Leading With Intent: Values-Based Leadership in Marketing Ops with Jaime López

In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, Michael is joined by co-hosts Mike Rizzo and Naomi Liu for a thoughtful conversation on a topic that rarely gets enough attention in Marketing Ops: values-based leadership.

Their guest is Jaime López, Head of Marketing at Ververica. Jaime’s background spans engineering, machine learning, technical marketing, and operations, along with leading global teams across Europe, Asia, and the United States. He brings a deliberate, human-centered approach to leadership that focuses on clarity of values, adaptability, and building cultures that support both people and performance.

The discussion explores what values-based leadership actually looks like in practice, how it differs from traditional performance-first management styles, and why it is especially critical in high-pressure Ops environments where ambiguity is constant.

In this episode, you will learn:

• What values-based leadership means in a Marketing Ops context
• How to intentionally define and shape team culture
• Why leaders must adapt to individuals rather than forcing conformity
• How to navigate misalignment between values and behavior with honesty and empathy
• Ways Ops professionals can lead with values even without formal management roles

This episode is ideal for Marketing Ops leaders and practitioners who want to build healthier teams, improve performance through trust and clarity, and lead with intention in complex, fast-moving organizations.

Episode Brought to You By MO Pros 
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Values In Ops
• 3:03 Engineering Mindset To People Systems
• 6:29 Values vs Rules: Ownership And Action
• 11:08 Defining Values And Avoiding Misconceptions
• 17:18 Intentional Culture: Hiring And Performance
• 23:03 Culture Fit, Norms, And Non-Negotiables
• 28:43 Building Team Values From Stories
• 34:43 Cascading, Rituals, And Reinforcement
• 39:38 Inheriting Teams And Respecting History
• 45:28 Integrating New Members And Coaching

Transcript

Michael Hartmann: 0:25

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOps.com, powered by all the MoPros out there. I am your host, Michael Hartman, and I am joined by neither of my co-hosts today, as we're getting close to the end of 2025. And when we're recording this, uh, today we are diving into a topic that doesn't get nearly enough attention in marketing ops. We'll call it values-based leadership. What that means, how it works in practice, why it's one of the most overlooked levers for building healthy, high-performing ops teams. And to do that is my guest, Jaime Lopez, head of marketing at Ververica. Jaime's career spans engineering, machine learning, technical marketing, and operations. And he has led teams across Europe, Asia, and the U.S. He brings a thoughtful, intentional approach to leadership rooted in defining clear values, adapting to team members as individuals, and cultivating cultures that align with both team identity and organizational contexts. So, Jaime, thank you for staying up late. You're in Helsinki. So it's late there. That's why, for those who are watching, it's dark in the background. So welcome to the show.

Jaime López: 1:29

Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. A longtime reader and participant in the ops community. It it's such a great opportunity. Thanks for having me.

Michael Hartmann: 1:36

Yeah. We were just talking before this about uh why it's so dark in your background. And it would like I think you're one of the few people I talk to when I say, well, it's pretty soon it's going to be changing. You like you know when the solstice is.

Jaime López: 1:47

Can't wait for it. Yeah, yeah. It's like four days. I can't wait to be on the other side of it.

Michael Hartmann: 1:52

Yeah. It's a little different here. Even like uh uh my my mother-in-law is visiting right now from Northern California, and even just there to Dallas, like the difference in um amount of sunlight we get is significant. I can't even I've forgotten what it's like to be in a real winter. I grew up in Minnesota, so probably maybe close to where Helsinki is. I don't know.

Jaime López: 2:16

Yeah. Well, Helsinki is at the same latitude as Anchorage.

Michael Hartmann: 2:19

So it's pretty close. Maybe a little bit maybe a little farther north.

Jaime López: 2:23

Yeah, but the kind of winters that you get in Minnesota and North Dakota, Wisconsin, it's pretty similar to a winter we get here in Finland.

Michael Hartmann: 2:31

Okay. Well, yeah, like I said, that's been long enough for me. I don't think I could take a real one anymore. So well, okay, so maybe let's start. I gave a brief overview of your career. Um, maybe that is a good place to start with some context. Yeah, so you mentioned you were in engineering, machine learning, did marketing ops, now you're in senior leadership. I'm curious, like how, like, maybe if there's any key moments that are important there, talk about those, but like think about how has that shaped your approach uh to leading and leading teams?

Jaime López: 3:03

Yeah, um, I think it's a great question to start with. It definitely has shaped my approach to to leading teams and to working as a whole. Um, sometimes at work, colleagues jokingly call me a recovering engineer. Now I work with kind of not with machines, but with people and systems. But they they, in a sense, are also a very, very complex machine. Um and I I love getting to understand the problem at its core, at its root cause, which is what engineer, in a sense, teaches you to do, um, and also to find elegant solutions for the problem. And an elegant solution typically is one that doesn't use all the resources available everywhere in the world, but as little as possible to make it work and work reliably.

Michael Hartmann: 3:45

And what do you so I I often see people in my ex maybe it's an opinion thing, mix up elegant with clever. And to me, clever is not a good thing. I don't use it complimentary.

Jaime López: 3:59

Right. It depends. Like I think that sometimes those two are aligned and sometimes they're not. If you use like wits or a clever solution to kind of build something greater, better, awesome. If you use your wits to you to build something that either profits off of somebody else's work, or kind of basically it's a net negative, then I don't agree with clever in a sense.

Michael Hartmann: 4:24

Okay. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I did anyway.

Jaime López: 4:30

Not at all. Like this is a conversation.

Michael Hartmann: 4:32

Yeah. But so you were in the middle though of kind of describing that engineering experience, which I I also have somewhat in the way distance past. So it sounds like that was a way like you've thought about that system thinking kind of model to how you think about leading to. Is that a fair way of saying it?

Jaime López: 4:54

Yeah, that that's where I was going. Like it applies in the sense that when I'm trying to think in systems on how or how to make this system work, um, I want to have a set of ground rules or principles that I can kind of fall back on. If I'm doing kind of fluid dynamics, those principles are going to be Navier Stokes equations. If I'm working with people, those are kind of what we call principles. And in each team, they're going to be different. And that's why I put a big emphasis on values-based leadership. So values and principles of a team are those immutable laws in a way.

Michael Hartmann: 5:26

Yeah. Oh, that makes sense. I never thought of it that way, of kind of those engineering or science-based rules to think about the I guess the way I've thought about it is norms within a team, right? Which I like the idea of principle ones too. Maybe we come back to that a little bit. But you you mentioned values-based leadership. So uh if people listening, watching are like me, uh, I probably have an idea in my head what that means. What does that mean for you? And how do you think it's different than maybe other ways that people think about leading and or leadership styles?

Jaime López: 6:09

Yeah. Well, I think one basic difference that I find is that most leaders default to rules, and rules tell you what not to do. And you'll see that kind of our big uh kind of Western working culture is full of rules of what you're not allowed to do because reasons.

Michael Hartmann: 6:26

Yeah.

Jaime López: 6:26

But I think the values are kind of the opposite of that. They tell you who to be and and how to act. Rules create compliance, nobody colours outside of the lines, which is fine, uh, but it's not sufficient. Another engineering thing, it's necessary, but it's not sufficient. Right. Um, but I think the values create two things that are super important to me. One is ownership, which is kind of the drive for people to find problems worth solving and go and solve them and be accountable for them being solved. And when you get there and you have ownership, people start displaying, if you if you emphasize it, bias to action, which is like, okay, it's not just that I identify and own a problem, but I'm gonna go and do it before I'm told that I need to do it.

Michael Hartmann: 7:09

Got it. Okay. Well, so maybe talk a little bit about the word values, because it seems like that's an important piece of this. Like, does that are there different when you think of it? What does it mean? And what do you think other people think it is that are off from what you think it is?

Jaime López: 7:28

There, yeah, there are a few ways of looking at this. I was doing a little bit of reflection before before we started that conversation today, and I it's inevitable to encounter the thing that people hear values, and I think it's soft compared to rules, compared to mandates.

Michael Hartmann: 7:45

Right.

Jaime López: 7:46

I think that's backwards. Um, to give you a hypothesis or an example, I think it takes more courage to fire someone or not hire someone for values misalignment than for missing a number. Um it requires you to be very strong in what you believe in and why. And um also some people think, or that has happened to me during my career. Um people think that compared to mandates or directives that values slow you down. I don't think that's the case. I think they actually speed you up because people second guess less. They have a clear path for what I should do instead of what I should not do. Yeah. Um faster decisions, less escalation, more ownership, more bias to action.

Michael Hartmann: 8:34

Yeah, yeah. So it feels like so let me run one by you. So one of the th one of the principles I like to have as a leader is um it really is not just leadership, but in general, right? Don't assume the best intent. Yeah. Right? I think is that the kind of thing you would have as a value so that way, like when there's conflict, right, you don't assume the other person's got ill intent.

Jaime López: 8:57

I that's something that I would take as a value. And that might very well be a team value or something that you intentionally or you all agree as a team that we want to operate in this way.

Michael Hartmann: 9:07

Yeah.

Jaime López: 9:07

Um, it's part of the OS of the operating system that when I encounter this, my default will be to assume good intent. Um I think that there's another layer to it. Like you can have values as a person and you can have values as a team, and those have to be aligned, but don't necessarily have to overlap 100%.

Michael Hartmann: 9:26

Sure. The reason I brought that one up particular is I've I've seen this a couple of times recently uh uh on Instagram or somewhere, I don't remember where. Somebody who talked to I I haven't seen the movie Inglorious Bastards for whatever reason, I just haven't seen it. But there's a I guess the character, the German main character is a German. Uh they were interviewing him, the actor about like how did you play someone so evil? And he was sort of stunned. And what what the implication was that the whoever was interviewing it might have been Simon Sinek, was that like the people who are come across as evil, they like they don't think of themselves as being evil, right? So this is like this is why like assuming bad intent is a dangerous thing to do.

Jaime López: 10:11

I think so. I think it is it is dangerous and it already puts you and the whole situation on the defensive, which is rarely a good frame to achieve big things.

Michael Hartmann: 10:25

Okay, I like that. Okay. So um when we talked before it it just maybe this ties in with your idea that it doesn't it having a value based values-based team and organization, leadership style doesn't slow you down because I could see that being a perception. You you mentioned that um being intentional about this stuff is and maybe is that like how how do you how do you fit that piece into it? Um into like making sure that you mentioned hiring practices and making changes and having tough conversations. Is that like is that part of the intentionality? And do you think that's part of how you generate that ability to move quickly still?

Jaime López: 11:10

It most certainly is. I think intentionality is the key to this. Um if you can just kind of let it organically happen, it might go in the direction you want, it might go in the complete opposite, or in no direction in particular. So intentionality is what's gonna make the difference in it kind of actually going somewhere. Um and it it comes up in in those situations you mentioned when you're hiring. What do we hire for? Or what are the things that are going to be absolute no-nos for kind of somebody coming into us? Um when we when we promote or when we evaluate performance, um, if you have values, uh, or if values are an important part of who you are as a company and a team, the question is not just going to be, did I hit the number or the objective? It's like, would I do it again in the same way?

Michael Hartmann: 11:57

Right.

Jaime López: 11:58

Like is is the way I I achieved or didn't achieve the goal okay or not?

Michael Hartmann: 12:04

Yeah. It's um I think the variant I have used in the past is that culture happens and it it whether you are intentional about it or not. And so if you want to have a culture that supports the values that you want to be a part of the team, then you need to intentionally reinforce the behaviors that support those values and not celebrate the ones that don't.

Jaime López: 12:28

And I would go a bit further, and you would this is the one type probably in the whole conversation where I'm going to use the verb to punish, uh, but punish things that are antithetic to those values.

Michael Hartmann: 12:41

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've heard, I can't remember, just probably multiple people who I've seen do this publicly where they say, like, we have you can call it whatever you want, but like the no asshole assholes rule, right? So you may be uh meeting to your point, right? You may be meeting your numbers, blowing it out of the the water as say as a salesperson. I don't want to pick on sales, but just that's an easy one to target is because it's um highly visible when people make numbers or not.

Jaime López: 13:10

We are always the target of everything sales has to say. So I refuse to engage in that. I'm not gonna say it's the target of any Yeah, yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 13:17

I I it's but I think my point is like um, I mean, I like to be clear. So you could have a culture that says that's what we want. We want people to be aggressive and asshole ish or whatever, right? I don't necessarily think that's a necessarily a bad thing on its face. It's not the kind of place I want to be.

Jaime López: 13:38

Agree. But I think you have a really good example in corporate literature, which is Enron.

Michael Hartmann: 13:44

Yeah.

Jaime López: 13:44

Um, they they have a very intentional culture, just one where probably you and I wouldn't want to work at, but plenty of people did want to work there and thrive professionally there until they didn't.

Michael Hartmann: 13:55

Yeah. Was that that was the one where what was it? They like every like they were regularly cutting the bottom 10% performers or something like that. Didn't really matter.

Jaime López: 14:05

Yeah, and kind of in their case it was about aggressiveness and kind of profit above everything, which ended up rewarding corporate fraud and and different kind of financial crimes. It's a shame that it ended up like that. Um I'm sure that there are high performance cultures, and I I hope we can build one where you can incentivize people being aggressive and taking risk without being a criminal or an asshole to each other.

Michael Hartmann: 14:32

Yeah. Well, it's and this is kind of a point I've made to people before is like I don't necessarily believe there's a good or bad culture. I do think there's better or worse culture fits than there are like so yeah.

Jaime López: 14:50

I mean that's you wouldn't want a high performance aggressive culture in a nonprofit, probably.

Michael Hartmann: 14:55

Probably not. It depends on what the nonprofit was about. But I mean, yeah, I could see I could see arguments either way on that. Um and I happen my wife happens to be in a nonprofit world, so I I know that area well. Uh see my dog agrees. Uh and uh but I I think I think that's that intentionality is also like I think so. For me, I'm at this point in my career where I don't want to work with assholes, I want to work with smart people do a good thing. And so a big part of what I'm looking at at opportunities, or if I when I have in the past several years, a big part of what I'm trying to do is uncover the way that the culture, what like what the value probably values is the way to put it, but like what are the norms that are expected? Um, in particular things like conflict resolution and decision making and that kind of stuff that are important to me. So I think that's like to me, this is there's a leadership part of it within an organization, and then I I feel like the hiring process has been broken for a long time, right? I thought when you said right rules tell you not what not to do, I think job descriptions do the same thing. True. Yeah, like and I think there's a lot uh I think there would be a lot of benefit for people focusing on not only skills and experience matches, but also the values and norms and cultural fit pieces, which don't seem to get in a lot of places I've seen, don't they spend a lot of time on that.

Jaime López: 16:32

That is true. Um I think that it it is growing a little bit. I don't know if we'll now see a little bit of a setback with how kind of HR practices have had a setback in the past couple of years. But I saw some encouraging signs back in 2021, 22, 23, um, of companies that I I work at and work with having a very clear place for a values interview in their in their interview process. And even bigger companies of to the tune of AWS are are famous for having very specific values they look for in an interview and that they drill. And you might be an amazing technical performer, but you know, if you were if your core value doesn't align with frugality, then you probably won't have a job at AWS.

Michael Hartmann: 17:17

Yeah, makes sense. Okay, well let's so let's say we're on I think we're on the same page, values-based, uh cultural fits, etc. When you join or build a team, how do you like walk me through the way that you think about building that set of shared values with the team uh from the start?

Jaime López: 17:42

So I think it's a little bit different every time, also very different between building from scratch versus inheriting a team, but starting with kind of building from scratch. Um, I don't walk on with answers, I walk in with questions. And questions like for each of the team members or kind of the team as a whole. When was a time where you were proud how we achieved something together? What was the achievement? How did we get it done? Um, when were you disappointed or embarrassed on how you individually on a one-on-one or your team perform or or missed something? And the values start to come from those stories. Um, I tend to aim to three or four values, or yeah, towards three or four values, more than that, probably it's an overkill.

Michael Hartmann: 18:30

Yeah.

Jaime López: 18:31

Um, but it has to be something that the team can feel their own and recite. So I don't select them. We workshop them. There's a structured framework for this. I'm sure there are multiple. This I use one. And you start then, like after you you've debated this in a team, you write them on a post-it or a piece of paper or on a blackboard, you start clustering them, and it's like, okay, what is common to all of these? What is one one value or word that represents all of these situations? Is it um trust, which is a common one, at least in my team? Is it people first? And then kind of you basically go at it and have different discussions until you call us on those three or four things that everybody feels like they represent not just how they work, but how the team wins.

Michael Hartmann: 19:22

Oh, and once you do that, how like how do you then make sure that's shared across the team? And maybe I'm making an assumption here that that uh you do that with say initial set of leaders in the team as opposed to the full team, but either way.

Jaime López: 19:43

Um so since the starting point is that they come organically from the team, then kind of the the question becomes is everybody in the team kind of in agreement with this, or is this in contradiction with anybody's values? And often there's the answer is no, but if the answer is yes, kind of we try to figure out okay, is there an alternative to this that we actually all feel aligned? Um an example of that is abundance. I remember like at a team I led a few years ago, um, a person was very had a very specific view of what abundance meant for them. It was completely misaligned with what abundance meant for the rest. So we had to figure out like, okay, what does this mean for you and why? What is an alternative that can actually convey the same value to you without maybe being in opposition to what the team feels.

Michael Hartmann: 20:39

Got it. So this kind of goes from this word cloud thing down to I mean, do you get it to where you have four or five like literally words or short phrases that represent those core values? Yeah. So I've done something like that. Uh I think I'm with you on the four, three to four. I think when I the one I'm thinking of in particular, I think we had five norms. Five was probably about as much as I would go. And we literally this in that case we did it more with the leadership team, and then it it got cascaded out to the rest of the organization. But we literally created uh like a one-slide thing that people could, and we pr we handed out printouts of it, and people, this is when we were in the office, so you could put it up at your desk. So it was kind of in front of you all the time. And I I really liked that. And and then on top of that, as we would have, say, all hands meetings or something, we would that would be one of the things that would come up every time. We would talk about here's our our expect norms of how we're gonna work with each other. And I think it was really it's one of those places where I look back and I go, like, I still have lots of really good friends. We had challenges, we didn't always agree, but I still would count those people as good friends.

Jaime López: 21:57

Yeah, I I understand, or I can relate to that and understand why. And uh in your case, the Norse, which probably are very close to kind of what I what I use as values, um what they do is they serve as an action manual for like how do I work with this team? And that eliminates a lot of friction, which allows you to actually have fun, a time at work, or make friends at work, and also it kind of eliminates misunderstandings. Like if I know that this team's value is um speed over quality, hell, then I know how to start working with them. I'm not going to hammer them about like why is this coma out of position? I know they value speed.

Michael Hartmann: 22:37

You just said a you struck a chord with me, so I'm gonna let that go. Come out of position. Okay. Um okay, so you mentioned you touched on this just briefly. I don't even know if you but you talked about um kind of each team is different. So is that because I mean, which I think I inherently agree with, but why do you think that is?

Jaime López: 23:00

I think fundamentally the individuals are different, and the leadership and leadership styles are different. Um and that naturally will kind of make different sets of values grow. And as long as all can coexist and don't kind of oppose each other, I think it's something to celebrate, not to oppose. I wouldn't want to work with five clones of myself, it would be horrible.

Michael Hartmann: 23:24

No, I I mean one of the values I have is I want uh I really how have I put it before? I I want I want to encourage vigorous debate to a point. Right? Because I think that and and that includes encouraging people to disagree with me, which I think a lot of people are not copyrighted. Yeah, it's it's not an easy thing to do, but I to me it's something to celebrate, and I have celebrated that before. Okay.

Jaime López: 23:52

I think we are really important, sorry to interrupt, we play a really important role as leaders in going and celebrating these things in public when people live the values and going on the Flack General channel and saying, hey everybody, I think this was a great example of how this person disagreed with me.

Michael Hartmann: 24:07

Yeah, I I am 100% in agreement there. I think that's a huge I mean it's it's another example. It's a if that is one of your values as a team, right? You uh in my opinion, you have to celebrate that when it happens. You know, otherwise, if you don't, people start to not believe that the values are right.

Jaime López: 24:28

It's just like yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 24:31

And I think that's a okay, so another thing you touched on is maybe there's some differences when you are building a team versus inheriting a team. And maybe I would add a nuance of inheriting a team where someone else thought that they should be in the role who's now a direct report. Uh how do you what are some of the things you think about? Uh do you change the general approach at all? Or are there specific things you try to do in the scenario where you're building versus inheriting?

Jaime López: 25:03

Um yes, there are a few things that I do differently, and I've learned from my mistakes and other people's mistakes in this. Um, like looking at it as a greenfield situation where you're building from scratch is a mistake. Um, inherited teams or existing teams have a culture already, whether intentionally or unintentionally. You cannot delete that overnight.

Michael Hartmann: 25:27

Right.

Jaime López: 25:28

And you have to live with it and adjust it. You cannot pretend that it wasn't there, you have to understand it, and especially you have to understand what worked in this thing before. Yes. And it's like, okay, like of these things, like how again, how did you win together? What worked? When were you very proud? What are the things that we should keep and kind of turbocharge? And what are the things that maybe we should ditch and change?

Michael Hartmann: 25:52

Yeah. Okay.

Jaime López: 25:54

So it's, I think it sounds like the big thing is there, don't assume that's gonna change quickly if there's no and like how much of the strongman role you want to play, like I'm now the guy in charge and sheriff in town, that's not gonna make it faster or better. It's just gonna very likely alienate people.

Michael Hartmann: 26:13

So maybe this might lead us into a little bit of a different conversation, too. So I remember a time in my career where I had a team, excuse me, and uh a new person from another team got moved to my team. It wasn't really his choice. And I think there was a culture difference between the team he was on and the team I would I had in the way we worked. So maybe how do you sort of two parts to this, right? One, have you had to do that where you'd have to assimilate somebody into another team where there's already a maybe a well-established set of values and norms? But also one of the things I had to do in that role, it felt like was to adapt my approach to how he worked most effectively. So, in other words, like I I think a lot of that this is part of what I do with coach, a lot of coaching I do with new managers is yeah, part of your job is not to like not to get people to change how they do things, but you have to adapt to how they work. How do you think about those two components?

Jaime López: 27:17

So the first one, I have been in the situation, both kind of in the role of a leader who has somebody move from another team to mine, and there's a cultural clash there, or these teams were rivals even before. Um, that's tricky. The tension tends to solve itself with time, but you don't have a lot of time also before the thing explodes or becomes antenna. Yeah. So my approach tends to be talking to the one person who maybe is the most aggrieved at the beginning and kind of reassure this person that I understand where you're coming from. I know that you're working a different operating system than what we run here. Like you have my trust and my patience. And uh, like my I'm committed to helping you adapt to this. I'm not going to tolerate everything, but you have an adaptation period to learn kind of how we work here. And at the same time, I'm very happy to hear how we can do it better if there are things that the other team did better. And I've also been in in the very in the very kind of uncomfortable position of being that person who gets moved from another team to report to my former co-worker. Um it isn't something that nobody likes doing. It is tough. Yes. I got very lucky in that the person I got to report to is a good friend nowadays, and he's an excellent person, excellent leader, but you cannot really avoid the clash. And you have to also kind of take that leeway you're given and commit yours to adapting to the new situation, the new philosophy, whether you chose that or not.

Michael Hartmann: 28:50

Yeah, it's it's interesting. I also have a similar experience where not where I moved, but I was in the mix for a promotion to lead a team that I was part of. Someone else got the job, and we ended up having a very honest conversation about that. I can't remember if it was he brought it up or I brought it up, but I think we like we just addressed that elephant in the room, so to speak. Like, um, and we ended up having a great working relationship. And it was it was good. I still wanted the job, but like I had to come to terms with that and either choose to be a to continue to do what I could do to make the team better or not. And it I'm not gonna say it was easy.

Jaime López: 29:32

It never is.

Michael Hartmann: 29:33

Yeah. Um that's interesting. So you you talked about is and is it I guess I assume this is gonna be both part of somebody coming into an existing values set or uh maybe something's going on with someone's life and they start to veer from the expected values. How do you yeah, and you kind of touched on this a little bit, but like how do you address that, right? I mean that like what I just talked about, like this the there's when there's you know regular kinds of things that are going against the set of values for the team, how do you how do you deal with that?

Jaime López: 30:10

In private, always like I'm a big proponent of public praise, private criticism in any situation, and and kind of being very clear about like this is not my feelings that we're hurt. This goes against the charity that we all agreed together and that you agreed to. Um why what did what prompted this action or this reaction is something more important than the values? If if it is, tell me, we'll figure out why and and whether the values need to be changed. But that that exercise of reflection most of the time is enough. And if it isn't, then it's a continued conversation that we're gonna have in our one-on-ones, and that might come up in a performance review. Like, great, like you you did your deliverables, but you also kind of hindered the team in this and this way. Please adjust your way of working.

Michael Hartmann: 31:03

So it's interesting to me. There's been a theme, I think, in what you the way you describe things, and you even used one of the words, which is I think a lot of this depends on trust. Right. I think I think you know, trust that people are gonna support each other, that uh you're gonna support the values, you're gonna hold people accountable, but you're gonna do it in a in a respectful way. The other, and this is a really, really, I think an important skill for people to learn, is asking good questions and then shutting up and listening. You talked about that, right? Because one other what's what went off in my head when you were describing a scenario like that is I think we all believe that people have this wall between work and personal life, right? Especially a very Western thing. Maybe it's even more more so in other parts of the world. But I think one of the things that COVID and all the lockdowns revealed is that it's absolutely natural. It's never been true, probably ever, but it really revealed it, I think, and put a light on it. And so one of the things I've found is that sometimes there's stuff going on in someone's outside of work, and it's they they can't help but bring it into work, and it's really that, and providing that opportunity to bring that out. Not everybody's comfortable with it, but you they've got to trust you to share that.

Jaime López: 32:24

I think there are ways that we can do uh or things that we can do as leaders to to ease that. Um, and this I learned from like an old colleague who's now doing something completely different, Matthi, brilliant person. Um, he always told us uh and his team that first take care of yourself, second, you take care of your loved ones, and only then you take care of work. If one and two are not in order, there's no way you can do number three. Uh so he created an environment of trust where we could say, Hey, um, this is wrong. Or he would even say, like, I don't need to know what is wrong. Just tell me like something in my personal life, my health, my loved one's health, my dog, then I cannot perform. We'll find a way to give you the space to deliver since you have shown commitment, and because I know you will show commitment. And when the team needs you, you are there. When you need it, the team is there for you.

Michael Hartmann: 33:20

I I've even had scenarios. I I'm all with that, like letting people like be honest with you. And one of the things I also tell them is trickier if I think it's gonna have maybe even moderately short-term, moderately long mid-term impacts to the team or ability to execute or whatever, is let's say it's a health thing. Uh, you know, I will ask them, you know, are you okay with me? Like I will explicitly ask them, are you okay with me sharing this with my boss or with HL or with like right? And if they say no, I will do my best to honor that. If I don't think I can do it do that without saying no, I will tell them I will do what I can. I may not be able to, right? And I don't like I and I think I've I've you know, I there's one in particular I think of, which was somebody in a country that uh somebody worked for me internationally in a country where uh uh mental health issues were looked down upon, and this person's spouse was going through something. This person was having it like checking out of work regularly, and we f and finally I think we had built enough trust that that person was comfortable sharing that with me, but asked me explicitly don't say anything. And so I did. And I never told anyone what was going on because I didn't think it was my right. If he was comfortable, if that person was comfortable, then I would I mean, then uh it might have been different. But like that's one of those things, like that there's very few people get prepared for that kind of challenge as leaders.

Jaime López: 35:10

And it's something yet that most of us have to go through at one point or another with a team member, with ourselves, with our families, that they are going through a really tough situation, and and we have to make it work for them and for us and for the team. So yeah, I think that's an excellent exemplification of values. Like trust is really important in that environment for you and for your team, and and you you honor and commit to honoring that. And when you cannot commit to it, you're also open about how you cannot commit to it.

Michael Hartmann: 35:42

Yeah. I mean, and for and in that and in this position, in that position, I was like, I'm not gonna tell my boss or the CEO. Right? I'm just not. Yeah, I will tell them as much as they need to know about what the impact is and what we're gonna do to try to address it, but otherwise, they don't need to know.

Jaime López: 36:00

They don't need to know. And and that's fair. Like, we we don't need to know. In a sense, kind of it sounds very transactional, but when we work and when we build a team, in most of the situations, we are renting somebody's brain for eight hours a day, not for the rest. Um I like I feel like we need to let our people have their life and their own complete persons, as you said. COVID showed it to us that you know their family members, their pet, their delivery driver comes through. It's a complete person, and we only have a share of that. We cannot monopolize everything in the life of our team members. It won't be good for them for sure, but it also won't be good for us.

Michael Hartmann: 36:44

One exception, if that's the cultural norm that everyone agrees to, then that's okay.

Jaime López: 36:48

Yeah, hell, you have like I work with colleagues in India where like the 996 work life is very common and adhere to, and now you see that popping up in the West Coast again. Uh, yeah, if that's the norm. And if if it works for everybody then it self-selects for people who want to do that.

Michael Hartmann: 37:06

Absolutely. Yep. I I'm a big believer in that. Let's see. You you you and I both have have worked with teams internationally. Um I are maybe this is our are there generalizations that you can find you you can see that you've seen across say yeah, the Americas versus Europe versus Asia?

Jaime López: 37:30

Um it's always it's such a dangerous game to play. Uh generalization one. Um okay, I'll start by saying like I don't see, and I don't honestly, in the deep of my heart, I don't think that any of the cultures is superior to the other. Agree. Um, nor trying to impose your culture onto somebody else's culture is a good idea.

Michael Hartmann: 37:52

I also agree.

Jaime López: 37:54

Um I think that they they are better or like more suited to specific situations. Uh something that I find often with my East Asian colleagues. They're very much not short-term oriented. They're quality and long-term oriented.

Michael Hartmann: 38:10

Yeah.

Jaime López: 38:11

Uh, which makes them really good at building a strategy for how to grow this company in the next 10 years. But there's probably not the same skill set you want if your whole focus is delivering the next quarter earnings.

Michael Hartmann: 38:27

Yep. You know, it's interesting. So for me, Asia, what I think about is how important relationships are. You know, I I think about a time where I um two different times, two different companies where I worked with a lot of people and Japan happens to come to mind. And how how our relationship, our ability to work together changed after we had met in person.

Jaime López: 38:55

I would agree. Like it it's a step change.

Michael Hartmann: 38:58

Yeah. And I think that's I think that generally is true across cultures, but it feels like that's a culture, those are cultures, no, I'm I'm over generalizing because I think there's a lot of nuance to all the different Asian countries. But I think in general, like that like relationships are are critical there in understanding the yeah how they're connected and all that. It's so that's that's been interesting from my standpoint. Because to your point, like I don't know that there's a culture that's better or worse, like, but it's I think it's good to recognize the differences.

Jaime López: 39:32

Yeah, I I completely agree. And as you said, that managers have to adjust to their people, which I 100% kind of submit to. Um we also have to assign to the cultures that we work with, or sorry, have to adjust to the cultures that we work with. And for example, kind of working with Asian uh colleagues, um, you can see that you might think that in our Western European-American culture, you meet somebody at a conference or have a dinner, it's one more person, one more potential customer. That is not true in reverse. They're like you will be a big thing for them. That this person has sat down with me for dinner and invested their precious little time into hearing me out and having a conversation carries a lot of weight. So we have to respect that and we have to kind of give it the way that it that it has for for people. people in who are half growing in those cultures.

Michael Hartmann: 40:26

Yeah, it's it's that's an interesting nuance. Yeah. Well I think the the point here for everybody who's watching or listening is that take if you are particularly if you're in a leadership role and you have people in multiple cultural globally be be cognizant of that. And probably like I mean don't do it. I made generalizations about teams that I worked with in certain areas and once I got to know them I found that many of my assumptions were not valid. Which which I think this is another like key point for all this right I think um this is a subtle thing but I'm noticing it but in our conversation here very regularly is that you gotta be open to changing your mind which is funny because well like I think uh I think about the US political scenario right where people are criticized widely for changing their positions on topics and I'm like I actually think that's a sign of uh maturity yeah I I absolutely agree with that it's maturity it's kind of emotional intelligence um that brings me back to a situation at a company I used to work where they tried to basically copy paste the values of a very large company and one of those was being right or being right often.

Jaime López: 41:57

And I remember having a very lively discussion that in my opinion and that of other leaders being right is not a value. I don't care if my people are wrong as long as they say like hey you're right I got it wrong and this is the data that says why I'm wrong I'm gonna pivot I'd much prefer that than people getting kind of calcified like this is the way that things should be so politics.

Michael Hartmann: 42:21

I mean my I I tell people my goal is to be because I think I'm a generally smart person and make good decisions but I so I my goal is to be confident but humble, right? In other words humble not sound downplaying my but being open to the idea that I could be wrong about something. Strong opinions loosely held yeah exactly yeah yeah exactly I've heard that so I I need to remember that to describe it better more succinctly at least all right well let's maybe let's wrap up here um so because our audience is primarily ops people marketing ops how yeah I you know I think a lot of people listening go this all sounds great but we're so busy you know ops isn't like we've got to deliver so much stuff you know we already don't have enough time how do you how do you bring how do you how do you think this would a values based approach would help them in terms of morale performance you know reputation pick pick the the the variant there.

Jaime López: 43:24

Yeah so I'm gonna get up my soapbox for a minute and say like trying to get ops people to to adopt this and believe in it. Ops is the hardest job I've done and it's constant firefighting. I don't know an ops team that is like literally going about their day anywhere ever. And I think that that's exactly where values matter the most when everything is burning you need that framework to make decisions that doesn't require like a committee of 10 to make the decision. That you can trust people to act based on that framework and go and do the thing because always something needs doing a fire needs being put out. Yeah so you can optimize for speed you can optimize for sustainability whatever is important to your company and your team but optimize on something and do it kind of intentionally the counterpart of that where I see and where I think I and my teams have gotten it wrong I've seen ops teams that have awesome playbooks extremely good systems perfect documentation and horrible morale or people very very burned out. The difference between the performing and burning out tends to be those the value alignment or having values in some sense.

Michael Hartmann: 44:42

And I think one of the things that I because I totally agree with you it feels like what that having the agreement on values and the trust that we're all going to support it and that I'm not going to get burnt at the stake for making the mistake as long as I was doing it with the intention of supporting the values is it gives people agency to do what they believe is the right thing within the framework of those values. And I think there's there's a lot of there's a lot of people who would who who might be stuck in a place where there's very rigid rules like step by step do all this and all that but don't feel like they have any control over what their day to day looks like and I think that really is hard for people to deal with.

Jaime López: 45:22

It is it is like opposite environment where basically everything is important and kind of no balls can drop and we all have more balls than kind of a human can handle. So I think that this like ultimately when you have a set of agreed values and like a direction to act based on values you can with your team answer the question like even if if this causes a ball to drop would we still do it is it worth sacrificing the values or the ball? Which ones or the two? And very often that allows you to say like hey you know to business leader X, this feature you want to implement or this integration might be vitally important to you but overall this will put us in a worse place. We're gonna drop this or we're gonna delay this or we're gonna delegate it. And that is a much more tenable and safer position for an ops team than to say like I'm gonna try to work another 27 hours this week to deliver this integration.

Michael Hartmann: 46:17

Yeah. I think I think about uh people who listen to this for a while I've probably talked about um the seven habits of highly effective people which I'm a big fan of in the in the whole um Frankly time yeah yeah and I think one of the biggest things I did when I got Frank Covey system is like the first thing you do do you remember this or you do a personal mission statement.

Jaime López: 46:43

I don't have a personal mission statement.

Michael Hartmann: 46:45

But I so I did and to me this is a maybe an analogy in that when I did that I don't think I really had a framework for making this is kind of general life decisions but you talked about this like take care of yourself then your your in my case like spouse and my kids and family and then everything else right so when things would come up and I had to make a tough decision about how I would allocate my time it made it very easy for me to go I'm gonna live with my values based on what I believe my personal mission is. This is the order of so that like I think the same thing applies here.

Jaime López: 47:22

I would agree I I think that's kind of it's that framework for kind of how to make tough decisions and to force yourself to actually make the decisions that a decision within this framework is always going to be better than a non-decision.

Michael Hartmann: 47:36

Yeah well it's I've I I've been reminded multiple times lately about the rush song Free Will where it has the the line it says if you choose not to make a choice you still have made a choice right yeah I I am on the same boat and I'm guilty too often of not making up decisions and then putting on the back burner things that are actually very important. Yeah for sure Jaime so much fun I this is a topic I I love I I'm sure it's going to come through in the in this episode or has come through if folks want to continue that conversation or could keep up with you what's the best way for them to do that?

Jaime López: 48:12

They can find me on LinkedIn Jaime Lopez uh there's like a million people by say first name and last name but if you enter like slash Jaime Lope you'll you'll reach my profile. Uh always to discuss about this with any listener, any leader who wants kind of to continue the conversation and massive thanks to you Michael for making this happen.

Michael Hartmann: 48:31

Yeah absolutely it was my pleasure I enjoyed it um I would love to continue the conversation unfortunately we do have to end so as we say all the good things come to an end. So Jaime again thank you thanks to our listeners for continuing to support us if you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be a guest like Jaime please reach out to Naomi Mike or me and we'd be happy to get the ball rolling on that. Until next time bye everybody brilliant thank you all right