S02E12 Empowering Human Centric Leadership | Veronica Wong | Wired for Wonder

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Go to cachava.com and use code fitness for 15% off that that's K A C-H-A-V A.com code fitness Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway, give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See 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 will tell you straight up, culture isn't defined by the values on your wall. It's defined by the systems that reinforce behavior every day. Veronica Wong is the head of people operations at Kindred, a human first startup in San Francisco. With a decade of experience building people systems inside early stage and scaling companies, she's the person founders call when ambiguity needs to become clarity fast. She's led global organizations across 15 jurisdictions and navigated organizations through growth, acquisition and contract all at once. What makes Veronica a compelling voice right now is that her company isn't theorizing about AI. They're running hackathons, experimenting in talent acquisition and doing the real work of bringing people along for the ride. She's learned firsthand that the biggest obstacle to AI adoption isn't the technology, it's fear, resistance, and the very human need to feel safe when you're willing to try something new. Welcome to the show, Veronica. Thank you so much, Lori. That was a wonderful introduction. I appreciate it. Well, good. Well, knowing your background, why don't you just tell us what you're most passionate about right now? There's so much change going on out there, so many areas to be tackled, but what's kind of really coming up for you, the thing that's kind of piquing your interest right now? Yeah, I think we're in a. It feels like the wild, wild west of AI and everything feels new and scary and things are moving really rapidly. But when we take a step back and think about it, AI has actually been here for a while. This is not a new phenomenon. And so the thing that I'm thinking about the most is how we are anchoring to what's real in this moment. Not trying to get distracted by the hype or the fear or the uncertainty, but really, how do we leverage this new technology to make us better, to make us be able to move faster, make quicker decisions and really elevate our human skills by using this technology? I think if we can avoid the fear mongering and figure out the right way for each of us and each of our businesses to leverage this technology. It's just a really exciting time to see like what is, what is the limits here. And it really feels like the sky is the limit in a lot of ways. No. Isn't it exciting? I feel like we're going to work right now and we're playing like every day to be like, wait a minute, we have this awesome technology. What can we do to help humanity? What can we do to like, right. Better the existence for everybody. It's just, I'm with you, it's the wild west. But it's really exciting because it feels like in our lifetime this is hands down the biggest technology leap that we've ever seen, at least in my lifetime. So it's exciting. But when you talk about anchoring and what's real and then you talk about the humanness, I'm just curious right now. Where are you yourself finding or helping others in your organization find, find their anchors? Like, where is that sitting? Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for 15amonth 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. Yeah, so I, you know, I just think about even what has happened in the last three, six, nine, 12 months. You know, a year ago when we were seeing kind of AI hit the mainstream media and people were really worried about their jobs going away. I think what I did to root into the humanness is, is help people ground in what is real, what is in their control. And you know, everyone comes with their own anxiety, their own personal value system that drives, you know, how, how open they are to AI in this moment. And so making sure we were speaking with each individual person to understand, you know, what are your fears. How can we give you clarity in this moment of this is how we're looking at your role, this is how we see your skills supported and this is the future we see for you at this organization. Let's root into that and then help you develop the skills that are going to, you know, make it possible for you to grow and develop with wherever this kind of role is taking you next. So it was really to anchor, I think, in what is, what is real for that person. I think for me in particular, I have a lot of people in my life who are like, you should try cloud code. You should do this, you should do that. I'm like, I will do it when I feel the need, when I feel like the time is right. I'm not going to just do it for, you know, the sake of the technology. But it is, how does this add value to my life? How does it make things easier for my workflows? That's when I will start to use it, not just for the sake of it itself. So I think as long as people are able to hold on to, how does this help me? How does this align with my values of how I see the world? How do I personally want to leverage this? It gives people a sense of control in this larger narrative where it feels like we're kind of losing control. It's so interesting, like just listening to you talk. One, I love anchoring in the humanness. I'm 100% behind that. That is for me, myself, with all these changes and keeping up that, I'm looking at my very human skills to be like, wait a minute, I can trust myself. But it's Bringing up things that I hadn't thought about before, which is my own agency, my own sovereignty. Right. Like wait a minute, I have to be the one to decide when it's right for me. Because the change isn't slowing down. There's only going to be more. But it is, there's a lot of power in saying, wait a minute, this is what's right for me right now as a leader of people. Right. You, that is one fundamentally different than how business was done, you know, as much as early as three years ago. Right. Like it's not the way we've really done business for the last hundred years. It's been, this is what the org thinks, this is what you should do. Try to fit into over here. And now the ask from organizations and the technology is like, wait a minute, where can you bring value? But it should also be aligned with your personal goals because otherwise you're going to get lost if you only are thinking about what the company wants. So how are you managing that within Kindred? Like how are you dealing with that? That's a, you know, it's kind of like what was. Into what were. It's going, what, what are you. What comes to mind when I talk about that? Yeah, I think it's a, it's a fine line to walk because, you know, we want to give people agency and independence and at the end of the day we're still a business that needs to make revenue and, and make business decisions. So I think Kindred has a leg up in the sense of what our mission and vision is, which is to. We are a, a home swap platform. So we are a third option when it comes to travel accommodation. You can use hotels, short term rentals, or you can use Kindred, which is a home swap. And the whole premise of that is based on community and connection. So if I'm going to let a quote unquote stranger into my home, I really need to trust the product and I need to trust that the experience that Kindred has built will keep my belongings safe. That if I go and travel as a guest somewhere that I will feel comfortable in a home. And so because we are based on trust and community and connection, we have a leg up that I think makes it easier for us to walk the talk. So when we say we want you to take initiative, find a problem, go solve it, go partner with someone else in a different area of the business to solve a roadblock, we really mean it. I don't know if that's true for all of the businesses out there. So we really do encourage people to think outside the box. One of our values is rewrite the rules. So just because things have been done the way they've been done doesn't mean we need to. I think that speaks to our mission. Right. We're creating a totally new way for people to travel and live in the world. And so similarly, we bring those values into the way we work with each other and the way we structure our teams, the way we really enable and empower people to make decisions we disagree openly and then commit together. So there's a lot of things that we do as a company and a team that set us up for success, to think about things differently, to be nimble, and to not just follow the status quo. So I think we. I don't know, I. I feel like we have a little bit of an advantage there. Well, and I think you're nailing something. I do think that's an advantage because I get the luxury of talking to, you know, companies across every industry, and the trust thing is a really big topic that's coming up because it's, you know, not only is AI a mirror of how humans act, it's an MRI for dysfunction. And when you start seeing, like, hey, this really successful company has some really big holes here or here, or this team that has been doing their job great, like, you know, speeding things up or making, you know, adaptation. You have to have that level of trust to go into an organ, go into a department and say, okay, you were right before, but now we actually want you to shift your thinking. That requires a deep level of trust. So I love that you guys are based on that because, I mean, we all. We all have trust meters in our, you know, it's wired in our brains way beyond anything that anybody says. It's, does my body feel like I can trust you or not? So I love that you guys have that. What. Tell me about just like a, you know, maybe a current problem. You guys are our current challenge. You're having that or you've had that you can speak to about how, you know, experimentation and adaptation is key, but that also. Communicating the wins and losses is also important. Yeah, I think it's been really interesting. Like I said, it's been a journey over the last, I would say, 12, 12 months as we've been thinking about integrating and adopting AI at Kindred Particular, particularly because we are a human first company. And so things that have been, I guess, the biggest. The. I'll go. Okay. The biggest thing that we keep in mind is change management. So Change management is not is anything new. It's something that humans have been dealing for forever. Change is constant. Change is the one thing, you know, that we're all going to have in our lives at all time. But we've been really careful about how we roll this out to our, our team members. So for example, I shared in the early days, a lot of our customer support and operations team members were really concerned about AI taking their jobs and moving towards automation. And we kind of coached them through that moment. Get to the beginning of this year and you have cloud code. And now the fear has shifted to software engineers where they're like, I'm also going to be replaced here because now all of these agents can code for me and I'm just reviewing it. And so we worked with them through the change management piece and the thing that we pushed through all of this is like, let's actually use this to our advantage. Let's leverage this to make us more efficient, more productive. And so our engineers are now openly saying, look, I'm not coding 90% of the code, I'm not writing, I'm just reviewing it. And so the more we support that and encourage it and provide people with the tools to use it. We held this AI hackathon last week and in preparation we led These vibe coding 101 sessions where people could join, they downloaded Claude together, set up their account together and really started prototyping all in a live session. And so we're helping people be able to learn and approach the technology in a way that works for them with the support of the organization, we give them the tools. We of course have an AI usage possible. We have an AI usage policy that gives guardrails and rules to make sure that we're using it in an ethical manner. But we're definitely, again, it's about walking the talk here. So making sure that people know they can use it. Like, you don't need to hide that you wrote this doc using AI. You can state it openly and let us know that you did, but also that you reviewed it and you made sure that all of the content was accurate and followed all of the rules. So making sure that we are setting up the systems and the processes that support the outcomes that we want. 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 that is one hackathons so much fun. You don't really have to do coding, especially now, especially with cloud code. But in general with any of the big LLMs you don't really have to do the coding anymore. You just get to be like, let's have an idea and create it. Which is, yeah, it was incredible. This is something, you know, as a remote first and distributed company, we try to get people together at least twice a year for these in person on sites. And so we've done hackathons actually every year. This was the third one we've done and we. It was incredible to see the difference that I allowed in terms of participation. Like usually people would come with an idea and then they would kind of like, you know, pass this problem statement onto an engineer who would then build it. But that person who had the idea was just like, okay, I have nothing else to do for the 40 hours that remain. And this time we had teams that had no engineers on them. We had teams that, you know, people were involved in the building from, from hour zero to hour 48. And so just the level of participation and ownership and engagement was so much more because of AI. And so the power of this technology to really democratize the ability to build a product to solve a problem, to make that, to get it live out to users and test it is just something that wasn't available before. I mean it was like for a long time it was like, oh, you have an idea and then you have to go through all these steps. And hey, I've been in tech for 25 years, so I understand, oh, we have to go to here and learn about applications and. Right. And learn about systems and you know, all the different internal systems. We did need to do that to get to the infrastructure and now it's like, wait, we're dropping all of that. But do you see a big collapse of the business and technology like being so different of of it, the business handing something off and instead really seeing now that it's much more around problems that are. And it's more of who are the right people with the right thinking for the right problem to bring the most value? Yeah, totally. I think we see we kind of framed the hackathon around this, but I think it's something we see generally is one, our customer support and operations team members are the ones on the front lines with our members who are taking trips and hosting. And so they have the best insight into the problem areas for our users. And so the fact that they can now bring a problem and a solution that they visualized, you know, or I guess a problem that they've identified in their mind and now they visualize with a prototype that can get built so much faster. So we're able to solve user problems faster. I think also for like internal tooling, we all know our pain points. So why don't I, as a people person, go ahead and build an app that our internal folks can use or an automation that makes all of our lives easier? Because me as the end user knows this pain point the best. There's definitely a way where we're just solving problems faster. It's really interesting to see what some of the larger companies are doing out there. There's a lot of news coming out about. I mean, the unfortunate side in the human impact side is that, you know, some roles are being eliminated, but businesses are restructuring themselves to either remove that layer of middle management because you don't need it anymore, or making organizations a lot flatter. I've heard about engineering managers now managing 50 people because their, their, their time can just be spent so differently. It can be spent on building those relationships with individuals so that you know your direct reports and can support them through to building, you know, whatever it is that they're working on. So there's just a complete kind of. I think the world of work is changing a lot in terms of how teams will be structured, where we're spending our time. Like we are going to be spending our time doing the human things, doing the things that technology and robots and agents cannot replace. And that's such a unique, I don't know, a unique place to be where we get to say, hey, I'm not going to do this repetitive stuff anymore that took up half my time. I'm going to do the things that no one else can do, that no one else can replicate. And you get to like, lean into your individuality and your personal human skills even more. I mean, it's kind of inspiring to be. At least this is what I'm finding is like, I'm finding that the stuff that I deeply care about, like, I nerd out on thinking about thinking. Like the amount of reading and philosophy, existentialism, quantum physics, and, you know, like, all the things that I've. Neuroscience that I've always nerded out on. I'm like, wait a minute, now I get to use my lens of how I think to better solve problems with AI. So it's like, it's actually removing a lot of delays for me to be able to contribute with my gifts in the way that makes sense to me. But the, but using the technology because it's so vast, it can take my information and make it more concise for other people instead of me trying to bring people along. Right. Which I think is wonderful because I think you're nailing something that I'm seeing in the organizations that are really moving ahead quickly is that they're like, they're not getting rid of people. Like, yes, jobs are changing, organizations are changing, but the people who are seeing big advances are looking at, you know, the, the intellectual capital inside of their people and saying, hey, how would you solve this problem? And so you're all of a sudden getting way more ideas that then, you know, you get two or three people on a team who are like, wait, this is what I was thinking. This is what I thinking. You put it together and you're like, wait a minute, we just solved like 10 problems when we thought we were solving this tiny one over here. And it's really inspiring around just to see how individuals get to be, get to contribute, which is something I don't think we've done very well. I think we've tried to take the human out of work for a long time and now it's like, no, let's really let people contribute. But that also leads to a shift in leadership. Right. That, that which you being, you know how to people is an interesting conundrum. Right. Of like, how do you say, still manage and lead, but then also now you're managing people who are moving at different speeds, who are showing different skills that you may or may not have ever seen. What's some struggles that you're seeing within the leadership group that you guys have had to work on over the last year or so as so many new skills and so many new things are popping up. Yeah, I. Let me, let me put my thoughts together. I think as a leadership team, couple challenges that we've had to overcome. One is that there is no one size fits all here. Right. So like I said, you know, 12 months ago it was our ops team being concerned. More recently it's our software engineering team being concerned and so understanding that our approach to AI, it does in a way need to work for all of Kindred. But it can also be customized for the certain use case for the team, for the function and what their individual challenges are. So that's something that we've definitely been thinking about in terms of like not just rolling out a policy, because we should, and just telling people to follow it, but really making sure we are understanding the needs of the people on the ground and then building the structures and support or the structures and processes to support that. I would also say there's just a lot of pressure in the market for people to keep up with AI right now. And I think it's really easy to be reactive to that. Of like, okay, you know, Google and Meta are doing this, so let's do it too. And something that we have been actively doing is, is not. Is trying to protect ourselves, I guess, from that pressure and from that hype. So we're saying, what do we. How do we want to use this at Kindred So specifically, how does this align with our mission, what we're trying to build in the world, how we want to run our teams, and then making sure we're really staying honest and true to ourselves. So there's just, I think it's a push and pull of making sure we are keeping up with the technology, but doing it in the way that feels right for us. And this is something again, very unique in the sense of like, our product only exists in the real world. It only exists if you have real homes and real people. And so how to, again, do we hold on to that as the kind of solid rock in our foundation and then use the technology to make things easier for our users, easier for our employees? And so those two things have been perspectives that our leadership team has been keeping in mind through all of this change. I love that. And it's. That's so honest, right? Because the way in business as a leadership team for many, many decades has been standardization. Roll this out, do this the same. Well, when you have people who are moving at different speeds, that no longer the standardization. We've almost. We basically maxed it. We've scaled it as much as we can scale. It's gotten humans very far. But we're stepping into a new paradigm model where standardization isn't great. So you have to own that there's going to be movement, there's going to be dynamic leadership. That does not look like A plus B equals C. That felt very, you know, it was very safe. So I love that you were honest about that because that's something that is really true in the market today is, is what works for you. Just like Being a human, you know, human being, what works for me doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for you. But if we look in ecosystems, kind of how nature works, right? You look at the bigger picture. Oh, wait a minute. It's not every step doesn't matter as much as is everybody moving towards the same outcome. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try. @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. See full terms@mintmobile.com right, yeah. One of the other kind of values or operating principles that we use is to optimize for the whole. And I think that's something that we're also really thinking about with AI. It's not optimizing one team or one skill set, but it's setting up kindred for success and it's setting up our team members. And again it's the structures and the systems that support that are, that are going to get us there, that we're going to be able to manage carefully but also quickly as things morph and really make sure that people are set up for success here. And how are you guys doing that today? Do you have all your internal systems connected or are you building towards that? Where are you guys at on that? I'm just curious where you're at on the path. Yeah, I'd say it's a work in progress. I think there was a lot of things we did in anticipation of the hackathon to get stuff in place. So we have our AI usage policy, we have our tools that are approved that people can use. We are as best we can trying to make sure that the tools are connected and can talk to each other, that the data sets are clean, that we're also not ingesting PII into our AI models as well. So there's a lot of guardrails in place. So I would say we're, I would say we're pretty, doing pretty well. I'm sure that there are still ways where we can leverage this even more. I think however, we're trying to balance like giving people enough to experiment now and to use now, but also not locking things in Too early because the technology is just moving so quick that we need to remain nimble. So it's a balance between, hey, yeah, this is what we're going to do going forward. And there's room for change as more tools get launched, as more software exists that we may want to tap into. Right, right. Because you can't, you can't really tie to one vendor only because that model of is gone. Because every, you know, month to three months to, you know, three days, things are changing. All right, well, just to kind of wrap up, wrap this up, I would love to ask one last question for of you, which is if you were to give our audience and leaders out there listening, you know, some advice, what would the three human skills that you would recommend that they work on be for right now, where we are today in the world? Good question. Three human skills, I would say first is adaptability. I used to work at a program that was kind of like the anti college program where we lean into the kind of what people call soft skills, but I like to call them power skills. And I think that adaptability in this new world is so important in that program. We talked a lot about growth mindset, and I think this is a moment where growth mindset is incredibly important because we don't know what is coming. We don't know what the technology is. We don't know how it's going to impact our lives. And so being adaptable to those changes. But again, with ownership of like, I. I don't know what's coming, but I know that this remains true of who I am, of how I want to be in the world, of how I want to interact with people. And so whatever comes my way, I will be able to adapt to that in a way that feels right to me. So having an open mind there to what can come, I know it can be really easy to spiral into the anxiety of, like, I don't know what is. And so the more you can stay again true to who you are, true to how you want to be in the world and mold in that way that feels right to you, the better you will be. I. I don't know why. My second word that's coming to mind is to be kind. I think that, again, it's one of those things that only humans can do. And as people are dealing with AI in different ways and reacting to it in different ways, the more grace we can give to each other to, you know, someone might be further along to adopting it, someone may not. Someone may be really uncomfortable using it, but the more we can be kind to each other as we're navigating this new future. I think it's going to be really important. I think it's important on an individual level, like I just said, but I think even, like systemic, we're deciding as a society what are the rules and the use cases where AI is acceptable and where it's not. And so the more we can empathize with the other person and also just the greater community and world that we live in, we will be much better off. Kindness and empathy, I think, is another really important human skill. And the third one, Let me think on this. The third human skill that I think is important is. Is a. It's a combination skill. It's a combination of common sense and awareness. There's some stat that like 90% of people in the world think that they are aware of themselves, but really when they do a test, it's like 15%. And so I think there's something. Yeah, it's. It's wild. That's crazy. Like, in order to be successful at those first two things that I mentioned, you have to be rooted in reality of what, what am I good at, what am I not good at, where do I want to lean in and where do I not? And I think there's just something about awareness of, like, what are the skills you're going to need in the world today and the world tomorrow. And then don't worry about the rest. If possible, there's just, you know, setting the right expectations for yourself again, giving yourself grace in this moment is going to be the way we move through this together in a. In a way that's not scary and totally overwhelming. And so being aware of your strengths, your areas for development, the places you're curious that you want to lean into, that will, I think, set you up in your teams for success. Man, those are some wise and very valuable pieces of advice right now. Well, Veronica, I've been so excited to have you on the show today. If our audience wanted to connect with you or reach out to you, hear more about Kindred or what you're doing, where is a good place for us to send that? You can find me on LinkedIn. Veronica Wong. I think the user handle is Wong Ver. But you can DM me on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to connect. Okay, well, thank you for being on the show and thank you, everyone, for listening. Of course. Have a good day. 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 intro rate. First 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra default terms at mintmobile. Com.