In this series, I chat with various industry experts on the intricacies of business and discover what advice they can offer to both seasoned and emerging leaders. 

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking with Chris Burke, the Vice President of Transmission Operations at Entergy Corporation, a Fortune 500 energy company.

A dynamic leader with extensive experience in both the public and private sector, Chris brings together a unique mix of business acumen and technical knowledge. Today, he uses his expertise to guide Entergy’s transmission operations to help them deliver electricity to 3 million utility consumers across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. During our discussion, he shared how a people-centered leadership style has helped his team continue providing essential services to their customers, at a time when they’ve needed it most. 

Can you share a little bit about your background? Where were you born and raised? Where did you go to school? What did you study?

I was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. So I always tell everybody I’m kinda like a farm boy. Even though we lived in the city, you’re never really far from the country. After high school I went to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where I studied engineering. After graduating, I went to the Nuclear Power Program and was soon based in the San Francisco area where I served on nuclear powered cruises for about four years. From there, I headed to the Pentagon and served as a staff officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After active duty service, I decided to go to grad school for a joint degree where I got my law degree and MBA from the University of Virginia. 

How would you define leadership?

To me, leadership is the ability to effectively lever all the resources at one’s disposal towards the accomplishment of objectives. Those objectives could be business objectives, personal or professional objectives, charitable objectives, it doesn’t really matter because the concepts are still the same. 

What are the core principles that guide you as a leader right now?

1. People – Everything that you do either needs people or has an impact on people or both, so that’s the number one aspect of leadership from my perspective. 
2. Authority – The tools, the power, the resources that you have at your disposal to get things done. 
3. Responsibility – That internal holding to account that you apply to yourself, it’s the voice that you hear at two o’clock in the morning reminding you to get something done that you may have forgotten. 
4. Accountability – The external holding to account, someone outside you or some entity outside yourself setting the expectations for what you’re required to do. 

Where does inclusive leadership come into effect?

Inclusivity is about being able to optimize the impact of everyone on your team. When I look at inclusivity, I look at the ability of a team to be able to get everyone at their maximum contribution, so that the individuals optimize the whole. We talk about those people-resources, and the ability to leverage their contributions, and that doesn’t happen at an optimal level unless inclusivity is part of the mix. 

When it comes to leading from an inclusive lens, what has been the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge over the past year has been maintaining a degree of connectedness throughout this global pandemic. That connective tissue that binds employees and team members together in a way that optimizes the work product that we’re trying to achieve. 

We run a 24-7 operation. Folks need to be in the control center, they have to be there. So we had to go above and beyond to make sure that we were very cautious and mindful of COVID protocols. Now we did have some close calls, but fortunately we were able to manage things successfully, and it looks like we’re getting closer to things opening back up. I would say the most challenging aspect is how I could walk by the water cooler and run into somebody and say, “Hey, I was thinking about this and I know that you’ve done it before.” Now you have to set up a meeting, make a phone call, put an item on someone’s calendar. It’s a little bit more challenging, but the work still goes on. 

What do you see as some key opportunities that lie ahead for businesses like yours now that we’re approaching a post-pandemic world?

We’re in the business of providing an essential service to our customers. So our work has continued, and our responsibility is to ensure that people still get their power, irrespective of what else is going on. We didn’t just get a pass just because there’s a global pandemic. In fact, I think the expectations went even higher, because more people are working from home and relying on electronic means of communication, so the need and dependence on power has never been greater. 

From that standpoint, what’s going to happen as we come out of this pandemic? 

First of all, we’re looking forward to people being reconnected to the social events and the things that make life worth living. And by the way, all those activities and events are things that consume power, so our business is still going to go on. We’ll be able to reignite those relationships, not only within our own team, but across our customer base, across our region, and across our nation. So for us, it’s gonna be business as usual, plus some. 

What is the advice you would give to a younger Chris Burke?

I’ve learned over the years that the technical aspects are important tools, but the things that really make the difference in whether you’ll be successful as an individual, a team or a company depends on people. The ability to liaise and form relationships where there’s an honest and trusting level of communication where people feel included and comfortable giving their best with the understanding that it’s going to be visibly appreciated.

In this series, I chat with various industry experts on the intricacies of business and discover what advice they can offer to both seasoned and emerging leaders.  

I spoke with Jean Patrick, CEO of ScaleUP Edge, an exclusive community for C-suite leaders which provides a vital network, resources and support for executives scaling up their companies. 

A strategic C-level executive herself, Jean brings a breadth of knowledge from a variety of industries to build, scale and transform organizations from small to large public companies. As the leader of ScaleUp Edge, she convenes a wide community of executive leaders, enabling them to overcome shared challenges and thrive together in ways that are often difficult for isolated leaders to accomplish. During our conversation, she shared how her leadership experience informs how she embraces change, harnesses diversity and builds teams that can succeed in complex environments. 

How would you define leadership?

Leadership is really about bringing a group of people with you to a common goal. It’s creating a team and bringing them forward from a leadership perspective. You have to pay attention to people’s skill set, people’s motivation and people’s strengths and create a team around you to help drive toward that goal. You also have to be a strong communicator.

What I hear you say, in terms of leadership and some core principles, is that communication is key in order to be an effective leader. What other core principles do you think are important?

I think understanding your people is key. Understanding, listening, accepting differing points of view doesn’t mean that one’s right and one’s wrong. A leader must be clear on what the goal is and celebrate success, not necessarily just the final success, but to celebrate and acknowledge those successes along the way.

What are your thoughts on the recent mandates regarding inclusive leadership?

A mandate is unfortunate. I would say that for business leaders to have an inclusive mandate tells you that there is an issue, that there’s a challenge because you have to basically tell people you mustn’t or you must look at that. But we can’t sell that overnight. I work with a number of peers of mine and we talk about this issue. And the focus is really on bringing in different points of view, different experiences, differing opinions, and being able to recognize and understand them and listen to them, and that’s because you’re gonna be that much stronger of a team if you have that. 

If you have people that look like you, that think like you, that work like you… For instance, if I brought someone that looks like me — doing the same things along the way, I’m not as strong of a team. 

I don’t understand why there has to be a mandate to do this. I think all of us need to just accept differences, and understand the importance of that, and what it can do for you as a team and what it can do for you as a business.

What is the biggest challenge for a leader like yourself to successfully deal with different perspectives?

There’s probably two things. One is communication. My way of communicating can be heard differently by different people, so I have to really pay attention to how people are reacting and responding, and be open to questions. Another challenge I have is speed. If you take time upfront with those different opinions, your product or your solution is gonna be so much better. I’m this, “Hurry up, hurry up, let’s get moving, let’s get moving. I don’t have a lot of patience,” kind of person, but it’s taking the time up front to say “Let’s work through this,” especially in a start-up. It’s taking the time to listen.

What are some of the actions you, as well as your clients, instituted during this time in order to survive?

What we’re doing right now, like interaction on Zoom or other Google Meets. I think the other thing that I’ve had to experience and understand with my team is that I have a team that would work 24 hours a day. So now we’re working from home, and it’s easy just to pop in, so it’s really putting up some parameters around taking the necessary time off. I think that’s a big part of it. I’ve seen some of my clients host happy hours online. They will have topics on what’s their pet, what’s their favorite food, those kinds of things.

So you would say the lack of informal interaction is something that really hasn’t worked in this virtual world?

Yes, yes, absolutely. 

What else would you add to the list?

Probably building relationships with clients as I would like to. In order to build relationships sometimes it’s good to go have dinner, just get to know people that way. I think we’re all so busy that it seems odd for me to say “Let’s just get on a Zoom meeting to get to know each other.” As we build our clientele base, it’s that relationship building that has been a challenge.

Looking forward to a post-pandemic world, what do you see as some key opportunities that lie ahead for businesses?

There’s a lot of technologies that are coming up in the cloud and there’s ways for us to run our business online. So I think we’re gonna see more and more of those business technologies aim to better integrate so that they aren’t all separate systems, so it’s a very technology and systematic approach. I also think we’re gonna have people with different skill sets down the road. We’re gonna need people who understand the data, understand the analytics, and understand what happens with all of that.

What are some concerns that you have observed that we need to pay attention to as we venture into a post-pandemic arena? 

One of them is for companies that are going back into offices to think about the people that are uncomfortable in going back. Think about that transition. Going back to the office, I don’t think it’s gonna be as easy as it was when we had to shut it down. I worked for another company when we shut down with COVID. We were a global company, a larger company, and we did it within a day and a half. It was easy. We were a technology company so it was easy and we had some remote workers at the time. As a leader within an organization, I think we all need to consider people’s reaction and response to this transition.

I also think we’re gonna be in a different place from where we started. I think we’re gonna see more people working remotely and more people using the technologies that are available to us. I think we as leaders have to be comfortable with people working from home, when and if we choose and have that as an option. We’re gonna be able to pull from a different people hiring set, because if we can reach out to global remote workforces, we should be able to do that a lot easier now that we’ve lived through this pandemic.

What would be the best advice you would give your younger self?

Have an open mind and don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t ever get satisfied.

This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

In this series, I chat with various industry experts on the intricacies of business and discover what advice they can offer to both seasoned and emerging leaders. 

I sat with Daniella Kahane, an award winning filmmaker and the Executive Director/CEO of Women in Negotiation (WIN). Based out of New York, WIN is a female-focused organization aimed at empowering women to reach new heights both professionally and personally by building their negotiation skills. 

Through their annual summit, workshops and coaching sessions, this organization works to increase the percentage of women in leadership roles and tackle wage inequality. As the head of WIN, Kahane has always been passionate about female empowerment. In fact, her first documentary in 2011 explored the relevance of all-women colleges today and whether they will go extinct in the near future. During our conversation, she shared the principles that have guided her as a leader and kept her grounded during challenging times. 

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself — where were you born and raised? Where did you go to college? What did you study? 

I am a New Yorker through and through. I was born in New York and I was raised on the outskirts of New York City. I went to Barnard College in New York, which I credit with really unleashing my inner feminist — way before it was common like it is today. And I studied English Literature as well as Film and Psychology.

How would you define leadership? 

I think my definition of leadership is constantly evolving. I don’t know if I can pin it in the sand as a fixed thing. But I will say that the core things that are probably consistent to me about leadership are the powers that we have inside of ourselves to inspire, to uplift and to engender growth in the people around us. There’s an amazing quote that I love from the late Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, who was a great spiritual leader and the Chief Rabbi in England. And he says, “Good leaders create followers. Great leaders create leaders.” I think it’s so wise and so true and it’s something that I certainly aspire to as a leader.

What are the core principles that guide you as a leader? 

1. Humility, the idea that it’s okay not to know. As a leader, we don’t need to know all the answers and have all the answers at our disposal all the time. 
2. Vulnerability because it’s okay to make mistakes and to admit when things are hard. And I think this is something that a lot of leaders have a hard time with. 
3. Passion, if you want other people to care, you need to start by caring. The idea of living the values that you hope to engender in others.
4. Perseverance because there’s no substitute for hard work.
5. Faith, the idea that we don’t always know the way forward, but there is a way forward and fundamentally, I kind of believe that things will work out.

Our county has been calling for racial justice since the unfortunate death of George Floyd last year. Not only within society, but organizations are also being urged to step up and implement inclusive leadership. How do you feel about inclusion in the workplace? 

I think inclusion is something that everybody needs to be embracing, both in the workplace and personally. I think one thing that we realized this year, especially through this seismic shift beneath us, is the need to be able to show up in our totality, as opposed to, “Oh, I’m just gonna show you this small side of me.” There’s just this obvious bleeding of all these different aspects of work and home and life, and I think part of what has made this year so profound is that it has brought to the surface the dire need for change… It has brought the disease up into the light of day.

It’s exciting that companies are now working on the importance of diversity and inclusion. And I say inclusion too, I think you used inclusion as opposed to diversity and it’s so important. There’s a quote that I love from Verna Myers, who says, “Diversity is like being invited to the party and inclusion is being asked to dance.” And I love it because I think it has to go beyond the ‘who’s in the room.’ And the statistics show that everybody wins when we are leaning into our inclusion in the workplace. Companies perform better, there’s greater talent retention, better workplace culture, and just a healthier society, so I think it’s an absolute fundamental.

What are the biggest challenges leaders like yourself face when making sure everyone in their company is asked to dance?

It’s a full-time job in itself. Leaders are bringing in DEI specialists now because it’s not an option anymore, it’s a requirement. I think it’s great but it also has to stem from culture. If you are creating a culture where people feel safe being themselves and people also feel valued in terms of the work they’re doing, then it becomes a lot easier. I don’t think you’re fighting upstream as much. And so, it starts with culture and getting back to those core principles that I mentioned as a leader — the way you are emanating and infusing your company with those values.

What actions did you take during the pandemic, as you went remote, to make sure your company stayed whole?

Obviously, as an in-person event company, when we realized this wasn’t going away so quickly, we were forced with a very stark decision — do we freeze like a lot of other in-person event companies did and say, “We are not doing anything until life resumes.” Or do we say, “We’re going to make the best of it. We’re gonna lean into what we can.” 

And I remember the day, it was about three weeks before the in-person summit, and I said to my team, “I need to do something. We need to do something. We need to find a way to show up for our community right now. And it’s not gonna look like it was supposed to, but it’s gonna be something.” 

We had already pushed the official WIN Summit out. But in three weeks’ time, we planned a virtual summit that was free and open to the public with an optional fundraiser aspect to raise money for Personal Protective Equipment for healthcare professionals and first line responders. It was honestly as much about our own need to feel that we were doing something a little bit less helpless during a hard time, as well as obviously the desire to show up for our community. 

The event was amazing, and it was just kind of profoundly impactful, in terms of how it felt like we were able to connect people in a time of great isolation. And so I think for me, it was kind of demonstrative of the fact that there’s always a choice, right? We chose to say, “We’re going to embrace the tools that we have at our disposal,” and we shifted everything online. And we pushed on, and I’m so glad we did. 

And I will say it was hard, it wasn’t an easy thing at all. On a personal note, I was pregnant with my third child with a high-risk pregnancy, not even taking into account the risk of COVID. There were times that I felt like the business was not going where I wanted it to.

We had just launched workshops and coaching as additional products right before COVID hit, and whatever interest was there in the pipeline vanished with the pandemic. And I was just so exhausted and sick during my pregnancy that I really wanted to just say, “I’m done. I can’t handle this, this is obviously not working.” And it was only because of the coaches that we have on our team and the incredible WIN community that I said, “Okay, I’m gonna continue.” 

It wasn’t always easy but I’m so glad that I pushed on because it has picked up since. I got through my pregnancy, I have a beautiful baby girl, and we get a lot of validation for the work we do, so we know that it’s needed.

As the world moves forward, post-pandemic, what are some opportunities that lay ahead? 

I think more than ever, there’s going to be a desire to reconvene in person. And so in whatever way we can do that safely and healthily, I think we will. I do hope that our next summit will be a hybrid model of some sort. I think in general, there’s that need to reconnect. We’ve been so deprived of social connection and as a society we’ve been through a traumatic year to varying degrees and I think universally we feel more bonded to each other.  

And I really believe that this is the earthquake that needed to happen for us to heal as a country, because we need to heal. We see an awakening towards racial justice. We see an awakening towards gender equality and equity. We see an awakening towards mental health awareness, and so many issues that for long have been pushed under the rug, so to speak. And so I think that we’re moving towards leading and living with just much more nuance. 

What is one key piece of advice you would offer your younger self?

Patience. I think I was that graduate who left, expecting everything to happen immediately. I wanted to win awards for my films immediately. And I wanted to get married immediately. And I wanted to start a family immediately. And I just wanted everything all at once and I didn’t get it all at once. And it’s impossible to get everything all at once or even at all. But I think if I would have learned to live with more patience and trust in the process I would have saved myself a lot of angst and agitation.

This interview has been edited for space and clarity.

I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with award winning Puerto Rican film director Mariem Pérez Riera during Denver Film’s Women and Film Festival. 

Born to famous comedian, Silvero Pérez, and singer and painter, Roxana Riera, Mariem Pérez Riera was no stranger to the limelight. But it wasn’t until she was 9 years old, that she realized she didn’t want to be in the limelight as much as she wanted to help create it. Perez made waves in the industry with her first documentary, “Lo Pequeño Se Hace Grande”, in 2002 before going on to edit several films including “Talento Del Barrio” starring Daddy Yankee. But her biggest wave yet is soon to hit the big screen.

Her newest project, “Rita Moreno: A Girl Who Just Decided To Go For It,” opens in theaters on June 18th and will make Pérez Riera the first Puerto Rican woman to write, edit and direct a PBS’s American Masters Series, according to the Weekly Journal. 

“A Girl Who Just Decided To Go For It” follows trailblazing icon Rita Moreno and her story as a Latina in Hollywood. With 70+ years of experience under her belt and numerous awards, Moreno has lived through the good, the bad and the ugly in the industry. While she may have been the first Latina to win an Academy Award, she was also subject to sexism, toxic relationships and playing deeming roles despite her talent. Perez gives viewers a glimpse into Moreno’s life and why she’s inspired so many along the way, including herself. 

In the past, you’ve directed documentaries that were also a bit controversial, specifically “Cuando Lo Pequeño Se Hace Grande” about the US Navy base in Vieques. Will your new film about Rita Moreno have the same level of controversy? Why? 

I think it could be controversial, but more than that it’s about bringing awareness to social issues.  We talk about what it means to be a woman, period. And especially what it means to be a woman in the United States and in Hollywood while also being a Latina. I think the main theme of this movie is how hard it is to be a woman. 

What was it like to interview people like Eva Longoria and Morgan Freeman and finding out so much more about Rita Moreno? 

It wasn’t until I sat with Rita and I interviewed her the first time that I realized this documentary had to be so much more than just about her life. It had to be about her life as a woman because it’s amazing how many hardships she had and kept going for it regardless. And I think the fact that she talked so much about the importance of therapy is also critical. I’m glad that she talked about it because in a way she became my therapist every time I interviewed her. To me, it’s very inspiring to know that she is open to these topics especially at a time when they were considered taboo. And I think that’s what makes her such an amazing woman because she’s very self-aware, she always wants to be better and she’s able to recognize her weaknesses while still being a strong woman.  

While watching the documentary, I took some notes and I wanted to take the time to highlight some scenes. In one scene, she admitted that she had stage fright even at this age. She called it the “Curse of Rosita.”. Can you tell me about that? 

Rosita is her. That’s the little girl that she has inside of her. That’s her fears, that’s her insecurities. And we all have that and we all have those experiences that changed us in a way, for better or for worse. But it’s because she can recognize it, thanks to therapy, that she’s able to see when that little girl or those insecurities are bursting in her. And she’s able to say, “Wait, no, I have this under control.” So I learned a lot from listening to her experience. I think I’m a better person this year, thanks to Rita and going to therapy I can now calm my own insecurities as well. 

A scene that really struck me as a woman, mother and daughter was when she was at an industry party and she said the Mexican gardeners saved her. She said those were the first gentlemen she had seen all day. What did you think when you heard that? 

That line was important to include because Latinos are always perceived as bad people and in this case it was the total opposite. So to me it was important to show that the Mexican gardeners were in fact the only men doing the correct thing. While all the other men that were at that Hollywood party were the ones who weren’t respecting her. So to me, that’s important as a Puerto Rican and as part of the Latinx community to show that these negative perceptions of Latinos are not true. 

 

In this series, I chat with various industry experts on the intricacies of business and discover what advice they can offer to both seasoned and emerging leaders. 

I sat with John Andrews, the CEO at Photofy. As a career marketing professional, with a focus on shopper marketing, John is passionate about the ever-changing ways in which to communicate with consumers. He has also been at the forefront of many company shifts, including Walmart’s. As a Senior Manager in Arkansas, Andrews was pivotal to Walmart’s move into the social media space. He created the company’s first influencer platform (Walmart Elevenmoms) and overall improved its rating and review community. However, before becoming an expert in retail and marketing, he got his start at Domino’s as a store manager. He credits this experience for opening his mind up to marketing and entrepreneurship. 

Today, he uses all his life lessons to guide Photofy in the midst of an unprecedented time in history. During our interview, Andrews highlighted the importance of embracing shifts in business and the benefits of ‘dogfooding.’ 

How do you define leadership? 

I’ll define leadership through one of my leader heroes, Sam Walton. In the early 2000s, I got the opportunity to move to Arkansas and work for Walmart’s headquarters. I always admired Sam Walton. His book, Made in America, was one of the first business books I ever read and I really liked his leadership style. He often described leadership by walking around the floor, not only in his stores but also in his competitor’s stores. He would study what they did, but more importantly, he would ask people about their day or challenges and empower them to make decisions. 

There are stories after stories of those early Walmart managers and how they made decisions supported by Mr. Sam. He may have given them some feedback, but ultimately he would say “this is your story, you go and run it.” And they did. Another of his leadership practices was having a weekly 6 a.m. Saturday meeting with his management team to check-in and get ready for the next week. It was an opportunity for stores to share and exchange ideas. 

So in conclusion, I really believe a good leader promotes interaction and collaboration between people. They work to connect the dots across an organization whether big or small. Applying that to Photofy, with only 10 people is still important. We may not be Walmart with two million people, but we still have to communicate. And it’s a leader’s job to foster team cohesiveness and take away any barriers. One thing I constantly ask my team members is what is in their way and how can I help them. We have very smart people on our team, a lot smarter than I am, and I just want them to be able to do their job without any problems. 

What do you think about inclusion in the workplace? 

An engaged employee is somebody who feels like they matter to the business. I’m sure you’ve seen these employee surveys and how often they show employees’ disengagement with the business. And I just think that’s tragic. 

I like to set a clear vision, especially as our team works remotely. In fact, we started this year with Ely Musk’s vision for Tesla. By the way, his vision is just four bullet points: make an expensive sports car to fund the business, make a more affordable car to expand the business, make a really affordable car to grow the business and the last one, which I personally really like, redefine the entirety of the fossil fuel car. It just goes to show that it’s so much bigger than a car company. That kind of vision setting creates a clear picture for everyone at Tesla. From the manufacturing floor to those in legal and finance, everybody knows the mission and their role. 

Jeff Bezos also did this with Amazon. The idea is that every day is day zero and it’s their job to make shopping easier for customers. That creates inclusivity by giving people a reason to be there. In a good organization, that floats down into every piece. In a bad organization, people are showing up to do a job and are unsure of how they fit. 

If you want an inclusive organization, everybody on your team has to understand how they are contributing to the overall vision of the company.

 

I sat with Violet Lim, award-winning entrepreneur, TED speaker and “Chief Cupid,” according to her Linkedin profile. While that last one might be a rather quirky title, it’s not an inaccurate one. Lim is the co-founder and CEO of Lunch Actually, Asia’s biggest lunch dating company bringing people together one meal at a time. With offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, Lunch Actually has arranged over 140,000 dates and matched more than 4,000 married couples. But what is the secret to her company’s success as a lead matchmaking service? Tapping into hidden potential in even the most challenging situations, Lim says. During our discussion, Lim delved into how she was able to keep her business running during the pandemic while keeping the human connection alive both with her team and clients. 

How would you define leadership? 

Leadership is about aligning and then acceding a group of people to work towards achieving a goal together.

What core principles guide you as a leader? 

I started out as a Management Associate at Citibank and that was a really entry-level position. I was only there for about one year and four months. And then I quit my job and started my own company. 

So the truth is at first I was pretty lost as a manager and leader because I’d never led anyone before. I started off by defining the certain things that I did not like as an employee or as a “follower” when I was working in a bank. 

So one of the principles I like to follow as a leader is “do not do upon others what you do not want others to do upon you.” So for example, I do not like to be micromanaged, so as a result, I do not micromanage my associates. Now that I’m a leader myself,  I’m just very mindful about things that I didn’t enjoy previously and thinking about ways not to put my associates through the same things. Another thing that I realized as a leader is that we need to recognize what’s the most important thing for our associates. For me, family comes first and most of the time it’s the same case for my associates. So when they come to me with problems about their families, I don’t even ask about it. I let them know family comes first and I encourage them to go do whatever they need to do and just come back when they can. 

What do you think about inclusion in the workplace? 

To me, inclusion in the workplace is a given. It’s very clear that everybody should be heard and respected. But, of course, sometimes it’s challenging because there are just so many different and sometimes contradicting needs among groups in an organization. So for example, in my organization, there might be different genders, age groups or belief systems. So I think as a leader since my overarching principle is that everybody should be heard and respected, it is my responsibility to align everybody’s interest and really help everyone see each other’s points of view.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced while leading a diverse organization? 

The challenge comes when you have people who maybe have different values and I think it’s something that every organization struggles with. We certainly have. But what I found really useful is when we are hiring to not only focus on past experiences or what their performance was like but also whether they match our company’s culture.  

So when we do interviews, we actually have a hiring manager focused on the candidate’s skill set and another one conducts an interview to make sure the candidate has potential within our culture. In fact,  the person hiring for culture has veto power, even over the hiring manager. Of course, as the hiring manager, you are just looking to fill the spot, but the other person who might be hiring for culture might think something different. And if they cannot come to an agreement — usually they do — they’ll ask me to meet the person and let them know what I think. 

What are some of the steps that Lunch Actually has had to take to stay afloat during the pandemic? 

When it happened, it really caught everybody by surprise including myself. When countries started to be affected we were all shocked and then the next thing I knew I had COVID… And I was actually in the hospital. But I’m very thankful because the healthcare and health workers in Singapore are amazing. 

What we did for our associates was let them work from home whether their specific country was on lockdown or not. Their health was the most important thing and we were not going to take any risks. Since then we’ve had very structured regular updates. So for all the different teams, we would have a daily video update and throughout the day there would also be what we call ‘huddles.’ So our managers have virtual catch-ups, bonding sessions or even game sessions with our associates because one of the things that I talk to my managers about is mental health. 

Even though all of our associates have been performing really well during this entire situation, mental health is a top priority. They could be living alone or don’t know how to manage so much time with their families. So it’s our job as an employer to see what we can do to help them ease into this transition. 

As far as I go, I also started doing regular catch-ups with all the different teams in my company. So every four to six weeks I arranged catch-ups with no agenda or work talk. It’s a way to say hi and make sure your employees know I’m here to listen. I’ll share with them my latest quarantine story like how I bought clippers and started cutting my son’s hair. And then they’ll share things with me as well.  

On the business side, we had to make a larger pivot because our business is very much an offline, face-to-face business. So when the lockdown started, we were unsure of what the future would look like because we couldn’t meet with our clients and they couldn’t go on dates with each other. But fortunately, when things started to happen, we did not wait to prepare. We had already started trying out some virtual consultations in case we were put on lockdown. Thanks to that preparation, our team was able to adapt well. We converted our entire business to virtual in a matter of weeks. So we ended up doing virtual consultations, dates, events and webinars. In fact, last year, we did more than 40 webinars, which is something that we had never done before and we also had about 1,000 virtual dates. 

The virtual dates were actually quite challenging in the beginning because a lot of clients were like, “Oh,  I’m already using Zoom for work. You mean you want me to use Zoom for dates as well?” So they weren’t very receptive at first. They thought it wasn’t going to work, it was going to be awkward or they just weren’t going to enjoy it so we really had to work on their mindsets.

We prepared them to have different options, so as an example, making a drink before the Zoom call. That’s something they can talk about when they get on the call. Some of the feedback that we have gotten from virtual dating is really interesting. The structure allowed clients to, for example, watch the sunset together virtually. That might have been something they wouldn’t be able to do on one of our normal dates scheduled around mealtimes. Also, people just got to see a different side of their dates that they wouldn’t have gotten the chance to explore in a restaurant like what their homes looked like, their interests, etc.