S02E11 Embracing Change in the Workplace | Hallie Condon | Wired for Wonder

The most effective people at work aren't working harder than everyone else. They're working smarter inside better systems. Superhuman GO from the makers of Grammarly is the AI chat that works inside every tool you already use. Always ready and already aware of what you're working on. It's a teammate whose only job is to help you be better at yours. With GO working with you, you can show off what you do best. See what Superhuman Go can do at superhuman.com that's superhuman.com Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com. Hello and welcome to Wired for Wonder where we speak to the architects of the future of work leaders who are using AI to dismantle the old grind and rebuild work around what actually drives results. I'm Lori Kirkland and today I've got someone who has built her entire career on a premise most organizations still still treat as optional, that people are capable of far more than the systems around them allow. Allie Condon is the VP of People at Chili Piper, a demand conversion platform built around speed, efficiency and pipeline. It's not the industry you'd expect to find someone who writes openly about broken workplace systems, what founders get wrong, and what HR usually won't tell you. That's exactly what makes her so interesting. She's chosen to do the hard human work inside a company that moves fast, and she thinks these two things belong together. She spent over a decade building people functions from the ground up and companies at this at the stage where culture either gets intentional or gets chaotic. What she's carried through all of this is a specific kind of optimism. Not the motivational poster kind, but the kind that comes from actually sitting in the rooms where careers get made and still believing people rise to meet the real challenge and real change. That belief is what we're going to explore today. Because as AI accelerates everything, the question she's asking is the right one. How do you make change something people move toward instead of away from? And how do you make that personal for each person and your in for each individual on your team. Welcome to the show, Hallie. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Great. So you work in a company that's built around speed and conversion. Right. And you've chosen to be the person inside that environment who's advocating loudly for the human side of change. What does that tension actually feel like? Being a people leader from where you sit? And has it made. Has it ever made you want to look away? Yeah. So part of me is like, it's just naturally who I am. I, like, authenticity is very important to me as a person. And so even when I'm like, if, you know, when I'm interviewing for positions I want to work at, I am interviewing the company for openness to that kind of pushback and authenticity. So in my interviewing with Chili Piper, like, that was something that came up, and it was something I knew going into my work here that, you know, was. Would be on the table to do. I. Our founders, I think, are different in a good way in the sense of, like, they're very open to doing things the unconventional way. And that includes, you know, how we look at the people function and how we think about the work environment for people within the company. And so, yeah, I feel very lucky to be in that kind of environment. It almost is like, it's easy where one wouldn't expect it. So you're not really seeing the tension so much as you actually have support of leadership. But I imagine within the operations teams and as you guys are building, right, that human. That tension between. Wait a minute. This is the process we've laid out, and these are the people we have that. That comes up pretty regularly, especially now that we're all in really fast changing times. Does that ring true for you? Yeah, for sure. And I think that there's. There's still, you know, that element of, like, startup environment kind of like, that's sort of, you know, whether, you know, we call ourselves a startup anymore. I think we still definitely, like, have that at our roots, and it's definitely a strong part of our culture. But with that. Right. Like, there's a. There's an expectation from the individuals that work here on, like, what it is that we need to deliver and how quickly it needs to be delivered and things like that. And. And that's really where I think maybe the tension comes in, is like, trying to make sure that we're really balancing those things, you know, in the best possible way. Yeah, that's amazing. And in our last conversation, you said something that I have heard very few people say, which is that you actually think change is novelty and kind of fun and that you really thrive in that type of environment. What are some, some things that you do to help kind of reduce the fear that others who don't look at change the same way. What are some things that you just, maybe you do naturally? Maybe they're your special gifts, maybe they're, you know, strategic plays you put into your business. But tell me a little about how you bring others over to accepting change. Yeah, I think this goes back to, I mean we talked about this a little bit prior is like, I don't like I have a risk aversion to some things, but when it comes to like changes that are meant to like benefit me, I have less risk aversion to them. I have less, I think I have less risk aversion to work related risks or trying new things and failing at them. Mostly because I also know that I generally learn the most during those periods of time where I fail at things. And so I think that's probably in the back of my mind. I think I also sort of naturally have that mindset of like things are going to work out and so it makes me less nervous about taking that risk a lot of times. But I, I think that the other thing that I have probably naturally like I, so I'm neurodivergent, I have adhd. So like as part of that challenge, like novelty, those are things that like really motivate me. And so oftentimes like especially in a time like right now, I'm just like, oh my God, there's all these things to do. I like there's not. Yes, it's like there's not enough time for all of the things that are like in my brain now of like, oh, I can, I can do this thing that I could never do before. It's like unlocked all of this like additional, like these additional like new paths. So. But I think a lot, so I guess to distill down and for you know, the average person potentially I think that really the something that's probably like a helpful thing to keep in mind is that consider again considering failure as a point like a learning opportunity rather than like the end all of like you didn't do it right one time and that means you can never do it right. So looking at things as a learning opportunity, knowing that things generally always work out, um, and then just. I don't know, I think I just am also like, just try. What is the harm in trying? It feels like I'm, you know, I feel like I'm parenting my child or like that. My parents said that to me, and they probably did, but I think there's also a lot of truth to it. Yeah, well, and I think you're tapping on something. A couple of things when you were talking that I heard is one, this is the time for ADHD people. I mean, it is the time for the people who are, like, curious and, like, who aren't afraid to change. Like, start tapping into those people and not with the expectation of they have the answer, but start listening to people like yourself. Right. Who or myself who are okay with playing in the ambiguity and then start. Are better at seeing connections. That's something that work for the last hundred years has not really promoted. Right. Work has been like, standardization, do things the way we want. Predictability is the outcome, but in a time, or, like, be the expert. And I think that that's another thing that can be really intimidating for people is like, when you first start using, I don't know, AI in a way that isn't, like, that's beyond just chat or, you know, whatever, like, using it more than it's being Google as an example, I think that you feel like, oh, my God, what am I doing? Or like, when you re. I started listening to the AI Daily Brief, like maybe six months ago, and the first episode I listened to, I was like, what is this? I was like, I have no idea what they're talking about, what's going on. But you quickly, like, the more you kind of expose yourself to it and try it, the faster you start picking up on things. And nobody expects. I think the other thing too is like, no one expects you to be an expert or, like, know everything you're doing the first time you try doing it, and that's okay. And that's a different point in time. Right? Like, for years, it's been like, you grow the ranks, you acquire knowledge, you know, then you are the expert. And it's like, well, information has just been democratized. Everybody can get the information. So now it's like, we have to go back to being the people we are and using the way that we individually think to contribute to the greater community for the greater good, which is really different. But what's something you've learned as you started exploring? Like, what's something that's come up for you personally, of, hey, this is, like, you mentioned, things were being unlocked for you, but I'm just curious as to what's your own personal learning as you've gone through this journey and seen a lot of the excitement of what can happen when you start really delving in. I think that working in hr, a lot of times there's oftentimes a lot of like. Like, there's things with tooling that, like, if you had a developer or like an engineer that could, like, make things simpler for you, you know, it would save you a lot of time. But oftentimes, like, your engineers are meant to work on the product that's making your company money. Right? And so I'm not going to ask them to, you know, take their time to build this, like, small workflow for me that would make my life a lot easier. So, like, one of the things that's really been an unlock for me is like, the ability to automate my work in a way that is, like, customized to our company's processes. I've always been sort of a systems thinker, but now I'm actually able to do something with that beyond just like, here's this idea I have, but I can't actually execute on the idea, or I'm extremely reliant on other people to help me execute. So I think that's one big unlock for me. I think through that process of like, have you used cloud code for that? Or what do you. I, I feel like, oh, initially I started just using N8N and there's, I think with a lot of, like, the people type work, we want, like, I want a workflow as opposed to, like an agent to do something. Because I need, like, especially with like a pay change as an example, I need to trust that it's going to be like, exactly like the figures that I put in one place need to make it to, you know, whatever the final destination is as I entered them. So I think, like, N8N has been a big thing that I've used, but I have used some Claude code workflows as well. So it's. It's sort of been learning a little bit of both. But I. What's interesting too is as I first started doing it, I was like, am I actually even learning how to do this? Like, Claude's just telling me what to do, so is that even useful? But as I've, like continued to build these workflows, I'm like, no, like, I am actually, like, learning this. Like, because there are. There will be things that, you know, while I'm troubleshooting that I'm like, oh, I. I know. Like, I can see looking at this error. This is why this happened. Like, it's not getting this information that it's supposed to be getting where like, the first time I was using it, I had, I was like, why is this not working? Just like copy paste back and forth. And it is, it is a difference of most software up until this point has been like, you have to figure out how their process is in order to get the outcome you need. This is different, right? Our. Our tagline is AI augmented, human enhanced. Meaning the technology can think along with you wherever you're at. I mean, I find myself often being like, big concepts. I'll be like, say it to me like I'm a third grader, right? So that I can get it, understand the important point, and then move on to much more complex stuff. So I love that you called that out. Because, hey, if you're out there just learning, right? You don't. You get to learn in whatever way makes sense to you. It's a machine. So, right. I use my microphone all the time and talk to it and it's like there's zero judgment around it. So just learn however your brain thinks. I can't do the, like, talk to text with it. I tried it because I know a lot of other people that really like it. And I just am like, I don't know what I want to say to it. Like, I have to type it out. Well, that's. You apparently do not talk as much as I do then because I'm the opposite. I'm like, oh, writing is harder for me where I thought. But that's like the beauty of it, right? Like, if I can, you know, I'll share with you. I whiteboard all the time. That's my like, creative design. So I'll be like out I. The outdoor whiteboard. Yes. I'm a little nerd like that. But I'll be outside whiteboarding and I'll have my, you know, I'll have Chachi beat with me being like, I'm thinking of this, this and this. What's that? What is the pattern that's emerging? And so it just naturally fits in with me. But that's what's really cool is this. I think we're going to be moving to a future where if you want to type, you can type. But if you don't want to go to a computer screen, you can talk, right? Like, which is kind of interesting because it's going to remove or it's going to at least change the way people interface with technology. And I mean, could you imagine getting off the screens? I'm like, it's interesting that you're saying that because now it's like leading me to this thought of like, I mean even prior to this, right. Like, there's been a lot of like talk within employee experience about like personalizing the employee experience more. And it's really interesting to think about how AI sort of fits in that and how like, I guess the, the setup of your particular AI instance as an example within your work environment, like how that will be personalized as we move forward. I'm like, I have no idea anything about that, but I'm like super interesting in a note that I am making in my own could think more. I'll share an example with you. So I had, I got to be a challenge advisor for two graduate student MI machine learning and AI grad students through this. It's called Breakthrough tech at Cornell. And last semester and we built prototypes for like think a couple years out for wearables that could sit behind your ear and they can read brainwaves. So you could determine if somebody in the prototype was around engagement. So is somebody engaged or engaged. And you can tell that through different EEG signals. So that's getting very futuristic. But this is where, this is where people are thinking about, well, wait a minute. If I don't have to be at a screen, if I can have something, you know, maybe an earring, who knows what it will look like, but some sort of wearable that allows me to, you know, be kind of hands free. Like what could that, how could that change how you as an employee like to work? Right. Like your adhd. I imagine you're not a good, good at sitting for very long. Oddly, I can be if I'm like hyper focused on what I'm working on. So yeah, it's again, like my issue is mostly around like regulating my focus. So like if it's something like AI right now, it's like great but problematic at the same time because it's like I, I should be modeling work, work life balance. And like I want to have work life balance, life balance. But like there's so much I can do. So I'm like, I'll like after work sometimes after I put my son to bed, I'll like get back on the computer. I'm like, let me just try this one thing really quick. And then I'm sitting at my computer for two hours. Do like playing around with whatever. Talk about that. Let's talk about that. That's also a change that AI is creating is getting people into the flow state. Right. Which is a psychological term. And it is really kind of asking some serious questions about work life balance, right? Like, people are in humanity. We are actually wired to build a better community because that has, that's in our genetics. We are, right. Community is our survival. And so people actually want to work and want to contribute. And so when you find yourself in a state where you're losing a couple hours, like, that actually means you see something of value for yourself that you're like, actually, this isn't like work. This is kind of like play. Like, am I cheating a little bit? Because I'm making it way easier for myself. And that kind of feels fun too, right? But it's not really cheating. It's just getting rid of the way things were processed once in processing different. Can you speak to anything that you see within your organization or just within the industry around kind of that push for people to start looking at what actually drives them personally to get into the flow, into flow state. And if you're seeing that arise more often as all these changes are coming with AI. Yeah. So I think like any company, right, like, we, we want employees to use AI. But I think that, I mean, the headlines don't make it easy to do that, I would say, just because I think a lot of the headlines out there around AI are scary. A lot of the ones you see are around, like people were laid off because of, you know, AI efficiencies that were made, which I don't think is the true, like the real story. I don't agree there, but it's, it's still what's out there and, and people, I guess, depending on, you know, the media you consume and what you listen to or, you know, your experience that may feel like that's 100% true. So we, you know, you want to tell a story, right, to employees around, like, how are, how is your company looking at AI? How are. Like, are you, are you trying to, you know, look for efficiencies so that you can downsize, headcount or, you know, that's not what we're doing. What we, the story that we're telling our employees and what we're making movement towards is the idea that we want to utilize AI to take away the work from people that really drains them. The work that people don't like or don't find joy in and allow them to reallocate that time to things that really bring them joy or the things that, you know, they can create the most impact with. And so we actually have launched this program that we're piloting right now called Zone of genius. And so we're helping employees figure out what their sort of zone of genius is, or the areas of work where they bring outsized impact so that people are kind of, like, going into this with that mindset of, like, okay, if I get AI to do this stuff, okay, well, what does that leave me to do? Or what should I be spending more of my time on? So that, you know, sort of helps people directionally with figuring that out too. So. So are you kind of saying with Zone of genius. I'm familiar with the concept, but are you saying really what you're doing is. Is helping people see their. Where their own gifts are and anchor in those. Is that. Is that really what you're. You're kind of hoping to do? To be like, hey, you may not be able to do anything, and it's okay because we got machines to do some of it, but you're good at this. Like, hang out here, and these are the problems our company wants to solve. Is that kind of what you're saying? Yep. Yeah. So, like, where are you bringing the most impact within the business? And again, like, part of that comes from what brings you joy. Because, like, there's. There's things that I Through. When I went through this exercise, I was like, there are things that I think are in my zone of excellence. I'm good at them. I don't like them. Yeah. Or they drain me of energy. Big difference. Yeah. So. So I think there's some of that that's involved, too, is sort of, like, working through those things. But also, I think. I mean, through the exercise, too, we also look at what are some of the things that, like, we could, like, use some development on as well. So it's. Overall, it's. In some ways, some of it's just. It's a feedback exercise, too. But because there, we do them in small, like, cohorts, essentially, with people that work with you. Because I think one of the things we've really noticed, too, is that there are things that other teammates or whatever, like, perceive as a zone of genius for you that you might not have even recognized yourself. So I think there's a lot of, like, value in that. And then also, I mean, a lot of it, too, you get some validation on, like, yes, you are actually very good at that. So, yeah, that's been like a. It's. It's been an interesting pilot. And so I. I think we plan to continue it after our. Good, Good. Now. Now tell me on that, because when you get to talking about zone of Genius, Right. That actually then brings. Kind of brings. It brings the individual's skills up to the forefront. Right. Which then means leaders. Right. Have this opportunity to respond to it or not. And so what are you seeing with some of the changes that it's requiring in leadership because of the empowering of individuals to get to the collective greater good? Yeah. So as part of this program, one of the last steps in the program is like, working with people to say, like, what is the action you're going to take to try to spend more time within your zone of genius? I can't remember what the final split was that we settled on. I think we said that ideally people would spend 80% of their time or something like that in their zone. So, like, what is one action that you can take to spend more time there? And oftentimes that does require, like, collaborating with your manager, your leader, to say, I'm finding that I'm spending too much time in this area and it's really draining me of energy. Like. So for me, as an example, one of the things that I brought up in my call was that I felt like. Like, I really loved building new systems. I built our compensation system from scratch, which was very challenging because we're globally remote. We wanted to pay by market. It's a whole thing, and I loved building it. And. But one of the things I hate about compensation, I hate having compensation conversations with people. It's just, it's important, and I want them to understand why they're paid, what they're paid. It's just like a really stressful conversation because people are going to feel the way they feel about money, whether or not the decisions we've made have, like, are logical, reasonable, equitable. People tie money so much. People have some weird stories about money. Oh, my God. It's always an interesting thing for me to see. To see how different people react to the money conversation. So I can't imagine it being in HR and having that be a regular part. Yeah. But I was like, it's. It's that plus that, like, people oftentimes just have this distrust for HR because of previous experiences. And so the weight of that and the, like, the weight of these conversations, because managers weren't having them and they were being pointed to me was just like, weighing me down. And I brought this up to my manager and he was like, well, you should. You should not be the only one having these, like, we need to enable managers to have these conversations. You don't need to be the one like. So I think there's, like, A lot of. There's a lot of opportunity, I think, just for collaboration between individual contributors and their managers or leaders within the org. And I think sometimes too we're also seeing that like, oh, people want to do a different type of work that maybe isn't in their traditional job description as it looks today. But I think that also directionally helps us too. If we're looking at how are we evolving these roles with AI to sort of think about some of that as well. So. And that's the exciting opportunity is much of where we have had very fixed roles in very fixed things. When you are looking at the future, like you actually don't want anything too fixed. Like right. There's a big move from fixed to fluid leadership where you're like, wait a minute, let's see how we use that person to get us to our bigger goal. Like let's figure out what they really value and how that aligns to the company goal, which is kind of a two pronged approach of the company needs to set higher goals than just productivity, revenue and efficiency. Right. Like that's the anti. Anti game. You have to get bigger something that people can align to personally. But at the same time it feels like a really huge opportunity to be having. Are you guys actually measuring the zone of genius? Have you put any metrics around it? We haven't put any metrics yet. Playing with. Yeah, so that'll be, that'll be sort of our next step is like putting metrics to it. What's really interesting I was talking to somebody else about this recent recently is that. So I, I mentioned I was. I'm a systems thinker. I also very much like to think about what's the story we're telling people. Like how do we bring people along? And when we first started piloting this because this, this came out of inspiration from one of our CEOs and founders. I feel like I sound weird saying that we have two CEOs that are also co founders. So I'm like, it sounds weird when I'm saying it, but yes. So one of them, it was their kind of idea. And when we first, you know, went through the pilot, one of my questions was like, okay, so what are we like telling people about this? Like why are, what are we telling people about why we're doing this? Is it that we think it'll bring like, we believe that like people who have more joy in their job, like produce higher results, like what is, what's the story we're telling? And one of our CEOs you know, looked at me and was kind of like we would do this regardless of if we thought that it actually impacted results because we think it's good for people. Oh, I love that. Which is like. I know, yeah. Which is so like it's not like, that's not a common thing that you hear, but I guess that maybe gives some explanation to it as far as like why I don't necessarily have like the metrics that we're potentially using for it is because this is one of those odd scenarios where I didn't have to get metric like buy ins by like hypothesis. Yeah, I was asking because I, I 100 think that where we're moving to is, you know, people are our most expensive cost center in any business. And somehow though in business planning, probably because we've been working in the industrial revolution, very fixed, predictable ways. Right. Like we've like just kept people out of it. And you're like, wait a minute, people have our systems as well and you have, there's such opportunity to do things like hey, let's actually instead of do the energy being draining from my people, let's actually have it be motivating. And that compounds just like bad energy does. Right. So I was actually kind of curious and hoping you had that because I don't think there's a lot out there, but I see that in the near future, like year to two years. So you know, think about publishing some, some data on this. I think that you're gonna, we're gonna start seeing people. The people component measured differently. And I love the idea of zone of measuring how much time are you spending in your zone of genius and then correlating that to value of, of the organization. Like that is a really, that could be a brilliant way to measure something that feels very intangible but is honestly affecting people's work habits and how engaged they are every day. Yeah, I think it's interesting too. I, I feel every year I feel like there's like moves further and further away from like engagement as like one of those like gold star metrics. And I'm one of the, I don't know the answer to this, but I'm just like what will the next metric be? Like what will, how will we. Yeah, I just, am I hopeless around flow or like. Right. Like something that's much more outcome driven versus engagement. Because engagement every, I mean, I don't know, I feel like every leadership team knows how to cheat on that now to get the engagement to where they want it to be. And it's Just never really felt holistic. It felt, felt like, it feels like what are we really looking for with this false. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I also think like it looks different for every person too. Well, it does. But going back to your systems thinking there's a lot of commonalities too. Like, like that's what's beautiful about humanity is like you can look back a thousand years and see, wait a minute, we're in the same place we've been at humanity has been at before. Even as I'm completely an individual person. Right. Overall, there's definitely some systems and patterns. I just don't know if we've explored it in the work world, which is kind of a wide open opportunity yet again. Another change that is just like interesting and something like fun to explore. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so for my last question for you, if you were to think about our. If you were to give advice to the people who are listening and you were to tell them what you think are the things three top human skills people should be working on now in this time of change, what would your advice be? I feel like I keep seeing this word popping up more and more, but I think that like, and I don't actually, I think it's maybe a skill. I think empathy and compassion are both, I think both for people and for yourself, I think are really important. Especially during a time when there's a lot of change. I think having compassion for yourself can be really beneficial. So I think that that would be a skill that I would definitely like put some time into. I think that it's funny because the things I'm like thinking, I'm like, is this a skill? I think that I think creativity and like being able to articulate your ideas is another thing that right now is probably would be a skill that is useful just in terms of like utilizing AI. Right. Because there's really so much you can do if you can just, if you can explain what your idea is, AI can take you so far. I'm just saying, real concise and easy to consume for other people. I love that. Yeah, I think, I think those would maybe be the key skills. I think that a lot of it just comes down to. Right. Like again, it's that willingness to try. Like be curious, don't be afraid to do something wrong. I mean, obviously be calculated. Right. Like, don't, don't go and put your company's entire database out on like public AI. But like, but you know, try things. Just try and be okay with not getting it perfect the first time. I love that advice. I love your thinking. Super fresh. You could kind of give a lot of ideas that, that are things that are great opportunities as we look at building the future of work. So I really thank you for on the show. If our listeners wanted to connect with you, where should we send them? I am on LinkedIn. I'm like can follow connect with me there. I'm like, I try to be active. I feel like I. I've been decently active recently this year. So. Good, good. Well, thank you for being on the show and thank you everyone for listening. The most effective people at work aren't working harder than everyone else. They're working smarter inside better systems. Superhuman go from the makers of Grammarly is the AI chat that works inside every tool you already use. Always ready and already aware of what you're working on. It's a teammate whose only job is to help you be better at yours. With GO working with you, you can show off what you do best. See what superhuman go can do@superhuman.com that's superhuman dot com.