Your Work Friends | Fresh Insights on the Now and Next of Work

AI Ambition: Balancing Innovation with Trust, Connection and Human Relationships w/McKinsey NA CHRO Wendy Miller

• Francesca Ranieri • Season 2

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Here’s the deal—AI promises a lot.
Efficiency, productivity, transformation. Every week, something new.

But work also runs on things like trust, connection, and human relationships. So the real question isn’t just how fast we adopt AI—it’s how we balance ambition with reality, timelines, people, and humanity.

In this episode, we sit down with Wendy Miller, Chief HR Officer for North America at McKinsey & Company, to talk about what balancing AI ambition and reality actually looks like on the ground. Wendy gets candid about the chaos, the learning curves, and what it really takes for leaders and teams to adapt without losing their footing—or their people.

We dig into the rewiring of organizations, the blind spots most execs miss, and why the real edge in the AI era isn’t speed—it’s humanity.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why “go smaller, but go fast” might be the smartest AI adoption strategy yet
  • The cost of chasing speed before impact—and how to avoid it
  • How to upskill, experiment, and play without losing control
  • The new role of HR as the human side of digital transformation
  • Why trust and authenticity are still your best performance tools
  • What a “learner’s mindset” really looks like in practice
  • How to reinvest AI’s efficiency gains back into better leadership, better work, and better culture

Find Wendy on LinkedIn 

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.

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SPEAKER_04:

Can we use this technology and AI revolution as a way to empower your organization to do things in a better way?

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to your work friends. I'm Mel Platt. And I'm Francesca Reneri. And we break down the now and next of work. So you stay ahead. What's going on?

SPEAKER_01:

Nothing much. Nothing much at all. I already put my Christmas tree up. Tis the season. Yeah. 2025 has been the year where November 1st the Christmas tree goes up.

SPEAKER_00:

We gotta create our magic. Francesca, who did we sit down with this week?

SPEAKER_01:

We sat down with Wendy Miller. She is the chief HR officer for North America for McKinsey. And we talked about balancing AI ambition with reality. Here's the deal AI promises a lot. Like a lot. And every week it's something else. But more than ever, it's a promising thing like efficiency, productivity. But work also runs on things like trust, connection, and human relationships. The real question isn't just how fast we adopt AI, it's how we balance ambition with reality, timelines, people, humanity. So we sat down with Wendy Miller. We wanted to talk to her about how she thinks about balancing AI ambition and reality for herself, for leaders, for organizations and employees, and what we should be paying attention to right now. Mel, what did you think about this conversation?

SPEAKER_00:

I loved it because one, just getting insights from Wendy, who is in the know, I would say, but in the real world examples, she's sharing around what McKinsey is testing and learning and trying, and just really sharing the vulnerability around we're all learning something and being open to that is is a we're in a unique space and we should enjoy it. So it was a positive, I feel, constructive message to share with some really good insights for those who are also exploring.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And Wendy is one of those people too you just want to hang out with. 100%. And with that, here's Wendy.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. We are excited to have you here, Wendy. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. We're talking about AI and the acceleration of AI. It's moving super fast, and from your seat, you've got like a front row seat to what's happening. What does it really look like on the ground?

SPEAKER_04:

I think it looks pretty chaotic, is what I would tell you. The speed of innovation and the speed of adoption in the last six months is incredible. I heard someone say that large language modules have learned more in the last six weeks than they had in the last six years. Usage is just so much higher. And it obviously, the more you use it, the more the AI becomes better. And so on the ground, what it requires is for all of us to get comfortable with things being a little clunky, right? So as you bring on a new tool and you're changing the process and you're identifying the process and you're upskilling your organization to be comfortable with the technology, that's a lot of disruption at the same time. We were on this journey around identifying our performance management systems. And we rolled out a tool that we call evaluator aid. And it allows for you to run through the entire performance management of collecting the information, pulling in the other resources and other facts that you might have in someone's performance review, collecting that information, synthesizing it, and starting to help you iterate on what a feedback memo would look like. We're 18 months into that journey. A year ago, the tool was very mediocre. The tool, this performance cycle, has been so much better. And yet we still have so much more to do. And so I think all of us have to have a mindset where you're working with something, you're giving improvements and be much more agile. We love to use that word, but for each human, that's a lot to continue to navigate. So I think it's exciting. I think there's a lot of growth and potential for all of us to learn new skills. And we have to remember that sometimes that feels pretty challenging.

SPEAKER_00:

What we're seeing in a lot of organizations from folks that we're talking to every day, and then obviously the headlines and what we hear from people in multiple organizations is they're told go out and use it and not getting a ton of guidance around it, get these efficiencies, see how it works. And so, how do you get them to balance all of that change, but also have fun in the process to see what's possible?

SPEAKER_04:

I think it's really hard. I think setting the vision of where this will go and the potential for change is still a vision that many people can't quite articulate. And that then leads to people saying, hey, take the tools, start to play with them and see what you can come up with. That's where actually a lot of the innovation is happening, right? At the ground level, here are processes that I'm doing today that even maybe senior folks don't understand how hard they are to do or how much time they take. And that is an interesting approach and a good one. Have people on the ground start to experiment and come up with ideas. And I think you have to lean into this as a new way of working in a way that you used to maybe know exactly what you're going to do every day. And how do I innovate? How do I bring a change mindset to things? How do I share and communicate with other people? We have found that creating communities that share the learnings and putting out, hey, this worked for me, you try it. Personal life and professional life, but that's where a lot of people are learning on the ground. Oh, I did it this way, so I could try it over here too. But that isn't been the way we've been working together over the last ever, quite honestly. Some people on innovation teams know how to come together and bring different people from different parts of your organization to then innovate on a process or a product. But your HR organization hasn't been your innovation center, per se, right? Like we've been rolling out and doing the things that we do and keeping things steady and no mistakes kind of atmosphere is what people would like to say about your HR processes. And so now what you're saying is, hey, go play with this and get it close to right, and we'll see and we'll make it better. But that is actually a pretty different way of thinking.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, there's it seems to be like this huge push for speed to adoption. You've been thoughtful in that performance management. I love that example because it's only gotten better over time, and then there's still room for improvement. And so there's like this need for speed. But as I think Francesca, one of my favorite things you always say is go slow to go fast. It's one of my favorite things. So in this moment, there's a real cost potentially for speed. So, what's that cost if you are trying to focus more on adoption versus impact?

SPEAKER_04:

I think if you go fast and go big, then the mistakes are more costly. And I also think that if you fail in a large way, it is too public and will stop some of the innovation. And the thing about AI is how do you create like smaller pockets with some boundaries on them so that you can experiment in a smaller way and you can iterate and make the process better and deal with the mistakes, but all in something that you can get your arms around. And the challenge with the push for speed and the push for efficiency is like how quickly can you get this innovation and the AI into a spot where you get the efficiencies out and the gains across your organization? So you're balancing those two things, but while you process rewire, you culturally rewire, you upscale your organization. So I do think it's a go smaller, but go fast, smaller, and learn and then roll it out, which I think the best of the best are doing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. From your own journey, what are some blind spots you would advise executives or people to look out for with AI?

SPEAKER_04:

From an organization perspective, the blind spot that I see is that all of this is coming that much of this could come out of your IT or from your CIO. And that it could feel like uh all tech all the time in the way you identify your organization. And I think what we know for sure is that there's a human-centric side to this and an organization process design side to the transformations that need to happen. And so you need to think about who is that team that is rolling this out and thinking about rewiring a function and ensure that it is tech in partnership with the business leader or the HR leader so that you can think about doing this in a much more holistic way for your organization. And the challenge is I'll just speak for myself and is I don't think anyone would have called me a tech savvy leader six months ago. And I didn't even think I needed to be a tech savvy leader. I know you need to be a business leader. That to me has been true. I think HR professionals are better when they are partnered with the business and understand the key drivers of success and performance for your organization. It's probably a very obvious thing to say, but we should, I think we all should dig deeper into what is the performance of our organization and what are the key drivers that matter. But tech has become one of those, and AI has become one of those very quickly. And so my challenge to myself is to become much more comfortable and AI savvy. And it's hard. I've got established habits and processes and the way I like to work. And so again, you have to step back and try to rethink some of the things that have worked for my for the entirety of my career and think, could I do this differently? I'm meeting with someone who challenges me and pushes me. Trying to do it on your own is one way, but finding someone who can help you think about it and change once you've been doing something for a while. It's nice to have somebody that can just offer some new ideas.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Better together.

SPEAKER_04:

Better together for sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

It's interesting too. I'm looking at like the Moderna CHRO is now the CIO as well. They put tech under her in addition to HR, which to me signals we're thinking about AI as quote unquote part of that resource in human resources. And so it begs a very interesting question around like org design and everything else. When you think about the tech piece, it's just, and it's all moving so quickly. All this is going on from a cultural perspective, a tech perspective, an org design perspective. And to your very good point, a lot of the AI, especially right now, it's every quarter there's some big update. Yes. And that's really hard to do these like big cultural transformations and big org design changes when it's all changing so quickly. I've never seen speed like this in my life.

SPEAKER_04:

I agree. I totally agree. I think we all are gonna have to learn how to iterate a little bit faster. And that's hard on your people. That's really hard on your people when their roles are changing and evolving. You have agents that are part of the design of the organization. Tech will just be embedded. Now, for organizations like McKinsey, where we bring in a pretty healthy-sized group of kids coming out of undergrad or their MBAs or early in their professional careers, that group will be tech savvy. So the bottom is going to push us quick to say there are better ways to do this, there are faster ways to do this. That generation will have AI as part of the portfolio of how they work every day. And I think we'll learn a lot from them.

SPEAKER_01:

It's all dead. And then you have other people that are saying this is gonna be the best thing on the face of the planet. AI is gonna allow you to go back to farming. I don't know why every freaking analogy with every futurist is, oh, we're all gonna be able to plant our own vegetables. I'm like, what the hell is going on with the farming analogy? Yes. I mean writing.

SPEAKER_03:

But it is really hard work. Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. A thousand percent. Like it's incredibly hard work. Also, like I'm not even gonna talk about the state of farmers right now. So it's just this is I don't know if this is the analogy we want to go with. Maybe we go with candle making or we're making donuts. But if you're a manager, if you're a leader, if you're in an organization, you're gonna have emplo some employees that are gonna see this as awesome, massive opportunity LFG. And then you're gonna have some other folks that are just like, this is taking my job. And I don't want to touch it. Or if you're leading a team or a company to keep people at least engaged or not freaked out. What's the play there?

SPEAKER_04:

I think we're all learning how to do this as we go, quite honestly. It's such a disruptor for folks, and depending on where you are in what role you play, and your own ability to work from a place of confidence or a place of fear, I think you'll react a little differently. I think overall you you can allow people to not opt in and to learn how to work in this way. I think it is a huge mistake. And ignoring that this is happening and doing your job the way you used to do it is a mistake. Will it create some efficiencies? Will some roles go away? They will. Will we still need real leaders, the human touch? We'll need judgment, we'll need folks that can think beyond the rule and create the exception. We'll need leaders that can provide the care and the insight. So if I was in the camp of not engaging in this, I am missing out on how to understand how this works and to upskill myself because we're gonna want folks that are truly adding value on top of AI. But I think it's challenging, right? There are definitely folks that are in roles where you go, this is a pretty administrative role, and all anyone is telling me is that it goes away. If I was in that type of role, I would be asking myself, where can I uniquely add value? And what can I do so that I take the efficiency of AI and then I, Wendy, personally make it better. And I think you should talk to somebody and think it through. And exactly what I said about the one-on-one. Sometimes it's hard to see the opportunities that you have in your own role because you're so entrenched in your day-to-day. Have somebody hold a mirror up to it, ask some questions, brainstorm, be curious. I'm not trying to act like that's easy, by the way.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm not. It's not easy to do, but that is the good advice, right? There's a couple things I think about with this. One is I think everyone owns their own career. They own their own development. Like at the end of the day, if you're taking a long view in the long arc of your life, to your very good point about intentionality, that starts with owning it. And I think part of that starts with how can you be more curious and that sort of thing. There is another component at the organizational level around the organization's responsibility to upskill or to reskill. We were having conversations 10 years ago about starting to at least upskill our folks on AI literacy, cloud, blockchain. Like, what is the blockchain? I still don't know how to explain what the hell the blockchain is as opposed to a ledger. I'm like, it's a ledger, but I oh, it's fine. Anyway, it's a good, it's a good example. It's a good example. It's like how do you explain this? But how do we be literate? Like we started this 10 years ago, but we are in triage. Organizations are in triage right now. What does practical reskilling look like at the organizational level right now? What is the good play here?

SPEAKER_04:

I think you've got to do both. So I 100% agree with you. Like we own our own development and we should all feel empowered to take charge of that. There are a ton of resources now available for free online that you could learn a lot. And then obviously, people is our business. Our client success is in is because of the people that we bring in and how robustly we train and upskill and apprentice them. We're doing a lot organizationally on top of it. There are learning programs you can join. There are small groups, there's one-on-one support, but we are trying to create an environment where there's in any way in which you learn, you could go and find the resources to help you. It's not perfect. That too is something like our learning and development people are running as fast as they can to create the programs, to roll them out and to get them in front of folks. The small group to me, the sharing within a community and just even creating the space. We created a Slack channel for people to share ideas. We've created learning forums where you come together and you just spend an hour on Zoom and people talk about how they're using AI. There's a lot of that is actually pretty cool and pretty easy to do. And you don't even need your organization to do it, quite honestly. You could find 10 friends and say, okay, we're going to hold ourselves accountable to do this together. Because don't you think like anything else? Like you know you're supposed to learn it and you're supposed to be curious and play, and then your day gets busy and you're trying to get through what's on your plate. And it's like exercise. Like I know I should exercise, but if I have a buddy who's holding me accountable to exercising, I'm more likely to do it. But we're all running at this pretty hard and pretty fast, is what it feels like today to me.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And I gotta say, McKinsey's learning team, we know those people over there. You got a great learning team over there. Yeah. Yes, we have an exceptional learning team.

SPEAKER_04:

They are exceptional. Yeah. But you would expect no less, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. If you had a crap, learning team would be like Wendy.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. I'd love to circle back on the human relationship side of things. We met with an expert last year, Dwenna Blomstrom. She talks about this concept of human debt. And human debt is what happens when there's a big disconnect between these huge technological advances, but then what we lose sight of are things that really matter. And you've talked about this yourself, right? It's purpose at work, connection, relationships, trust. We see trust in the toilet these days. So when we think about that, how do you make sure that stuff isn't lost? Like the community building piece that you're building around learning together is so great because I think that feeds into making sure this human debt doesn't occur. But what how do you do that at the individual level, the team level, and the org level, making sure those things stay intact?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, Mel, this is the million-dollar question. If you reflect on the last five plus years, we've all been through so much. It's actually a bit unimaginable the level of big change that has happened. You think about obviously the pandemic and learning to work remotely and the great resignation, everyone is leaving. And so you crafted programs and approaches to just keep your employees in your organization. And then it felt like on a dime, that's shifted. And all of a sudden, many organizations are struggling with growth and costs that are too high, and suddenly people aren't moving around, which actually creates its own different complexity. So, in all of that, it's pretty easy to see that organizations have eroded community, culture, trust. And now we're adding on this unbelievable AI transformation. And there's no way not to acknowledge that there's a lot of fear and job insecurity as part of this transformation for folks. So, with that lovely backdrop, I think about it, I think every day. And I think there's no way that you can't do it at every level of your organization, as you said. So you build trust through speaking authentically, through saying what you mean and doing what you say. And you're gonna do it at the individual level, you're gonna do it at the team level, you're gonna do it at the organization. You're gonna have your purpose and your mission and your values. And we need to stay super, super true to those. McKinsey just hit 100 years. We're celebrating our 100-year anniversary as a firm. And we had a big celebration with the Global Partner Group a couple weeks ago in Chicago. And it's incredible one how many companies that you look at that are 100 years old, and when you see the names, they embody something and what they stand for. And we spent a lot of time coming back to our values and talking about the purpose and the mission of our work and delivering unbelievable impact for our clients and an unbelievable apprenticeship and experience for our colleagues. Having people on message and the message be real and something the leaders believe in goes a long way in navigating the inevitable amount of change that's coming our way. Do I trust you? Do you care for me? Do you have my back? Bringing that full circle. Will you tell me honestly what is happening in our organization when inevitable change is going to continue to happen? Will you take care of me while I'm here? Will you be generous and take care of me if we have to part ways? I think they're critical things to all organizations and to all leaders. And it's hard. It's hard.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

What advice would you give to a leader who is maybe struggling with that today? Their direct team is potentially being impacted. They want them to be optimistic about what's possible, but also they don't have all the answers. So how can they double down on creating that meaning and connection and growth for their people?

SPEAKER_04:

I think the first thing you can do as a leader for any of your teams is to make sure you have a connection with that group and that they know that you are an authentic caring leader. I think that means you share information as you can. Doesn't mean you share everything all the time. And that your team knows that you're doing your best to speak the truth and to navigate all of this, balancing the needs of the company with the needs of the employees, which are your team. I think you could be pretty transparent when things are tough and say this is going to be hard. I think we can also look for the positives and do our best to upskill and to create a safe place for people to innovate and play and figure this out. And you as a leader set the tone on how as those things occur, how do you navigate them? How do you support folks as we're on this journey? But it's real work. And we're all really busy. I think that's the thing. Like you think this is the work on top of the work, which is caring for my team.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I I worked with a leader one time. I did not give her this nickname. She was known as the robot. And I will tell you that because I think the idea of being an authentic leader and just even establishing trust, like your first two things that you talked about, goes so far right now. Like, are you real? Do I believe you? Do I trust you? Do I trust that you have your back? Like, even just sweating that to me, based on what Mel and I are seeing and hearing, that is so huge.

SPEAKER_00:

We talk a lot about human capabilities becoming more and more important and really leaning into them. Things like critical thinking, curiosity, resilience, of course, through all of this. What do you feel is the one human capability that is most important for people to lean into?

SPEAKER_04:

The one is challenging me. I think it's a learner's mindset. Realizing that your experience has gotten you to this point. There's a lot changing. So how do you continue to learn and grow? The most important thing that I'm focusing on is how do I continue to learn and grow and change? Right. So the learner's mindset assumes that as you learn, you're going to change. That's what I guess I've got. That's tough. That's a tough question.

SPEAKER_00:

I think you have the perfect answer though, because it combines all of those things. You have to be curious. You have to be okay with not knowing everything. You have to be okay with failing, not getting it right. Like that encompasses a lot. So I think that's a really good idea.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, we haven't said that out loud, but you're right. Being able to fail is hard. And have it be okay for us as individuals and for teams, that is a really hard thing to do.

SPEAKER_01:

I want to talk about like the next 12 to 18 months because I'm thinking about some shifts coming. Obviously, with McKinsey, you all are looking at what's happening and a lot of future casting, forecasting as well. You are in charge of developing the people that are doing all of that at most companies. What is one shift that you think is probably going to be coming that most leaders and employees aren't maybe seeing yet or might not be talking about yet? What do you think is going to be something we need to be looking out for? I think right now people see it coming.

SPEAKER_04:

They're just not sure what it means, what does it look like and feel like? The embedding of technology, flexibility, rewiring functions is going to be really disruptive. And so I think as you look out to the next 12 to 18 months, we will all have agents that are part of the way we work. And today, most of us probably do not have agents that are part of the way we work. And so getting very comfortable in crafting your team, whether or not it's a McKinsey team where you go out to serve a client, and so you're really putting that team together, but even the way you would solve a problem and the way you would team in a corporation will feel different. So I think in the next 12 to 18 months, the rewiring, the identification of your processes will for many organizations start to become in place. It will be there. And that's not that long when you think about how different that could feel with the way it looks like you're working. 12 to 18 months is nothing. What are the org development impacts of that? That's the million-dollar question, I think. Yeah, I think that there will be some efficiency gains. I think some of the administrative areas will go away. I think the demands on your more experienced colleagues to truly enable actions and decisions to be made with even more information will be critical. There's a lot of different views as to where and how you'll be more thoughtful about where you have your organization designed and how they then enhance the technology.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It will be quite disruptive to org design.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I think we're going to see the smorgasboard of org design from people that are like, yeah, a genic. Let's lay off 4,000 customer service reps and just use it. There's the middle ground, and then there's the how do we think about the abundance mindset on some of this stuff to think about really leveraging our people in a way that we can go into places where we haven't been before, business lines that we haven't been able to do. I think it's going to be hugely disruptive. My biggest concern people's reaction to change is going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting.

SPEAKER_04:

If we use the performance management tool example, what's interesting about us having rolled this out is that what we've also found is besides creating efficiency in the way you do your performance. Performance reviews, everybody upskilled a bit in the way they did the review. And so it's a nice example of your abundance mindset of how do you use technology to be better. The evaluator asked more specific questions and was a bit more organized because they knew it was being captured by tech. We're very much an interview-based performance feedback culture. So we take a lot of the different artifacts or kind of the facts that you would pull into a review, but then we have a ton of one-on-one feedback that we gather. And we leaned into that culturally. We've tried to lean out of it before. We don't like it. We like the one-on-one feedback. So we developed a tool that was the part of the review process that we liked and enabled it in a better way. But the person being interviewed also gives a better answer, a more thoughtful answer because they know it's being transcribed and captured. And then you spent more time kind of synthesizing that feedback and thinking about okay, what is the so what? What is the information I want to give to this person to perform better, rather than spending all your time on the upfront stuff just capturing the information? It's been really pretty cool to watch. It's what you want to have happen when you think about how do we all reinvest the time that we get in the savings of the efficiency of AI into doing the job better. 1000%.

SPEAKER_01:

That's an amazing example because A, it's being held true to the promise of what performance management should be, which is helping you develop, helping you get better. And also in that, getting people's ability to give really robust feedback that actually enables you to do that. And in a process that's easier for the person to do it, it's one, two, three. Damn.

SPEAKER_04:

The team has been at it for a while. And that's the thing. Like it's real work to pull this together. Yeah. And yeah, just a real shout out to the team. You can imagine there was a fair amount of resistance. The performance management of our colleagues is what we do. It's such a sacrosanct process for us. And so we boldly took it head on. I'm proud of the work they did.

unknown:

Should be.

SPEAKER_04:

It's awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

We like to do a little get to know the human side of you. Are you up for a quick rapid round? I sure am. Awesome. Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?

SPEAKER_04:

Work is rapidly changing, as we all know. And so I think it's going to look a lot like an acceleration of the last two years. And we're going to lean into technology and automation, and it'll become even more further embedded into the way we work. And I think human connections and meaning and purpose will have hopefully just as much of a part of the workforce and the way we work as it does today. Maybe even more so. I hope I hope so. I do too. I think we could take an optimistic view or we could take a negative view. I think if you take the optimistic view, human connection is more intentional. And you will have to embed that into your day and to just be a little bit more thoughtful about how about how you connect with people.

SPEAKER_00:

I like it.

SPEAKER_04:

I like to see it.

SPEAKER_00:

I am an optimist at heart. So I believe we will get there. I do. What's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see just die already?

SPEAKER_04:

I would really love for us to all have more of a through-cycle mindset and to remember like there are these core strengths and values that organizations have and that we need to rely on. And so to navigate this changing landscape, but with a long-term view versus a short-term view.

SPEAKER_00:

What's the greatest opportunity that you think most orgs are missing out on right now?

SPEAKER_04:

They're missing out on a way to take all of this change and to have it be an opportunity where you look at ways you've worked or processes you've had in place that haven't been working. And can we use this technology and AI revolution as a way to empower your organization to do things in a better way? And so rather than it being fear and efficiency, it's upskilling, it's improving the way we work, it's improving the way we serve our clients and our customers. And I think we're missing the opportunity to balance the change and make it something that is exciting for folks.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, I'm gonna switch to get a little more personal. That's okay. More about you. What music are you listening to right now?

SPEAKER_04:

So I listen to all the things that my 19-year-old daughter sends me. She knows I'm a Swifty at heart and I do like to play things on repeat. But I've been pretty intrigued with the new Olivia Dean music that's out there. Okay. But yes, she tries to keep me a little bit hip and a little bit cool. It's a pretty heavy lift, quite honestly.

SPEAKER_01:

But she's trying. I give her the credit for trying. When you have a song you love, you just play it over and over again. Are you that person? I do.

SPEAKER_04:

I do. I actually do the whole album and then I find comfort in the repeat. Yep.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Same. No more shuffle. What uh what are you reading? Audiobooks included.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm an old school paperback, like a book person. I also think that my day is better if I'm reading a book and really engaged in a book. I just finished Covenant of Water, which was just an unbelievable undertaking, but a beautifully written novel. And the book that's on my nightstand right now is this remarkably bright creatures, which, if you all haven't heard about it, one of the main characters is an octopus. But people love it. So I'm about a quarter of the way through. Oh man.

SPEAKER_01:

Did you see that movie, like My Friend the Octopus or whatever that thing is called? I have not seen it, but apparently it's quite sad. Oh Jesus, I can't even talk about it.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm like, I'll add it to my list. Yes. The people, when you say you're reading this book, they then ask, they and recommend the it's a documentary, right? It's true. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Who knew that octopuses could be your friend? That was that's really good.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no more calamari. Just absolutely no more calamari. Not happening.

SPEAKER_04:

Who do you really admire? Um, I love this question. I admire my parents, and it makes me so proud to be able to say that, and also to feel so lucky to be able to say that. My mom and dad, I have one sister. They really role modeled what does it look like to work hard, stay true to your values, and persevere through all the things that life can give you. They pushed my sister and I to dream big, be bold, take chances. And I think the gift that they gave us, which is an incredible gift, is that you always knew no matter what happened that they had your back and that you had their support. And life is better when you know somebody has your back. I admire them, and I really hope that my kids would say that about me someday too.

SPEAKER_01:

That's lovely.

SPEAKER_00:

That's really nice. It sounds like they will. Your daughter's tracking you. Yeah, yeah, she is, exactly. All right, what's one piece of advice you wish everyone knew?

SPEAKER_04:

I think the piece of advice that I wish people knew is that it it takes intentionality to build a rich, full life. And life is full of lots of chapters. So you have hopefully a really long journey to be able to do lots of interesting things. So I wish people would think through what is the life that I'm looking to build and what are the choices that I'm gonna make at various points so that I build that life. And we all have more control of those choices than I think at times we think.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That's easy to forget the free will that you have to do that. Maybe close on something fun and not to put you on the spot. But I like daily mantras. I put a new sticky on my laptop keyboard every morning. What's my mantra of the day? What's a mantra about this that you'd like to leave everyone with that they can repeat for themselves?

SPEAKER_04:

Be bold, be fearless, have fun.

SPEAKER_00:

Like it. All right. With that, thank you, Wendy. This episode was produced, edited, and all things by us, myself, Mel Flett, and Francesca Reneri. Our music is by Pink Zebra. And if you like this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com. But you can also join us over on LinkedIn, join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode, and you think somebody else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

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Francesca Ranieri

Co-host
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Mel Plett

Co-host