Fi (00:10)
Welcome to unDUBBED where we're unscripted, uncensored, and undeniably data. There's no fluff, filters. It's where Sarah and I talk about real data, decisions, and the digital world. Today, we're continuing our series of What Makes A Great, and we're diving into something that can make or break decisions faster than you can say dashboard fatigue. What makes a great data visualisation? Is it colors, the charts, or the storytellers?

Or maybe, it's about what you don't show. Let's cut through the noise and find out. Let's get unDUBBED

Sarah, welcome to another poddy Excited to have you here and get back into our series. I thought we'd start out with a question that's a little bit looser. So we've all seen those dashboards that look like a data explosion where there's so many great numbers and so little clarity. Why don't you tell me what actually makes a great data visualisation?

Sarah (01:12)
Great question, because I think we can spend hours on what makes a really bad visualisation. So let's spin it around what makes a great visualisation. You were talking around clutter. Now, there's a lot of things we can do to remove clutter. And I would say 90 % of the problems I see with dashboards is in clutter. It's like a visual overload. I call it walking into the Chemist Warehouse over going into an Apple store.

I find it so overwhelming. There's stuff everywhere? Walk into a beautiful Apple store and I feel very at peace. So that's how I feel dashboards should be. So when you're looking at what makes a great data visualisation, some of the key elements for me are, is everything on the page, does it really need to be there?

Fi (02:01)
And how do you get to that?

Sarah (02:03)
Well, I think in the past, we would build a dashboard to rule the world. It was a dashboard for everybody. You know, those old dashboards, or we'd be just trying to showcase what we could do with a dashboard, how much data we had. So people's idea was like, let's just throw as much stuff on a dashboard as we humanly possibly can. But for me, I like to really think about who the intended audience is for the dashboard.

and also understand why this dashboard is being produced. And I think if you've got that in mind, you can really start to remove all the unnecessary charts, maybe subtext, additional lines of information, a whole lot of tables,

Fi (02:49)
100 % and I love the analogy of walking into the Chemist Warehouse versus the Apple store. So if anyone's tuning in from overseas, Chemist Warehouse is a drugstore on steroids. So it's floor to ceiling whether it's vitamins, Band-aids, and it's just colour.

everywhere and it's like an assault on your virtual senses. So I know exactly what Sarah's talking about there and I do feel the same way as well about when you've got so much information in a dashboard that really can turn people off

So I totally agree that it's important to be able to understand the audience. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you've got an audience, let's say of 400 or 500 people for one particular dashboard, and maybe they come at things with different requirements or different points of view around what needs to be shown or how it needs to be shown. And what have you done in that respect?

Sarah (03:57)
Yeah, really great question. Some of the dashboards that my team has built in the past has gone out to cast of thousands. And that is really difficult when you're trying to get the information across and understanding that some people are more visual and other people are more tabular based. So what I like to do is really come back to that why the dashboard's being delivered and start with the insights.

something that I know you and I are both favorites of Fi is Big As Numbers, also known as BAN's and you can also replace the "as" with something else if you like to. having those big call out numbers across the top

Fi (04:29)
Yeah.

Sarah (04:39)
then using the tool's functionality to be able to either click into those numbers to see more information or at least show the key information in the next area. That is a good way to get that communication out across many people and let them almost do a bit of their own self-discovery on what's important for them to then go and dig deeper.

Fi (05:04)
I've definitely had situations where I've been rolling out large visualizations across big organizations as well. And in fact, there was four distinct groups. There were the management or leadership team, and then there were...

franchisees, licensees, and then the employees of the organization as well. so franchisees are really their own small business people, So they've got very different ways of thinking about things. The licensees I found weren't as complex in what their business requirements were. And then employees...

sigh and just get, on with it because this is what corporates telling me to do. And where I felt that I might've gone wrong in the delivery, at least in the initial stages, was not engaging with each type of stakeholder.

Even though they were all supposed to have one product to rule it all, having different needs, I could have potentially better represented it or explained things along the way. So it became quite tricky in terms of the change management behind it So I think even though everyone had a central why, they needed to understand how they were performing relative to one another and relative to

benchmark businesses that were the same size as them It really did have a different flavor of what needed to to happen. requirements and understanding who you're developing for and acknowledging, especially when there's a large audience that that might be quite complex. You have to make some

decisions it's never a good idea to try and solve for everyone in the one space You might have the need for additional dashboards or workbooks that are separate from the delivery that you're doing to satisfy those needs that are superfluous for other people but critical for some of the stakeholders.

Sarah (07:13)
I really like that layering approach. So you can come in with your insights and your BAN's and any kind of key graphical information that you need, and then drill down. Because like you said, you've got some people that really want to get into the weeds, other people that probably want to look at historical trends. I like the way when you start up at the top, and you've got that strategic outlook that

is the company's key KPIs that everyone's working towards and then allowing that flexibility to go down and look into what's important to you based on your persona.

I quite like in the BAN is having a small, almost like spark line trend that supports that BAN. And sometimes that can come just above it.

Fi (08:00)
Yeah, I've seen it happen just above it or even just below it as well. Also bar charts as supplementary, especially when you've got the BAN's coming down the left hand side. I've seen some beautiful BAN's include the bar charts there as well. Have you ever heard of a mini BAN?

Sarah (08:18)
a miniband.

I can visualize what it looks like. Is that kind of when you've got maybe more than five going on or?

Fi (08:26)
Good guess, but no, it's actually having a BAN further down the page within charts pretend that you've got an area on your dashboard where there's a chart, but you also want to have some associated BAN's with that chart, but it's much further down in your long form.

not having it the same size as your typical BAN but still a bit of a call out so it's easy to understand.

So you can see it's all tied together and it sort of ties off that story if you've got a real long lot of information to get through rather than just having the BAN's at the top or down the side. The mini BAN's I've seen can be quite effective but to your point I really believe in consistency

Sarah (09:04)
Yeah.

Fi (09:10)
BAN's should be top or left. I don't really want to see them everywhere

Sarah (09:14)
another important factor when we're using BAN's is to make sure they tell us something. if revenue is $40 billion this year, is that good or is that bad? It's understanding the context behind that. So what are some of the key things that you do in that BAN area Fi to really highlight what the outcome is?

Fi (09:40)
Right, so I love your comment before around sparklines because the sparklines can give you the perspective of, how's this comparing over time? over the last 12 months, There's also some great indicators that you can use. the

upwards triangle versus downwards triangle or using some colour in that as well to really help to highlight or punctuate what's happening. If you're using a typical RAG you may want to double encode like that using both the green and the red. There are ways, beautiful ways that you can actually have a colorblind safe RAG as well whether or not you're using something like a navy and an orange or if you're using

different saturation. of the colors red and the green, it can actually show up as well. So the double encoding is this a good thing or is this a bad thing? Is it versus target? Really comes back to what the requirements are of

of the visualisation Some good BAN's chat going on.

Sarah (10:40)
Yeah,

So Fi, what else is important when you think of BAN's?

Fi (10:44)
I always challenge people when they come to me with a dashboard that doesn't have BAN's. And the question I have is, what's the most important thing about this page? What is the thing that you're trying to communicate on this page? And so I believe that 98 % of the time you should be having BAN's.

I think if there's something like a table dashboard where you've got all of the data in one place, it's likely that someone wants to export the data somewhere else. Is it necessary to have the BAN's then? I don't think so. So there are times at which BAN's aren't important, but I would really challenge people to think if I'm putting a dashboard together,

and there's nothing that's important on this page, why am I putting the dashboard together?

Sarah (11:38)
Yeah, really good takeaway there, Fi.

So Fi, you touched a little bit on accessibility I think it's a really important one.

Fi (11:45)
It's really important for fonts to be legible. And so I typically go with the Tableau designed fonts when I'm designing for Tableau because I know that they'll render properly on the server or in the cloud environment. It is important though to ensure that you have

the right size, that you have consistency in the way that it's written as well. one thing that people may not be aware of is that some people with disabilities find it difficult to read text when it's all in capitals.

And I know that in some instances people like to put titles or subtitles and all caps, but it's actually more difficult to read. it's something to do with caps having less curvature in there and that makes it more difficult. So there's more cognitive load to actually go and read. So in terms of typography, I would just be aware of the case that you're using. I'm not saying completely avoid caps. I'm just saying,

When you use CAPS, make sure that you're fully aware of it.

Sarah (13:02)
really good thoughts there Fi do you have a minimum size font that you would put on a dashboard? And when would you not adhere to that?

Fi (13:14)
Well, I love consistency in my workbooks and design is really important to me. So I sit on the Apple side of the fence rather than the Chemist Warehouse side of the fence. I avoid an eight point or nine point. And the minimum I have is a ten point, which I'll use on the axes. But you really need to make sure that the colour of

text that you're using has enough contrast in there as well. There's always an exception that can be made.

but it really needs to be for a great reason because people who are older will have difficulties sometimes in reading that smaller text. How about you?

Sarah (13:54)
Yeah,

I think there's cases when the dreaded, I need to print this comes out and you've got a bar chart and they're like, I'm going to need all the bars are going to have to have the number on the top and you can put in 12 font and you're trying to go in 12 font, but without it really overcrowding your dashboard, you're a little bit stuck. So

There are the odd example where it is in my mind more secondary information. So you've called out maybe in the BAN what the current revenue is for the year and maybe even the month.

but you've got some supplementary information there. But like you said, you are going to start restricting people that aren't going to be able to read that as much. The reason I say it's secondary because in this case, I would highly recommend having your Y-axis clearly labeled and potentially having guidelines so people can estimate what those values are regardless.

Fi (15:01)
Mmm. Guidelines, they're really interesting because I typically take them off. I find them to be the chart clutter. Understood though, if you're going to be printing out, it can be really helpful because you don't have the ability to wave your mouse over and just pick it up quite quickly what the actual number is in a tooltip.

So what other design elements do you think makes a visualisation or dashboard great?

Sarah (15:31)
consistency. having your titles all in a consistent colour, size, font, your subtitles, your legends, your X and Y axis labels, your tooltips. Then of course you've got the whole gamut of coloring.

Fi (15:33)
Mm.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (15:55)
What are your colour, palettes How much colour do you, don't you use? you've got

brand guidelines that are being built out by your marketing and UX teams. I would say typically they are not going to serve you completely for building out data visualizations.

Fi (16:16)
Yes, I agree. Brand guidelines are never going to give you exactly what you need from a data visualisation perspective and even though they go a little way sometimes things need to be different. So for instance, the typography that might be your regular typography and your brand guidelines might not be loaded or accessible on your server or cloud environment. Therefore,

you may be better choosing the Tableau typography because that it's going to render properly and just make that carte blanche across your guidelines. Having delivered three sets of guidelines now, two in my previous role at JLL, one for Dub-Dub, it takes some work to get it there. But once it's there and you have the templates, it's much, much easier for you to be able to

build the dashboards because you don't have to think about what's actually going on. The colour is in a specific order of how you layer it on. It has been designed that way because the colors that are adjacent to each other have enough contrast and therefore if there is a colour blindness issue

they've got different saturation levels, that you know that they're going to show up differently, colour is really important, not vomiting up colour on the page like you're a unicorn on LSD.

if you've got a good design colour palette, you can start off really neutral and start to layer on the colors. Thinking about the order that they come in, having a rubric behind it really helps in that space because if I have to make a choice and I've got three minutes to repair a dashboard and I can only choose one area nine times out of ten, it'll be me going and fixing the colors. in addition to the colors,

Thinking about things like size, so other pre-attentive attributes, so how thick are your bars?

the more that you can remove, the better for your brain to then be able to assess quickly what it is that is actually occurring.

that is the key, making sure that the dashboard is as simple as possible so that people are able to consume the information. And they almost feel like, I knew this already. that's a real test for me when things are going really right. And the design people think, I intuitively know. Yeah, that's because I've done a really good design in here to help you intuitively understand these things White space, padding.

really important.

Sarah (18:46)
and consistency in padding, Yes.

Fi (18:49)
absolutely. So every element needs to be the same at times when we add a legend in, for instance, it can throw things out. So really adjusting how the X axis on the left is at the same level as the X axis on the right. All of these little things that developers can do to really tweak how things are, it creates

and builds trust in what the end user is actually seeing. the design elements, always having your filters in the same spot, always having, the info in the same spot. So when the end user is coming in, you might have to teach them the first time, the second time, the seventh time, but eventually they're going to end up getting exactly how it comes together and then they're going to become more comfortable in reading.

the work that you've put together and they're more likely to adopt it. What other design elements do you think are important?

Sarah (19:47)
white space is a massive one and that's going from your Chemist Warehouse to your Apple Store. Historically, you would see a lot of overwhelm in dashboards and just removing that clutter and giving space is so key. So I think that's a really great one that you've highlighted there. One thing that I wanna dig into is in organizations, there's many.

people that are designing data visualizations. How do you ensure consistency

Fi (20:17)
trying to get individuals to design like one another, it's a huge process to commit to. And it's really a organization that is committed to design, committed to getting the best products out there that will implement a thing like visualisation guidelines, will implement training to help their people to understand it, will implement coaching so they get one-to-one coaching.

on their visualizations, peer reviews as well to help people discuss is this the best way to be doing things, creating some suggestions, getting some

opinions that are better than the stakeholder opinions because they'll be more qualified and experienced in design as well. So it gives the developers some time to reconsider whether or not, their design is really hitting the mark or how people may interpret what they've done. Because we always, we have a bias where we've built it. that's simple. But when we get

third parties to review it. having that in place really important. And I think just that top down change management commitment, this is what we're doing in terms of having the style guide, implementing it, the reason why we're doing it, brand recognition, consistency, a reduced effort.

You and I recently did a proof of concept for a large global organization, the Green Climate Fund, which was really exciting. And we brought in another organization, MIP and the Data School to help us to deliver it. So there were four of us that were working for a week. We had three dashboards to deliver and we had a whole bunch of data modeling to do at the same time.

So one was assigned the data model, the rest of us were assigned doing the visualizations. And we came from different companies, so it wasn't like this is something that we do regularly, we were thrown together and the requirements weren't clear until the middle of the week. we had limited time with the client, we would have an hour each day

And it wasn't until the Wednesday after the third hour that we had a clear definition of what the requirements were so that we could go away. And we had until Friday. So two days of work to deliver something that was consistent. By having the guidelines and a checklist and some templates to work from, we managed to deliver something that was consistent across the three dashboards.

it was tweaked to the GCF's brand so they had their own colour palette as well. We ensured that they had that trust in the data from that brand recognition and we could build a lot faster as well

And without those guidelines, it would have been really difficult for us to ensure that we had something consistent, given that we only had two days to bring it all together.

Sarah (23:22)
Yeah, and they did, they looked beautiful. without that starting point style guide that we could all adhere to, would have been every individual's creative input, and then probably quite a mess to deal with on the last two days, which we didn't have the time for. So yeah, really great use case there of what a style guide can do.

Something else we haven't talked about yet is around charts, chart types.

Fi (23:50)
Chat choices.

Sarah (23:53)
Something that always sticks in my mind is that a visualisation should stand on its own. You're not going to be there to narrate over top of it. And every time I think that in the back of my head, I think what chart type do I have to explain to people? And the two I don't is a bar chart and a line chart.

Fi (24:17)
Agreed. And if you had to choose one?

Sarah (24:19)
Bye.

it depends.

Fi (24:27)
what do you think is the driver behind people choosing tricky charts?

Sarah (24:34)
think a lot of it is just showcasing what they can do.

Fi (24:39)
I agree. it's really difficult when you're in a role and your role is to, do dashboard after dashboard and you want to get some variety. It's like eating the same breakfast every day. Eventually you're sick of that breakfast and you need to move on to something different. So we see people wanting to be creative and in their chart choices.

I suggest when you want to be creative, do a passion project rather than thinking about how do I introduce this into your business. Part of the reason someone can be viewed as a great designer is not about the design that they're actually doing, but around how many people are actually adopting that design, that usage and behavior. And I can guarantee you if someone's introducing a Sankey into one of their workbooks for Joe Public.

They're going to struggle with it, even though they're becoming a little more mainstream out there with what we see. It really gets into, people who love data. Things like chord charts, really beautiful, and a piece of art, but requires people to sit there and look, you know, what's that point to that point? it doesn't necessarily give you, it's more like art.

information.

Sarah (25:53)
Yeah, I agree.

I'm going to add an extra type in there and that's a heat map. I think heat maps are really good if you're looking at two different attributes. So maybe you've got a region down the side and you've got a particular product running across the top. If you want to really hone in quickly on which region and which product is doing the best, I think a heat map is a really great way of doing that.

Fi (26:24)
I love it for day of week and time of day. Some of the activities that are going on and then having the thing that you love to add, which is the bar chart. So a horizontal and a vertical bar chart on the top and the side. That gives that sort of context again really quickly. So I agree, heat apps are pretty cool,

But you should be careful about when you're using them because the heat map is very rich in the colour that you bring into a workbook. So it should be something where you know that there is going to be these hot spots that you really want to be able to highlight.

So what are what are some visualizations that are on your **BEEP** list?

Sarah (27:14)
For me and anyone that knows me, I'm going to start with the pie chart.

Fi (27:20)
Does that include donuts too?

Sarah (27:22)
Yes, that's just a fancy pie chart.

Fi (27:27)
It's a pie chart on Ozempic.

Sarah (27:29)
Yeah, exactly.

Now, I am going to put a caveat in because there are some places where a pie slash donut chart is okay. And for me, it's if you're comparing two things and two things only, and you can quickly identify based on a pie or donut chart, which one is outperforming the other. When you go beyond two things, the human brain really struggles to figure out which piece of the pie or

Fi (27:53)
Mmm.

Sarah (28:02)
doughnut is bigger than the other.

Fi (28:05)
Yeah.

Sarah (28:06)
What's

your thoughts, Fi?

Fi (28:08)
avoid them. But people like non data people love circles. So you'll often get asked for them. it's a bit of data fluency training for people and showing them tell me what you see here.

asking some of those great questions that I know Andy Cotgreave used to do, what's the numbers? guess the numbers of what you think it is and doing that in comparison between two bars or two sections of a pie chart, you can quickly see that it's much more difficult to do it with a pie chart. You could do it if you sit there and look at it, but we know that people don't want to spend that much time. I'm with you.

I also see people doing doughies just to add some flair. And I'm not someone that's about flair. I'm about practicality. I'm about clarity over complexity.

Sarah (29:00)
I think the other piece around a pie chart is you have to colour it all differently. you've got 20 segments, you're going to have to throw 20 colors on that and that's going to overwhelm you Whereas a nice simple bar or column chart, just put your highlight colour in.

Fi (29:09)
Yes.

That's a really important point. Being able to highlight and draw the attention to something is again a quick win in showing people where things are important on your dashboard.

What about any other charts? Maps? What's your thoughts?

Sarah (29:37)
Do you know how tiny Singapore is on a map? And then you want to compare it to India? That is very hard. And the amount of times I would walk into a room and they'd be like, we've built this, it's got a map, HR headcount on a map showing Singapore versus Malaysia versus India. Almost impossible.

Fi (29:59)
think that from a design perspective and stakeholders, they're curious about maps because it's like, look at my map. I recognize that. I'm familiar with the shape of Australia or Tasmania.

you know, it's really easy for them to feel comfortable and non data people when they're coming in to look at data, For me, I love it. I feel at home in it. And so but when I see a map, like you say, because there's different sizes of countries, it can blow out or create bias in the way that we interpret the information. I don't mind the odd hex map.

Sarah (30:41)
Yes.

Fi (30:41)
as a way to go around that. Or if you need to, having just a lightly colored map in the background with little dots and using size, et cetera, to do different elements of it. But I try to avoid as much as possible. So my question when there is a map on the page is this map actually telling us anything? Is it there or is it fluff? Yeah.

Sarah (31:03)
Or is that fluff? Yeah.

And for those that don't know what a hex map is, the best example is probably looking at the states across America, where you've got Hawaii shoved down the bottom there and tiny and you've got Alaska that's very big up the top. So using a hex to represent each state and putting them as close to where they are located as possible is actually a really nice visual way of showing America. Have you seen it in any other countries done well besides America?

Fi (31:35)
I've seen them do it sometimes in Australia. So again, big landmass, right?

Sarah (31:42)
any other other chart types that you're just like, why is that one being thrown up there?

Fi (31:48)
We haven't talked about scatter plots and I love a good scatter plot. if you're plotting two different measures, one against the other, really good to understand is there any correlation going on? Where are the outliers? You can also layer on some colors for different groupings coming through in there and again, that can show you interesting insights.

a scatter used well is important. What else?

Sarah (32:16)
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the scatter as well, in the right place,

Fi (32:20)
tables? Where do tables sit in data visualizations?

Sarah (32:25)
necessary evil.

Fi (32:27)
Yeah, like, I think my opinion has softened over the years.

Give people what they need.

Sarah (32:38)
where I turn my nose up at is when it's 50 columns wide and thousands of rows long.

Fi (32:46)
Hmm,

hmm, agree, because it's definitely you're getting it from the wrong place then. But if it's supplementary to the visualizations that are going on in the workbook and they might want to do something else, go for gold.

Sarah (33:00)
if you're showing a top 10 leaderboard, the table definitely has its place add some visual context to it. So whether that be your RAG status with both colour and arrows.

Fi (33:04)
Mm.

Absolutely. Are there any other charts that we haven't spoken about that need some airtime?

Sarah (33:20)
the spider chart.

Fi (33:21)
Really? Because I think when I think of spider charts where I've seen them work really well is when you're doing some kind of psychometric profile of an individual and really understanding where they're

strengths really lie and perhaps where they've got deficiencies as well, so around openness or agreeableness, know, all that kind of thing can be really interesting to see marked out on onto a spider chart. But thinking about the complexity across multiple people or multiple dimensions, I feel like I would be overwhelmed if there were lots of them on the page.

Sarah (34:04)
a bar chart will tell you the same story. And for me, it's a lot cleaner and clearer. having the circular side of it gives that unnecessary bias to potentially the top of the spider chart compared to the lower.

Fi (34:19)
Mm.

interesting point because I hadn't really thought about also the connections between them are we really connecting neuroticism to openness? Like they're two distinct categories as well. So take your point.

Sarah (34:34)
Maybe someone can show us a good example of a spider where it does work. I'm sure they're out there.

Fi (34:39)
Yeah,

absolutely.

Sarah (34:42)
What about box and whisker?

Fi (34:44)
I think a box and whisker and showing the jitters of where all the points are can be really fascinating, but that's just more the data person in me. So I don't think that I would do that for a large audience. great for in depth analysis.

Yup.

Sarah (34:58)
So Fi, something that we bang on about so much and it should have been right up at the front. Why does this matter?

Fi (35:08)
Why do great visualizations matter? Well, it helps people to see patterns, trends, and insights quickly. that makes it really actionable for end users. So I believe that my role as a data professional is to really solve the problems upfront or highlight problems quickly so that people can adjust and make better decisions. The types of designs that I look to do

avoid that sort of cognitive overload and helps people to be able to intuitively understand what's happening. So if you don't have a great visualisation, it can be misleading. some of the ways that it can be misleading, for instance, or if you cut the axes for a bar chart, doesn't matter if you cut the y axis for a line chart, but it does for a bar chart.

we've talked about the pie chart difficulties and understanding things. understanding what a great visualisation is can really help people to make better decisions. And even though there's been a lot of progress in AI recently, where more tools are able to query data through natural language,

A data visualisation that's pre-prepared, that everyone's using the same way of calculating things. It gives that standardized measure of what's happening that everyone can benchmark against and rally towards.

Sarah (36:40)
I love how you've summarized having everyone on the same page looking at the same definition of metric because that's another big piece a great visualisation should have that consistency

a great data visualisation allows the user not just to ask the first

question but be able to dig deeper into why that's happening.

Fi (37:03)
I agree. What are some quick wins that you think people could get for instantly better visualizations?

Sarah (37:11)
Look how many colors they've got on the page and try and get it down to four or less. Increase their white space. Get their topography right. Get rid of those thick ugly axis lines. Make sure their bar chart always starts at a zero.

Fi (37:15)
or this good one.

Yes.

Sarah (37:29)
Tidy up your tooltips. Don't use the standard format that comes, especially from Tableau. I like sentence tooltips. Make sure your legends are clear, that people understand what each colour represents. If you've got interactions on the dashboard, highlight those. Use some Unicode.

Fi (37:37)
Mm.

That's a good one.

Sarah (37:52)
Make sure your filters are consistent. There's somewhere that people know where to find them, particularly if you're hiding them.

Fi (37:51)
You

Sarah (37:58)
I love what you were talking about earlier around peer review. We can get so deep in our own data visualisation we're not allowing them to stand on their own. So get someone from outside, your immediate space to have a look in and ask how they understand it and how they interpret the data.

Fi (38:14)
great ideas there. think just leaning into a few things, you mentioned reducing unnecessary axis lines. reducing chart junk in general is really important. Do you really need certain things on there? Are you doubling encoding without intention? Remove all of that?

I like your point around tool tips, turning off the tool tip menu as well so that you can't click on it and you get that awful pop-up Making sure that things are balanced as well. So sometimes different charts can get out of balance and so using padding there can really help improve the alignment.

Do you believe it's important to tell the story?

Sarah (38:59)
I want to say yes and no. You've got to go back into your audience. And I feel that some of the visualizations that are out there are more in infographics space. So you've got to understand your audience. Is this a marketing piece that needs a lot more contextual information Or is it a data visualisation that people are coming in to look at every day

and they need less information

Fi (39:26)
exploratory and explanatory. Yeah, I agree. I don't think that a story is always necessary. And in fact, it's impossible to tell a story if you've got data that is regularly updating. The story might change. You can't hard code that story into the visualisation as well. But helping, like you said, add some of those tooltips that annotate where things are can help.

Sarah (39:28)
Yes.

Fi (39:54)
I believe that you can let the dashboard tell its own story by using pre attentive attributes like colour effectively, where you're drawing the insights up so they really almost smack people in the face when they get to see them in a nice way of course.

Sarah (40:10)
another way to tell a clear story is to make sure the data flows. don't start with your Big As Numbers at the top and then get into the weeds in the very first chart. make sure you're telling the story with your data as you go down the page.

Fi (40:15)
Mm-hmm.

100 % and I think that the most important stuff even then if they're not BANed should be the stuff at the top because the dropout rate as you start to go down particularly in a long form can be a lot so you've got to make sure that you're capturing the attention right up front and that Tik-Tokification of the way that our brains actually work keep that attention in there

Sarah (40:48)
what's your thought, Fi on long form versus slide form visualizations? Yeah.

Fi (40:55)
I prefer long form. I

would say preference. I don't think that it's grounded in any research that I've seen or read, but for me going top to bottom, it's really easy. How about you?

Sarah (41:10)
Yeah, yeah,

I agree. I do prefer long form as well. And that allows you not to be restricted by how much of a story you can tell.

Fi (41:18)
people are less likely to click and go to the next dashboard. I do know from looking at adoption stats, that people are less likely to keep going along to the right or in the tabs. So by having it in long form, it can reduce that. The only issue with that is if people want to print?

Sarah (41:36)
Yes, the dreaded PDF where dashboard goes to die.

Fi (41:42)
Any other things that you would like to raise? Because I do have one more section that I did prepare something for.

Sarah (41:48)
come on, challenge us, let's go!

Fi (41:51)
Quick fire round

Sarah (41:55)
Payback!

Fi (41:57)
I think that mine's maybe more like focused on the topic, but we'll see. All right, are you ready for your quick fire round?

One colour to rule them all. What's your go-to highlight colour?

Sarah (42:06)
Bye.

It really depends on the company. So I like to lean into their colour, but today I'm thinking teal blue.

Fi (42:21)
Interesting. I've had teal blue as a colour in a previous organization, but our dub dub colors, we have our highlight alert, which is a hot pink colour and our highlight insights, which is a bright purple colour

If you could ban one chart type forever, what would it be?

Sarah (42:42)
definitely the pie chat. What would you, ban?

Fi (42:44)
interesting.

I think chart type map.

Sarah (42:52)
Okay.

Fi (42:55)
because it's not a chart. It's a diagram.

What's more powerful, a good headline or a good legend?

Sarah (43:06)
good headline.

Fi (43:09)
Interesting.

Sarah (43:09)
What's your

It's the first thing. It's like, it's the hook.

Fi (43:10)
Well, I think you go...

The reason why I was surprised, we didn't really talk about headlines or titles, you know, we didn't really say that. So interesting to hear that come out.

First thing to check when a visualisation isn't resonating.

Sarah (43:26)
Our game changer.

the padding.

That's one of the first things that comes to me. It's not balanced.

Fi (43:41)
Hmm to me the first thing that I check when something's not resonating is the requirements like why am I doing this? What's my purpose behind it? That's the thing that stands out,

Sarah (43:53)
Yeah.

Fi (43:55)
What's the most overrated data viz trend right now?

Sarah (43:58)
chucking a whole lot of AI in it and over-complicating everything.

Fi (44:02)
Hmm, interesting. Have you had a favourite data storytelling example?

Sarah (44:09)
I love the old Andy Cotgreave one where he talks about

the deaths in Iraq.

Fi (44:15)
Mmm good one. I love that because you think it's one thing and then he just flicks the switch on you and and puts it a different way and it really shows the power of what a visualisation and how you position the visualisation can actually do to the end story.

I also love Hans Rosling's one because obviously he gets so excited and talks like he's at the Melbourne Cup almost about what's happening with everything and that you just can't help but get drawn in

The other person that comes to mind around great storytelling is Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic if you're starting out in data viz, really great book Storytelling with Data because it's super accessible. I managed to read it and under a day it's written.

for anyone to understand, not just data visualisation people. And it will tell you all the things that you can do to get rid of chart junk. And she just on point brings the storytelling and weaves it through. So it's really great.

Sarah (45:17)
Yeah, I was

lucky enough to go to her workshop a couple of years ago and meet her in person, which was amazing. And it's a book that I've bought often for my team.

Fi (45:27)
Me too. Okay, last question. Describe a great data visualisation in one word.

Sarah (45:38)
Beautiful.

So Fi, that concludes podcast number eight. It's in the bag on what makes a great data visualisation. You'll see, So Fi and I have been wearing our glow up shirts and you may be thinking, what is a glow Up? Well, a Glow up is where you can come, reach out to us, give us your visualisation in whatever format that you've got that you're not happy with and we will come in and glow it up for you.

Fi (46:13)
Yeah, fab, I can't wait to be doing some more of those Glow Ups and getting people onto the right track so that they can have beautiful designs that are showing the insights as well. I feel like this session's been really great, but it's been a bit like a waffle chart. but don't shh.

Sarah (46:33)
so funny!

Fi (46:38)
which

was one chart we didn't talk about but I have really enjoyed this conversation. Take care, bye! don't forget, like and subscribe and give us a review.

Sarah (46:43)
We're undubbed. Bye!

Yes, we want reviews. Good or bad?

Sarah (00:09)
Today we're diving deep into Tableau Quest, a game-changing approach to unlocking value from Tableau and driving real adoptions to organizations. And who better to guide us through than the mastermind behind it? My guest today is none other than Fiona Gordon, co-founder of Dub Dub Data and the architect of Tableau Quest. Fi has spent years helping businesses move beyond just using Tableau to actually embedding it into their DNA.

tuning dashboards and decisions into data and action. She's seen it all, the highs, the lows, the hurdles, the aha moments. And today we're unpacking the real reasons why Tableau adoption fails and how Tableau Quest fixes that and whether AI is shaking up the game. Welcome Fi.

Fi (00:59)
Thanks for that intro, Sarah. Look, I think it's our, what is it, our seventh podcast. I think that we're getting more professional at this.

Sarah (01:10)
I'm actually a bit nervous. It's like I'm the solo host, even though you're my guest. It's still a bit different mixing it up today.

Fi (01:14)
I know.

Well, maybe

it makes you feel, if it makes you feel any better. I also feel nervous because I feel a little underprepared for this. when we say that we're unscripted, we're definitely unscripted. I've got no idea what I'm going to be answering today. And given my experience in this space, I feel like, am I going to mess it up?

Sarah (01:39)
hey, let's crack into it and let's discuss first off, what is Tableau Quest and why did you create it?

Fi (01:47)
Good question to start with. Well, Tableau Quest is a gamification program that helps take people who are creators or developers on the platform from rookies to rock stars. there's five different levels starting out at rookie, which introduces people to the platform. And slowly but surely, we help people to elevate their skill sets and capabilities.

So they really nail the delivery of what they're doing for their clients or their stakeholders. And why did I start the Tableau Quest? Well, it was actually a really long time ago, I think 2017, where I started out at an organization and was asked to take a look at some of the dashboards that were coming in. And whilst the dashboards actually...

looked pretty, like they had some great design. I felt that they didn't necessarily help to elevate the insights or draw the insights out. So it was really easy for people to see. And I don't want to crush anyone's enthusiasm for their roles or what they do. But at the same time, I wanted to find a way that helped people to go through the journey of understanding the art of the possible in Tableau. So

That was one thing, one cause of it. The other reason was that I felt that as adults that we struggle a little bit with understanding how to learn. When we're early in our career or we're at school, we're very much in that learning mode and really trying new things out. As we start to progress through our career, the expectation from leaders is, you should just know, and you should be able to turn that around quickly.

So people spend less time dedicated to learning themselves and more time on tools, just trying to figure things out. I really wanted to find a way to help adults unlock their learning potential again. I believed that the way to do that was through a gamification program that broke things down into training. So a little bit of the same sort of thing, online training, and then...

Practice, which is where the majority of the magic happens, so creating that muscle memory and doing it in a fun way. And then the little cherry on top is certification, so getting badges and external credentials.

Sarah (04:20)
Yeah, I really like that and just leaning in a little bit to, people that are on different learning paths and so forth. Who would you say that the Tableau Quest is really designed for?

Fi (04:31)
the Tableau Quest is definitely focused on people who are developers, but it can be for anyone, no matter how far or advanced you are within your skill sets in Tableau. I guarantee you, you'll always learn something new along the way. There are accelerators, so you don't have to start all the way at the beginning if you're already quite experienced but it will throw you some challenges to help you to elevate.

and refine your design skills as you start to get more confident on the tools. But it's not for stakeholders. it's not for somebody who is reading a Tableau dashboard. So it's not a data fluency program in that respect.

Sarah (05:15)
you said a little bit around, how Tableau Quest is really engaging and the gamification. How do you feel it compares to the more traditional Tableau training that you see out there?

Fi (05:27)
Well, I actually include the traditional Tableau training as part of the training component because why not use an organization that's going to continually refresh their training in line with their product releases. But if you're anything like me, when you get faced with a bunch of online training programs or even classroom training,

My eyes can tend to glaze over when it's just consistent training along the way. So what it does is it breaks up the training into different levels so that you get a little bit of training, but then it's time to really start experimenting with the challenges.

Sarah (06:07)
Yeah, I really like the challenge component and like you said, it's such a major part. So although you're leveraging the Tableau training, which is very smart because they are, like you said, constantly updating it, you're really leaning into the challenge aspect, which I think is the way more exciting and a lot more for people that are different, learn differently, neurodiversity. We see a lot of that in...

data and analytics and I think that's a really great part. So thank you for that.

Fi (06:39)
Well, I think...

I know that you have spent a lot of time on challenges and that you actually committed to a year's worth of Makeover Monday, so I'm sure that you sign up for the challenge aspect and helping you to learn. Why did you decide to do challenges in that respect rather than training?

Sarah (06:57)
Yeah, I find a page of words exhausting. So if you give me a document that's just read this and do it, I won't get there. Whereas what I really enjoyed about Makeover Monday, and I would set myself this one hour time period or when my old Mac book would crash, which could be 50 minutes or an hour and a half, depending on the day, it would give me this time box to just go and do it. it

And what I loved about the challenge is it was very separate from work as well. So it was something a bit fun and a bit more creative that I could do. And the learning I got out of it was amazing.

Fi (07:31)
Yeah, I still use some of your Makeover Monday challenges when I'm teaching other people as well because there's some standouts for me like the Rats in New York City and I just love that one having the heat map with two bar charts on you know the the upper level and the side level as well because it gives just in a really big snapshot a key view and insights into

the density of or the repetition of how things are happening.

Sarah (08:04)
Yeah, another part about doing challenges like this is you get a portfolio. So I as well have used things that I've done through the Makeover Monday challenge to then go and show clients of what is possible with Tableau.

Fi (08:10)
Mm.

Sarah (08:19)
Okay, so I'm just going to move on a little bit and start talking about some of the struggles that say customers can have with Tableau adoption and what are some of the biggest mistakes that you think organizations make when rolling out Tableau?

Fi (08:36)
The first big mistake when anyone rolls out any product, not just Tableau, is the lack of change management behind it.

So for any program, tech program, to flourish and be successful, I highly recommend engaging with a change manager or giving someone a lot of time so they can learn all of the change management principles. But where that change manager will start first is identifying who the sponsor is of a program.

And whilst people may not like to hear this, it's a very hierarchical thing in organizations. Perhaps we'll see some changes over the next 10 years with a bit more self organizing of teams occurring. But right now, for the success of any program within any organization, data related or not, it needs to have the sponsorship at the highest level where the hierarchy converges.

of the people that are going to have the impact. So for instance, rolling out a sales dashboard or a sales thing that all of your retail teams are going to need to adopt, you need to have the managing director of sales to be able to sponsor that. Otherwise, people are going to wonder why am I going to spend my time changing if...

that guy or that woman is not saying this is one of the most important things for us to be doing this year. It also means that that sponsor can engage their, what we call the management coalition. So the management coalition are all the leaders that sit in that hierarchy below and it's cascading information through them so that they understand the importance of why we are making that change as well.

So if I think of a smaller Tableau deployment, and implementing Tableau for instance, this may be just departmental. It may not be for everyone in a huge enterprise like you and I are used to working in, but it could just be the department head. And having the department head sit through and explain to the change manager.

what's, you why are we changing? What is the risk of not changing? Identifying all of that so that they can get a comms plan together. They can ensure that there's the right training in place. All of those great things will help people to adapt to the changes along the way. And then there's a sense of teaching people. even though Tablet Quest is a training program in itself, it would be helping them to understand how the program comes together.

making sure that there's time that's set aside for them to actually be delivering on the Tableau Quest and participating, having champions to run the quest as well, and have those champions also help the leaders to reinforce the great behaviors that they're seeing as the changes are coming through. So the biggest thing for me, why implementations of any tech fails if you've got good tech and Tableau is good tech.

If you've got good tech and you're implementing that tech, the only reason that it will fail is because you haven't really thought about the implementation plan and how to get people on the journey to actually change. Because spoiler alert, people don't like change. People like their habits.

Sarah (12:06)
Yeah, and just touching on that change as well. So what are some of the good things that you've seen with your deployment of Tableau Quest in terms of the cultural shift?

Fi (12:17)
Look, I don't want to lie, it's never an overnight success. And that comes back to change as well and what I was saying about people not enjoying the change. So especially when they've been doing a job already or using a tool already, why should I change? And what should I change along the way? So some of the things that I see is that

usually you get one or two people at the very, very beginning who just get it. And when you identify those people, you really coach and nurture them through it. the things that I see at the beginning, you're going to have to say it over and over again, you're going to have to have repetition, you're going to need to keep encouraging people to come in, but then also celebrating what they're doing along the way. So all of those.

little mini milestones of progress, whether it's people elevating through the different levels, or even some spectacular work on a challenge, highlighting that, sharing it, being transparent, try and keep it really open within an organization, so other teams can see what you're doing and get a bit curious about it. once people start to go through those level changes,

they will get notified that they've got Credly badges. So these are digital credentials that they can share on their LinkedIn profile. And I tell you what, when that starts to happen and people are getting recognized externally, there's amazing things. So first people feel really good. They get a dopamine hit from it. They're getting recognized externally. And also external people start to say,

What's going on at that company? What are they doing? What's so special about them that they've got these programs in place where they've got their organization investing and building their skill set and capability and the organization benefits from attracting great talent but also retaining them as well.

Sarah (14:29)
Yeah, and I really like that recognition because I feel sometimes in our roles it can be a thankless task and people only talk up when something's gone wrong.

I really like how you've embedded that into the Tableau Quest and encouraged as part of the process for stakeholders and peers and others to all kind of have their say and comment. And then I really like the external facing piece with the Credly badges as well. Because I remember seeing a lot of those badges coming through on LinkedIn and thinking, this looks exciting. And you're right. You see them come through from particular companies and you think, what are they doing?

They're

really all in on Tableau and it looks like they're really forging ahead. So I think that's a really critical part of what the Tableau Quest Just going to jump into wondering if you can kind of share a bit of a real world success story from Tableau Quest.

Fi (15:28)
Can I share a real world story from the Tableau Quest?

So the thing that I would say is the biggest success from the Tableau Quest is the attrition benefits. So the lack of attrition that is going through the organization. So benchmarked, we had 7.8 % attrition and that was compared to our organization at the same time, over the same period having 20 % attrition in other roles.

And then more industry-wide looking at analytics and data at that time that we were measuring, it was 35 % attrition. but the...

Sarah (16:09)
that's great,

right? Like you're not just training people and elevating them, but you're retaining them as well. So all that knowledge is staying within the organization.

Fi (16:17)
100 % and when you retain that IP, people can get things done faster. They can get it done in a more elegant way as well. They also challenge themselves a bit more around, how can I do this better? And so we would have group sessions where we would give feedback on one another's workbooks. for instance, I mentioned

before that I used to use your rats in New York City. We used that to create a workbook that would allow us to see across the hours of the day, because we were running 24 hours in all time zones, and across days of the week where there were bottlenecks on the Alteryx server environment in terms of workflows being executed.

people could come on and understand perhaps if things went really urgent, they could run it in a less busy time

Sarah (17:13)
Yeah, I really like that. because not only in Tableau Quest are you elevating individuals, but you're really building a sense of community within the people that are on the quest together and potentially allowing them to collaborate across different business units and talk about potential problems that they're facing.

Fi (17:32)
when you're working particularly in a global organization where teams, aren't on calls every day with one another, the place where they congregate is on the online platforms like Teams or Slack. Now, how do they have something in common beyond the type of work that they're doing? Well, programs like the Quest and the Adventure.

It can help them to celebrate wins with people that they don't actually know in person, but there's a sense of camaraderie as well. So ambassadors can publish up the wins. and the rest of the team can come on and celebrate that win with them and congratulate them for the efforts that they've put into learning.

and developing their skill sets and capabilities. beyond that, people can also get used to being more open about asking questions and not being afraid of saying, hey, does anyone know how to insert X, Y, and Z and doing that in a more public forum? the beauty of creating a culture like that is you can get answers really quickly on the fly, but you need people to have confidence that they can

post a question without having any repercussions of looking like idiots. all of these cultural elements that we work on to build the confidence within teams and giving them something like the quest where it's not about the product that they're actually working on for the clients or stakeholders.

But it's actually something fun. It's much easier for people to feel like they can support and congregate around that.

Sarah (19:18)
Yeah, nice, nice. And what kind of commitment do you think the team members have to put in if they're on the Tableau Quest?

Fi (19:28)
Sure, so I believe that every week people should have some form of learning for at least an hour. Ideally there's different learning hours so there might be an hour on feedback and then there might be an hour on learning because feedback is one way that we can all learn off one another but it's also one way that makes people's stomachs flip. if we create time and space to do that regularly

It just means that people get more and more used to it. by setting aside an hour's worth of training each week, it doesn't always have to be on Tableau. You can find a way to get into that momentum of making sure that you've got progress. as you mentioned earlier, you used to set aside an hour to do the Makeover Monday. That was something that you committed to. With the Tableau Quest.

as you're getting started, especially when you're brand new to the platform, really important for that weekly occurrence to happen. As you start to get further up in your skill set and capability, there may be other areas that you want to learn in, but I suggest that you make sure that you're always moving forward so that you keep the memory

of all the muscle memory of how to learn.

Sarah (20:55)
Hmm. Yeah. so it's very much self paced, isn't it? Like you're talking about having, regular catch ups and things, but everyone's at their own pace as well. So there's no kind of game of catch up or anything on the Tableau quest.

Fi (21:12)
Yeah, 100%. So people all learn at different paces. And the thing about the Quest is whilst there are some specifics around training and certification that you can't avoid, you pretty much get to run your own game in terms of the different challenges that you do. So we do recommend doing a certain number of Workout Wednesdays, because there's some amazing hooks that those people put into their Workout Wednesdays. But then there's

a swath of other opportunities that you can do to do other challenges where you're creating visualizations. So you could go through the back catalog of Makeover Mondays, which is really easy because the data is all provided for you. But I love real world fake data, pulling down one of their old challenges and making sure that you're thinking about how can I visualize this type of data more and really leveraging the power of Tableau Public to help you to understand,

the art of the possible. as an individual, you can choose what you're working on. There's different challenges at different levels that we ask you to complete along the way, but the speed at which you complete them, if you decide you want to five hours doing a makeover Monday and that's your choice. That's your journey. But someone else may do a Sarah

and go off and do things fast because they just want to get into, I've got to learn how to be able to turn things around quickly so I can move on to the next program. So choose your own adventure.

Sarah (22:48)
Yeah, and I'll just confess here that my very early on ones were very basic and I probably spent most of the time, trying to figure out how to do the basics. But as I committed to 52 weeks, as I evolved, I did get better and have some more engaging visualizations. But I think that's great. It's a path to learning, isn't it? And kind of work to your energy levels as well, week to week and what you've got available.

Okay, Fi, for those that are listening and are like, we need this, we need Tableau Quest in our corporation. How do you encourage leadership to come and buy into Tableau Quest?

Fi (23:27)
Well, you've really got to understand what's driving them. Because if you try to go in and sell the quest to them and say, we need to be doing this, you're never going to be successful. Because the sad truth is that not a lot of leaders actually believe in investing time in people's skill set and capability. And there might be some lip service around it.

but it can be quite difficult when they say, well, if I've got 25-100 analysts each taking an hour off each week to do this, that can be a significant cost over time to our organization. So you've really got to understand.

What are the things that are driving them? you can ask them questions. Why do you want Tableau to be successful? Why do you want our team to be successful? What's important to you? So you really get to understand the things that are going to be driving them. probably a lot of them will say, we want to get costs out of our organization. We need to limit our costs. so it could be that

The quest is actually enabling the teams to move faster. So they've got more opportunity to solve problems, which is actually a reduced cost of, because you're getting the efficiencies of what they're doing. it's a really difficult question to answer, Sarah, because it really depends on every organization and every leader is different. My old leader was...

sold from the minute he heard gamification. So it wasn't an issue for him. He really believed in investing and skill set and capability and building that out to have an amazingly talented team who would want to continue and stay with us for as long as possible. So it really depends on the leader, what drives them, asking some good questions.

If you're tied up in knots and you're not sure what to ask them, have a conversation with ChatGPT. Tell ChatGPT, I really want to convince or influence my manager to invest in a capability program like the Tableau Quest. That's a gamification program. helps people to develop their skill sets. They're faster on development. They've got more consistent design. They've got

better ways of visualizing data and telling stories so that the stakeholders get more value out of the content and adoption is therefore driven higher. What are some ways or some questions that I could ask leading questions so I understand what motivates them and then help me to ask those and what some follow up questions may be so that I can lead them towards the quest.

Sarah (26:32)
Yeah, I really like that. And I think that the focus here is finding out what is defined as successful within the organization and almost working backwards from there. And I think one of the other things you could always have in your pocket is around the retention as well, employee retention,

Fi (26:50)
That's a great point around retention, Sarah. And I think not only retention, but hiring the most amazing and talented people out there as well. Because when you're hiring talent that is seeing how you're investing in people, they'll be of a certain type of culture and mindset, a growth mindset where they want to belong to an organization that invests in its people.

And then you get these really curious individuals who love to solve problems and it's a snowball effect. So it's a really great way to help to not only do things internally, but also recruit as well.

Sarah (27:30)
Yeah, seeing what's happening on LinkedIn, seeing those badges come through, and effectively saying that your company is investing and is serious about, leveling people up that's going to really impact if you're looking for a job and you want to join a company that's serious about about education and training.

Yeah, really great.

So Fi, what's some of the impact on people's careers Tableau Quest has had?

Fi (27:55)
Right, so as I was leaving JLL, I asked a few people whether or not they would be kind enough to put some recommendations on LinkedIn. And it's also something that's really lovely to reflect on. So I'll just read out a couple of things where I know that it's the gamification that's had an impact on people's careers. So first up is from Gemma, who's based out of the US. She says, Fi's impact on my career started before I even began at JLL.

I learned all about JLL at a Tableau conference, brain day, what it takes to work for JLL, an initiative she put into motion. Though I hadn't heard of them before, I learned all about it and it sounded like a fantastic place to work. Fast forward three years, I've joined JLL, earned two certifications while participating in the Tableau and Alteryx Gamified Learning programs that she implemented.

I'm so thankful for the opportunity that I've had to work at JLL and I know that I'm a much better BI specialist because of the learning initiatives, attention to data for best practices and the data culture that Fi helped to cultivate here.

Sarah (29:02)
Wow, so all from a single brain date at a Tableau conference.

Fi (29:07)
Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, I've got a bit of goosey on that. And by the way, for that brain date, we were also issuing Credly badges as well. So we were getting people to promote that they were talking to us. And then more people wanted to come along and join us. So we hired, I think, through my tenure there, I hired over 10 people through that kind of process. Because we were really identifying through a group session who might be a great

Sarah (29:10)
Hahaha

Fi (29:35)
cultural fit for the organization.

Sarah (29:37)
Yeah, that's really great. recruitment fees aren't cheap as well. it's cost saving straight away.

Fi (29:44)
100%. I wish that I'd got them all on referral fees, but because I was involved in it, I didn't get to cash in. I had another one here. Don't really want to blow my trumpet. I just think that it's important to hear from other people rather than me about the impact that these programs have. So this is from Aprii and again, she's based out of the US.

Sarah (29:47)
you

come on.

Fi (30:11)
she said, Fi is an incredible asset to JLL. I greatly benefited from the gamification training programs that she launched, which enabled me to level up my Ultrex and Tableau expertise much more quickly than I'd been able to do on my own. She taught me an enormous amount about visual communication that I have and will continue to use in my career. She's an absolute star, organized, efficient,

Anyway, to Aprii's point, the Gamified programs, because they're a little addictive, and you kind of go through things a lot faster than what you would normally do in a training program. And that's where we see the benefits of the badges and also, the momentum that's created.

Sarah (30:54)
Yeah, and just on momentum, what else do you see to kind of keep that momentum going? What are some of your tricks and tips that happen through the Tableau Quest?

Fi (31:05)
aside from having the weekly sessions that people come along and join, and you do chase people to come in and make sure that they're participating as well, getting their leaders to encourage it. There's some great things with the dashboard. So individuals have their own dashboard where they can log on. They can see their progress today at what points they've collected because not every challenge is worth the same amount of points.

And then, they see what they've done. They also see what they need to do to get to the next point or the next level. And they also see how they compare versus their peers. So they can see who's at the top of the game and perhaps who's at the bottom. it's really, really fast and engaging. And in addition to that, I recommend having manager dashboards so you can see.

who's doing what in your team, what progress they're making and in your individual one-to-ones, can encourage them to continue with their progress and, you know, reinforce where they're doing really well. But if there hasn't been a lot of progress recently, maybe the work's really busy or maybe they're focusing on learning somewhere else, you can do a bit of an encouragement as a leader to get them back on track. So that leaderboard's a really good...

motivational tool in addition to the Credly badges, which people get a buzz out of learning, especially when you learn and you can put something on your LinkedIn profile and say, hey, I'm progressing through this.

Sarah (32:33)
something that you said earlier on was around just having stakeholders comment, maybe it'd be on like social Slack channels that are internal or Teams depending on what you're using. having having those channels and having that open conversation and encouraging people to use it and, give credit.

Fi (32:51)
It is and and just digging deeper into that point around having other people reinforce the behaviors I believe strongly that teams shouldn't lock themselves away in private teams I believe that teams should have open channels where other

departments and people can peek in and see what's going on and even join because if you're doing some great things people will see it they will start to learn about what your team stands for what you can deliver and the more that that occurs the more investment you actually get into your space It was one thing that I was really proud of even though we were a team of 150 at JLL

We had over 600 people joining our channels from the organization and they would comment, they would get engaged. when I looked at the stats that I could see, that the team was actually punching above their weight in terms of the engagement. So there were the most posts on the channel, there were the most reactions. So it's building this culture where people feel like.

It doesn't matter that you're in the US or the UK or Poland or wherever you are, you can jump on board, you can have a conversation and you can help one another out.

Sarah (34:11)
Yeah, that's awesome. that's so encouraging and I'm guessing would have built a lot of momentum

Fi (34:19)
Yeah,

Sarah (34:22)
So I'm going to switch up a little bit now I'm going to quick fire you with just to warn you 15 questions.

Fi (34:31)
What?

What a moment!

Sarah (34:36)
Yeah,

exactly. So quick fire round. Yeah.

Fi (34:38)
No, you're

getting way too much pleasure out of this. Like, are you a sadist underneath it all?

Sarah (34:46)
I'm just thinking to myself, payback's gonna be a bitch, isn't it? Because I can imagine when we swap the tables, it'll be like, oh, I've just got 100 quickfire questions. That's all we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, no overthinking, just answer. Question number one, what's the first word that comes to mind when you hear tableau?

Fi (34:58)
Yeah, that's all we're doing. So you ready? Okay.

Sarah (35:18)
What's the biggest myth about Tableau adoption?

Fi (35:21)
that it just happens without any intervention.

Sarah (35:26)
Completely agree on that one. Number three, if Tableau Quest were a movie, what would the title be?

You're hating that I didn't let you prepare for this aren't you?

Fi (35:41)
If Teflon

I'm just thinking of really bad movie titles.

Sarah (35:50)
You

Fi (35:51)
The Wolf of Wall Street. That's the first one that I can think of. I don't know.

Sarah (36:01)
It doesn't have to be an existing movie. Moneyball, okay, nice, nice. Okay, question number four, the biggest facepalm moment when you have seen a bad dashboard.

Fi (36:04)
Could be Moneyball. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to talk more generally about this. One thing that's really difficult, having worked in data visualization for such a long time, and this is even pre-Tableau, I was very much in the space, is that when people want to share what they've done and they're on their journey and they're coming to you with this real excitement about, at what I've done, and if it's...

if it's not one of the top people coming through, there's things that you can see and it's like, how do I give them subjective feedback? where do I focus the feedback on? Because I don't just want to list.

Sarah (36:58)
Subjective.

Fi (37:05)
100 different things for them that they could be doing better. what are the three things that they could look at and giving them some pointers around it? So I think my biggest facepalm moment is in my career as well is, how do you how do you figure that out and figure it out on the fly? It's really difficult. And definitely there's an art to it.

For anyone that stuffs it up, my biggest advice is be vulnerable and say, hey, I didn't quite say that right. And I remember doing this with you the other day. no, that came out wrong. Let me try again. And that really reflects on, I don't want it to be an awkward conversation and I don't want to crush your spirit, but at the same time, there are things that you could be doing that would make it better.

Sarah (37:51)
that exploding pie chart I was trying to get across the line never never never never okay number five one thing you wish every tableau user would just stop doing

Fi (37:54)
Never. Never happened. Never happened.

one thing I wish that every Tableau user would stop doing is, can I have two?

Sarah (38:17)
Sure. Yeah, you're not exactly hitting the quick fire anyway, so you might as well break that rule as well.

Fi (38:21)
Oh god. Listen, I blame it on you and 15 questions.

So first up, stop vomiting colour onto the page. Actually start with something that's almost grey and seeing where you can layer the colour into to make it really effective. not every chart needs a different colour.

Sarah (38:42)
Yeah, nice.

Fi (38:44)
The second thing is more personal preference. Love to hear your impression on this, but I would love every Tableau user to stop using Viz in Tooltips. I think that they can be really busy, perhaps use a sheet swap. You know, used occasionally, it's fine, but not everything needs to be a Viz In Tooltip.

Sarah (39:05)
I remember when they first came out, it was very exciting. They're not the fastest thing to use and I think they can overwhelm the user. So I do really like that sheet swapping as well. As long as you've got all your action buttons set up well and the user knows how to get out of the sheet. Cause I think that's one thing that Tooltips is good at is it's obvious.

Fi (39:10)
Yes.

Yeah.

Right, so I think the reason why is that when you're waving your mouse across the screen, it'll be flashing up different images if you've got all of these vis and tooltips. And it's very distracting and it reminds me of early 2000s websites where you've got pop-ups and everything happened. so really thinking about what that user journey looks like.

Sarah (39:45)
Yeah.

Fi (39:51)
support it.

Sarah (39:52)
Yeah, agreed. What's your go-to hack for making a dashboard instantly better?

Fi (40:01)
Color and padding.

Sarah (40:05)
white spaces, favorite chart that you go to. Yes. If you could steal one data skill from anyone, what would it be?

Fi (40:06)
white space. Yep.

Bye, chat.

That's easy. I would be Andy Kriebel Because he's just got all the mad skills.

Sarah (40:29)
All the

skills, all the skills. What's more important, data storytelling or technical skills?

Fi (40:31)
Yeah.

So I don't think that every dashboard needs to have data storytelling, but what every dashboard or workbook should have is insight that's being pulled out of it. So if you're referring to that, then I would say the storytelling insight piece. Otherwise, you've got to have the technical skills to pay the bills.

Sarah (41:07)
you do. Question number 10. Worst excuse you've heard for not using Tableau properly.

Fi (41:26)
I can do it in Excel.

Sarah (41:29)
Can I print that?

Fi (41:33)
Can I download the data?

Sarah (41:35)
Number 11, best song to power through a dashboard build.

Fi (41:42)
I don't know that it's particular songs, but some good doof music helps to get me going. Yeah.

Sarah (41:47)
Yeah, maybe a playlist instead.

Would you rather fix a broken data set or untangle permissions hell?

Fi (42:03)
I mean, permissions hell is easy. How about you?

Sarah (42:07)
I think permissions, you just need to set up your groups properly. A broken data set, I'm like, oh, how big is the data set? How broken is it? I'm thinking back to my SQL days of having screens and screens of SQL that everyone was working on and only half of us would comment to what we were doing in there. Yes, giving me, giving me.

Fi (42:12)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (42:36)
Goosebumps in a bad way on that one. Number 13, AI in Tableau, a game changer or just hype?

Fi (42:38)
You

I think there's a lot of hype. Let's step out of Tableau and go into any platform. There's a lot of hype that's out there and a lot of things that can go wrong. We talk about even GPT hallucinating. So I think there's a lot of hype, but future wise, there's a lot of opportunity.

Sarah (43:13)
Yeah, agreed. And I think the main thing is getting the right use cases.

Fi (43:20)
Right. Right.

Sarah (43:24)
14, almost there, almost at the end. One tool other than Tableau that you can't live without.

Fi (43:34)
One tool that I can't live without is Google Workspace because it's how we connect all the time. And it's not a data tool. I'm not going to go in and say this, that, like, there's a lot of tools that are important, but for me, the connection with you is the most important right now.

Sarah (43:50)
how lovely I was going to say chat GPT because I can talk to that as well you know now. Okay lucky last number 15 if you had to describe Tableau Quest in three words what would they be?

Fi (43:52)
Mm. Well, nice to know.

You

Learn, practice and certify.

Sarah (44:28)
Love it.

It didn't do too bad. I'm not sure if all of them were quick fire, but hey, we got through. Stay tuned for the...

Fi (44:36)
I think that you're asking too much. Usually in a quickfire round you might give people five.

movie buff? Like, who knows what bloody movie it is?

Sarah (44:47)
You could have made up your own movie title. Well, Fi, it's been great having you here on the other side of the fence and I can't wait to you repay the favour. Learning all about Tableau Quest. We are undubbed, we're unscripted, uncensored and undeniably data. I hope you've really enjoyed tuning in today.

Fi (44:49)
Oh, I don't know, as if.

yeah, follow us on your favorite podcast. We've actually just started adding videos onto Spotify. So if that's your preferred channel, you might enjoy that too. We're on YouTube, we're on Apple podcasts, and we also have our wonderful community that we love catching up with. So if you haven't joined the community yet, make sure that you...

connect with us. It's just starting out. You could be one of our founding members. We really look forward to seeing you there and continuing the conversation. Don't forget, like, subscribe, review, tell us where we're doing well, tell us where we suck. And then look forward to catching up with you again on the podcast soon.

Sarah (45:58)
See ya!

Fi (45:58)
Thanks, bye!

Fiona (00:08)

Hi everyone and welcome to our next podcast for Undubbed, where we're unscripted, uncensored and undeniably data. And along with my co-pilot, Sarah, I am super excited to announce that we actually have a wonderful guest on our podcast today. And that is Josh Geller. Welcome to the Undubbed podcast, Josh. Yay!

Sarah (00:32)

welcome Josh.

Josh Geller (00:35)

Hey,

welcome to Undubbed, I'm Josh Geller and obviously thrilled to be here today. I'm a career coach and specializing in helping tech professionals, especially those in data and analytics, navigate what's become, over the last year, fairly unpredictable and a bit weird job market, particularly for those of us that are old enough to be wearing glasses. My main thing really is helping people land roles that align with their career goals.

the reason I'm doing that, I've got a couple of decades experience recruiting predominantly in data. I was coming back to the market sort of mid year last year and I saw the state of recruitment was terrible. The state of the data market was terrible. I found that a lot of people that I looked to as being very easy to place was struggling to reach out and get a new role. And this was a new experience for me to observe.

but obviously a new experience for them to have and to experience themselves. we're trying to do today, if you're job hunting, or just trying to find out what's next, bring some practical insights to help you not just survive but thrive with your career.

Sarah (01:39)

I really love that Josh and thanks for giving yourself your introduction. We love people that jump in and get stuck in. When you talk about, coming in and being a coach and a mentor, how long have you been doing that for out on your own now?

Josh Geller (01:54)

I started June last year, so I've been doing recruitment for, as I said, many years. I faced redundancy and retrenchment myself And that put me in position to kind of go, well, what do you do next? Do you go back and what you were doing?

The first thing that people need to do when they're having a think about things is get some clarity

Everybody has

of who they are. And often that's your job, right? So if you're a banking project manager, well, I'm a banking project manager, And that's not necessarily the case, right? It's just what you're currently doing. So I had to think about, what are the bits that I really enjoy about the work that I've had?

So I was thinking that there's that training and development that I enjoyed the most. But then I was thinking, well, who do you train? It's a tough market, right? We're not hiring newbies. And if we are,

We're not necessarily looking for training. So the people that seem to have the most need for my help were people that were struggling to get a job. And if you're struggling to get a job and you're earning $200,000 a year, in six months, that struggle like manifests quite a big problem, right? Particularly if you're not someone that's particularly shrewd with six or 12 months money tucked aside.

So I thought, hang on, I've got to be able to make an impact here. This is, really very easy. I mean, these guys, they're 15, 20 year experts, they've got a huge network.

Just don't really know how to hustle because that's not what they do. So for me, I thought I'd try and promote a bit of hustle.

Fiona (03:25)

I know that feeling.

Yeah, I know that feeling.

and I have both been working in data for over 25 years and switching into business ownership, even our business all about data, having to, learn the positioning, learn about that clarity, learn about that messaging is definitely a journey that we're still on as well. So sometimes I look at your posts.

on LinkedIn, even though I'm not looking for a role with another corporate organization, sometimes I feel like I could do with some of that coaching to get that clarity as well.

One of the things that I've observed is that coming back to work this year, there's a lot of There's a lot of posting about AI taking all of the data jobs. I think the World Economic Forum said that 87 % of analysts are going to lose their jobs to AI. Thanks for that wonderful statistic. And so there's a lot of

anxiety that's coming through, not to mention I still think we've got the hangover from the pandemic where people are really trying to find their feet in their roles. So there's a lot of people that are thinking, I need a change. I need to do something differently. I don't want to be a sad person on the train or the ferry going to work. I want to be really passionate about my role, but perhaps they're a little bit stuck. So walk me through.

what that looks like for someone coming to you and how you approach that with them.

Josh Geller (04:55)

What people are thinking at the moment is how can let AI to do my job? That's a really bad move only goes one way, What you've got to think of is how can I harness AI to do something that's more valuable than my job that still maybe needs me? this is where education comes in.

A lot of people don't realize, but all of the best education on this stuff is free and on the internet. most Americans, Stanford and some of the other really tier one organizations in America that are absolutely at the heart of this, all their learnings are online and for free. So go and learn. What you've got to think of is what would be better here that could maybe leverage AI.

there's going to be huge opportunities in the

ethics, implementation of AI. There's going to be huge opportunities in how do we trust the data. You won't trust the AI with the data, you'll trust them to analyze it, but you won't trust them with where did it come from? How do know that it's true? There's all that lineage and the data quality, there's going to be huge demand for and they want something they can turn around and say, right, this is sound or it's not sound.

Sarah (06:07)

Yeah, really interesting. And I think that whole trust aspect is so fascinating. And when you were talking about that, I was just thinking to myself, when I'm leveraging and leaning into, chat GPT or something, sometimes it can get it so wrong. And luckily, I have the foundational knowledge to know that it's so wrong But there can be a lot of examples, when people are relying on it so heavily that it won't be picked up.

the data governance aspect of how particularly banks and healthcare, big large organizations are going to leverage AI and have it in a way that it is still safe enough to use is really valuable.

Josh Geller (06:48)

Well, the AI ethics officer I see is going to be a huge, huge role. what I'm thinking is if you're a data quality guy, you're interested in AI, you've got maybe some program management or some change management skills, you could style yourself as an AI ethics guru, because no one is, right? So I always tell people, if you want to learn something, be an expert, learn something new.

Fiona (07:13)

Yeah, really great points we will see huge evolution and the way that data professionals are approaching.

their work and so someone who may have been or a BI analyst right now in five years time, they may be prompt engineering to understand things more or we may just be getting auto generated insights and they're there to help train the models and improve what's going on. So as Sarah was saying, being able to ratify some of the results that are coming out based on their knowledge, they've just become much faster at delivering

to people but I can guarantee you that executives at the top of the chain even if it is as simple as doing a Google search will be wanting someone to dish up the insights to them of what's the most important because they'll be time poor in other other areas as well.

Sarah (08:06)

Just wanna switch gears a little bit here and maybe lean in a little bit to, one of our listeners potentially has come back in the new year and has kind of come into their job. Maybe it's their first week back and they're like, don't wanna be here or, I've got a sense, my role may be up for the dreaded redundancy soon. And I want to start focusing on making that shift and moving within.

maybe a different career or something like that. you've spoken a lot around really, making sure you're in front with AI and looking at opportunities there. within LinkedIn that you would recommend that that person did.

Josh Geller (08:45)

AI is obviously good and everybody's gonna try and get involved, but to be frank, some people won't necessarily have the interest or the capacity to credibly work in that space. it's not necessarily the be all and end all. Probably what's important is to have clarity around

your value is, what you want to be doing.

and

So if you're there thinking, I know a lot of things, I can help a lot of people, I've got a fairly broad capability and I'm open. I'm really open for a change, I'm happy to do many things. Nobody will want to talk to you. That was the worst thing I had as a recruiter. People would call me up and they'd say, hey Josh, I can do development, can do programming, I can do project management, can do architecture.

I'm really open. I'm quite wide on salary as well. What do you have for

the feeling from an outsider maybe would be that would open you up to so many opportunities, but all it does is just confuse people. They've got all these boxes they're trying to put something in and you're not giving them a shape. So they don't know what box to put you in.

the first thing you need to do, whether you do it with a friend, whether you do it with me, whether you do it with ChatGPT, is go through some introspection and work out what you bring to the world and where you want to take it, and then ask yourself why. If you can answer those questions, you've got a very clear direction on what you want to do, which does a number of things. It pushes you a little bit out of the slump because you ah, I'm going there.

I know where want to go. So, as long as you've got a destination, you can do a map. But if you don't have a destination, you don't know where you want to go, you don't know what vehicle you've got to travel in, you're going to get nowhere. the next thing is who do you want to be visible to? for example, you may have decided that

you want to work with an American based SaaS business in the AI space. That's the thing that really tickles your toes, right? Well, you can do some research and work out, who are those people?

If I'm an accountant, obviously I don't want speak to somebody in software. But if I'm a data scientist, is there maybe a head of data science that's responsible for those sorts of people? Are they active on LinkedIn? Where do they post? Who do they follow? So you kind of look to see where are the people that you want to engage with? Where are they? What are they doing? Where are they talking to?

be as active.

in the real world and digitally in those places. if you see that they're all going to the same meetups, go to the meetup. You'll meet them. You can actually say hi. If they're all commenting on certain posts, comment on those posts, but comment with value. If they're all interested in certain things, particularly certain things that you have knowledge around, share some authentic stories that inform.

and give people a little nugget of information they can take away and use themselves. And it's like the old saying goes, if you hang around in a barbershop long enough, you get your haircut. Once you're engaging, these people will start talking to

of them might ask you for your advice. You'll probably come up in headhunter searches because of the tags and whatever you're putting out and you're linked in. You may even get asked to speak at meetups.

And then all of a sudden you're at a taller table than everybody else professing your expertise in an area that perhaps you'd like to get hired in. So when you engage with people, even if you slide into someone's DMs or actively apply for work, if they've seen you present as an expert in one of the key areas within which they're trying to hire in, you'll probably get interviewed.

that interview will probably be a pleasant one where...

they're trying to themselves to

rather than one where they're trying to validate should even be in the room.

Sarah (12:19)

like that. And because I feel that, when you are talking, it's something that you're passionate about, right?

you start leaning into it, and doing your research, you'll kind of find your your journey and almost your posse of people that you can talk to this about. you may start in one area and end up down another rabbit hole.

but it's such a great way to

passion within the industry as well.

And Josh, what would you

people that feel a bit down and out? So maybe their confidence is gone and

see that they should be, stepping up and finding their passion But there are some people out there that have just been burnt and

tired and maybe they've been looking for six months

not getting

any interviews what would you to the people that are really struggling at the moment?

Josh Geller (13:09)

it is really easy just to question yourself. imposter syndrome is something a lot of people talk about when you're the CEO leading the company. When you're unemployed. Imposter syndrome, it doesn't just creep in.

it absolutely slams you. this is where a lot of people are supported by friends and family. If you can spend time with people that know that you're good and capable and have that reinforcement and they treat you as a human being that's capable, that's good at stuff, then you have a little bit of that validation in your sort day-to-day life.

a capability perspective, only thing that really is worthwhile is winning. Winning begets winning.

when I'm

of concerned or what I'm working with people is just that sort of table leg process where you think to yourself, in terms of how I present to the world, it's not good. I don't feel competent. have nothing that I can base my competence on.

If you've done things that are exceptional, you need to remember them. what I tell people is go back through your history, and it doesn't necessarily even need to be from a commercial perspective, but you need to think of the times you've done the impossible. If you've not done the impossible, I'll take the exceptional. Anything less than that's not really worthwhile. And you think to yourself how exceptional or impossible the task is that you did.

and how few other people could do that. it's not your skills, it's just your persipacity, your resilience, your refusal to give in, they've got stuff over the line. And that's what people buy.

It can be sale that you made where your client was saying, absolutely no. I remember

London years years ago, we had a guy for an interview with the Royal Bank of Scotland for some important job, and he said, look, I won't take your job, but I will come out and have a beer with you.

and my colleague Sam had a beer with him and he took the job. He went into that conversation just knowing that there was just no way that he wouldn't convince that guy to go and do the job. I was absolutely blown away.

It's not something that people can do. It's not even something that someone like you should be able to do, but you did it. And you did this, you did this, you did this. And if you go through it four or five or six or be there for an hour, eventually you'll feel that, I can get stuff

And that's the easiest little mental hack that I have for trying to make yourself feel a little bit better about life.

Sarah (15:32)

I really like that and I think we very often focus on the bad things, the things we didn't achieve that we wanted to. news, the media shows us this, everyone wants to hear the bad stuff and not the good stuff. But if you can spend some time with yourself or others and talk about

times that you did do the impossible, I think that's a big mindset change that can then help

your ability.

So thanks for sharing that, Josh.

Josh Geller (15:59)

Yeah,

it does. was reading something the other day, people want to understand you, they want to understand how you've overcome challenges.

So stories that kind of highlight your resilience are probably more important than I've got version X, K, Y of Tableau or Oracle or whatever it happens to be.

Fiona (16:17)

Yeah, I'm going to circle back to something that you said a little bit earlier on, which was winning begets winning. And that hit me hard because when you start to get that momentum in there, you can really start to progress quite quickly. And one of the things that I find helps

me to gain that momentum is just starting with the small stuff. So starting with the small wins that I can make and then building on top of those. And then that does bring me into a space where I feel like, okay, I've got this.

So there's one thing that everyone typically shares when they're applying for new roles and they have to look after is the dreaded resume or CV update. Tell us, what do you see in your coaching experience for how people go through that journey and how do you help them to elevate their chances of hitting the top of the pile in that short list?

Josh Geller (17:17)

Yeah, it's interesting. First, I think you shouldn't rely on a CV. If you can get a referral, at least two thirds as likely to get an interview. And so I ideally would try and get a referral for each and every application. That said, a great CV is a great CV. Where people tend to go wrong in CVs is they're very narrative.

And this comes down to clarity. If you are clear in terms of where your value is and what you want to do, then you can put that down. You can say, I bring this value, I want to do this. If you're a cloud architect with five years experience delivering AWS transformations, and you're looking to lead a transformation effort in Sydney, it makes a lot of sense, right?

Whereas if you're an IT, this is the word I hate the worst, if you're a seasoned data professional, what even is that, right? So I think you could do some of the basics, if they are looking for a software architect, be a software architect. If you're not a software architect, why are you applying for a job as a software architect? why is your job title not relevant?

If your job title is not relevant because they called you a managing consultant rather than a senior technical architect, change it. Call yourself senior technical architect because that was your job. the thing that puzzles me the most is where the job roles are just so different.

that's kind of basic, but you want to get your first four or five lines is your profile. And if I was calling somebody up and said, hey, Fiona, I've got this person I think you should talk to, you would say, well, who are they? And I would talk for 20 seconds and you would either be interested or not be interested.

really strong tip is to make that as interesting as possible. So you have the job title, you have some level of capability, senior dashboard expert with thousands of tablet dashboards built for finance, so and so and so departments of banks, insurance companies and so on. So I know I can picture straight away.

who that person is in terms of where they sit in the business. I can understand that someone that could probably sit in our business in that sort of role, sounds very similar. then the next thing I'd want to talk about is some kind of relevance to the role. So if they are looking to do a cloud transformation, recently delivered a cloud transformation at Optus with a little bit of detail, moving.

X number of terabytes to so and so And then I'd round it off with the best accolade. Because I want to give people is the gift of no decision.

go, oh wow, it's Fiona. I'll just pick up the phone. I don't even need to read the CV.

Sarah (20:00)

Yeah, some great tips there, Josh. think so many things that you've pulled out there, especially around having that profile and that first four lines. I really like that and having those hard hitters in there and then going into the detail. And I think, coming back to the earlier conversation, network is king.

Right? you've got your CV

someone's got 50 CVs in front of them and they know someone in that CV or they've heard of them or they've seen them on LinkedIn talking about something that relates to the role, I think you are right. of that level up.

Josh Geller (20:30)

going to make a huge difference.

The other thing I saw the other day, which isn't mine, but I'm absolutely still because I think it's golden, is getting your cheerleaders who are references to do a reference in advance. So if I got an application from 35 people and I got an email from the CIO going, Josh, I understand you've got an application from Sarah

a data role. I just want to let you know that I'm probably going to be one of Sarah's references.

and here's a reference I prepared on her behalf. She was excellent. I think you'd be very lucky to have her. And then you've got a glowing reference. that's absolutely someone that you're going to speak to. definitely going to include them in the conversation because you have less risk. it's all about risk and reward.

Sarah (21:11)

Yeah, completely agree. And I think we're have to end up there, Josh, because we have just run some time there. And I've really enjoyed our conversation. It's great to see you here as our first guest. Josh is an active member of our community, which is great. You can find us all talking over there on www.dubdubdata.com. You can come and join our community. And please do.

Josh Geller (21:23)

Yeah, through. Thank you.

Sarah (21:38)

Give us a like, a subscribe here on our podcast under what platform you do prefer to listen to us on, whether it's YouTube, Spotify or Apple. And please do leave a review as well. We are very new at this and we're evolving and every little bit counts. thank you again, Josh. we look forward to talking to you more because this was really exciting and I felt like we just touched the surface. But for everybody that

Enjoyed this today? You can find Josh and his great products that are listed on our marketplace as well. So thanks again.

Josh Geller (22:12)

Thanks for having me Hyperloop Valley.

Fiona (22:13)

Thanks everyone.

Fiona Gordon (00:08)
Hi everyone and welcome back to Undubbed, where we're unscripted, uncensored and undeniably data. We're here today to have another episode in the series of What Makes a Great-----? And we threw this one out open to our followers on LinkedIn and gave them a few different options 67 % of people decided that they wanted to hear about what makes a great work culture. So that's it, that's what we're rolling with.

today. Welcome to the episode, Sarah.

Sarah (00:39)
Thanks, Fi. Looking forward to it.

Fiona Gordon (00:42)
Also looking pretty schmick there For people that are listening and tuning in, Sarah's got this beautiful black and white embroidered undubbed trucker hat.

Sarah (00:49)
is

What could possibly go wrong today?

Fiona Gordon (00:53)
Well, who knows? Really? It's one of our podcasts. Anything could go wrong.

Alright, let's get stuck into it. No point us rabbiting on. Why don't you kick it off with something that you reflect on that makes a great work culture.

Sarah (01:09)
So Fi, one of the big parts of work culture to me is having safety in the workplace. And I'm not talking about hard hats and so forth, I'm talking about psychological safety and it's really key. A lot of the big corps and I think smaller organizations now do have channels like Speak Up, but encouraging people to use them seems to be the trickier piece. Now, some of the...

examples that I've seen where it has worked is where you've got a leader that encourages people to use Speak Up when they need to and leans into that. you can have all the policies and processes in place, but unless you're talking about it actively, it's not going to work on the floor. So where I've seen it being really successful is when managers have said, hey, that thing that you've just come across.

I think that's a speak up and let's work on that together and go through the process together.

Fiona Gordon (02:06)
Interesting. I like that having the manager to pitch in on it as well, because it could feel, a little isolating for people. I've seen it work in pockets really well. But I also think at times, there's a bit of lip service that does come through leadership, particularly those at the higher levels of an organization. Great call out though.

just establishing trust, really important in order for that process to work.

Sarah (02:35)
Yeah, completely agree. So Fi, you've just said a big key word here, trust. Now I'm sure you've got something to say about trust and culture.

Fiona Gordon (02:40)
Mm.

spot on. You need to be able to trust what your leaders are saying in terms of a culture and trust your peers as well that they're not going to throw you under the bus if you don't have that trust, you're constantly (or maybe) thinking, is someone out to get me? Can we really be productive when we don't have that foundation of trust? And I would say, nah, not at all.

So trust is a big one for me, being able to know that people aren't jamming knives in your back, aren't undermining the projects that you've got. nodding along, yes, I'll be involved in that in the meetings with all of the leadership team. And then next minute you hear that they're undermining the process, going off with their own project. So it's really important to establish trust throughout an organization.

Sarah (03:32)
Yeah, and when you've seen it go wrong a little bit, so there is a lot of that yes and then no, I've seen that as well. What are some of the things you think can culturally shift to mitigate that going forward?

Fiona Gordon (03:48)
the big word that comes out in front of mind for me is accountability.

Sometimes accountability can feel like a massive weight. But when people see you taking accountability or responsibility for something and actually delivering on it, it furthers the trust that you build within organizations.

Sarah (04:05)
I like that looping background to trust again, because it is such a cornerstone of great culture. something else you mentioned is within accountability, it's having people that do come in and say, hey, actually, you're not being truthful or pulling people up on where they are going a little bit off topic

having people that are also going to marshal that and be really responsible

So any specifics you wanna talk about, Fi, in terms of work culture, any great shining beacons of work culture that you've had in your career where you've just gone, that's amazing. And I wish everyone could replicate this.

Fiona Gordon (04:46)
cultures that I really love working in is when it's where everyone rolls up their sleeves to help one another. And I suppose it's kind of like what I imagine the army's like, never leave someone behind that creates that team unity along the way. what

that has meant for me in the past is as a geek or an analyst, I've been pulled into stuffing envelopes for the marketing team because they're running late on a promo, or they've sat down with me while I've been coding something. And that means that none of them are leaving the office. We're all sitting in there until we really get the job done. And that makes me feel like I'm belonging to something that has a great purpose, but I'm not.

being left behind as it's happening. So that's been a really great experience for me in multiple organizations that I've worked in. Have you had that experience at all?

Sarah (05:43)
Yeah, I've seen that and I do love it. I love it when everyone bands together and it's like, we've got to get this thing out the door. And I love your example of it may not even be my thing or other people's thing, but they're all in the office. So let's see where we can help, whether it's stuffing envelopes or watching someone code or, anything else in between. I think it's really important to show that camaraderie.

Fiona Gordon (06:09)
I love that word camaraderie. So what else Sarah?

Sarah (06:12)
Almost didn't get it off my tongue then, but I managed.

So one of the things I really enjoyed at one of my organizations was, early on in COVID days, we all were all of a sudden on Zoom calls, it felt like 24 seven. And, we see a lot of what we call in human centered design, the hippo. So the hippo is the highest paid person ('s opinion) in the room. Now, when you're in a Zoom call, it's very equal all of a sudden, because you're all the same size on the screen.

and you've got the highest paid person in the room, and they can quite often dominate the conversation, everyone listens and doesn't want to respond. we noticed that really early on in our daily stand-ups where a new leader came in no one really wanted to step out of line or say anything different. a really great

leader within the within the team. she would enforce round robin so every time something of relevance that was said by the hippo she would take note to go around the room

and make sure that everyone got a voice. it was so uncomfortable to start with. So uncomfortable.

Fiona Gordon (07:30)
Is that I think I've heard of Hippo before the way that it's been described to me. There's one slight add, so it's the highest paid person's opinion.

Sarah (07:41)
Sorry, yes, you've got that right. I always just think of it as highest paid person in the room, because that's the opinion we're listening to.

Fiona Gordon (07:49)
yeah.

I really like the way that they would go around and do the opinions of everyone else and do the circle.

thinking of a hippo, it just sounds like that they're going to back up that fat booty and squash everyone else's opinions along the way.

Sarah (08:04)
Ha!

On that note, what else, what else, what makes a great culture?

Fiona Gordon (08:05)
Ha!

Perhaps one thing reflecting on our culture for Dub Dub is that we have a lot of empathy, I think, for one another. In fact, candidly, people might think this is a bit weird, but I've cried the most in this organization, than any other organization that I've worked in, and I think that comes back more to do with what's going on in our personal lives and being really empathetic to that and how that then impacts our professional lives as well.

you let's be candid about it. You can't just have a brick wall between both, you know, there's things that leech in and out. that the way that we support one another and the way that we lead with empathy is a really an incredible experience to be a part of.

Sarah (08:56)
I agree. And leaning into the crying. I mean, I was crying on the last podcast, This equally for me, I'm not someone that normally cries at work, but hey, if it happens, it happens. it's great to have you there supporting me through it. And we're spending so much time together right now. I feel like we're in the room with each other all day anyway, which is also a great thing.

Fiona Gordon (09:20)
Mm, mm, for sure. Okay, that was a short one. Over to you.

Sarah (09:25)
Yeah, so I want to just go into maybe something a little bit more fun in the work culture. So some of the fun things that I've experienced is just around a bit of quirkiness. I used to have a manager, his name was Jonno - And he used to insist on our Friday meetings that were in a big glass office at the end of a big board floor, open to the finance department.

that we would have YouTube Friday. someone would have to find a YouTube clip, it had to be kind of under three minutes. And that was how we would introduce our meeting. And that would set the tone for the meeting. And at the end of every meeting, the next person was chosen. So you had a week to come up with something.

Fiona Gordon (10:13)
you

Sarah (10:14)
And my gosh, some of the things, sometimes it was very serious and very, you know, what was going on in the world. And other times it was just completely left field and it would leave us all rolling around the floor in fits of laughter and the whole finance department looking at us wondering why we were so happy. But, you know, it gave us so much to talk about. that's important as well is when you're communicating with these people that you're spending 40 hours a week with minimum.

day to day, having something just completely random to laugh about. And one of the ones where I think was the high or low depending, maybe research it, is a song called Willy Willy Bum Bum.

Fiona Gordon (10:48)
Mm.

gonna leave that one there. I mean, we can have an explicit tag on the session. It's fine. leaning in a little bit to that around having fun. We used to have a lot of corporate off sites, and maybe it slowed down a lot with COVID and perhaps is not ramped up as much as the appetite for return to office.

Sarah (11:02)
You

Fiona Gordon (11:18)
But hopefully we'll see more of those kind of activities occurring because you find when you're bringing people together for an extended period of time, if it's two nights, it could be three days almost, two and a half days that you're spending together. really those times that you're not just doing the activities of the conference, but perhaps breaking bread together.

that triggers the breakthroughs that you often have. people become more human. you get to really understand what drives them as people. You find things that you can connect with them on as well, which can really help to grease the wheels when you're working in some more high pressure environments.

I hope to see more of those corporate off-sites with spending time together and really trying to connect on the personal level.

Sarah (12:16)
I agree. And when I reflect back onto my last role here in New Zealand, we used to go to Waiheke Island every December, just for a day. was the team. It probably around 15 of us. And we'd start off the morning, we'd have to do a little bit of workshopping and things. But then by lunchtime, it was off to a vineyard, nice long lunch, couple of great wines. Waiheke Island, for those that don't know, is very famous for

Fiona Gordon (12:28)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah (12:46)
It's wine collection and I can actually just see it out of my window, it's a great, great island if you're ever in New Zealand to visit. what we got out of that, again, was a lot of laughter, a lot of jokes and something to look forward to. You we knew every December when the weather was great, we were gonna go away to Waiheke and have some good laughs together and like you said, break some bread.

Fiona Gordon (12:57)
Mm-hmm.

I have very vivid memories of going up north to far north Queensland and having activities throughout the day. We'd have speakers come in. We'd be doing things together between the marketing and sales teams. The vibe was electric.

Then, next minute, we were split off into groups and we had to record something, dressing up as Steve Irwin along the way, and just getting crazy on. we all watched the videos afterwards and had a good laugh. And anyone who's trying to record a video that's not used to being a content creator really cringes at themselves. But the fact that people could let their egos down and just have a bit of fun.

really personalised who the individuals were and makes it a lot easier when a problem's happening and you need to pick up the phone and go, hey, Beau, what's the story?

Sarah (14:00)
Yeah, having that connection and a slightly different connection out of the office environment is so important to get a different sense of who people are. sometimes we can really just focus on, okay, this person does this job and I need this out of them. a little bit more around, what they're open to tell you about around their personal life can be really important and can you understand them a little bit more in their journey.

Fiona Gordon (14:25)
Mm-hmm. So what else is on the list?

Sarah (14:30)
So another one for me is really around collaboration. I've spent a lot of time working with off offshore teams. And one of a really great work culture that I unexpectedly walked in on in one of my roles was meeting a woman who led the offshore side of my team her name was Rekha and she was amazing.

from the minute I met her, she just really, really wanted to collaborate with me. She knew the value of getting me on side and being on side. And we would have so many great conversations she really wanted to listen to what the direction I was steering and she had great feedback she really wanted to collaborate. And it wasn't lip service. It was.

let's make this work together, Sarah. Your success is my success. Everything was based around teamwork and pulling things together. I had to have some tough conversations with her at times and, mention members of her team that I didn't think were performing. And her response was always I've got your back, Sarah. I know what I need to do and I will help you get through this and we will get it through together. And those are some of the things that made us an offshoring with her and that lead role.

So, so successful.

Fiona Gordon (15:47)
Oh my goodness, offshoring, a whole other game, in terms of different cultures coming together and working, listening to what you were saying there. Funnily enough, you talk about, she really listened to you. And our bestie PK has told us, go in and give people a good hard listening to.

And that's actually resonated through other people that have worked with PK in the past and they've told me the same thing. give people a good hard listening to him by the sounds of things. Rekha absolutely did that. And I love that she was so aware that you would have mutual success if you could come together by doing it.

Fantastic. Sounds like Reka would be a great person to have on our podcast at some point about how to work with the different global cultures. I want to continue a little bit on the culture side, but slightly adjacent. it's really important for leaders to hire people for fit on culture. So not just about what technical skills they have.

or even what soft skills they have, but indeed whether or not they would be a great fit for the type of culture that you've developed. So for instance, if you have a really strong culture of feedback, where people actually have to present their work publicly and get feedback from the team, people who struggle to adapt to feedback or potentially have rejection sensitivities may really push back on this.

And then they start to undermine your culture and your vision. So they become that voice of negativity. They're trying to say, this isn't great. And really, you know, tearing things off the direction that the leaders are trying to put in place. So I think it's really important for leaders to hire for a fit on culture

Sarah (17:37)
Yeah, I really like that. And it's something that you see some organizations do really well and others not. I do wonder with having so much more data now and a lot of focus on soft skills and a lot of profiling, how that will evolve and improve potentially over time, getting that right cultural fit when hiring.

Fiona Gordon (18:04)
Yeah, 100%. it really leads from this new push, and I say new, you know, and a push in the last four or five years around diversity. But what happens when you pull a really diverse bunch of people together, as if they don't have, they don't share the same values.

then they just tear one another apart. So it's really important to consider how you hire and what you're adding into the team and how this may evolve your culture and is it the right add to be doing in this space.

Sarah (18:44)
Yeah, I really like that. the other risk you can run if you've got pockets of competing cultures is you can almost form groups and silos and that's when it gets really hard to get back out of.

Fiona Gordon (18:53)
Yeah.

Spot on.

Sarah (19:02)
So something else that's on my mind is around the culture of feedback.

Fiona Gordon (19:08)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah (19:10)
So what's your thoughts? When I was reflecting on culture, I was looking at some of the programs around feedback that have been instilled, the 360 and some of the gamification. You can get badges or rewards and so forth if you do this feedback to certain people. And what's some of your thoughts on that, Fi? Things that you've seen go well.

when

Fiona Gordon (19:36)
So I've spent a lot of time in coaching teams for delivering feedback along the way. Now there's two types of feedback. There's directive and there's suggestive. So sometimes you are gonna hear feedback where there's no choice, but you need to adapt or change. And some of that might be as much as changing a font or something on a presentation, because it's not quite right. Or it can be actually changing your behavior and directive on that as well.

I like when people are clear with me around is this suggestive or is it directive upfront. So it's really clear for me what's expected of me through this process. So in a suggestive manner, I train people to talk about the things they like and also the things that they would suggest changing.

the reason why that's really effective is the individual that's receiving the feedback can take it on board or they can just push it to the side. so it's less confronting for people to adapt. It still is confronting, especially if they're hearing that feedback publicly from a group of people. But I have seen incredible growth from people who stick with it.

go through it, experience it a few times, and then really start to see the value of what's happening.

Sarah (20:59)
I

like how you talk around being really clear around subjective or directive feedback. And it comes full circle to that trust build as well, because you're being very open and you're telling people that, this is how you're going to deliver the feedback and for them to be able to trust in the process of what you're delivering and why.

Fiona Gordon (21:06)
Mm.

Mm.

spot on and then as a leader, knowing if you are giving directive feedback, you can tell if people are starting to shut down or if they can't take it anymore, and saying, should we take a break on it? Should we, put a pin in it for now and come back? But being, clear that you will come back and revert to the conversation, this isn't just a get out of jail free card.

Sarah (21:46)
very nice, very nice indeed. I want to...

Fiona Gordon (21:48)
What else

on feedback? Do you have some ideas on feedback?

Sarah (21:52)
Yeah, so I've seen feedback is a big journey that I think has evolved in the last couple of decades in terms of how we handle it. It's a thing that you give once a year and it hits you like a cannonball because your managers not talk to you about it for the whole year.

And I've struggled with that in the past and as a result of that have made sure that similar to you that I'm giving constant feedback and I'm allowing my team or the peers, people around me to understand how I'm going to deliver that feedback as well. So I feel it's very much to me around giving feedback as close to the time it's required as possible.

rather than saving it all up for an end of year review or something like that, which historically I really saw happen in my early days. So I'm glad that that has evolved. And with tools that have come on, some of the organizations that I've worked in has allowed like a feedback circle. whether it's anonymous, some of them have...

Fiona Gordon (22:47)
Mm.

Sarah (23:00)
allowed that so people that maybe don't feel as comfortable giving the feedback they want to. It's an interesting one. I'd rather it not to be anonymous, but I feel sometimes people feel more comfortable doing it that way.

the most important one is just making sure it's as open and honest as possible and that it's as close to the event as possible as well.

Fiona Gordon (23:24)
Mmm.

That's a really important one, being close to the event because it'll be fresh in the mind of the person who you're delivering it to. it's also really important to ask for feedback. you and I had a call this morning, straight after the call, I asked you for some feedback on it because we're still growing and learning and having that third party as an observer as well on the things that I can improve on really helps. But I just want to circle back to one

point that you made around the anonymity of feedback.

Being anonymous doesn't give you the right to just, yeah, just troll or have verbal diarrhea and just offload a lot of your feelings and vent on people. You know, really put yourself in the shoes of the person that you're delivering feedback to and try and make it so that it's not just your feelings that have bubbled up, but.

Sarah (24:02)
Troll.

Fiona Gordon (24:20)
constructive that would help them to improve, whether it was their delivery of something or the way they went about it, the way that they spoke, whatever it is, help them to see your perspective. And if you, really just run off at the mouth around it, they're gonna shut down, feel defensive and not really take that on board. Cause they're gonna be like, this person's just got a chip on the shoulder.

And quite frankly, they'd be well within their rights to do that. If you say something, you're like, that was kind of came off wrong. Be really vulnerable with it and say, I didn't quite mean it like that. Let me try again and have another crack at it. this is really important to sharpening your own skills at delivering feedback along the way.

Sarah (25:04)
Yeah, I like that. the other thing that you've just highlighted is vulnerability as well. We're all human. Sometimes we don't get it right. You know, when you and I delivered our feedback session after our call today, what I loved about it is we were very vulnerable. And it's like, yeah, I'll take note of that. And I think the other piece that I enjoyed about it is

taking that time to reflect back, we kind of slowly pulled other bits out and had a really open, honest conversation around things that we would potentially change.

Fiona Gordon (25:36)
It was really great feedback and I feel like that's another reason for a lot of growth in myself that I'm having at the moment with running Dub Dub So that segues really nicely into

I love companies that encourage growth and learning. a uni degree shouldn't be the last time that you're investing in learning something new. Companies who dedicate the time to learning for their people is a huge win for me. And obviously at JLL, where part of my role was enablement, that's why I'm so passionate about it because I saw the growth in individuals, our

retention rate was something like 7.8 % over a period that in other parts of the organization, it was over 20%. And more globally, it was 35 % in the data and analytics space. So that was obviously when a lot of people were transitioning over COVID and turning over jobs. People wanted to stay at JLL because we invested in their skill sets and capabilities with our gamification programs.

Sarah (26:41)
Now, if you use call that as a retention, is that not a attrition?! Wouldn't your retention be in its 90s? And your attrition? Yes.

Fiona Gordon (26:47)
did I call it retention? Yeah, thanks. Yeah. So

the attrition was 7.8%. So that was really good retention on the other side. Thank you. But I still love, to this day, seeing all of the achievements of those amazing people at JLL come through with their digital credentials. And it's a real buzz to see that they're continuing to focus improving their skill set and capability.

Sarah (26:55)
Hahaha

again.

Yeah, yeah. learning is so key to culture. I think most of us really want to learn. giving that time and space for people to learn while they're at work is, your retention, attrition statistics really highlight that. I've got a case specifically.

where a peer of mine called Leah, her and her team would have learning days. And I think it was on a Friday and it might've been weekly or fortnightly, but that was their time. That was their no meeting time and they were gonna go and do dedicated learning. And I saw some really great stuff come out of that team. And I think it was because they took that time and that breathing space to go and learn the things that they needed to learn to do their jobs.

Fiona Gordon (28:00)
Yeah, spot on. mean, at JLL, they had every Friday afternoon, there was an hour for viz review. So that's the feedback sessions. And then there was an hour for learning as well. So really setting that aside, at a time of the week that people just want the week to be over. They were actually investing in themselves, which was superb.

Do you have anything else to add? I have plenty more.

Sarah (28:27)
I have so much more. on that continuous learning and development and asking for feedback and so forth, I've worked with some great people over my years. I actually, one woman, Hansini, she's worked for me a couple of different times. And something that I always loved around her feedback was she was always, hey, Sarah, like,

Fiona Gordon (28:29)
You

Sarah (28:53)
maybe this could have gone this way if we'd done it this like this. So she was always constantly like pushing the boundaries and saying, what if we did it like this next time? And not being scared to come to her manager and being really direct.

Fiona Gordon (29:00)
Mm.

Sarah (29:07)
she'd always do a little bit of like investigative work Like, I've just heard the team over here is doing this. And I think that's really successful because of X, Y, and Z. maybe we should look at it as well. I really loved how she would think well outside the scope of our department and look at what others were doing and to take that on board.

I think back to the cultural side of it, it's building that trust where the leader is open and demonstrates that, where anyone can come in and have a suggestion and change a direction potentially.

Fiona Gordon (29:40)
Okay, I've got another one. I think in a great culture, it means commitment to the vision. Now, the vision doesn't have to be the organization's vision. It could be your broader team's vision as well. But this means that people aren't nodding along to the vision. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But they're like...

roll their eyes, they're like, totally don't believe in that. And they, undermine what's actually going on. If you don't believe in the vision, get out.

you'll be pushing against it. You won't really be bought in. You won't be energized by it. it's not going to rock your world to come to work every day. Cause you know, sometimes work is just the grind, but if you really believe in what you're doing, the times at which it is just the grind will fly by because you'll be at the next stage of really trying to make that vision actually happen.

Sarah (30:34)
Yeah, I agree. And I like how you've said it doesn't have to be the organization's vision. And it's actually reminded me of a really good thing that a previous manager, Greg, to do. And what he would do is we would have a, at the beginning of each year, we would have a three-day workshop. And everyone in his department was pulled in to rooms. We were offshore, so there was multiple rooms.

but we would all get to have a say and we would all get to shape our department vision. And that meant that everyone bought into it. Everyone had a little piece of the puzzle to play and they knew what their role was, they knew what their interest was and it it shaped it beautifully. And at the end of that workshop, we were all so pumped to go forward and deliver

Fiona Gordon (31:24)
Greg sounds like an awesome leader.

Sarah (31:25)
He is.

Fiona Gordon (31:28)
Okay, another one for you, celebrating the wins. So, hands up, who's one of those people who does lots of projects, gets to the end, and then continues through into the next project, or has 50 other projects on the go. That's definitely me.

Sarah (31:44)
Yes, me too.

Fiona Gordon (31:46)
And it's really easy because what are we doing? We're chasing solving problems because we all love to solve problems along the way. But it's really important to stop and smell the roses, making sure that teams and individuals are recognized where their efforts have culminated in success. Also measuring that success as well is really important. If you have an ROI that you've delivered, being able to trumpet that out and it really embeds the value of your team along the way.

Leaders making sure that they're celebrating the wins making sure that they're giving people pats on the back It doesn't just have to be like bonuses and all that kind of culture It can be you know a shout out on a team's channel where there's lots of people on there and they're getting that recognition

Actually, I read some research a long time ago that said the biggest impact and change is when the individual's line manager says thank you. So simple, so simple, but they say, you know, thank you so much. That's really amazing what you've done. I know that, if you're getting two and a half percent pay rises, that doesn't pay the bills along the way. But it's, it is important to know that you are being

noticed for what you're doing and I'm sure that leaders who can will remunerate you if they're a great leader

Sarah (33:00)
Yeah, and it's something that I see that I really love is at the end of a project having the stakeholder, and even if, if you're the project lead on it, sitting down with a stakeholder and saying, Hey, these are the people that really went out of their way. Can you put an email out to them, and, over time, maybe they'll, they'll just start doing it naturally.

Having people see the impact of what they're doing upstream, think is great.

Fiona Gordon (33:27)
Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that can tear the culture apart, and I just sort of referred to it a little bit there, is bonuses.

Depending on the size of a bonus in an organization, those bonuses can put such monetary incentives in place that people just want to play their individual game instead of the team game. And so if the KPIs aren't aligned, it very quickly, it dissolves into people.

doing a lot of that, yes, yes, yes, I'm gonna be involved in to, there's no way that I'm spending any time on Sarah's program because I've got this big bonus that's sitting over my head and I need to focus on my project, which will deliver that.

Sarah (34:14)
Yes, yeah, the bonus culture is a very interesting one that I've seen through many different organizations and I completely agree. You don't want it to be the sole reason why people do every single thing and they calculate it, right? Yeah, I really agree on that one. You were talking a little bit around ways that people can feel appreciated. Something that I always...

Fiona Gordon (34:31)
Mm.

Sarah (34:43)
liked and one of my managers, Sean, used to do is unofficially, he would always say, when it's your birthday, you get a day off.

And I know other organizations that have had duvet days or doona days as they call them in Australia. So it's just that kind of little thing that's not through the HR department. It's off on the side, but it says, hey, I appreciate you and why not take your birthday off? Or hey, if you're not feeling the greatest one day, you wake up and you just wanna.

Fiona Gordon (35:02)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah (35:21)
effectively call a sickie, but let's not call it a sickie. Let's actually give it a better name, a doona day or a duvet day. And I think as we evolved, they became during COVID, became mental health days as well. It's like, I'm just not fronting up today. And I think having a culture where that is okay is great as well.

Fiona Gordon (35:32)
Mm.

Any final thoughts?

Sarah (35:46)
well, I think I feel we're only touching the tip of the iceberg on this. And there's so many great things that people can do when it comes to improving their work culture and what makes a great culture. I just hope that this podcast has inspired people to make a little change, to move the needle just a little bit and how they work with their colleagues or work, as a leader or

encourage their leaders to maybe improve their culture just a little bit. What about you, Fi?

Fiona Gordon (36:19)
I

love that. My final thoughts is around work culture. Also make sure that you've got a data-driven culture.

Sarah (36:26)
Of course!

Fiona Gordon (36:30)
And with that thought, think that we can wrap up today's podcast. Thanks so much for all of your amazing insights, Sarah. I've had a blast. Bye.

Sarah (36:38)
Me too, thanks, Fi. Catch you later, everybody.

Sarah (00:08)
Hi everybody and welcome to Undubbed, Where Where Unscripted, Uncensored and Undeniably Data. Now today we've got a new series for you and it's called What Makes a Great? And today we're starting with What Makes a Great Leader? So, Fi, over to you. What Makes a Great Leader?

Fiona Gordon (00:33)
So many things make a great leader. I think it's really easy to say what doesn't make a great leader and for the mind to flick into things that aren't so positive. But I'm gonna start with going back to earlier in my career and talking about one of my early leaders. Murray had a knack for sitting back and observing.

What makes a great leader are people who observe, looking for where people can excel along the way and helping find them ways to excel in line with the vision or strategy of the organization. Murray hired me to build an access database to reconcile assets. I had no experience with that whatsoever, but he'd seen that I had really good Excel skills.

Even in the interview, I was saying to him, I haven't done this before. And he's like, "don't worry, you'll be fine". You've got great Excel skills. Already he was observing a skill set that was adjacent and knowing that I would be good to go and do what he needed. As I was working for him, I had a couple of months in a contract. He observed me helping the guy next to him analyze trends. And so he found me work to do that same trend analysis as well.

Thinking back, there was also another leader who did this sort of observation. At another organization, John had his personal analyst leave the organization and there was only a few days to pick up and understand her work. They gave me a few months to automate it. Now, John was actually the CEO of the organization and he would walk the floors and stop.

and ask people questions about what they were working on. So whilst I was replacing his previous analyst just to do some automation, I wasn't reporting directly to him. So he would ask me what I was working on. He enjoyed the chat around it and sort of walked off and I didn't think anything less. Now I finished that.

that particular job in half the time that I needed to. And even though I'd figured out a new job to start that was a permanent role instead of the contract, John heard that I was going to be leaving and he pulled me into his office and spent over an hour convincing me to stay. And he created me a role in his organization as well. What stands out for me in those two examples was that

they were taking time to really understand, whether it's a silent observation or if it's actually coming and having a chat to somebody and observing what things people are really good at and then finding space for them to really excel in.

Sarah (03:14)
Yeah, and I really like how you've talked as well around, the CEO, John, of the organization, walking the floor. We've worked in really big organizations, and we've seen the big hierarchies that it can have. And to see someone like John walking the floor and how much he got out of having you, encouraging you to stay on

and perform a role that he had the ability to know that you could do that purely because he'd walked the floor and came and seen that. One of the things about being a great leader is cutting through the hierarchy and actually talking to everyone in the organization. I know that we've seen initiatives come in like the skip level

reviews which has tried to encourage that. But what I liked about your story is you've got John that's just taken the initiative to get to know the people on his floor. And at the time, I think you said you were a contractor there. So you were kind of the lowest on the scale almost.

Fiona Gordon (04:18)
Not even lowest from being a contractor, I think lowest from just, simply being at the stage in my career where I was at. I was young. I was so young that I was naive that thinking, this is normal for somebody to come and have a chat. I haven't seen a lot of that actually occur later in my career.

Perhaps it becomes more difficult as we have more virtual organizations where we're working online a lot more. It's something that definitely sticks out to me and would be something that I would want to go back to as well and find that kind of leadership again.

Sarah (04:56)
Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Fiona Gordon (04:59)
So Sarah, tell me about something that stuck out for you around great leadership.

Sarah (05:05)
Yeah, and I just gonna say back to your original point, it's very easy to think of some bad leaders in my time. And I, I'm lucky to have a lot of great leaders. One that's automatically kind of comes to my head is a manager called Adam.

A couple of years ago, I was going through a really tough time with my son's schooling and I was in quite a high pressure job and I actually, feeling a bit emotional about this one already, but had to just sort it out. I was a single mom in another country and it had to be resolved. And I think...

Fiona Gordon (05:50)
Take a moment.

Sarah (05:51)
Yeah.

think great leaders can show a bit of compassion as well. Yeah. I had to take quite a bit of time off work and resolve this. And what I really remember is my leader, Adam,

not only saying but really standing behind that he and the management team would do and support me in whichever way that I needed to be supported.

And not just saying it but actually following through. And I remember for quite some time, our one on ones would always start with, him asking about the situation and whether it had improved or not. And then also, just making sure that, small things his EA would make sure that during certain times of the day,

things weren't booked for me, so I could just make sure that transition worked.

Fiona Gordon (07:02)
Thank you for sharing that.

I know how hard it is to open up in particular when we're having these conversations. We don't even know where it's going to go or who it's going to reach along the way.

It's important to recognise that we can't compartmentalise what's actually going on in our personal life to what's going on in our professional life as well. As much as we would like to be able to shut the door to our office or come into work in person and say, okay, well now's the work time. Actual what is happening at home impacts work and what is happening at work impacts home as well.

Sarah (07:41)
Yes, to finish off that story, throughout the entire time of this, Adam was very conscious about not ever stepping over boundaries. So asked permission to talk about it each time because it was upsetting. No, I got upset just now. Like imagine how upsetting it was at the time. So he would, make sure we were in a quiet space,

Fiona Gordon (07:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Sarah (08:07)
asked me if I wanted to talk about it at all. And if not, he would put his business face back on and off we would go. I really appreciated that. So I feel a really big part of being what makes a great leader is empathy

Fiona Gordon (08:21)
Okay, next.

Sarah (08:25)
So Fi, what makes a great leader?

Fiona Gordon (08:29)
Another thing that makes a great leader is people who coach. I had a leader, his name was Strav, who has taught me some of the best resilience and perseverance techniques that I try to help other people with as I've started to lead them.

Now our roles weren't always sunshine and roses. You know, there was kind of politics like any large organization. Have any of you tried to get a tool implemented where there's one that already exists that's similar in nature? Yeah, and how did that go? It often feels like you're just tapping against that brick wall.

Sarah (09:04)
Me me!

Yeah, really hard.

Fiona Gordon (09:13)
Many organizations back in the day that used to be Qlik versus Tableau, now it would be Tableau versus Power BI in data visualization. With Strav, we'd go into meetings with senior individuals and I was a lowly manager. Now I use that as a way to describe the hierarchy within organizations. I was a manager and I was going into meetings with head-ofs, managing directors.

Yet Strav would let me prep and talk. I was the one with experience in data and analytics. Strav was the leader in terms of the operational transformations that were going on.

And most of the time I would walk out of that meeting feeling really downtrodden, like I'd made a shedload of mistakes and that there was no chance of moving forward. And why would I feel that way? Well, there would always be a lot more senior individuals who were backing the different tool to what I was backing. They would come in and one after the other, they would ask,

questions and I would respond to them but when you're the one person responding it makes it feel like you're defensive, yeah you're on defense the whole time and it comes across like that. So even though I would walk out of the meetings feeling like there was zero chance that this would move forward even though I knew that it was the way that we should be going, Strav would always find this single glimmer of light that was seeping through this

Sarah (10:26)
It's an attack. It's a bit of an attack.

Fiona Gordon (10:47)
brick wall. The reason why I describe it like that was because we were just trying to chip away all the time and we'd go into these meetings and I'd be banging my head against that brick wall. And we'd come out and, Strav and I'd go for a cigarette to start with. Good times back in the day. He would just sit there and he would talk about the one glimmering light and he would grab a crowbar and say that's

what we're doing and it just wedged open We'd get through that brick wall and wouldn't you know it there's another one across the side as well. So off we trot until the next time that we came up against the naysayers. This has been really important to me to focus on the fact that people will come up with a hundred different reasons to shoot down your ideas but if you can find ways to navigate around them that positive technique focusing on the positives

you eventually find a breakthrough.

Sarah (11:46)
Yeah, I really like that. And you mentioned earlier around, coaching. So did you find that Strav coached you to how you ultimately leveraged that crowbar technique into your own leadership?

Fiona Gordon (12:01)
Absolutely. The muscle memory that he was creating for me as I felt downtrodden and like I failed and it wasn't going to work and we weren't going to get it across the line because he was role modeling this behavior of no, Fifi, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and would go through it. It helped me to understand even if you were hearing no from people, there's always a way around it.

He would, you know, chip in and some of these meetings where he would see they were going off and he would prime some of the ideas where he was getting the glimmers of light as well. How he coached was really about helping me to understand where to focus on. When I stepped back as I matured in my career, I could see.

it's an incredibly powerful tool that even when you feel like there is no more moving forward there's always opportunities to get around things.

Sarah (12:56)
My mind just actually wandered to a time where I had a manager talking about kind of opportunities and seeing things. It was my first role straight out of university and I was working in the coffee industry. And I always say I kind of had two managers there. So I had...

John who was our general manager, and I had Nick who was our marketing manager. I had to come in and tell them something that was going to impact how I was going to get to work each day. go into details. I remember I had to sit both of them down and tell them and I was young, I straight out of university, I was so nervous, I thought I was going to get fired. And

Fiona Gordon (13:37)
fresh.

Sarah (13:40)
funny story. Well, maybe not so funny. But the first thing Nick said was don't worry, when I was eight, I shot my cousin in the leg. Bearing in mind, I had not done anything remotely like that. That was kind of going to the extreme. I was like, okay. And then John turned around and said, Well, we've got this opportunity over here that we need you to work on. And let's do it.

And I just really remember thinking, wow, I thought, I'm going to get fired. I'm going to lose my job. You know, this is horrible. And Nick came up with some random comment that popped into his head about shooting his cousin in the leg.

And John had already in his head come up with another opportunity and gone forward with that and off I went, which maybe didn't quite learn my lesson like I should have, but love the leadership style.

Fiona Gordon (14:33)
That is amazing, so I need to pause on a couple of things there. One, just for anyone who's listening, it's not normal for people in New Zealand to shoot one another.

Sarah (14:44)
No, no.

Fiona Gordon (14:46)
But I love how he just took it down into what's the worst thing he could probably think of to make you feel better. You know, cause we're human. We are human and we've all done silly things. I also love that it wasn't like their first thought wasn't punishment. It was like, how are we going to turn this frown upside down?

Sarah (15:04)
Yeah, exactly. I still laugh about it now.

Fiona Gordon (15:08)
I love it. I need to go and work for John and Nick.

Sarah (15:10)
Yeah. Well,

I actually caught up with Nick recently and yeah, love the fact we're still in contact.

Fiona Gordon (15:18)
That's awesome.

Sarah (15:19)
So any more stories popping into your head, Fi, on what makes a great leader?

Fiona Gordon (15:23)
Yeah, absolutely. So another one from Strav and he's made a huge dent, I reckon, in my career. Strav was a leader who really understood how important it was to have tough conversations.

Some of my best roles that I've had, I've also had my most difficult struggles, which is really interesting, right?

Sarah (15:45)
When it's a great job, you put everything into it. you get really passionate about it. when you're feeling comfortable as well, you're really driving and taking, you know, taking risks.

Fiona Gordon (15:54)
Yes, risks,

that's a good one. having a place that you can take risks. And so Strav, with his "Stravisms", would start out tough feedback by saying, I'm gonna give it to you right between the eyes.

Sarah (16:11)
Love, Strav!

Fiona Gordon (16:13)
Now that can be a bit brutal, but on reflection it's much better than getting a knife between the shoulder blades when you're not looking. I've had that as well from some leaders. So Strav would give me the space to make mistakes, but he would also let me know when I'd breached the boundaries.

we achieved like groundbreaking stuff when we worked together and I really know it's because he gave me enough rope that I could go out there to to chase the success although sometimes I'd get caught up in it and that's when he would give me the feedback

it's a awful thing to deliver feedback. That's tough feedback.

No one wants to do it. Lots of people hide from it. But I'm just grateful that he would sit me down and really tell me, that's not going to work like that. And you need to change and you need to figure this out. yeah, delivering tough feedback or having those tough conversations makes a really great leader.

Sarah (17:26)
Yeah, I agree. I remember having a manager back in London called Lucy and she was so direct and I remember being so scared of her at the time. And when I reflect back, she'd always say this one thing and it was like, we've had this conversation, Sarah. And I'd be like, have we? And when I think back, you know,

She was a very busy leader. had lots of things on and she was very direct. And I think that clashed with me for a little while. But when I reflect back now, having her be so direct and like you said, she was giving it to me between the eyes and not in the back, way, way better.

Fiona Gordon (18:11)
Way better.

Sarah (18:11)
Constructive feedback is so important.

Fiona Gordon (18:14)
And it's not always a shit stack sandwich. Okay. What else, Sarah? What else makes her a great leader?

Sarah (18:22)
Fi, you and I have spoken around neurodiversity in the workplace and you know, we've worked.

with people that are neurodiverse and we both think of ourselves as potentially undiagnosed in the ADHD field. a great leader, Greg, has given me the opportunity to work to my energy level. And that's something where I've been able to feel confident enough to say to him, hey, Greg, kind of got ants in my pants today and I'm just not going to be able to sit at my desk.

So I'm going to go for a walk. We've got our one-on-one scheduled at this time. Hey, it's going to be hot at that time. We were both in Singapore. Can we do it maybe slightly earlier? He was a super early riser. So I knew I could always kind of catch him in the morning or whatever. Can we have our chat now? I'm out walking. And he'd always be like, yeah, sure. just knowing that, you know, people work in different ways and methods and, some people

like to be at their desk all day, other people need that movement. And I just really appreciated how Greg gave me that flexibility and gave me enough confidence to ask for it as well.

Fiona Gordon (19:34)
think I could do better in this space with leading neurodiverse teams. Working in data, you know, I think we've got higher chances of working with people who are neurodiverse.

what I really love about our partnership is that we can talk about, when we've got the ants in the pants, or, when we need a specific break on things.

But I would always love to hear more around what I can do better. And a small plug for our community, we do have a neurodiverse community forum on the Dub Dub community. And I would love to learn more from people who are neurodiverse and can help to share what are the things that help them.

from their leaders and also their teams to be more successful in their roles as well.

Alright, next up for me is actually it's at the same organization as Strav and it was his leader the thing that made Frances stand out as a terrific leader was her sponsorship of things. So transforming organizations, really no easy task.

Spoiler alert, no one likes to change, even if the change is actually really super beneficial along the way. sometimes that's what data people are actually asked to do, whether it's change themselves or help to change the organizations. I strongly believe it's about change management and that sponsorship along the way. And you might not want to hear this listener, but change management comes top down.

So by leaders actually role modeling the behavior and sponsoring the behavior and talking about the behavior and setting the expectations for that behavior. the best outcomes I've seen in transformation is when leaders are committed to change management. They invest in hiring change managers who set out the plans that...

gives everyone the best opportunity to implement the change. Now, Frances, she was the best leader that I've seen who has committed to change and transformation. She would turn up at every steer- co, she would deliver on the steps that were hers, which meant prioritizing her time, like change comms, having calendar blocked out to record videos, and she knocked it out of the park. Now, before the change would go in, she would ask all of the tough questions.

She wouldn't let you get away with anything, but once it was ready, she was 100 % committed to actually getting things across the line. And I still remember her very vividly recording videos for our launch. And I felt like she was a real rock star for doing it and leading by example.

Sarah (22:25)
Yeah, great. really stepping in, right, and fronting up, not just being that leader that was there when things went bad or to take the glory, but actually being there with the hard grafts with you in those meetings as well. another story that comes into my mind is more of a general one, but

Fiona Gordon (22:40)
Yeah,

Sarah (22:46)
around culture and having great leaders that look at the positive and the negative within the culture and try and shift and shape a team So leaning into the things that are good about the company and then trying to help avoid or redirect the toxicity that can sit in a culture.

That is really important for what makes a great leader, is being able to navigate within the bounds of the organization's culture and to try and impact it in a positive way.

Fiona Gordon (23:19)
I love that. And I'd love to add some things that I've seen that really help to shape that culture as well to help turn things around. That means being present. we talked a little bit earlier about John walking the floor.

that's possible when you're in an office. When you're not in the office, it might look like they're on Slack or Teams and really doing shout outs for people or celebrating the wins with people as well.

Sarah (23:48)
Okay, Fi, what else have you got?

Fiona Gordon (23:50)
Leaders who stretch you. So organizations have always got hundreds of problems that they need to solve. And I love it when a leader really believes in you and something that they think that you can do, even though you haven't demonstrated at all that you have the experience. So Sean had a vision on human-centered design.

that it was the future of data and analytics. really getting to the bottom of what is the problem you're trying to solve. I built a program using IDEOs or is it I D E O? I don't even know over their framework and I learned so much along the way in doing that. the important thing about a leader identifying a stretch goal for you is what's the worst that can happen? You fail.

I've had great leaders who haven't cared at all if I've failed. Similar to your story before about the guys sharing the shooting story and then giving you a different opportunity, when things go wrong, no drama. It hasn't cost a great deal for the organization and you can always try again or you can move into a different direction.

Sarah (25:05)
And I think to

that other point as well, if you don't take risks, you're not gonna potentially excel. So having a great leader that gives you that space to take risks and potentially fail, yeah, it's great.

Fiona Gordon (25:12)
Mmm.

the belief that he had in me that I could build many programs, was really empowering. again, it was a period of high growth for me.

Sarah (25:32)
I loved the whole pushing boundaries piece as well, which reminds me of a story with a previous leader of mine called Zoher, who, really pushed me. every day he'd be like, okay, then let's do this. And I'd be like, no, no, we can't do that. And he would very much say, yes, you can.

I really enjoyed working with Zoher _ on his ability to keep me thinking bigger and bigger. And we were very successful in what we did because I think of his big personality and driving that.

Fiona Gordon (26:08)
I love that when people or leaders have this expansive view of where things can go, it really expands the remit of what the team can achieve as well. it's really inspirational and sort of gets everyone hyped towards stretching themselves.

Sarah (26:33)
Yeah.

Fiona Gordon (26:35)
got another one, leaders who partner with you. So it's really easy to think of command control style leadership where they come in, this is what's happening, it's all this top down, pushing down all the time. But we all have strengths and weaknesses.

And I believe a powerful team is when they know that their team excels in an area that they do not. And they may not just have the time for it, or it may be that they just suck at it. In fact, at times leaders great leaders hire for these gaps as well. at JLL,

an organization-wide transformation meant that someone that I perceived as my peer ended up being my manager. And boy, was that a learning experience for me. Turns out, Paul outpaced me in many areas. And that was a great learning as well, understanding what other people bring to the table and why that may actually be more important in a senior level than what I have to bring to the table as well.

We found a groove much faster than what I expected and that's because he focused me on the things that I was good at and he focused on the things that he excelled at, where I played the support crew for him. So I teased out the strategy, built the programs, which were very in line with his vision as well.

And we just adapted to where we had gaps at pace. So that was something that was really amazing to have was this strong partnership where I knew that I had a leader who was there to support me, to support the team. We would have some tough, tough conversations along the way. It wasn't always the rainbows and sunshine, rainbows, lollipops, all that, but...

we did know that we had a commitment to helping to transform the team and we really delivered on that.

Sarah (28:57)
Yeah, something we haven't spoken about enough is around egos, right? the ability for people to put their egos aside to lead as well is super important.

Fiona Gordon (29:08)
huge learning for me. you go in, think, why can't I be in that leadership role? Well, he was 10 times better in that leadership space than I would have ever been. But I feel like I probably was 10 times better than what he was in going out and building the gamification programs. And it gave me an opportunity to shine in a space that I...

thoroughly enjoyed.

Sarah (29:33)
Yeah, that's awesome. And I just want to dig a little bit deeper into my personal experience on egos. And shout out to Jono who really taught me a lot around putting your ego aside. he used to say to me a lot, Sarah, you could do this role. and this is before I was a leader. He said, you've got what it takes to do my job.

that's something that always sat with me. years down the track, I proved that in abundance that I could do that. putting your ego aside as a great leader is something that's super important. not everyone's after your job, but give people the, the encouragement to come in.

Fiona Gordon (30:17)
I that's a great thing to end on. I thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. In fact, now I want to have more discussions with the people who actually led you along the way because they inspire me and I know what you've ended up like as well,

Sarah (30:20)
Yay!

Yeah, and I think same for you, Fi. You know, I do know a couple of the people that you've mentioned today, but there's a few that I'm really, I'm like, can we get them on a podcast? And you know, really kind of drill them and to learn more because I think there's some really great takeaways there what makes a great leader.

Fiona Gordon (30:54)
thank you so much for sharing and also being a little bit vulnerable along the way as well. I really appreciate it. Bye.

Sarah (31:03)
See ya!

Notes – we apologise in advance, this transcript is not 100% accurate as we were recording in the same room and had issues with the automation.  We have attempted to clean as much as possible, but means removing time stamps as it was duplicating the transcript from both Fi & Sarah.  Everything will be back to normal when we’re on opposite sides of the ditch! Thanks for your patience, Fi & Sarah

Hi everyone and welcome to unDUBBED where we're...

Who knows?

come on, we've got the merch, it's written on the merch. Unscripted, uncensored and undeniably data.

That's it.

Hey, so welcome back and could you believe it or not, it's finally the end of 2024. So we thought we'd take some time to reflect on the year that's been and look forward to the year that's coming.

You're excited, Fi?

I am excited. In fact, I'm the most excited because if we just do a little bit of magic of camera.

I'm excited because we're both in the same place. Very exciting. Yes, we are sitting opposite each other and we are doing our podcast here live in Sydney.

We're looking forward to doing a bit of a reflection of the past year, but also hopefully some looking forward into the next year as well. I always find December is that really like busy time of the year, right? Everyone's just cranking up.

Trying to get everything finished. You know, for those that celebrate Christmas, it's a really big, big time, especially for families.

Here in the southern hemisphere, it's also our summer holiday, so it's a bit of a double whammy, I think, with expectations and things happening. And also for most businesses, it's that time of the year where we do kind of reflect on what's happened, what's been. And I know in our previous lives, a lot of time for performance. So everyone's in that mad scramble to finish their things up,

yeah, there's usually some deadline that's coming up and at the same time you've got the family craziness of getting ready for kids, getting ready for Santa. If you've got older kids, they're probably thinking about holidays. yeah, it's one of the times that I think that it's really easy to lose your mind.

And I always remember my mind just went back to the good old favorite thing in technology, the change freeze period. yeah, I thought about that.

yeah, I forgot about the change freeze period. my goodness, you're right. Lots of fun, little handcuffs on, can't do anything and so there is that real mad rush coming through. Sarah, tell me, what did you used to do when you were working in corporate at this time of year?

I used to try and make sure we were prepared as possible for that looming change phase, people going on leave, trying to get all the paperwork done for performance reviews, et cetera. And also just trying to really check in with my team. Although I would do that constantly throughout the year, I just think extra time and kind of guidance and consideration was given around this time of the year because people would be in a bit of a frenzy and work wasn't necessarily top of mind as well. think a lot of people get really tired at the end of the year. I've actually noticed it a lot more, know, obviously being in Asia for the last decade, in the Northern Hemisphere, people get that kind of mid-year break and it's a bit of a reset. And then the end of year, a bit of a break as well. But what I'm finding back here in the Southern Hemisphere is there's not that mid-year reset. So everyone right now is just burnt out. I notice that at schools, all our kids feel burnt out, everyone, adults are burnt out, everyone's just trying to get to the end of the year and to have a little bit of a reset. So I think going back to my team, was really just trying to help them as much as possible, expectations on things that needed to be done, things that maybe could wait and trying to be really mature around the things.

So I think going back to my team, was really just trying to help them as much as possible, see expectations on things that needed to be done, things that may be great, trying to be really mature around the things that, stuff that's more important.

and let's focus on that instead. performance reviews, sure that the year there was no surprises. It was always like, you know, this is what you need support on and helping along that. And what about you, Fi?

Usually at this time of year, I've got some crazy deadline that is more likely to be self-imposed than anything. Also, I'm really ramping up to try and get something done at the same time, thinking about culture for the teams, really thinking about what we can do to celebrate with each other, not just my immediate team, but more broadly across the teams as well.

And then at the same time thinking of Christmas lunches or celebrations and bringing people together. Sometimes even bringing people from who previously have worked for us as well them.

I really like that. I like going back and pulling other people together. You used to see every day and now you don't. I think that's really lovely.

I miss people when I've worked with them so much for so long and then suddenly they might have got a new opportunity that's really great for them. They're going off, they're building their career.

I still miss them and Christmas is a time for bringing people together for me. And so it's really lovely.

This is a time for bringing people together for me. And so it's really lovely.

I'm wondering now how I can incorporate that now that there's just the two of us. I know, it's funny, right? Like, you're asking the two of us. I don't think we'd even plan to have a society. Let's see what we can do on Friday. Yeah, let's see. What else would you do at the end of year with your teams? whole performance, you love it, hate it.

And it is a real big time to go in and self-evaluate. wasn't always a big fan of the rigid structure of performance reviews, but I did really like the piece that would tell you like it was a time for you to go back and reflect on your year and how you impacted the organization and so forth.

I liked the way that you could go out to your peers or your team or, manager would always effectively be giving you your review. So it was a really big time to and look at how you made an impact or things that you could

I liked the way that you could go out to your peers or your team or your manager would always effectively be giving you your reviews. That was a really big go and look at how you made an impact on things that you could improve on and do really enjoy that aspect of getting that feedback.

I hear you there. So what I really don't like the whole performance review and corporate culture and I believe even bonus culture isn't a great culture to be working around. In fact, when I worked in financial services, the bonuses were so extraordinary. I felt that it really undermined the collaboration, especially the more senior that individuals got, the more that they would be vying for their own pieces of work to be successful, which meant that they weren't really open to spending time on other people's. And so one thing that I'm grateful for around our organisation is that we don't have performance reviews but I think at the same time we need to make sure that we're giving one another feedback and that's one thin that we're really doing well at the moment.

Yeah I agree, think it's not always easy because there's just two of us so it can always kind of feel a bit in your face when we give each other feedback because there's no one else to support or deny the feedback.

But I do appreciate, I think we've spoken it before on our first podcast, there has been times where we've had to give quite strong feedback to each other and I think we're evolving to that. So we have a performance review all the time and trying to do what's better for us as a company, which I think underlyingly shows through in the feedback that we do give each other.

Do you have anything planned for our podcast today, Sarah?

Wow, yes. I do have a few things planned. I would take some time to reflect on the year that was, so 2024. We did start our own company only halfway through the year. And I want to talk about a practice that I use quite often, both professionally and personally, and have used the corporate world is around rose thorn bud.

Think about roses, things that are positive that have happened can focus organisation see in half of this year. So anything that's positive and we would take a couple of minutes to write some of those ideas down. And then we would talk about thorn. So that's effectively anything that's negative.

And in the human centered design, normally have roses are pink, thorns are blue, and then we have bud. And bud is the potential.

So what I thought is if we would just take a couple of minutes and we kind of would like people on the podcast as well to take a couple of minutes and just when they're thinking back on 2024, if you could think of one thing that is a rose, so something that's really positive, one thing that you find is a little bit spiky, a little bit negative. And then something that's a bud, some potential.

 Okay that sounds great, do we have to just stick to one?

No, of course not.

Because even while we were talking, I was thinking, my god, I want to turn left and go down the next roadway.

Well, normally when we run Rosebudthorn, it's an opportunity for everyone to up and stand and grab their Post-it notes and to write down as many ideas. And we typically would time box it to say five or 10 minutes,

this one, just thinking how we're going to run this. It's live on the podcast. Time

for this one, just thinking how we're going to run this. Time boxed. Time boxed. I reckon another five minutes and

maybe go one for one until we're done. How does that sound?

Okay. All right.

First rose for me this year is to be able to start Dub-Dub with you. It's been such an incredible journey to have such a talented and road for me this year is to be able to start dub dub with been such an incredible journey to have such a good, talented, intelligent, thoughtful and kind person to be building this organisation work. So, getting something out the door, amazing, from the seed of an idea to here we are at the end of the year and coming into next year, so many exciting things ahead.

When I think of my, my rose as well, it's definitely around like getting this off the ground and, on this journey with you as well. I feel that I'm none of those things because you are like 10 layers up from me. 10X! Yeah, 10X, you know, and, and I think, and being really proud of what we have launched. Sometimes I think we're like super critical of ourselves and we're like, but we haven't done this. And it's like, Hey, look what we actually have done in six months. have platforms up

The next rose for me is it's been really odd walking away from corporate life, but it's actually opened up a number of doors and conversations with connections that I've built throughout corporate life, where people are really leaning in and wanting to help. And so an organization, that I had a lot of experience with from a corporate perspective who'd done extremely great work for me at a number of different organizations has stepped up to the plate when we've opened the door and explained what we're doing with dub dub and when we had an opportunity to do some work for an organization. So this client organization might have a lot of work for us. How do we ramp up and scale up? Well, I want to work with companies like MIP who have in the past delivered outstanding work and we came together for this week to deliver for the client who was tied up, no insights, they had some data. And seeing how we self-organized, navigated some tricky requirements that weren't so clear and actually knocked it out of the park was just amazing. So to think that another organization will come in and do this and believe in our ethos has just been an amazing, exciting experience.

I really love that. I think, you when I think of another rose, it's just around pulling community networking and having so many great conversations with organizations like MIP others that understand the value and what we're trying to do and how we're trying to change things. And I love that feedback of, this really makes sense.

Earlier this year we had family members pass away and when that happened one of them was running a business and I just so happened to mention it to Chris McClellan from Visualise Data that I was trying to wind up the business. He asked what kind of business it was. It happened to be a computer business that did some hosting for websites and domain registration. And turns out that Chris also runs a business along with his data business for that. He helped us to pick up all of the clients, reach out to them, contact them. And we transitioned them across at the same rate and with the same really great client experience.

Now Chris does our domain registration and hosting as well. he was the first dubber to sign up!

The realization is that sometimes being a little bit vulnerable, people will step forward and help you out. I really feel like the relationship that we've built with Chris, even for dub dub, is something that's really going to help pull us forward as well. So Chris, if you're listening, thank you.   

Yeah, agree. Chris's been such a great help for both and the family situation and then ongoing for us in the domain and always at the end of a call, we need him. love that bit where you mentioned around being vulnerable

I'm going to move us into the the thorns now and focus a little bit on the negative. vulnerability is really around the great unknowns, and I have been very much used to being in corporate life and having corporate money coming in on a regular basis. And now we've gone into this great unknown. Fi and I went for a bit of a walk this morning. And as we were talking, we discussed sometimes, we're really pumped about, we don't know what's happening next. And other times it's like, my gosh, it can be a bit heart wrenching as well. I reflect, it's, it's having faith in what we are doing and moving forward, but also knowing it's a bit of a rocky roller coaster as well. those great unknowns is really scary, but I'm super happy that I've got F beside me because we do have really open communication style and when we're feeling those highs and lows, it's great to have you next to me feeling them too. Or quite often, sometimes we're feeling the opposite, which is great as well. So we can balance each other out a bit, which I appreciate.

Yeah, I'm totally there with you on that. Sometimes it’s like there's no money coming in, you know? And trying to get to that point and that realization while we're juggling, you know, so many different plates is certainly challenging at times. But like you, I feel like, thank goodness I've got Sarah, I don't know that I could do this without you.

What else is thorny? Coming back to the open conversation and having those challenging conversations, it's hard. We're friends first. One of the things about starting the business was how do we navigate this business and make sure that this is not something that destroys our friendship because it means a lot, which means having those tough conversations before they fester.

I've always been somebody that's leaned into harder conversations. A lot more than me. A lot more than you. But it doesn't mean that I enjoy giving them as well. And in fact, I ruminate a lot about tough conversations. I might lean into them faster, but then afterwards I'm circling around going, is that the right thing?

Which is funny, actually, because it's something we've not spoken about. So I will

avoid a tough conversation at all costs, and I would like to think that throughout our business I have improved. I have tried to lean in earlier, but it's quite funny because hearing that you ruminate afterwards, because I ruminate before.

And so once the conversation's done, I'm okay, it's done, move on, next thing, we've agreed, we've aligned. So it's quite funny to see that we are completely on the other side.

Yeah, absolutely. One thing that I have noticed about these tough conversations, and you alluded to it before, is there's no hiding. We have to have them because you're the only other person. I can't go and talk to Bob or Dave or Susie or whoever else because it's just Sarah. And that I feel is helping to improve my communication style. Really trying to have the conversations in ways where it's not disruptive. Or understanding that you're somebody that likes to ruminate beforehand, how much space can I give her before I can bring this up? There's a lot of thinking and growth happening in that space. That's not to say that I have nailed it at all, but getting there. Journey, journey!

We're growing together. I love that. think we are, we've come from super powerful and we're used to running big teams and it's kind of like, it's the two of us, right? And in the right way, have to have conversations straight away, we have to figure out what we're gonna do as a result and it's a real partnership which is jobs and we're used to running big teams and then it's kind of like, it's the two of us, right? And you're right, we have to have conversations straight away. We have to figure out what we're gonna do as a result and it's a real partnership, which is exciting and nerve-racking all at the same time. Yes.

Do you have any other thorny issues? I think that was a big one. It's happened a lot for me. can't think of any off the top of my head right now. I have one more. I reckon you should share this one too.

Sales? I shouldn't have done that while you were drinking because that could have been dangerous.

So Sarah and I are not sales people. We'd had to do internal sales obviously, but less or so in terms of going out pounding the pavements as virtually as you would say. having to think about what that means for us, I don't think that we've nailed this. I want to think that we are going to get some help from our friends and other dubbers along the way to help us with that. I know that we have really great connections and a well established network, but it's definitely something that we, I'm gonna use we, we need to get better at it.

Yeah, agree and it is like that scary path as well right like it's really important that we get good at sales we've spoken to some really great people and they are there to support us which is exciting and and watch the space we're going to evolve that into 2025.

And I don't know that you need to be aggressive as such but a little more polished and a little more structured in the way that we approach it. Watch this space.

No, that conversation's over, there's no potential. Okay, I see potential in our community. if you haven't signed up yet, please go to www.dubdubdata.com and sign up to our community. It's right at the beginning. So we have about 70 people who have signed up for our community so far, which is really exciting. But as with anything, it's like going to the school dance and no one wants to wants to dance first. Dance first or dance? So I’m in Australia “dance” first.

So we're really looking for people who wanna start driving the conversation, getting involved. We have a space where you can run your own life meetups. We don't care just as long as you don't sell to people while you're doing it. That's all we ask. So you can just go on, hang out, have a meeting there, do whatever you want, connect with people from around the world.

And it's really lovely to see our community start to grow and have a few people who are brave enough to start talking or posting.

 Yeah, and loving seeing some of the conversations that are happening. You know, our last podcast was on redundancy. Some really great conversations there, the meetups and loved that, building and bringing people from around the world together that could have really open and honest conversations about how they were feeling marked on, fact that their roles had been made redundant and having some really great thought leaders on those calls as well, which I was really, really exciting.

For me, my bud is around changing lives. When we thought about, why dub dub data, we really thought around how we could have these super talented people come together on this community and look at how they could start selling things there and having opportunities of connection to be able to monetize the stuff that they've potentially been giving away for free over the years. And I love the we could help people find their next job if that's what they're looking for, or have a little side hustle, make connections, work with other people in the community. We wanna pull people together when there's a big project and have that happening. for me is really exciting.

It is super exciting.

I'm keen to see how far we can push our platform. So one of the things that might not be outwardly apparent to people is that we can host online training. So you could create a passive income through online training. Think of it like Udemy, but a different platform. So you could sell your course through dub dub. We'll host it for you.

Really great opportunity here. But obviously I'm thinking to some of that as well.

Okay, so I think we're at the end of our rose thorn bud. I hope those on the call spent some little time reflecting on their 2024 as well. box yourself and five minutes and school and get a get a pen out and maybe some colored post-it notes and the things that into your mind some time to reflect. Rose-Thorn-Bud I find really great to just get ideas down and of your head and onto a page. And so with that now I would like to kind of switch it up a little bit and focus on 2025.

2025. Okay, well, why don't you start first so that I can have some time to think about what I think is going to happen in 2025. I want talk about some areas that I, want to focus on for next year. is sounding a little bit like a performance review now, isn't it?

We spoke how we've got the community. It's at 70 people at the moment. And I think that's amazing. You know, we launched less in a month ago. So that's great. I'd like us to really keep that momentum up. We want to put numbers up against those, right? Like, could we 10X that by the end of 2025? I would love that to be at least an 10x, 700. Yeah. Okay. On the board.

Challenge accepted. 10x, 700. Yes. Done. What does that mean from a social media perspective?

Good question. So we do need to really keep going on our social media. We are oneight platforms, the moment, and we try to post at least five times a week. are learning a lot around the analytics. We've spoken a little bit before about we don't have a big [?] behind us at the stage.  .

It is us at this stage. So learning a lot more around helping, maybe encouraging others to help us as well in terms of posting, liking, sharing. Getting the word out there. Yeah. Yeah. Anything stand out as a surprise to you about the social side so far?

I think around the platforms that have been more popular than others.

Like TikTok here we come. It seems like every video we're posting is getting around 700 views coming through. So that's pretty high, I thought. But maybe they just have different ways of measuring it.

Learning the algorithms across these platforms is something that we are gonna have to focus on.

And if anyone's got any feedback for us, there's a place on the unDUBBED Details page on our website where you can give us feedback on things that you think would work better. Coming into next year, we will be having some guests on the podcast rather than it just being Sarah and I talking. We will be having dubbers who are people who sell on the dub dub platform come and talk, but they won't be talking about what they're selling. They'll be talking about skills and things that might be of value to you.

I love that our focus on our our podcast has been value-added with a little we're trying to do and in the background as well. So if we think about some goals, we've spoken about growing the community, what are some of the goals that you want to achieve in 2025? Some sales goals? I think we need to put some sales goals in there.

Creating some structure behind it, hopefully also getting some help. One of the things that I'm keen to do is offload some of the lower level tasks that we spend a fair bit of time on at the moment.

Paying someone else to look after those so we can really focus on connecting with our network, understanding how things are going in the dub dub space and getting out there and trying to make the marketplace work.

I love that. both been focusing recently on, early days, it was all like, we've got to get all this done. We've got to, you know, do all these things. And now it's okay, so we've got this to a level where it could be semi-automated. And let's think of, it's a VA or someone that can come in and help us run certain elements while we really focus on the big word that keeps rearing its head around sales.

Is that enough?

maybe it's enough for this podcast.

Okay, I would just like to take the time to say to anyone who's listening, I wish you happy holidays, a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate it, or Hanukkah. I hope that you have time to spend with your loved ones and do reach out if there's anything that we can be doing to make this better along the way. So thank you so much for your support so far. It really means the world to us.

It really does. And yeah, looking forward to crash landing into 2025.

We're definitely not going to crash land. We are going to roar. Roar. Roar.

We're going to roar into 2025.

Thanks for tuning in.

Thanks. Bye.

Bye.

Sarah (00:07)
Hi, and welcome to our second podcast for Undubbed, where we are unscripted, uncensored, and undeniably data. Welcome back, Fi.

Fiona Gordon (00:16)
Thanks Sarah, it's great to be back.

Sarah (00:18)
Very awesome. And so today we are talking about the joyful word that we all have in our dictionary, the most hated word probably in your work life history, maybe redundancy. No? Let's see. It may not be the most hated word. It may be a really great word. So today we're going to go in and talk about a few topics. At some point in our career, we've all faced

either redundancy ourselves, like I have, and I know you, Fi, you have as well, or we've definitely known someone who's been made redundant, that within our family, our peers, our colleagues. So let's get down and dirty and start talking about redundancy.

Fiona Gordon (01:05)
Sounds great.

Sarah (01:08)
cannot wait. So, Fi, I want you to talk about your redundancy and tell me about when you first found out about it, what went through your mind?

Fiona Gordon (01:18)
Okay, starting off with a big hitter, because that question just threw me back into that moment. So I just returned from a three week holiday, living it up large in Europe, and it was absolutely amazing. And I've even taken a day in the office out of my holidays to go and visit everyone. And I was running a little bit late, and I got a message from my manager, and he said, are you coming to this meeting?

I hadn't realized that there'd been something that had been booked in at nine o'clock on my first day back. And I got online and I could tell from his demeanor that there wasn't something that was quite right. And he said to me, HR is just about to join us in a moment, which for anyone is code word for the warning lights going off and it's time for you to be.

told that it's likely that your role is being made redundant. I remember that, the two people, I knew the HR lady on the call, she was absolutely wonderful as well. And I think that the three of us just sat there and went through the motions. You know, there are certain things that the organization has to say to you. I was told at that point that I couldn't tell my team what was happening as well, which threw me.

a bit sideways after being out of the office for three weeks, how am I going to not talk to my team? What are they going to think along the way?

Sarah (02:42)
And I think it's like that is a really interesting part. You've been told this really shocking news that obviously impacts you, but I don't know about you, but I went, first it was me and my environment and how that was gonna impact my family and my livelihood. But for me, my second thought was what about my team? I've got this big team. And then to your point, you're not allowed to tell them for a certain period of

That's really hard.

Fiona Gordon (03:12)
It's really strange when you're actually close to your team to not be able to tell them the truth when you're so used to telling them exactly what's going on.

Sarah (03:15)
Yeah.

Being really open and transparent is really part of our ethos, right? And being told that you're not allowed to do this and you've got HR in the room and your manager saying this information can't get to your team.

Fiona Gordon (03:33)
100%. So there was that. And then at the same time, I would say the adrenaline just hitting, hitting me, it knocked me for six. So even though I had previously had conversations with my manager to say, look, I think, you know, the way that things are, it would be a better opportunity for the organization and for me, if I was to be made redundant, I don't want to walk away from this.

but if we need to invest more money into a certain space, this can be something that works really well. So even though I'd asked for it, it was still a massive shock, and we still had so many amazing things that we were going to achieve So I would say the first thing that hit me was shock. Then the next thing that hit me was I don't wanna talk to anyone about corporate life. I don't want to think about jobs or...

what I'm going to do after the redundancy. But I do want to connect with some people, that are really important to me. So that's, that's the emotional feeling. It just threw my brain for six, like it, really hit it for six to use a cricket analogy. I was

in a space where I had no idea what type of role that I would want to go into, nor had I any interest in figuring that out. And at the same time, I would say that perhaps brain fog, in a way, is the best way to describe it. That hit me as well. I wasn't firing on all cylinders. I was, it was almost like an out of body experience for me.

Sarah (05:11)
Yeah, and it's really, really tough. I'm just gonna kind of chip in with a little piece around when I found out that my role had been made redundant, you know, obviously the shock came in, but one of the first, the first person I called was my son's school administrator, of all things. That's where my mind went to, right? I had just signed his school fees for the coming year.

And that was one of my top expenses. And that was the first thing I needed to figure out for me. So I think, when you're in that kind of shock moment, you end up doing almost the strangest of things because it wasn't my family that I reached out to or anybody. it was the school administrator of all people. And to your point as well, in terms of talking to people, I don't know about you, but I went through like a little bit of kind of embarrassment, right?

Who was I going to tell and how was I going to tell them?

Fiona Gordon (06:09)
Yeah, that's a natural feeling to feel shame in a redundancy. The best way to describe it is when you get made redundant or when your role gets made redundant, let me say, and readjust that, it is so natural to feel all of these crazy emotions, even if you wanted it, even if you thought this would be a great opportunity.

Finding the time to process those emotions in your way, not in a way that anyone else can prescribe for you. It's important to take control of how you will move through that.

Sarah (06:48)
Yeah, I think that's really important. Like really thinking about your own narrative, right? How am I going to voice this out? And, you know, there is a bit of time that needs to be taken internally to take that on.

Fiona Gordon (07:05)
So we've heard about the immediate shock and what happened to us immediately after hearing the news. What did the next month look like for you, Sarah?

Sarah (07:16)
I spoke to my son's school administrator and managed to resolve that pretty quickly and the ways that we could go around the exorbitant school fees that they charge in Singapore for anyone listening that has been an expat will fully understand where I'm coming from and why that was possibly my first conversation. The next piece was really on what I was going to do next.

A similar situation to you, I wasn't allowed to tell my team and I wasn't actually given a timeframe. I was just like, you cannot tell your team at this stage, which was super tough. I had to focus on my family and living in a foreign country and tied to an employment pass, which meant there was a lot of timeframes that I had to stick to.

additional to my son's schooling. I just recently resigned a two-year lease. Now, part of my employment pass meant that I may have had to leave the country in seven months. And without a job, you can't rent a house. So there was all these effects that I had to take into account.

I looked at some jobs internally and I toyed around with that. I looked at some external jobs. I was in banking. I looked at some local banks. But as I was going through that process, it just felt like it was not just...

my company telling me it was time to move, it just felt it was bigger than that. And I really wanted to turn this into an opportunity. And that's when I thought, actually, I'm going to really go out and do something different, and I'm going to leave the country and come home to New Zealand.

Fiona Gordon (08:57)
Wow, there was so much that you had to experience there that I didn't have to take into account. You know, I'm still in the same home. I am still in the same city. I didn't have to think about packing up an entire house and lifetime, you know, 10 year lifetime or however long you're in Singapore to get there. So that definitely is a lot of extra on the top in addition to what we experienced with the redundancy. For me, the week of the news was

really unusual for me and for who I am as a person. So I wake up early in the morning, my brain is very busy. All of a sudden, I did not want to get out of bed. And that's a scary thing, having been through depression when I was in my early 20s. Now, I don't have that at all. It hasn't factored into my life.

I really feel like I've got good practices in place to keep myself mentally healthy, but to find myself in a space where I didn't want to get out of bed, I was questioning what the hell is going on? So one of the things that my company did offer was support from EAP.

And it was really fortunate because sometimes those services can be really, a bit hit and miss, yeah, a bit hit and miss, and more miss than hit in my experience. Always good to give it a go though if you need some support along the way. But the woman who I met with, she was trained as a psychologist and she really helped to nurture me through

Sarah (10:23)
We're hitting it.

Fiona Gordon (10:43)
I would say, you know, one to two months of Fi not being Fi and rediscovery of myself and in fact rediscovery of some of the things that I definitely pushed aside because I was working incredibly long hours in a very senior role and to do that, you know, means that sometimes you sacrifice parts of yourself.

And so it's been a really fun journey for me to rediscover myself. What she taught me was something called SEEDS therapy. And I felt that I could do certain things that were just taking small steps. And small steps is something that I really recommend in that rediscovery phase or that immediate phase after getting made redundant.

to just show that you're doing a little bit of progress. SEEDS stands for Social Connection, Exercise, Education, Diet and Sleep. social connection, for instance, I really leveraged the great people in my network that I would call and have a chat to and...

part of my network I wasn't allowed to chat to for over a week while we were going through the discussions around the role and the consultation period is what they call it. so I didn't talk to people from work, but I reconnected with a lot of my network and

It was quite comforting in some places and not so comforting in others. social connection, I would call you. You were the only person that I would remotely want to talk to anything related to work because you had been through this. I loved the coaching and ideas that you gave me through it.

for education, I was going online, I looked at masterclass, I looked at lots of different things that could really help me understand how to be better. Exercise has always been one of the things that I de-prioritize in life. so having to work on how do I get up, go for a walk, get the blood pumping, do some weight training as well was really great.

Diet, again, love food. Love, love food. I eat my emotions. So I to be quite careful in that space. I really chased after 30 different fresh foods each week. And the last one, sleep. Yeah, it's a work in progress. I think that any middle-aged woman will understand that sleep is something that declines as we hit our mid to late.

Sarah (13:13)
Working on it, still a work in progress.

Fiona Gordon (13:24)
40s and so it's something that's really important to me to make sure that I'm trying to do the best, you know, things with whether it's magnesium, the exercise does of course help, but you know, it's definitely still a work in progress. I will try and post up a blog at some point regarding SEEDS therapy because I really feel that for anyone going through a redundancy, having these small things, you don't have to do everything every day, just a little bit of focus on one or two things can really

improve the lifestyle and that social connection for me was a really important one because it made me feel like I wasn't alone.

Sarah (14:03)
Yeah, and really interesting, right? I think for me as well, the more people you talk to, the more people that have been through some shape or form of this, or a loved one or a peer that has been through it, and they can share a lot of information and support and things that maybe you haven't thought of yourself. But I really like that the SEEDS Therapy and the fact that you leaned on external as well. Your work was kind enough to the EAP as part of their...

process. I know that where I was allowed that as well, which was great and I really leaned into that. So I would say, it's available, tap into it. If the one that you've got is not working for you, there's ways that you can change that as well. So really love the SEEDS Therapy. So social connection, love that. We spent a lot of time on calls and we do still today because look at us now. Exercise.

Fiona Gordon (14:57)
Yeah

Sarah (15:00)
Fi and I have actually got away in our working day where we integrate both of them and we're like, hey, it's a sunny day here, it's a sunny day there, let's have this conversation while we walk and talk. And that helps us to this day. Education, I think we're always throwing each other things even now and going out and researching is in our DNA probably. And then the diet, I love being home and eating all the good foods, I think that's great.

and sleep. I'm a little bit better at sleeping but not perfect but yeah love the SEEDS, the SEEDS therapy.

Fiona Gordon (15:32)
You

And were there any other things sort of after that initial period with the redundancy that you found challenging perhaps in moving on from the role that you'd invested so much into? Were there things that were the major challenges that you experienced?

Sarah (15:58)
You invest so much time into your role and when it's taken away from you in a form of redundancy, you feel a little bit of loss and grieving around the things that you'd set forward to achieve that were no longer going to happen. I think also for me, it was a lot around the care and consideration for the team that I was.

leaving behind and wasn't going to be able to support, whether that be in their day-to-day jobs or their ongoing careers. I have remained in contact with them all to this day, so the career focus, I still hope that I can kind of help them along with and inspire them in different ways today. Then I think it's, You go through that process of then it's like, okay, instead of winding up, like we're so used to doing, we're now winding down.

and we're having to close the door on so many things, which is really so different to what we do in our roles.

Fiona Gordon (16:50)
Hmm.

Yeah, for me, this might sound cold and it's definitely not how I am as a leader. It took me until just last month to be able to do videos for my team. They'd sent me videos as they did so many things to farewell me, which was just really heartwarming, but also overwhelming.

Sarah (17:25)
Yeah, a really mark of how much you meant to them, right? Because that kind of stuff is not, it doesn't have to happen, but it did. That's lovely.

Fiona Gordon (17:33)
Yeah, and so they'd sent me cards with beautiful messages. They'd sent me, these videos with really touching reflections of not only how I had helped them in the role when they were in my team, but even many years beforehand. And it makes me teary thinking about it.

It really demonstrates how much these things meant to me, but also why I felt so overwhelmed with how do I respond to that? And how do I respond to it in a way that they understand how much they mean to me?

Sarah (18:16)
That's lovely. And I love the way that you've taken the time to almost say, I can't respond just now, but it's in my program to go back and respond when I feel that I'm in the space, that I can give it everything. And I think that's a true testament to the kind of leader that you are Fi.

Fiona Gordon (18:35)
I really hope that I'm gonna get to work with them again, so look out my old company. You're on notice, look after them.

Sarah (18:42)
I love it, I love it.

Fiona Gordon (18:43)
Okay, so we've we've been through the journey a little bit about, you know, what it feels like. And obviously, there's still a few emotions there. But really interested in, you know, thinking about how you move through this redundancy. So what advice would you give to someone who's just received a redundancy notice?

Sarah (19:08)
first of all, be kind to yourself. It really is your role that's been made redundant. It's not you. Typically, you're a number on a page. And the higher up the food chain you get, the more likely you are to be made redundant. So almost wear it as a badge of honor, think, it's there, it's going to happen. Redundancy has been around since, I think I was reading, since the revolution, what age is it?

more the dark ages. It feels like the dark ages, right?

Fiona Gordon (19:37)
dark ages. It's been around since the dark ages.

Sarah (19:41)
let these emotions roll over you. Focus on what's important to you. It's more than likely yourself and your family that take priority during this time. So take time, take stock. Know that you're gonna be angry. Know that you're gonna be in shock. Know that you're gonna be in denial. just take that on board and don't think of it as yourself that is being made redundant. It's your role. So don't be.

Don't be cruel to yourself, be kind. Then as Fi mentioned, As you feel comfortable, move through the stages. And I feel as well, a lot of it is around talking to people. Fi mentioned as part of SEEDS Therapy, a social connection. Talk to the people that you can around redundancy. Remove the shameful stigma that you may have circulating in your head.

you'll find that more people than we realize have been made redundant and have great tips to share. like we are today. So I think it's really important just to give yourself a lot of time and to really talk to the right people.

You will feel like you're running on empty for a while because all of a sudden your career, everything was just going along and now it's all in chaos. I know at one point I remember talking to my EAP therapist saying that I felt like my feet were on the ground but everything else was just a tornado moving around me and I didn't really know if I jumped where I was gonna end up and I think that that's okay,

I think that the scariest thing for me was I had a timeline. You know, there was definitive times in my calendar that I had to have a new job in Singapore or start, thinking about shipping an entire home full of everything back to New Zealand.

a really big part was just seeing the good for it. So going, okay, this is a really horrible thing that's happened, but it doesn't have to have a horrible outcome. It can have something awesome instead.

Fiona Gordon (21:50)
It can have something really awesome instead. And I feel like today's podcast is a good example of something positive coming out of it. Yes, we are starting our own business and that all came through conversations and social connections. So my fiance, John, suggested that you and I should start a business. "Why don't you start a business with Sarah?" And, that was something that had

not crossed my mind, but it came as one of those moments where it was like, of course we should be starting a business. So I love that that came out of it. And it's definitely, the sun peeking through the cloud. If I can add to all of your great advice, Sarah, about what are the things that somebody should do if they've just been made redundant. Things that come top of mind for me are really taking

to the next level, the information that's coming out of your mind and it will be going at 100 knots and going around in circles, get it out on paper. start journaling, have a list of the top things that you should be doing during the day.

Don't take it digital, try and get it out onto paper into something that's actually physical that you can cross off along the way. And it really helps you to settle the brain chatter. my advice is get things out onto paper.

Sarah (23:22)
I really like that, think as well, like particularly when you first wake up in the morning or you're going to bed at night and your brain's just full of everything. It's like, what am gonna do? How am gonna get the cat back to New Zealand? Like was having all these random thoughts, right? But actually writing it down just feels like, okay, it's there, it's documented. I can look at that tomorrow or I know it's there.

Fiona Gordon (23:44)
100%. And it also helped me to prioritize which SEEDS aspects I was going to work on that day, for instance, and give me some focus because I really felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. I felt very much like I was in this washing machine being tossed around and there was so much going on. So getting things out into paper really helped me. Doing the coaching really helped me. Now,

The coaching for me, the areas that were important were how do I readjust to this new life for me and get through that. So she helped me to understand that perhaps not getting out of bed sometimes and rotting in there and looking at Netflix and bingeing, that's okay. That's not okay for me normally,

so that was an adjustment for me, but to have somebody that was just in my camp and saying, it's okay to be doing that for now. And it really did help because eventually it was like, I can't think of anything worse than sitting in bed all day. I need to be up and about and getting shit done.

Sarah (24:55)
Yeah, and I think that's where it comes back to that whole being kind to yourself. if you have a pajama day, because it feels too overwhelming and you've got this list and you just don't want to deal with it, then do it.

Fiona Gordon (25:07)
Right, spot on. Then I think reaching out to people that you either know who you admire and you know have helped you through your career or even to people that you've seen out and about in the data community who might be able to help you with your roles or your search for roles. Really great to start working on that network. And don't be afraid.

Chances are they've already been through a redundancy themselves and they will have stories that can help you to actually get further through this redundancy and to have even better opportunities coming out the other side. So really leveraging the power of

people who you are connected to or even maybe people who your connections are connected to as well. LinkedIn is definitely your friend. Some people do the announcements, you know, I've been made redundant, I'm looking for work. I did that initially and then I took it down obviously when we knew that we were doing the business together. But I would say it's easy to feel shame at that point as well. And if we just...

take a step back from that shame for a moment and think about it. What on earth, what on earth do we have to feel ashamed for if the company's not doing well financially and needs to look at a balance sheet and make some cuts along the way? There's nothing there that's there to be for you to feel that way at all. So just...

Sarah (26:45)
Yeah.

Fiona Gordon (26:46)
Close the door, close the door on shame. Acknowledge it, I can see you, but that is not how I need to feel about what has happened.

Sarah (26:55)
Yeah, and I love the way you brought up LinkedIn because I think, it's our friend and our enemy sometimes and I think we overthink that. when I got back to New Zealand, I was like, am I going to put this announcement up? How do I feel about it? And I think one day I was just like, yep, I'm going to do it. I wrote it out. I put up my open for work frame on my LinkedIn and kind of went all out and that was prior.

to you and I kind of forming what we're doing, going forward, but the actual, the reach out was just overwhelming, right? The people and the concern and the, you know, the coffees just came flowing and you know, everyone here back here in New Zealand and abroad as well really wanted to connect and that helped me. it can be a little bit like scary and as you said, it can feel shameful, but it shouldn't.

Fiona Gordon (27:28)
Mm.

Sarah (27:45)
It's like, here I am, I'm still the same person, I've still got everything that I bought to every other role that I've got, and I'm ready to go forward and make a change. when you feel that it's right to go out and bring it up head on and just wear it loud and proud is how I ended up doing this. And I'm excited to be doing the next part of our journey loud and proud as well.

Fiona Gordon (28:11)
So on the flip side of people whose roles have been made redundant feeling shame, what do you see when people post about their redundancies? What's your immediate reaction?

Sarah (28:25)
My heart goes out to them because it's definitely not an easy road, right? When you're made redundant, there's a lot going on, the whirlwind and everything. So my heart really goes out for the people that have been made redundant. Obviously, it's not so obvious if they're happy about it, if they wanted it, if they're devastated, where they feel they are in their career, whether they're...

are even financially able to make a change or whether they're just going to be grinding to get the next role because they have to feed their family. for me it's a lot of empathy and just reaching out to people that have and just asking personally where I can help them or if I can give any advice on where they feel they are in their emotional journey of being made redundant.

Fiona Gordon (29:14)
Yeah, what I'm hearing is you feel compassion for people who are going through this situation and your instinct is, how do I help?

Sarah (29:25)
Yes, very much so.

Fiona Gordon (29:29)
What are some of the things that you have done to help people who are going through a redundancy?

Sarah (29:35)
Yeah, so for me, it's talking about the way in which the redundancy process rolls out and what I would have done myself to be better prepared going forward and whether that's, you know, the difficult conversations with the company itself, the conversations with my peers or my teammates, conversations with my family, with my friends.

It's really just around helping them through potentially where they're stuck at and where I can tell them potentially where I went wrong, you know, or what I would have liked to have been better prepared for when I was going in it. And just sharing a little bit of knowledge there on things that I thought I was successful doing throughout my redundancy and maybe where that will fit with them as well.

Fiona Gordon (30:07)
Mm.

Mm.

Yeah, I've had an opportunity in the last couple of weeks to connect with two people who had been made redundant here in Sydney. They've been made redundant, had worked for, 14, 17 years at this organization, both of them, which is a real chunk of change in somebody's career. And to have that, that news.

that their role was being made redundant was frightening. And I didn't know either of these two individuals directly. Indirectly, were sort of, one of them I was an acquaintance with on a WhatsApp group. We'd realized that we lived in a similar kind of region of Sydney and he was really brave and reached out to me and we went and had a coffee.

Top tip if anyone's been made redundant and you're not the one you're not the one whose role has been made redundant Please be the one that buys them the coffee and just take the pain away. It's just something small but a really nice gesture and sit down and listen to them and comfort them and Really try to understand what they're trying to achieve or where they're at in this process of the redundancy

and give advice on all of the things that have helped you to come out the other side, which of course includes connecting with other people as well. So some of the things that I've suggested around these individuals and how they can improve their chances, I've helped them with their resumes.

given them some really tough feedback and I know you know that can be really confronting especially when you're going through the emotions of the redundancy and then someone's saying to you you're not going to get to the top of the pile with this we need to be you know creating more active words in here than passive words so that people really get excited by it. We can't have

fluffy terms, know, want we data people we want hard numbers, you know, Things like this that can really help people to get shortlisted along the way are really great tips, but they can also be quite confronting for the individuals. So coming at it with compassion. My mentors favorite term kind candor along the way.

I think is really super important. One of the other things that I always recommend to someone who is going through that redundancy process is negotiating. And I know that you're super good, Sarah, at negotiating your way through this. For me, I can't talk directly about what I negotiated through my redundancy because I've signed paperwork behind it, but.

what I advise other people to look at is do you need certifications? They can pay for certifications. Is there a bonus that you have? Can you find a way to get your bonus pro-rata and paid out? Are there shares involved, and options? What else can you do that increases the value? And oftentimes the...

departments that are calculating your redundancy get it wrong as well. So please make sure that you're getting everything you're entitled to. For instance, in Australia, if you're over 45, you get an extra week of redundancy pay that's included. So making sure that you're up to speed with everything that you could possibly get. You you might ask for your sick leave to be paid out. Now, companies don't have to do all of these things, but

By creating a list of things that are important to you and being well prepared, you can often get more than what they originally offered.

Sarah (34:44)
Yeah, I really like that and negotiation there is the key. Like Fi said, you know, we all sign documents around this on what we can talk about, but I really like some of your top tips there around negotiating and looking for your own country and company, what their policies are is really important. And sometimes thinking outside of the box as well, right?

just because typically you wouldn't know if they've done different things before, but really internalize your own situation and take that back to your managers and your HR department and see if there's other things in exceptional circumstances that you may be able to get on offer as part of your package.

Fiona Gordon (35:32)
100%. And I know that there's some really great coaches out there as well. So aside from EAP or the outplacement programs that some companies actually organize, there's companies who offer specific coaching about getting through a redundancy process and actually elevating yourself and finding a better role on the other side.

We know a few people who are actually doing this. We've got Eva Murray, who's based out of the UK. We've got Josh Geller, who's based out of Australia. What I really love is when they go the extra mile and try to also connect you with a new company along the way, which is also something that I try to do is, I know that there's jobs going in this area that I think that you'd be a really great fit for and doing an introduction to it. I would highly recommend

investing in yourself and going and finding a coach you're paying for their services and therefore you're expecting certain things back and helping you to plan your way through this. And think of it like an individual cheerleader who's just there cheering you on along the way, but also guiding you through this process. And you'll be investing, as I say, in yourself. That could be something that you try and negotiate with your organization.

Sarah (36:51)
Yeah, I really like that. And I think as well, beyond the negotiation, having that kind of roadmap when you can be feeling quite lost if you're, you your role may be you may end up on gardening leave or you're all of a sudden gone from, you know, a big role, big hours to nothing. it's almost like you need a project, right? Enlisting in a coach or leveraging into the outplacement companies, if that's what you're

Fiona Gordon (37:09)
Mm.

Sarah (37:18)
organization has given you are really great places to start. And some areas that I started in was really around, you know, the typical, so getting my resume, CV up to scratch, looking at the roles, whether it be on LinkedIn or Seek or any of the kind of places available, then really refining my LinkedIn. I learned how important that was, understanding what my purpose was.

with this opportunity, what was I gonna do differently? How did I want to reframe where I was gonna go next? And just going through all this and running it almost like a mini project for yourself on your own personal development. If you are going to find a new role and that's your journey, then looking at interviews, how do you interview? You may not have been interviewing for five, 10 years.

And things have changed and how can you better do that? With coaching now you can almost do like mock interviews and a lot of them are online, which is a lot different to maybe what we've historically done. So a lot of changes in technology and process and things to take on board and when you feel like the fog is lifted to really have this as a focal point, I'm gonna kick ass with my LinkedIn.

it's going to look amazing and my resume is going to be awesome and leaning into people like coaches and outplacement and networking. that's really important to have that social connection with people within your industry because I think just about every role I've ever had has been through someone that I've known really well and they've known the company that I've been going to and being able to suggest, this is

Fiona Gordon (38:54)
Mm.

Sarah (39:00)
you this is a really great fit for you, go through the process. And some of those roles, I don't think I would have found any other way. So really lean into your network.

Fiona Gordon (39:02)
Yes.

What you're touching on there is making sure that you've got a good values fit for the organization that you're potentially going into next. And a really great way to figure out that values fit is to know someone who knows that company really well, or to know someone who actually works there. And the great thing is if someone actually works there, they can often do a referral through, they might make a little bit of money out of it. And also it might get you to the top of the pile.

Finding the right company that sits well with you. Perhaps it's a company that invests in building your skills up and you really want to make sure that you're continuing to learn along the way, elevate yourself. That's difficult to find a company like that that offers that option for you to spend a little bit of your work time working on elevating your skills. So really important, connect a lot with people.

Be open with them. Be vulnerable. Let them know what you're really looking for. If it's something like, have a lot that's going on in my personal life, so I need a role that's going to be less involved and good work-life balance, people will look for those organizations and perhaps avoid sending you to organizations where they know that you're going to be spending a lot of time in.

Sarah (40:31)
One of the things that I learnt, which is a very new thing, in today's industry,

Fiona Gordon (40:36)
Mm.

Sarah (40:37)
Every CV (resume) is now expected to be almost tailored to the job in which you're applying for because there are now HR bots that are collecting the information before it goes forward. So those lists of candidates per role right now are huge.

Fiona Gordon (40:57)
Yeah, you know, bots can be great. HR can be great at times. But I also feel as somebody who's spent a lot of time recruiting and building great teams with great culture, that it's important for leaders to ensure that they're across all of the resumes that are coming through. Now that might take you some time.

but I can guarantee you, won't miss some little nuggets of gold as well. as leaders, if you've got open roles posted out on LinkedIn, or they might be coming up, I might have some roles coming up. You know, if anyone's interested, reach out so that you're starting to build up a list of people who might be a great fit for your organization and your team and your ways of working as well. Because it's really about

Sarah (41:46)
Yeah.

Fiona Gordon (41:47)
It's just like dating, it's finding the right match, know? Perhaps we need to create an app which is swipe left on employees as well. A little bit different from LinkedIn. Maybe that's dub dub 2.0, Sarah.

Sarah (42:01)
Yeah, maybe. There we go. New business ideas come out of this. What next?

Fiona Gordon (42:03)
Absolutely. One thing that I'm really interested in is what did you find most helpful that people did when they reached out to you when you'd found out that your role was being made redundant?

Sarah (42:18)
So for me, it was two things. It was just them sharing that, they'd been through it before, or they knew someone that had been through it it's not the end of the world. And those kind of pieces, you know, just, I guess, just comfort, comfort and knowing that you're not alone and it's not because of you and these kind of things that can be the voices in your head.

And I think the other piece is the networking. So it's like, so-and-so is looking. exactly what you were just saying, right? Or have you thought of this? Or this company is really interesting right now. Asking for candid feedback. Hey, this is my resume. What do you think of it? This is my LinkedIn. Is there anything missing? And I think For me, it was that social connection and building up your networks again. Because you can go a little insular when you're

single focused on the current role that you're in Getting back out there, getting your name known and building up that confidence one bit at a time that you can do this and you can go forward. And You're not the only person in the world that's in this situation.

Fiona Gordon (43:18)
Mm.

I'm going to start at home and have and just focus on that a little bit before I go out and into my network. So when I found out that my role was made redundant, immediately, John said, it's going to be okay.

we'll get through this. Which was great, but I was in that real washing machine of emotions going through. Over the course of the next few weeks, we had some really good discussions because he has a really different way of looking at redundancies than what I do.

Sarah (43:42)
Yeah.

Fiona Gordon (44:05)
I feel that redundancies and the package, we haven't even spoken about packages really, but that the redundancy package that you get is a really good lift up in your life. You don't often get it. And so you can become more financially independent by leveraging that money, banking it, and then finding something else and keeping the money flowing through.

Sarah (44:25)
Because there's not very many times in your life where you're effectively paid to do nothing. Yes. Right.

Fiona Gordon (44:31)
To leave a company? No. Yes. And John, on the other hand, has a very different opinion on this. He believes that money is for you to rediscover yourself and to have time to work through that, grow, and then move into something. So he doesn't view it as a path to financial independence.

He views it as a way to invest in yourself.

It's been a real journey for me to come to his path and to think about what does that mean for me and us as a family and also you and I in terms of investing in the business that we're bootstrapping and what does that mean along the way. it was really important for me to have that conversation because I felt like I was letting the team down.

Sarah (45:29)
Yeah, that's really interesting, right? That all of a sudden, you're not, you know, your mind went straight to, okay, there's that money and that's over there, but now I've got to have this regular income again. Like, where's that coming from? And I'm not valuable anymore. I'm maybe over-exaggerating it there, but you know, an element of my value is gone because, every month I'm not getting that income anymore.

And it's really nice how John took a different approach to actually, you have got that money, let's you leverage it to invest in yourself. And I love that.

Fiona Gordon (45:56)
Right.

Yes, and so it's, you know, it's paid the bills and it's kept everything going. And I have had no income since my redundancy, I've been really focused on building the platform and the organization. So having his sponsorship on that was really important to me.

And then when I look outside at what other people did to support me through it.

It was really heartwarming when I would hear things like, I'm really sorry this has happened to you. It meant a lot because, people would say it who I'd worked with in my career and clearly they thought that I had value to offer. And so it was putting a few chips in the old emotional bank account. And that was really helpful. People asking, what can I do to help you?

was really important too. People asking me, how do you feel if I send you job links? actually asking for permission to send that through rather than just bombarding me. Yeah, yeah, it was really lovely. the thing that I take away from that is as somebody who's not going through this process, when somebody

Sarah (47:10)
overwhelming you with job links.

Fiona Gordon (47:22)
comes to you that is moving through their redundancy, ask them, how can I help you? What do you need from me? What can I do to help this to be easier for you?

Sarah (47:36)
Yeah, and I really like that because some people can think that they're doing the right thing when really they could be just overwhelming you, right? And I remember an example where I had about three to five friends that were like just overwhelming me, you know, and all around the globe. I'd wake up to like all these links on roles and I'd just be like,

Fiona Gordon (47:46)
Yes.

Sarah (47:58)
I don't even want to open it because my head's not in that space just yet. I'm trying to do 10 other things today. I'm not looking at that space. I think for me, just touching back on having the redundancy package, it really allowed me that space to move home, which I saw as a big opportunity in the end because how often do you get paid to kind of relocate yourself?

Fiona Gordon (48:02)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Right? On the flip side, talking about where things didn't go so well with other people and my redundancy process, and I'm sorry to out my mother here, but every call that I would be on, she would be asking me, have you been for any job interviews? No, mum.

I'm working through this and I'll let you know if I am going to a job interview, but please don't ask me that because every time you ask me, it feels like additional pressure is being loaded on. And she would continue to ask me, even when I told her we were setting up the business and I'd be like, mom, it's not gonna happen. I'm setting up the business, I might fail. I'll tell you if it fails.

And then I will be looking for job interviews. I might even go and work at Woolies and stack shelves along the way if it really means it. I have no shame in doing that.

Sarah (49:16)
Wait a minute, wait a minute, I thought Plan B was a cafe that was only open on the weekends and public holidays. That's it.

Fiona Gordon (49:23)
Dub dub grub.

So yes, please don't put pressure on people about what their next step is or what their journey is. Be open, just keep asking them, what can I do? Is there any, hey, we haven't checked in in a while, is there anything I can be doing now to help you? You don't just have to ask once, you can continue to ask along the way. If you are...

Sarah (49:48)
Yeah, I really like that check-in, like check-in on people. Even if they haven't responded the first time, give them a couple of days grace or a week and check-in again. Is there anything I can do? But to your point, don't overwhelm them with all the things you'd think that you would do in that situation.

Fiona Gordon (49:54)
Yes.

Yes, because we all go about it differently. Yeah, so there's a lot to consider through a redundancy. Now that you're out the other side. Do you think we're out the other side? I don't know, is it? We're somewhere. I do have a purpose. How are you feeling now about

Sarah (50:20)
Yay.

don't know, we're somewhere. We've got a purpose again, I think that's great.

Fiona Gordon (50:34)
what you have been through in the redundancy process.

Sarah (50:40)
I feel I've come out the other end. Am I in the right spot? Time will tell. Maybe, I don't know if I want to end up at Woollies, but let's go the cafe path if dub-dub data doesn't work. I like dub-dub-grub. I feel re-energized. I love the fact that I was given this opportunity to spend the time. It's been a long time. I've been home now for 10 months. You and I started our business.

Fiona Gordon (50:55)
Mm.

Hmm.

Sarah (51:07)
Four months ago? Yeah. So there was a lot of time, I gave myself a lot of time and I was very fortunate to do that. I had to settle my son back in New Zealand and change our lifestyle and very different than Singapore day to day. And I feel so grateful that I got given the opportunity to spend this time, some extra time with my son has been amazing.

Fiona Gordon (51:08)
Mm.

Mmm.

Mm.

Sarah (51:35)
We actually spent the month of January in Thailand because we didn't have an apartment anymore. So there we go. My son got two summer breaks last year, which was, yeah, half his luck exactly. So there's some great things. And I feel If I had to go back into corporate again, which I don't want to, I don't want to be the sad people on the ferry every morning.

Fiona Gordon (51:48)
Half as luck.

Sarah (52:01)
that I see when I take my son to school. But I feel refreshed and re-energized, which is, beneficial coming through the process.

Fiona Gordon (52:13)
Yeah, I feel optimistic that we are doing something to really change the way that people work with data companies and data individuals. And I really am hoping that we can be wildly successful in that space, helping other people to get value out of data, whether they're solopreneurs or organizations, and also do the same for ourselves as well. So I'm

wildly optimistic that this is going to work. And if it doesn't, you know, there's always corporate life again, or dub dub grub I don't want to be a sad person on the ferry either. This redundancy has really given me an opportunity to reassess what I want to be doing with my life, how I want to be leading my life.

and how I want to help others to elevate themselves. in corporate, there's always only a certain amount of things that we can do. When it's our own company, it's you and I. We can decide whether or not we think an idea is great and how we help others to be wildly successful as well.

Sarah (53:23)
Yeah, and I really love that. The piece that I love the most is, you know, a lot of the foundation of what we're trying to do at dub dub data is give people that other opportunity to not be completely reliant on their corporate job. One thing that's come out of this for both of us, if we'd had something on the side, we could potentially, you know, have switched over.

Fiona Gordon (53:39)
Mm.

Sarah (53:48)
and maybe taking some of the early on financial pressure.

Fiona Gordon (53:52)
Okay.

Sarah (53:54)
Okay, so I think we've come to the end of our second podcast, all about redundancy. Very exciting. How did you feel, Fi?

Fiona Gordon (54:05)
still think I'm getting the hang of this podcast thing.

Sarah (54:09)
Yeah, we're getting there. We're hoping we're a lot better than our last one and we're only going to get better. We're excited to get this out there and I hope it's helped you all. Like I really leaned into Fi talking through SEEDS. I'm going to get her to remind me what each of the stages were, but I love the social connection aspect. Let's see if I can remember it actually. The education.

Fiona Gordon (54:36)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah (54:37)
The, no, what is it? What's the second E? Exercise, sorry, yes. And then we've got diet and I love how you're trying to eat, what is it? 40 different, 30 different things each week. Yeah, I love that. And sleep, God, wouldn't we all love a little bit more sleep? So that's it, that's a wrap from us. I hope you enjoyed and.

Fiona Gordon (54:40)
Exercise, exercise.

30 different, yeah, 30 different things each week. Fresh foods, whole foods.

Please.

Sarah (55:02)
We'll be back next time.

Fiona Gordon (55:04)
Thank you.

Sarah (55:06)
Bye.

Fiona Gordon (00:00)
Welcome Sarah Burnett, I'm Fi Gordon to our very first unDUBBED podcast where we're unscripted, unfiltered and undeniably data. So it's really exciting to get started on this podcast because it's the first time that we're going to really be talking publicly around

what we've been up to for the past few months and the business plans that we have. But before we get started, Sarah, because some people may not be familiar with you, if we think about this like comic book number one, we want your origin story. So give us your backstory, the journey that made you get here today and, were there any kind of plot twists or superpowers that you have that brought you along

Sarah (00:50)
Thanks, Fi So my origin story begins in New Zealand, but it's not quite where you'd expect. It actually kicked off in the coffee industry, where I got hands-on, manually scraping cafe listings from the Yellow Pages, like you do. It wasn't glamorous, but it really gave me a taste of how transformative data can be. I also spent some time in Australia, where I was so excited because they had on a CD-ROM,

the whole state of Victoria's cafe data, which is very exciting. So no more manual scraping for me. And I remember going into the government department and picking up physically the CD-ROM. Then I built an access database. And I remember presenting this back to the coffee reps of how they could now filter on a map by postal code and number of seats per cafe. So it's very exciting for me. From there, I leapt into London. So diving into the world of investment banking.

and I spent a little bit of time in fund management and a plot twist, but a time in recruitment as well. And here I felt like I started off in access and then evolved through to things like SQL. I eventually returned back to New Zealand where I did a little tiny stint in a telco and then I headed off to Westpac, which was one of New Zealand's top banks. Business intelligence was just becoming a buzzword then. And I remember getting some...

powerful consultants in that really showed me the power of visualization. And I was hooked after that. Next minute, it felt like I went off to Singapore. And here I was lucky enough to work for two of the biggest global banks, doing roles like business intelligence and heading up the data democratization. All the time here, I managed to keep like hands on, but was also developing my leadership strengths.

So as guiding teams through complex data challenges and helping them shape strategy at a higher level, I realized really early on that, quite often we were building out these big technology areas and the final hurdle, which was actually the, know, the getting the data out the door wasn't being focused on. So I found that my niche really early on was working tech side and business side and building those partnerships.

and the teams and to make sure that what we were delivering was meaningful, not just a technical solution. Through these twists, I've always had a superpower for me, which is seeing the beauty in data and the stories and insights behind them. I love to drive clear, actionable insights from our data to help strategically make better decisions at the top.

Fiona Gordon (03:32)
Wow, so that's a full on packed career history with data back to back.

Sarah (03:38)
Yep, it really is. And I think when you find your passion and my passion is data, then it kind of just, it leads you and it carries on and it builds. over the years, I got all the way up to exec level and that was really exciting. six months, a year ago, I think I found out that that was all gonna change when my role was made redundant.

Fiona Gordon (04:03)
Mmm.

Sarah (04:04)
And I was based in Singapore and I'd been there for almost a decade supporting my family there. And I kind of thought, I could, yeah, I could just go and get another job. And AI was really kicking off and all the big banks were talking about AI. And I was kind of going into these, interviews and they were like, so what are you doing in AI? And I was like, well, I only found out about it like two months ago. What do you mean? What am I doing? and, and I just kind of felt like it just, it just didn't feel right to come and say, yeah, I'm going to

I'm gonna head AI in this organization. I don't know if it's part of being a woman, but sometimes we like to know 90 % of the job we're walking into, right? And I felt like in this instance, I knew 10 % of the job and I couldn't do that. And I felt, things were changing and I wanted to do something different. I couldn't do that thing different in Singapore. So I came back to New Zealand to do it differently. Yeah.

Fiona Gordon (04:55)
Back home. Well, for the folks that are tuning in, I'm actually a Kiwi as well, but based out in Australia. So you'll be listening to two broad Kiwi accents on this podcast as we continue to host things, over the years, hopefully, if we're really successful, but really interesting. And, I feel you around that redundancy.

that's a really tough space to be in and also a place where you can reinvent yourself as well.

Sarah (05:25)
Yeah, so I think that segues really nicely, Fi into kind of where you are today and what led you and maybe a little random story about your journey to get here.

Fiona Gordon (05:37)
Thanks, Sarah. It was really interesting actually going over your story. And I feel like there's definitely some threads that are so similar between our careers. And it makes a lot of sense why we connect so well. So apart from being two crazy Kiwis, my data story is I fell into data and the way that that would happen, I would have jobs and people would

want me to be their beta tester, helping them on all of their technology platforms and even doing lots of automation and Excel, those good old macros that you could do along the way. And I went along to an interview one day, they wanted a couple of access databases built and I told them flat out, I don't know how to use access and they told me, well,

your Excel skills are really great. And that's how I started in a more truly analytical space. I was sitting next to a guy, he was reading trends and he couldn't do it so well and I was helping him out. And in the end, the manager wanted me to stay on and asked me to come and be an analyst. And I loved that job. So I was analyzing underground tank data for mobil oil in New Zealand and really making sure that petrol didn't get into the water table there.

which was really interesting to have such a green focus all the way back then, those 25 odd years ago. So since then, I've been working in data full time and in lots of different areas of data. I realized using bespoke programs wasn't really great for my career. So I learned how to code in SAS. And from there, I jumped across the ditch and

did lots of different types of analyst roles. I did campaign analyst, I did insight analyst, I went up the ladder a bit and became a business intelligence manager really quite quickly. And I realized the way that the market was going, I actually wanted to step back a little bit and learn predictive analytics because I believed that's where the future was. So I had a really great opportunity to slot into a role.

where I was looking at churn rates of telecommunication customers and building predictive models for that. And really have just gone through different roles in my career, building out new skills and capabilities in different areas of analytics until eventually I felt that I had a good enough foundation where I felt I could successfully lead teams in ways that

I knew which tools needed to be implemented. I knew which processes needed to be implemented having come from that background. eventually I found myself with Tableau and

Tableau was a huge deployment. In fact, we did the biggest deployment in APAC until you came along and implemented it at a bank over in Singapore. that was a really great time to help people see and understand data. And from there, I've just gone from strength to strength, rolling out different tool sets and technologies in more senior roles.

my last role, which was at JLL was as the executive director of BI strategy, enablement and technology, which is a bit of a mouthful. But what I did was I looked after how we standardized all of our processes and operating models. We upskilled our employees using gamification programs like

the Alteryx Adventure and the Tableau Quest, which I personally developed And then, just went on this amazing journey of transforming the way that all of these, 150 odd analysts did things around the globe.

I've really had an opportunity to help so many individuals to upskill and really leapfrog their peers outside of other organizations. And I really look forward to being able to do something similar, but at a greater scale with our company, dub dub data.

Sarah (09:41)
Yeah, and I really love hearing your story. And obviously I've heard parts of it before, but there's so many synergies with both of us, right? We both fell into data and gravitated to it. I mean, my first role in the coffee industry was actually in the marketing department.

to your point as well, that whole access database origins and then, finding our way through technology as it's evolved as well, I think it's been really exciting.

Fiona Gordon (10:08)
Absolutely.

Fiona Gordon (10:09)
Having had a recent redundancy in June of this year, reaching out to you was amazing to have had someone that's just so recently been able to

share their experience and give advice on how to navigate through that. And, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to really say, hey, should we start a data business? Can we do things differently than we've seen done elsewhere? And what's the opportunity there?

Sarah (10:38)
And I think it's really funny, because basically that was the conversation, right? We were talking, you knew I was recently back in New Zealand, and you called me up and kind of, dropped the bomb as I had to you six months before and said, hey, my role's been made redundant. This is what I'm thinking. And I was like, yeah, sounds good, let's do it. And that was kind of the end of the conversation.

It felt like it's been really organic and natural from the beginning We wanted to do something different. And there's not many opportunities that come along that give you a little bit of breathing space.

a redundancy allows you to take a massive step back, or it's forced us to take a big step back, right? And reassess what we're doing. Sometimes it's serendipitous of the timing of things that happen in your life. And I think that initial conversation, did that happen in around June? Have I got the date about right?

Fiona Gordon (11:34)
it was around June so it was either late May or early June and you were the only person that I wanted to talk to anything remotely close to work about Shout out to all the people that are getting made redundant out there it's a really tough time make sure that you've got the right support around you make sure that you've

got plans for yourself, but you're giving yourself that space to really just relax a little bit and settle back into yourself because I can guarantee you there's a part of yourself that you've been giving up along the way for whatever role it is. Even if it's one of those redundancies where you've asked for it and I had asked, know a little while back to be made redundant. So even though that happened, it was really tough.

when the rubber actually hit the road and I was made redundant and that's okay. I'm grateful for all of the support that you gave me because those conversations were really healing for me and also

helped me to understand when things might not just be about me, for instance, what my team at work had been going through as well. if anyone's listening in, perhaps we'll do a podcast at some point about redundancies, because I think that it can really help other people as well. But I'm open to anyone messaging us or wanting to have a chat who's been made redundant. We're pretty well connected in the data community.

and know jobs that are going on, I'd be happy to help out and give you any of the advice that I learned along the way and also the things that I learned along the way that really helped me.

Sarah (13:09)
Yeah, and I'd like to say as well, like reach out, like doesn't have to be obviously New Zealand or Australia, we're well connected globally. In my career, I've worked in both London, Singapore, Auckland, and a little bit in Melbourne actually, very long time ago. We're very well connected and

it's a real rollercoaster being made redundant. actually I try and reframe it to say that my role was made redundant, not myself. And I think that's something that I was lucky enough as part of my redundancy package to have a year of coaching. So I've learned a lot through that and I could actually pass on to Fi at the time, which is great. Another good thing as well is if you can...

Fiona Gordon (13:35)
Mm.

Sarah (13:51)
teach what you're going through as well. It's almost like a second round learning for yourself.

Fiona Gordon (13:55)
100%. Okay, so off the cuff, if you were speaking unscripted, yeah, this is totally unscripted. If you had someone in front of you right now that had just been made redundant, what's the biggest piece of advice that you could get them to take away that you think will help them?

Sarah (13:58)
Unscripted. Unscripted.

Yeah, I think the first thing is it's not personal. Like I used to always say, you're just one management decision away from a redundancy, right? And we've seen it, in my roles, I'm surprised I've only been made redundant once, to be honest, because we work in numbers. And those numbers quite often come down to profit and headcount. And we see it all the time. So I think the first piece of advice is it's not personal.

Fiona Gordon (14:34)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah (14:40)
it's the company and they throw away good people all the time. And I think it's quite often, it's really just a number. It's like, you're at this level, you're in this band, you're this grouping. We need to get rid of X amount of people in this space. And it's almost like the first person that looks up, right? It just feels that it's like, don't take it as any kind of personal attack on yourself. And then the second piece of advice, which you've already seen for years just

Fiona Gordon (14:57)
Mm.

Right.

Sarah (15:07)
Take time for yourself. Let it all wash over you. You you're go through all the emotions and some of them are an embarrassment. I was doing all this work and I thought I was doing great. I've got this big team behind me and I'm really proud of everything that we're doing. And then someone just comes and takes it all out. And it can be really humbling that, that's happened.

Fiona Gordon (15:26)
Right.

Right, yeah, I totally agree. It's definitely not a personal thing. It's a numbers thing. it's actually almost always the most impersonal thing.

there's a bunch of senior executives that have sat around a table, looked at how much you're earning and figured out this is the amount that I need to get rid of, and sadly, that's often because, they're trying to report numbers back to market if they're a publicly listed company so, literally they're just going through line by line on a spreadsheet and saying, you're in or you're out.

And, for me, the fact that I'm out now, I'm just grateful.

I absolutely love the opportunity to work with you. I've learned so much so far and there's so much more in front of us that we need to get going along the way. And so, I'm grateful that I've had this opportunity to get a bit of a payout, which has enabled me to spend some time getting dub dub up and running and ready almost to launch.

So, on that note, why don't we talk a little bit about dub dub data.

Sarah (16:42)
Yeah, let's get into it. we started talking in May, June. I think we formed the companies in June, yes. And yeah, we're ready. We're getting ready to launch, which is really exciting. And I'm gonna pass it over to you, because I think you do the best intro pitch.

Fiona Gordon (16:47)
Mm-hmm.

June? Mm-hmm.

So.

no, now I feel under pressure.

What's dub dub data? Well, we help people unlock value from data. we want to help people to be able to find the best people in the world to either deliver their consulting, to deliver their training.

to attend live training sessions, to go online training sessions, to get templates, anything that's data related. It doesn't have to be just about data visualization or data engineering. It can be about anything, anything that's mildly related to the topic of data. it's a combination of Fiverr and Etsy smooshed together.

Sarah (17:51)
for data

Fiona Gordon (17:52)
but for data people and if you want to sell your products on our platform you're called a dubber. You come on you do a listing on there you go through some quality control checks with us because we only want the best of the best actually listed on the platform.

And then clients can come to one place and search for the best people to help them out. And it gives them exposure globally to some resources that they may not actually know about. So we're a global marketplace for data products and services.

when I think of data consulting businesses, one of their biggest risks is that they have people on the bench, right? So these people who they employ, they pay their regular salaries, and then all of a sudden there's a bit

of a lull in what's happening out in market and they've got people that they're still paying.

but they're not getting paid for them. And depending on how long that period of time is, that's when we start to see some of the redundancies come through, and it's not good for anyone. So I'm really excited to be able to partner with other data consulting organizations.

if we can solve for that, and help people to be able to...

advertise short-term contracts for their bench along the way, perhaps at really sharp pricing as well, just for a short period of time. I think that it's win-win for everyone.

Sarah (19:23)
I love the idea that we're not working in opposition. That's a real big part of us is we want to build a community of data and analytics people, whether they be, individuals, companies, et cetera, that are going to come together and, fill gaps that are needed and give them that kind of global reach is really what it is. And with DubDubData,

Fiona Gordon (19:27)
Yes.

Mmm.

Sarah (19:49)
We are trying to really build not just a marketplace but a community as well.

Fiona Gordon (19:54)
that's right. you're talking right to my heart there, because I love the community side of things. I've been really lucky to be working on our community platform.

behind the scenes. It's ready to go for people who want to join us. So if you go to hub.dubdubdata.com and then on our front page there, there's a few different links that you can go to. One is to register your interest if you would be interested in selling anything, whether that's consulting services, could be a short hour mentoring session, could be business coaching.

We're wait listing at the moment. We will be reviewing people and then slowly bringing them on to the marketplace platform. But as soon as you register your interest, you will also get signed up for our community. And the community is a bunch of different groups or channels that you can talk with, data professionals from around the world.

and connect on different topics like data engineering, data visualization, any other data related topics. And then there's places just to hang out. There's places if you want to pitch your own goods so you can sell the things that are actually on the dub dub marketplace as well. And also get support from other Dubbers who, are perhaps solopreneurs or

Sarah (21:01)
A-I.

Fiona Gordon (21:16)
they're running their own businesses to get feedback on on your own products as well.

Sarah (21:20)
It's super exciting and I can't wait till launch. It feels like it's been a long time and a short time at the same time. It's all been building up because Fi's working on the community side, I'm working on the marketplace side, we're dividing and conquering.

Whatever the word is. Yeah.

Yeah, let me think of something more fluffy for next time. Less masculine. it is really exciting that we're going to have something that people can kind of get their hands on soon.

we spoke to a lot of people that we knew and trusted in our community. And we got a lot of really positive feedback, which is great.

the next step in the journey is really being able to potentially monetize all that stuff that you've potentially been giving away, giving away for free in the past.

Fiona Gordon (22:09)
Yeah.

And just on that point, if you don't want to sell on the marketplace, you can also just join in on the community. on that hub.dubdubdata.com, in case you didn't know, we'll put it in the show notes, if you join us early, you'll be one of our founding members, whether or not you are someone who becomes a Dubber, or you just want to hang out and talk data,

get access to some really great things along the way. There'll be freebies, we'll have some great deals as well on things just by joining into our community. We really want to leverage the power of people.

So please join. There's places in there to ask dub dub any questions as well into the community and we'd be happy to connect with you. Whether you're a business or you're an individual, it'd be really great to have you on board.

Sarah (22:45)
Yeah.

just to your point on why, why build this organization for me, is when you're lucky to be part of...

communities you get all the knowledge that you need. we've been very lucky to be able to find resources as we need them. sometimes when you come into an organization, if they haven't tapped into the right community, they're flying quite blind. And what we really want to do with dub dub data is have that really trusted set of products and services.

that people can come in and buy and sell that will really help them in their organizations or on their personal journey.

Fiona Gordon (23:41)
I agree. And sometimes people struggle, Sarah, with understanding what kind of products that they might be able to sell on dub dub or services. Can you just list off a few off the top of your head that you think might work well in a data marketplace?

Sarah (23:58)
if I start with services, like you said, filling bench seats some day kind of consultancy. I'm a specialist in data visualization, for example, or I can help you kickstart your technology platform, or I'm really interested and I've built some LLMs, know, like things like that that can really come in and support small, medium, large size organizations that need a really specific set of...

requirements, built out for them. I also really love the more short-term thing. this could be something that you could potentially charge by the hour instead of by the day. Or I want to do, a viz review, or I need some particular coaching or mentoring and maybe, that I've been made redundant in the data world and I need someone to help me

with a better global reach than I've got And I think those are some of the really key services that I find will be really interesting.

Fiona Gordon (24:52)
one of the things that...

I'm observing out in market at the moment is the rise of the fractional insert name here role and and so if we think about that and in dubdubs Realm, it might be a fractional CDO. It might be a fractional head of It might be a fractional manager might be a fractional consultant on a specific area or you might be going out and pitching in your own business on different things and you just need some

who is well renowned in the industry with that specific expertise who could look over and review the work that you've done. You know we all know that...

Sarah (25:32)
Yeah, almost to get you over that hump that you just can't get over, right?

Fiona Gordon (25:36)
Yeah, it'll just double check. I mean, you may have chat GPT the hell out of something to get you, into your RFP or what have you, but...

let's face it, chat GPT has its own hallucinations sometimes. And so you really want to make sure that you're putting out content, to potential clients that is proven and it's actually accurate along the way. Otherwise, you could have a bit of egg on your face. So I think, if you're considering how you can work in this fractional space, dubdub is a really good way to be able to market your skill sets and capability

Sarah (26:10)
Yeah, I really love that. And then I think onto the product side, I'm going to throw it over to you to kind of start with your exciting hit list of products that you hope to find on DubDubData.

Fiona Gordon (26:16)
God, I wasn't.

Right. So I thought I was doing a really great podcast host role there and asking all of the tough questions. Co-hosts. Co-hosts. Co-hosts.

Sarah (26:28)
Co-founders, co-founders. Doesn't work like that. Co-hosts, co-founders, same, same.

Fiona Gordon (26:35)
That's right, that's right. so what kind of products could one sell on the on the marketplace? Well This might sound strange, but I'm gonna start with books,

As a leader in data and analytics, sometimes I'm, I'm looking for a small acknowledgement of something that somebody's done and I would just like to recognize them for it. And having a data book, particularly for people who are really interested in data, can really help out. But it's sometimes hard to know what's the latest best book or, what's something that would be really good for someone starting out in this particular area. So I'm really keen to build up a great library.

of well-known data books. In addition to that, everyone's favorite, we want to have some Dub-Dub merch that's online as well. I personally am a bit disappointed that in our first podcast, we're not wearing Dub-Dub merch.

Sarah (27:30)
Yeah, stay tuned, stay tuned. Like logo here. Sorry.

Fiona Gordon (27:33)
like Sarah you're behind the eight ball come on definitely having some merch along the way that we want to bring online but that's just kind of the fun stuff more importantly and data products we can look at things like templates style guides

Templates could be for things like how you should document your work. That could be something that's relatively cheap and inexpensive, get off the ground really quickly. Or it could be an automated template. in a past life, we've built out automated.

documentation both for Tableau Workbooks and Alteryx workflows. that kind of thing could save so much time for everyone. Everyone hates doing documentation so the most you can get ahead of would be really great. And they're things that people could really easily implement at their own organization and that would save them potentially weeks of development along the way as well. So anything that can be packaged up and sent

or downloaded whether that's in a physical form or a digital form, That's really what we're looking for. It could even be things like

training. So having an online training program, we have the facility to actually host your online training. if you're a potential dubber, and you want to sell your own online training, we will provide the platform to host that on for you and give you all of the goodies that come along with that. So that's exciting. It could be in person training. So you could host in person training or even virtual training on your own platforms as well.

making sure that you've got the ability to deliver these things out to end clients at scale. What else could we do on there? Is there anything else that you can think of? Sure. Yes.

Sarah (29:13)
I've got one that you've missed that I'm very excited about coming on board because I think it's going to be one of our first products for sure is the Tableau Quest.

Fiona Gordon (29:24)
I think you're putting me on notice a little bit there. okay. Well, that's, that's fair, but I think merch is easier than the quest. So the Tableau quest is definitely something that I'm perhaps more well known for in the data community. Back in 2018, I presented the Tableau quest to the Tableau conference and it's been wildly successful both at my previous organization and also

Sarah (29:28)
Well you just put me on the hook for the merch so come on.

Fiona Gordon (29:50)
the one before that and it really helps people go from rookies to rock stars on the Tableau platform and there's also things like the Alteryx Adventure. So they're things that really help to elevate the skill set and capability of your teams and do it in a way that's really fun and a little bit addictive.

Sarah (30:09)
I think the beauty about this marketplace, if we take the Tableau Quest as an example, I know that we've spoken about that there's going to be like a kind of a gold, silver, bronze package available, So.

Bronze is here's your digital product, done. It's all packaged up, ready to go. End of, of one-off price and you're done. And then you're gonna have the other options where you've got the silver, where it's a little bit more hands-on and some particular coaching. And then you'll have the potential for gold packaging, which is, you might get the use of Fi and really make sure it's.

it flies at record speed.

Fiona Gordon (30:47)
Right, make sure that we're adapting it to the needs of the organization so we're really addressing what's important to you strategically in this process as well. And perhaps doing some upskilling of your own team so that they understand things like change management and how to really make sure that a program gets in, is well received, and it's sticky. There's nothing worse than launching something and no one adopts it.

Sarah (31:15)
crickets.

Fiona Gordon (31:16)
Yeah, exactly.

Sarah (31:17)
I'm gonna change topics because we've been talking a lot about what the platform's gonna do and that, which is awesome. But I think just a little bit back to maybe us and building out an organization and everything, what are some of your fears with taking this big leap of faith which we have done? what's the thing that worries you the most about this?

Fiona Gordon (31:19)
Shoo!

Mmm.

But like jab, jab, right hook. Getting the tough questions in there. No, I think it's really important. And Candidly, one of my biggest fears about being in business is I've experienced when it goes wrong.

Sarah (31:48)
Why not? Why not? Unscripted!

Fiona Gordon (32:03)
I grew up in a family where things did kind of go wrong in a business and so I've always wanted to stay away from that because I just wasn't ready to assume the risk.

everyone might be telling us this is a great idea guys, we can't wait for this. And then, when the rubber really hits the road, it's like crickets in our community, there's nothing going on and no one wants to list their products, who knows? But if that happens, so be it,

Yeah, failing and making this a really expensive bad hobby, which I know is your favorite.

terminology

Sarah (32:36)
Yeah, and I think failure is always the biggest fear. But if I can kind of answer the question, what I love about our kind of connection and relationship is I feel if an element of it fails, we're quite okay to go, okay, well, shit, that didn't work. Let's go on to this part. Like, let's take a total left turn. And I think that's probably why we've been a little bit

Fiona Gordon (32:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sarah (33:04)
we've been buying our time and speaking to the right people. and this is actually a big step for us today, isn't it? Like to actually like publicly put on the line, we're building a community for data and analytics and a marketplace. And it could completely fucking go nowhere, right? And, our family could watch this for years, and say, a big failure that was.

just the fact that we feel that we're comfortable enough to now say, hey, this is actually what we're doing to the world. I think that's really exciting. And also that if it fails, we change it.

Fiona Gordon (33:38)
Right.

I've got another one. Another massive fear with this is,

getting onto socials, doing things like reels, doing the recording of this podcast, being on camera, it is also a fear of mine and, but I'm just gonna fucking do it and get over it.

Sarah (34:00)
Exactly. I think even just setting up this morning, We're like, like, I don't think I've ever seen you this nervous for a while. But at the same time, camera comes on and it's all good, right? Because we're friends first, right? we've been data BFFs for how long now?

Fiona Gordon (34:15)
hundred.

This is, yeah, I don't know. I think it's seven years. I think it's 2017 was the conference that we met each other at.

Sarah (34:20)
Seven years? Seven years?

Yes.

I really love spending quality time with you and we've done a lot of that over the last couple of months and it's been really enjoyable. Fi's come over here and I've been over to Sydney and I'm going back again in December, which is great, very exciting for lots of reasons. And it is really good. And I think one of our fears as well is how will our friendship survive this? But we also really...

Fiona Gordon (34:33)
Mm.

You

Mm.

Sarah (34:57)
feel that it's good to go into business with friends. And I think, we've really had to work a lot on our open communication and we communicate different styles. I feel that Fi thinks really fast. And so sometimes she'll be like 10 steps ahead of me and I'm still thinking of like the first sentence that she said. And, we have to balance each other. But from being really open and honest in our...

Fiona Gordon (35:01)
Yeah.

Sarah (35:22)
and just when we have our chats and everything I think it's awesome and I think because we're building something from the ground up together we've both put our skin in the game right like we can't risk hiding from problems or hoping someone else is going to pick up the crappy things that we don't want to do because it's just us we're having to pack up all the fun stuff as well right and they're not so fun stuff

Fiona Gordon (35:48)
But we have this podcast, Sarah, and this podcast isn't going to be just a one-off. It's going to continue along the way. Can you tell me a little bit about your vision for how this is gonna work the type of podcast that it be so that people know what to look forward to as we start to build this out?

Sarah (35:50)
Yes.

Yeah. So I'm not going to put a frequency cadence on it just yet. it's not just going to be, us just talking every time. Obviously today was really important to introduce you to who we are for those that don't know us and what we're trying to achieve. But what we actually want to do is we actually want to start getting other people on the podcast as well and really going deep into some of those topics.

Maybe pre-attentive attributes is one day fee, a passion. So we really want to come in and unlock and, as it says, undubbed. So unscripted, what is it? Uncensored and undeniably data.

Fiona Gordon (36:52)
don't think that's quite it, but anyway.

Sarah (36:54)
isn't it?

I've decided it is.

Fiona Gordon (36:56)
get it right it's unscripted unfiltered undeniably data but well maybe we'll make a change on that now before it goes out that's what I love about working with Sarah we can just break shit

Sarah (37:00)
can sense it.

Fiona Gordon (37:10)
Yeah, I think that's a really great sort of summary of what we're doing. So if anyone's got any ideas of podcasts that they were topics that they think would be really interesting, we'll be hosting a lot of the Dubbers who we start to bring on, the founding Dubbers that will help us to build the business out.

Sarah (37:28)
Love it, love it. So, is that a wrap? Is that a wrap on our first podcast? I think.

Fiona Gordon (37:31)
I reckon it should be, because know, the time's getting up there and as much as we love to talk, I don't know how much everyone else likes to listen. Thanks very much everyone for tuning in. I look forward to connecting with you on hub.dubdubdata.com. Have a great day. Bye.

Sarah (37:39)
No, over and out, right?

Bye!