Speaker 1: Today's episode is another my favorite Tip episode where I
Speaker 1: go back to interviews from the past and I dig
Speaker 1: out the thing that was my favorite tip, like the
Speaker 1: thing that I got out of the interview that really
Speaker 1: impacted or resonated with me. My extract on today's show
Speaker 1: is from my chat with Kendra Banks. Kendra is the
Speaker 1: Managing director for Australia and New Zealand at Seek and
Speaker 1: if you live in Australia, you've probably used Seek at
Speaker 1: some point in your career and for overseas listeners. Seek
Speaker 1: is Australia's number one employment marketplace. Kendra has had an
Speaker 1: amazing career and has worked in senior marketing roles at
Speaker 1: Cole's where she was the general manager for Customer Insight
Speaker 1: and Cole's Brand, and also in London at Tesco. Kendra
Speaker 1: holds a master's in European Politics at the College of Europe,
Speaker 1: where she was a Fulbright Scholarship recipient, and prior to this,
Speaker 1: Kendra completed a Bachelor of Economics and Mathematics at Yale University.
Speaker 1: So in my extract from my chat with Kendra, we
Speaker 1: talk about how her executive team at Seek make their
Speaker 1: biggest decisions, which I found fascinating because this was recorded
Speaker 1: during COVID where they were making a lot of big
Speaker 1: decisions given the plummeting unemployment rate. So let's head on
Speaker 1: over to Kendra. I'm wondering with the decisions that you
Speaker 1: have to make as a leadership team, like, are their
Speaker 1: strategies that you would deliberately use to make better decisions
Speaker 1: or try to remove emotion from some of the big decisions,
Speaker 1: because I would imagine, like during March and April there
Speaker 1: would have been some very emotional decisions to make as
Speaker 1: a business.
Speaker 2: There were, yeah, and look some of them were a
Speaker 2: lot of them were around our people in terms of
Speaker 2: how quickly we were going to mandate working from home,
Speaker 2: and we ended up going more on the earlier side
Speaker 2: of businesses to say, not, you know, everyone just work
Speaker 2: from home. This is very uncertain, let's see what's panning out.
Speaker 2: But also how we dealt with our customers. So on
Speaker 2: the hiring side, we've one of the key decisions we
Speaker 2: had was around how much support we give to customers
Speaker 2: who have pre purchased advertising packages with us, So they
Speaker 2: would have said, oh, you know, across the next year,
Speaker 2: we're going to hire five hundred people so we'll buy
Speaker 2: this kind of level of investment with you. Now, for
Speaker 2: a lot of those customers, that five hundred dropped to
Speaker 2: nearly zero, you know, overnight, And so how we dealt
Speaker 2: with that was really important. Probably the key approach we
Speaker 2: use in making decisions, which was relevant there but I
Speaker 2: think is relevant for other decisions as well, is setting
Speaker 2: up what are the principles we're using to make this
Speaker 2: decision and which are the most important. So in that case,
Speaker 2: we had different factors to look at. We had obviously
Speaker 2: a financial factor. If we were going to refund customers
Speaker 2: a lot of money, that was going to be a
Speaker 2: significant financial impact. We had are we looking short term
Speaker 2: or long term? Is it better to keep the the
Speaker 2: long term loyalty of a customer or the short term
Speaker 2: financial gain? What are our competitors doing and what you know,
Speaker 2: if we're in our customer's shoes, what would we want
Speaker 2: to see? And we decided that our most important principle
Speaker 2: there was we wanted to be proactive with whatever we offered.
Speaker 2: We didn't want to have customers coming to us and
Speaker 2: asking We wanted to be proactive. And once we decided
Speaker 2: that principle, that forced everything else into place, there's only
Speaker 2: so many things we can do proactively. There's only so
Speaker 2: many things we can do quickly and simply. And if
Speaker 2: we wanted to err on the side of generosity because
Speaker 2: we'd rather keep the customer for the long term, then
Speaker 2: actually there was only a handful of options that would
Speaker 2: even make sense. So we were able to kind of
Speaker 2: narrow down a very complex, ambiguous question about how we
Speaker 2: were going to support our customers to a narrower set
Speaker 2: of options that we could look at and make a
Speaker 2: decision quickly.
Speaker 1: And in terms of deciding on what those principles are
Speaker 1: and how much each of them will be weighted, is
Speaker 1: that a group decision or is that something you'd think
Speaker 1: about before harnessing the collective wisdom of the group to
Speaker 1: make a decision.
Speaker 2: We'd probably you know, there are probably one or two
Speaker 2: people who would lead the structuring up of that thinking,
Speaker 2: but then we would take it to a group. So
Speaker 2: in that case, it would have been my leadership team,
Speaker 2: but also in consultation with you know, our finance team
Speaker 2: and executive leadership. Because it was a big, big decision,
Speaker 2: very symbolic decision in terms of how we relate to
Speaker 2: our customers. But I think it helps for one or
Speaker 2: two people to kind of structure up well, this is
Speaker 2: how we're thinking about it, and then you've got kind
Speaker 2: of a straw man for everyone to look at and
Speaker 2: debate and discuss, just to keep things flowing quickly.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. If you want to
Speaker 1: listen to the full episode, I linked to that in
Speaker 1: the show notes, so you might want to check that out.
Speaker 1: And if you are enjoying how I work, I would
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Speaker 1: So thank you to the hundreds of people that have
Speaker 1: left reviews. It is so deeply appreciated. So that is
Speaker 1: it for today's show, and I will see you next time.