in the insurance industry. Well, thank you for that. No. I'm not sure I've ever... So how have you... I've ever sort of viewed it like that. But it's been, I've been thoroughly, I'm trying to think of the right word with that, signing people on a stick, their fingers down a throat. But I've just thoroughly enjoyed being part of this world. And there are things that go on these days that annoy me. And I think we can still improve the way that we do things. But I've just loved being part of it. And I have sort of looking myself now to do things differently, having got to a certain point in my career because I stepped away from working in a reinsurer. Last year, finished gardening leave early this year. Because I felt for the first time I needed to stop doing something to work out what I did next, which is hence the naval gazing bit, I guess. But I really felt that because your head can get so full of stuff that you're not quite sure where you're going. So it felt right to take a pause and just decide what skills do I have, where do I want to go in the future. Work out if you are still ambitious about working going forward. So I've had a bit of a career change myself and still working through that actually. So I thought I needed to consider what I wanted to do next. I felt that at 53, and that's on tape now, but yeah. Young, young. The days of lying about my age are over. So what I was gonna say, I used to work for a French company, we all like our age, but that would be something that you'll edit out, I'm sure. But so I felt, I was starting to feel that I wasn't, I was starting to feel I was still ambitious and I know that I'm still ambitious and needed to find an outlet for those ambitions but trying to work out what they are. Because I think it's quite nice to try and, it's not easy, but I felt like I needed to change my career and what I did and what I focused on. So having made the decision very amicably to leave where I was, I took on a non-exec directorship for a US company that I absolutely love. And this is something else I think is important for me going forward. So I took on the non-exec role and I sit on two boards of theirs, one in the UK and one in Luxembourg now. Amazing. But they are just, I've never worked for a company quite like them in terms of their mission and their purpose and focus about what they do. And I'm just thoroughly honored to be part of their structure. And what do they do? Well, they're called the USAA and they are a company that provides insurance cover, they're a bank in the US, to all the US military. Amazing. And so that kind of purpose-driven organization, on a completely different scale than anywhere I've ever worked before. And they've got sort of 27,000 people on one campus in Texas. It's just incredible. But such a thoughtful business. And so I decided going forward, and this is nothing about where I've been before, but going forward in the next stage of my career, I want to work for companies with companies that I really care about, in terms of that they're important to me as a driver in terms of my, the things that I care about personally. Yeah, so like a social, either a social impact or... A bit also, but also be very ethical companies as well. Like, you know, that's something that I really enjoy. And so, but taking this non-exec role was a very rigorous process to get there. And having gone through that and come out the other side, it was a good way. And this is something I think we can all do at some point. It was a good way to reevaluate what you've done to date, because I think you can forget all the bits you've been involved in. And so it made me sit down and consider all of those things that I've experienced, done, set up, whatever it might be. So I sat down and looked at that. And then you suddenly have a realization that actually, so you can do this, you are actually able to do this. You have every right to sit at that table and to try and take this role on, whether that I was successful or not, fortunately I was, but you have a sense of, okay, I've got a great set of experience and you have to start to find ways, I would say this for everybody, you've got to start to find ways of articulating your worth that's in a very positive way, but it's not cocky and it's not egotistical, but it's very practical, because I think you can forget all of those things that you've done. And it made me just take a pause and just look at, because all the people I was having to be interviewed by in the different areas of the business. You know, I realized, crikey, I do know quite a bit, whereas I think you often forget the things that you've done. It was a very timely thing for me to do. And it felt that it was exactly the right time as well. So... That's awesome. Because a lot of people, if you sit down and almost, if you had a CV, writing your CV, they're thinking about your story. Yes. Because ultimately you're really, your storytelling, you're telling someone that you've never met before, what you've done, what your skills are. Yeah, and I've always been quite reticent about that. It's not been something I've been very good at, but I've got better, much better, probably the last, definitely the last six months, maybe the last year, about finding ways of doing that. I still don't do it enough. And there are still things I don't do well enough, but it is, it feels right to try and change some things. Definitely. Take on some new experiences and then work out what else I want to do going forward. And I think, I think what we all value as individuals is that we do something where our experience is called upon and that we feel like we're adding value. I think when you get into a space where you feel like you're not adding that value and you get those frustrations. So I think sort of working out direction about how to find an outlet for those frustrations and your experience is really good. I'm sort of, so I'm not quite there yet, but getting there. And it's been, but the luxury of time is not something that everybody has. And I feel that my time of considering this is perhaps coming to a bit of a close now. I need to, I'm the world's worst bored person ever. So, I'm very privileged to be part of the USA, but I need to then sort of do something else as well. I'm not sure that I'm ready for a full portfolio career. I mean, we talked about portfolio career that's very non-exec-based. I still think I have value to add in terms of exact side of things. So it's working out how to do that. And that's often quite difficult because that cuts them back to my other point earlier, which was around. And you brought it up with IT and changing structures and that we're in this bubble in the city within the insurance and reinsurance world. That's a good thing and a bad thing. So one of the things that I think we don't do well enough in the industry is we've got all of these new drivers. We've got some people coming into our industry and we need different skill sets and where we get that talent from was going to be a very different place. So we've got people coming in that use technology differently. I think 5G and digitalization will transform the businesses even more. I think that's just an incredible opportunity to think the most insane things about how you provide insurance and actually be able to deliver them. But what we do with these great opportunities and space that we're creating and one of the things I love about this industry is that anything anybody can make or do or go to or want to try or develop, we will find a product or a way of, a risk management way of enabling them to provide that. And that's something that we should be really proud of. I think that we match the innovation that we see every day. And that we provide support and help to people when they need it most from floods or hurricanes, whatever it might be. That's something that we should be massively proud of. But what we don't seem to do very well is change our structures to match these new opportunities and ways of doing business. So I think we often silo things and maybe it's driven by regulation but a lot of it I think is driven by just historical precedence of where we are and how we've always done things. And so I sort of look around sometimes and think there are some things happening in the market today, which I'm not proud of in terms of my industry has been spoken about in the press about. For example. Well, if we looked at sort of the recent sexism that's been highlighted, particularly over the last week in the market. What came out recently, it was the Bloomberg article. No, not that. So it's more the sort of the broken emails and so on that have come out. And that's just, you just think, oh, big sigh because it's just like, oh. And just for people that don't know about these. Yeah. Would you mind giving a little quick summary of what? So Karen's take on this is that, and I don't want to use names necessarily, but I think a very ill-advised email was sent out, which is all in the press. People can read this. An ill-advised email was sent out, which just crossed the line between between being humorous, we'll come back to banter in a minute, between being humorous and being just totally ridiculous. So like sexist. It was, and insulting to a particular individual. And that, you just think really. And this got leaked. It's got leaked and it's the press, national press. It's been all over the news. And you just think really, why would it be? And was it excused as banter? I haven't seen that work, but I do think there is a view that, well, that shouldn't matter because it's banter. So I think what has surprised me, and I find quite interesting this, that has surprised me is the action that has been taken about that particular incident, in terms of companies dealing with it. I think in the past it would have been very much, well, let's leave it a couple of weeks. It might all go away and then nothing happens to anybody. So in terms of actually making sure that we respect all our colleagues, then I think that action has been taken. And I'm... And did the person got fired? Suspended or something. I think it's worked. So, you know, and I'm sure... I'm just, this is a guy sending an email to a girl. That's right. And I'm sure he wakes up every day at the moment thinking, God, you know, with an awful feeling every day. But it's just a... I think we've lost in this digital world that we're in and the way that we communicate, I think we've lost the ability to understand how to use it a little bit. Do you know the issue? Absolutely. But back to that, if I was using that as an example, you know, it's not just that we have to say to companies, you need to drive out sexism in your company. We need to be more respectful. All companies in whatever industry have those things to deal with. I think if you look to this on a sort of a more granular level and ignore the fact that it's a broker or an underwriter or whatever it might an MGA or a, you know, one of the big four consultants, whoever it might be. But I think you have to look at the environment that those people are in. And that's something that's been built up. I'm not sure how to solve this, by the way, but that environment that they're working in, these small teams with a particular style, working in an area that's got historical practices and a culture stitched into the fabric somehow, just lends itself to people behaving not necessarily very well sometimes. So it's not just the fact that they're underwriters or they're brokers. It's the kind of structure that we're asking them to operate in, in a very changed world where we can communicate instantly that's come out of, that's being operated in a space that's got a lot of history and habit stitched in there. So I think we need to think about how we construct these things differently and what we do to actually unpick that bit of those small teams, wherever they may be, and those drivers that are making them think they're just in a bubble within a bigger bubble. It's interesting because you're right, but it's, what you don't- I don't know how you do it, by the way, but I just think there's something in there that it's not just- But what's interesting is, so there's two things here, there's these bubble, let's say, and there's these older school practices and stuff, but then you've got, on the other side of the coin, you have technology, which suddenly whatever you say or whatever you write to whoever you want, it will just, it goes to the world, right? It completely goes to the world. And also, given all of the conversations, I guess the countries, everyone's very quick to call people out and to publicize these things. So what I find is it's very difficult to really know like how bad is it or is it actually quite good? Have we got better? It's very difficult to measure. It feels in the UK, compared to other countries in the world, we're in a great place, it feels. I mean, the UK is open, London is super multicultural and diverse. None of my friends are sexist or racist or homophobic, anything like that. So it's an interesting- So something happens to these great people when they come in, and this is why I sort of think that we need to think about this a bit more. So I am sure that that behavior was generated by being in a particular kind of space, not the whole company, not the whole of a big organization, but in a particular space within it. And then the corollary is that, is following this incident, that social media gets used to then, I understand, almost pillory the young lady involved in that. And that is massively unacceptable. Also, so social media came on, attacked the lady rather- I think it was some, I understand that there's been some online action around. To know the problem is- You just think that's just appalling behavior. So whoever thinks that that's acceptable is nuts. But this is where we have to have some, we have to understand why that arose really. Well, so technology, Twitter, all the social things. People just use- They're all teenagers. If you looked at social media, I would describe social media as being teenagers. Facebook's what, 14? You're putting your hands and your view of yourself in the hands of a bunch of teenagers. Or, yeah, but if you step back even further, these platforms are used for people to just get out there venom on people. You can be anonymous. If you're on Twitter, you can have an anonymous profile and you can just attack people completely anonymously. And most people use these platforms for these venomous attacks or negative comments. And this is where I find myself stopped and then defending social media because I think it's an amazing tool for good. Absolutely, no, no, true. You can educate people in the middle of nowhere that don't have access to schools. You can demonstrate to somebody that needs the skills, a particular bit of heart surgery that made it. And the ability to use this technology is incredibly for the good. That's amazing. But we've just sort of allowed, and I think that's just added to our, those habits of the way we do things personally, slip into our working life. But I think there's something about this space that we get people to work in in a smaller level than just the company that we need to work out how we break those habits down when it's allied with such a new space to be in. And that's an interesting thing to try and deal with. I'm not sure how we do that. But we have a very vibrant industry with some very old fashioned working practices. And I think that needs to be that bit more granular level needs to understand. And it's not just training people. It's not just sending them on courses. It's not just, it's actually about working out how you change their environment. That doesn't always involve people having to go nuclear when they just start really or suddenly become clean dead. It feels like it's come a long way. Oh, I think it has come a long way. And if I looked at it, so I think we've spoken about this before, there's something called London Insurance Life, which is a great thing to look at on Instagram. Or as you said, how's my Grammy going earlier? And I have no idea, I think it would be Instagramming. Kind of lots of cool then. But if you looked it on Instagram, London Insurance Life is a great way to look at all of those great, diverse, young people that we are attracting to our industry. And we need to make sure that they are not put off joining. I don't think they are at the moment. I don't think they're put off joining industry because of these things that they see. But we need to make sure that they aren't. And we need to have some kind of, you know, some kind of duty to make sure that they, whatever their career ambitions are, male, female, black, white, don't really care, all right? Whatever their career ambitions are, we can provide them with a space in which they can pursue that and a space that's fair and open. And I think we have to work out how we do that. And because I think it's, we've been talking, it is better. And we talk about these things now, which is massively good. Absolutely, yeah. But I'm not sure that we, I think we need to turn this discussion into action. I'm not sure what that is. But we need to start to be active about really changing these things. That's, you know, not just suspending people and it's not just, I mean, they're great examples. And that being done so visually, I mean, we're not talking about anything that's not in the press. Being done so visually is an amazing step forward because five years ago, 10 years ago, that would just have been brushed aside under the carpet. But we know about these things now. So a bit of a problem back to social media and stuff is all of these things are so polarizing. And so on social media, you pick a side, right? Either the guy was at fault or he wasn't at fault and you can't be anywhere in the middle. And it doesn't leave, it doesn't leave any room for nuance. No. Because in all these scenarios, there's nuance and... There is. And yeah, and you, you know, things can get taken out of context, but it's a very hard field to navigate, I think. But I do think we need to do more about tackling the cause of all of that. And part of me is convinced that part of it is due to the fact that we are expecting people to operate with stuff in an unchanged style environment that's got that historical stuff behind it. But then you have young people coming in who have grown up in a different time. And interestingly, just kind of circling back to your current scenario of, you know, maybe either a few jobs or one job, right? Actually going forward, more and more people through even the start of the career are going to end up having multiple jobs or a gig economy. Right, I read somewhere recently that a body in the US has escaped me. It has just said on average people now will have 11 jobs throughout their career. Interesting. 11 roles. They're very different from, and we still see this here today in our market in London that we see that there is people that have been at one or maybe two companies throughout 35 years of their working life. And so that, you know, I think that fluidity of change and people hop from job to job is quite an interesting layer as well to add in to people in an environment that can see people stay somewhere fantastically for a long time. Sure. It might even be more extreme than that. Yeah. I think nowadays and very near future, people won't want a permanent job. You've got a lot of young people that want a portfolio of jobs. Yeah. Depending on all these different integrative industries, lots of where, and the optimal size of companies is shrinking. You don't need so many people. You've got technology, all these things. And so people can do like gigs or jobs for different companies and they can go away for a couple of months. And then we can call them up and be like, hey, we've got this great project. Amazing. I think that's right, but that requires us to think differently then, doesn't it? About how we hire people and where we hire them from and who they would be. And because that's not just, that desire to do those things like that is not just a belong to the young for want of a better phrase. Some of us want to operate like that as well because, but getting that and being able to do that is not, it's quite challenging to think about that and articulate it because people still tend to want to fill a job, a role, something and B, have that formula around it. So we talk about flexibility and I think we mean flexibility of role when we're there. We can have flexible working time, pretending which is great. But that flexibility of attitude about how you get somebody to do something for a period of time and they can dip in and dip out and you create a pool if you like of people that you'll call upon with different skill sets. I think it's something that we need to think about differently about how we approach hiring people and who those people are. I think quite often we silo, and this may be another way that breaks down that kind of bubble I was talking about earlier of small teams, is that when you do have a project, I think the project should have a breadth of people on it. It shouldn't just, if it's a new innovation that's driving a product and how you want to deliver that, it's not an IT project, it's a business project. And I think you need to have a breadth of experience in that you need to take your people, you need people with a vision to put that in place, but you also need experienced people. And I think we tend to silo them within specialist bits of the company. And I think that would be a whole lot more breaking down of barriers if we looked on a cross sectional basis about where you add value. I'm sure lots of companies are doing this, but not all, I think it gets siloed a little bit into teams and then a certain type of team. And I actually think we need to be a bit more refreshing about how we approach those, because it breaks down a whole load of other barriers as well. Well, I'm finding a lot of people want to work that way. And the companies either are doing it. If anybody's listening, I do. Yeah, I mean, at any stage of your career, I mean, you could either do a portfolio career, but it's funny because you call it portfolio when it's like a non-exec or something like that. That's a very traditional way of doing it. When you're younger, it's, I mean, a gig economy or I'm a contractor, or it's quite funny the terminology, but same challenges throughout. Definitely, definitely. So, you know, and I think it's, I think we need to think about how we do that and get sort of a different breadth of people involved in projects, you know. The other interesting thing is, it's kind of back to mentoring or showing younger people the way. Mentoring is key, I think. Mentoring and sponsorship is something that I have come to realise of late is not of late. But certainly, my last colleague is, how important that is. Okay. And did you have a mentor? I didn't. Well, I'm gonna say it's, yes and no, which is not really helpful. So, I think there were people that I admired when I was sort of going through my career in the earlier stages. One of the things that I was very fortunate to get at school was the, I had a professional mentor, a number of us did within the, within the committee to spend nine months with us on a programme of, and that was something that was, I was not particularly, I was a bit reticent about doing it actually because it's not, I'm not, I've got a lot better, as hopefully you can tell, about talking about things and what drives you and because these things inevitably involve you talking about your faults and where you failed. You never really failed, by the way, but you have to talk about your faults and that's something that's quite difficult, I think, to talk about. But having done this professional mentoring programme, which was with an external person, entirely private relationship, it became, it was one of the best things I've ever done because it opened you up to understanding your faults, what you could be better at and they're not really faults. They're just things that you're just not as good at that you need to concentrate on. And then it also involved you asking other people their views of you. And I think I was really dreading that, but inevitably, I think it's for most people. Just develop them. It's never as bad as you think it is and some people say some things, you think, really, you know, and so it becomes just a, generally, a positive exercise but you have to go through some hard discussions to work out what drives you to do things and I think we very often disconnect our background and drivers about trying to get somewhere with them and that can cause us to struggle with some things, I think. I know I certainly felt throughout my career that probably I've been my own worst enemy in terms of not feeling sometimes that I've always belonged in a particular place or a space. I do now. I absolutely do now. But I think there were times where you're trying to find your feet in an organisation, you try and adopt personas or style or whatever it might be to fit in and actually you should just find a way of being yourself and that's where a mentor or a sponsor can help you do that and I think that's massively important that you find somebody that allows you to express who you are and do things in a way that is intrinsic to you. Definitely. And then you'll be so much more successful. And also find one that appreciates the world and where it's going. Absolutely. And that's a sort of a slightly different view of it and in a reverse mentoring is also something that's great as well. But I think and it doesn't matter whether that's if you're a woman that it has to be another woman, be a man or a woman, it depends who has got that skill set and desire to support and listen to you. And so I don't underestimate at all the power of mentoring and sponsorship as well. I mean, it's slightly different things but they are incredibly powerful things to do. And so I would encourage anybody to take part in mentoring schemes. And if people have a desire to help, just find some, you know, you will keep your eye out for them. If you're looking for a mentor, they can be quite people that you don't necessarily expect them to be. I mean, I still have who will remain nameless, I do have a couple of mentors today that I always talk things through and just those times when you need a bit of kind of like doing the right thing. When things feel a little bit like you've made a stupid decision about, you know, stopping something before you find the next thing. Then you know that actually you're still on the right track because having not made decisions, having not gone down a certain track would have been just worse, I think. Yeah, yeah. Individually. So that's, so I think mentoring is massively powerful. And there are some great things around to do. I'm taking part in this evening in there's something called ICANN. I think it's the Insurance Cultural Awareness Network which has been established. And I am sponsoring a speed mentoring evening this evening which I'm taking part in. I'm really looking forward to that because I think it's a great way for people to come in, talk about a few issues that are bothering them and get some advice. And then if they wish to have a more longer term, a relationship, they can perhaps find somebody that will be willing to do that for them. It's great. And it's awesome. There's plenty of people. All you have to do is give your time. That's all you have to do. But surprisingly, when you're seeking a mentor, it's quite a nervous, daunting thing. Do I ask? I'm not obviously saying no. But actually so many people are happy to help. If you just ask. So I think asking for help actually is a massive piece of advice. I'm still really crap at it actually. Everyone is. I was gonna use another word but I'm really crap at asking for help. But if someone asks you for help, you're like, yeah, no worries. Oh, absolutely, fine. It's sort of a really outset. Sorting out myself won't be really bad at. And so I think, I would love us to be more flexible in our thinking, not just packages that we offer people or say you can work from home through that, which are all great. Just change the way we think we need to hire people in a space, you know? I think that will be really a different kind of flexibility. Yeah, definitely. If I've articulated that at all, I think it's about thinking differently about the kind of people we need to fill roles or where they come from and how we might go about that. Yeah. And I think we're in a time now where it's gonna motor really quickly. I hope so. In the next few years, I mean, it's all changing. People's desires, companies are changing, and it's a really great time. So, I think to sum up, do a life plan and find a mentor, and that will set you on a nice... Yeah, and I see life plan. These life plans are not set in stone. As you say, they can be flexible and just sort of flexible, and you can revisit them. And at some point may have a giggle if you look back over a few years of what your life plan might have been. I think I probably wanted to be an archeologist, but look where I am now. Some people would say working with a lot of old people. So that's fine, but... Being an un-exec-comfortable circle, but no. That's cool. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for coming on. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me back. Great conversation as always. It's good fun. And I wish you luck with your podcast and so on. And I know you're taking part in the Diving Festival. We are. We are gonna do... Yeah, we're a media partner for them. Good. Which would be fun. So we're gonna do three podcasts, which would be really interesting. So yeah, there's a lot going on. It's great. All right. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks. See ya. Bye. Hey, folks. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.