Better Together. Co-Create Culture with Isabel Naidoo [FIS Global]

+ Notes

This weeks guest Isabel Naidoo is an imaginal inspiration. She heads up Inclusion & Talent at FIS Global : a company with 70,000 global employees.

A woman on a mission, she explains how she found the courage to overcome naysayers and persuade Accenture to launch its CSR programme - and the impact of purpose and giving. If you suffer from imposter syndrome, her advice will help, and if you’re struggling with figuring out how to shift your culture, her tale of empowerment and co-creation will give you the know how you need to succeed.

+ Transcript

KATZ: Welcome to humans leading humans towards a future of work that works for people: A smorgasbord of snackable stories to help you be a more effective leader. My guest this week is a wonderful woman called Isabel Naidoo who heads up Inclusion and Talent across FIS global, a company with 70,000 Employees, If you can drive change inside an organisation that big and complex, you can drive change anywhere. And she has. By nurturing environments where people thrive. We had a quick chat earlier, the three stories we’re about to hear will inspire you. They inspire me. They will fill you with the confidence you need to be courageous. She'll talk about standing true to your vision and standing strong, even when those around you try to fill you with a doubt.

But first, let me explain why you should dedicate 30 minutes of your precious time to this podcast every week. If you work inside a complex organisation, whether that be private or public, and you work with humans. If you lead teams, or are charged with making change stick, and you're finding it really hard… Bring on humans leading humans. This is your audio fuel kit, packed with the stories and the tools and inspiration we all need to shine as leaders. It's for those times when you need to be re energised, to be inspired, to believe you can succeed. Because here's the thing, leaders across the world have succeeded. They have proved that you can get changed to stick; if you start from where people are. If you put empathy into practice. So, I’m on a quest to collect those stories to give you the courage, and then know how to lead more human.

Next week guest is Vint Cerf, oh my god I'm so excited about that. I have to say I am a total fan girl. He will share warts and all stories about how the Internet came to pay, and then how the interplanetary Internet came to be. If you think that your job is complex, just imagine that. The week after I will be talking to a dear friend and change maker Harley Dubois, who is the Chief Culture officer of the Burning Man Project. So Burning Man, changed the way that I see the world of work completely. So I can only imagine which of her many, many, many insights and stories she will choose to share.

Now, I said last week that I would collect stories from our club house room, but I've had a lot of people tell me how much they are loving this podcast, and thank you guys I want to say it means a lot to me it gives me the energy to keep going so please, please, please reach out if you're loving this. But I also heard that short is sweet and I should get to the interview quicker. Now, you will know by now that I fully believe that everything can be better. Always. So I've listened. If you want me to put this chapter back in, please use the contact form or indeed if you work inside a large corporation and you're struggling to make change stick, please go to www.wearebeep.com. We would love to help. But enough of that. Let's get to the good bit. We have been waiting for Isabel, who is a positive powerhouse.

So, Isabel, I am so, so delighted that you're going to be my fourth interviewee on this podcast, so tell all the people who are listening to this, what have you done.

ISABEL: I run a function called inclusion and talent to FIS global, FiS is a provider of tech solutions for merchants banks and capital markets globally. Prior to that, I used to run HR for fast growing consultancy and have held various roles at Accenture as well. And throughout my time I have really driving change across a whole range of talent and people strategies. Really what's more important for me is that I'm on a mission. You know my personal vision is that people are fulfilled at work and I'm really trying to bring that to life in the work that I do and the way that I operate as I navigate this world that we find ourselves in.

KATZ: And it's working. My goodness isn't working. Okay so I shared the CREATE Framework with you and asked you to think about three short stories that are inspired by it - so that people who are listening can be inspired by, and learn from them, so they can feel brave enough to drive the level of success that you have. So what's your first story.

ISABEL: Well my first story is about one of the favourite jobs that I ever had, which is one that I made up a piece I realised as I was going through my career and I look back on it, thinking about these stories for you Katz that one of the things that made me tick who was having impact, and that's been a very deliberate short term goal for me throughout everything that I've done.

I was working in Madrid for a few years and I've been brought up in a traveling household, moving country every three years. I’ve been in Madrid for seven years I thought wow this is the longest I've ever been anywhere I need to, you know I need to get out here to do something different. So asked for transfer to London, and it was in financial services consulting working with Accenture. I got involved in a program called the Accenture business partnership scheme with VSO. VSO is the world's largest volunteering charity. We had this scheme whereby people took leave of absence and took a smaller salary and go and volunteer with VSO and I managed to negotiate that this was something that I wanted to do a day a week. So four days a week doing my consulting job which is really six days a week, but that's okay, and a day a week doing this VSO setup on we expanded the scheme and it was just amazing. And I realised that actually I wanted to make this a full time role I'm so fired up with the fact that having purpose was giving such satisfaction. It felt like the right thing to do. So I crafted a business case as to why the company should invest in the CSR program in the UK and Ireland. This is way before CSR was a buzzword as it is today. And I remember feeling very, very lucky because the lady who was running corporate citizenship, called Jill. She was such a massive sponsor and mentor of mine and she really encouraged me. She saw the need. She gave me that helping hand and helped me craft the business case.I went to speak to the Managing Director at the time.He was also the chap that brought me over from Madrid to London. He listened to what I had to say and said: “this will be the death knell of your career”

I thought, oh my gosh what am I doing? I'm so ambitious and is this the right thing but honestly, Katz, I just thought this is the right thing to do; the right thing to do for the business, it’s going to help us win work, because increasingly our LPs were asking you for what we were doing around CSR I had Jill on my side, she was encouraging me. So I put together a pitched for my case to the local leadership team. You can imagine, I’m in the UK. And I'm standing in this room with all these very, very important men - and one woman who was running it at the time,. I stood up and made this case and took all these different elements. So, in your CREATE framework for example you have EMPATHY. I need to get them to empathise and they're all going to believe in something slightly different, like the head of HR is going to be thinking about engagement and so on. The folks focussing on business and teaching them to help with business: All these different elements. I also threw in that a senior manager should be running that and they should create this function, run by a senior manager. So I was pitching myself at the time because I was only a manager then. I looked around the room, I was very nervous but I did it - and I got the job and it was amazing. We built out volunteering programs, charitable giving, environmental measures. We won awards that put us on the map with businesses and communities. We became a really well esteemed thought leader in that space. aI loved it and it had impact and it engaged my brain, it was really an amazing role, and interestingly one of the people who joined my team and then, it's amazing, amazing manager fanella. She still runs that team. She has expanded it and taken it on to even greater things. She’s extraordinary. It’s still going strong for that company today. And really that was all about EMPATHY and it was about COMMUNICATING with all these people, but it was also about courage. Maybe courage is missing in the framework.

KATZ: I love that. I think we should definitely have courage. Community has been suggested, but we'll add courage that as well. And that must have been a moment when you're Managing Director, a key sponsor said that to you. What gave you the courage to step forward and go, I know this feels right. You listen to your gut.

ISABEL: Yeah I do listen to my gut. And having a sponsor in this lady Jill was incredible. Somebody who could bounce ideas off. I think it makes you stronger in some ways when you have someone who gives you that kind of opposition. It really forced me to hone that business case. Maybe if he hadn't said that I wouldn't have been strong on the RFP component or some of those other elements. Sometimes when you're faced with really difficult feedback it can turn out to work in your favour. In a way, so I'm not gonna lie. It was a terrible thing to hear. It worked out okay that was not easy.

KATZ: I think that's the thing isn't it. When people push back on you, you've got two choices : you can think maybe I shouldn't be doing this, or I need to listen to this, because there is something to be learned from everything that everybody says to me. But that’s not easy. God what a journey,

ISABEL: Okay you know I've work with a boss now, Denise Williams, she wonderful lady and she's just extraordinary. She is just so expert at listening and discerning. It's something that I'm really trying to learn from here. She believes everything has something to say, listen, listen to what they are saying and what sits behind that, and so I really I've watched her and tried to get better. And no matter how uncomfortable it is. Feedback is a gift, even if it doesn't always feel like it

KATZ: Story number one was great. You saw what was happening, you saw clear need, you turned that need into an opportunity, you turn that into a new job, you pitched and won and it had a big impact. Could you just run through again the impact that it's had.

ISABEL: The impact that it had was a massive uptick in terms of employee engagement and people engaging with what we were doing. We saw recruits talking about the programs and asking questions about it. We saw our ability to pitch for work based on the environmental standards and we won awards. Accenture had a really solid global perspective and impact is happening at the macro level, attention in the UK and Ireland, persons so it was a real opportunity for us and it's still working. They are doing extraordinary things. I’m in awe. Speaker 1

KATZ: We're also saying that you made damn sure there was somebody who was empowered to take on your role to fill your shoes when he left,

ISABEL: She was always gonna do great things but yes she was amazing to work with and has since gone on to develop that in ways that I couldn't possibly have conceived of when I stood there in that room quivering as to whether it's going to be the death knell of my career or not!

KATZ: That was a brilliant story and I'm sure that everybody's listening appreciated it. People tell their stories like: “I came up with this idea and I made it happen and it had enormous impact. That's not the truth. There are always moments when we feel terrified. When you have to go to bed at night and wake up in the morning wondering if it will work. Just hearing these stories will hopefully help everybody, no matter what they're doing, no matter what level of leadership there and to just be able to go, I can do that. I can be courageous. What's your second story.

ISABEL: Well, the second story is related to that actually which is this observation that I have which is everybody is winging it. And if there's one thing that I want to make sure that my children have and I've got three of them. I want to make sure that my team has its CONFIDENCE. One of the things that I see all too often in the workplace it’s people held back by lack of confidence in themselves, or their ideas. Of course people have written about imposter syndrome; this idea that we're going to be exposed as a fraud that you don't deserve to be someplace. We all feel that that sometimes and there are multiple reasons for why that might be. It might not be you, it might be the environment that you're in, but most people don't admit it. They don't even mention this lack of confidence in the workplace, it definitely wasn't discussed at all. But I was prepared, and the story that I wanted to share, which had such a massive impact for me in terms of how I have built and managed my career was when I finished my degree I wasn't sure what I wanted to do job wise. I didn't really have a long term plan. I made my way to to Southeast Asia where my parents were at that time, and I love to see. I also trained as a teacher. So I did a teaching English as a Foreign Language course. Early on before you have students you have to be observed. So this was the first time I was observed and I was really nervous because quite honestly, I didn't really know much about English. I mean I spoke English because at home growing up we always had English. My father was English. We have Spanish because my mother was Spanish speaking and then we had whatever language country we're living in,. So in theory, in theory, that should make me a great language teacher because we speak different languages. But it's completely different speaking the language, to understanding how it's constructed, to teaching it, and learning about grammar and sentence structure and all these things at the same time I was teaching it. So this day of the first observation, I was literally shaking, and I was dreadful. There is no doubt in my mind that I was awful. I could see the examiner was watching me and the lesson was going so badly. So he stopped the lesson. Can you imagine !He stops the lesson, takes me to one side and I think - she’s gonna tell me I failed. I looked at him and said: “I was awful wasn't I.” And he looked at me and he said I'm going to give you some advice.

To the people in there, in that room, you are a teacher, you are a teacher. I had this realisation that if you choose to present yourself as someone, something, that people will see you as that person. That if you project confidence, others will feed off it. No one was trying to catch me out, watching to see if I made a mistake in my grammar or expecting me to know everything. They just saw me as a teacher. I just thought: “Gosh, how can I take that simple simple sentence and take it forward with me in my career. If we can accept that we know what we know then you’re on your way to being whatever role you want to play and to bring it to life in the workplace. The best thing you can do is get an accurate gauge on how you're doing, so seek out feedback and, you know, find out where you need to develop. The more self aware you are, the more confident you can feel so I’m on this mission, to give people confidence and to create an environment where everyone feels like they can be themselves at work without feeling like an imposter in some way. You know all these people feel like imposters, I read that evne Albert Einstein felt like he was an imposter. So you can't banish it entirely, but you can talk about it openly, and I think from an organisational point of view, you can create a culture that's open and welcoming of lots of different styles and approaches. This isn't about everyone trying to be this gung-ho, confident person who can walk into the room and pitch mad things.,It’s about how do you get comfortable with what you know, and what you don't know. How do you get comfortable with the power of diversity which is where imposter syndrome doesn't even get a look at.

Because there were so many things that didn't work out for me Katz. And I think what you see when you look at someone is confident winning presentation itself, but everyone's path to what that looks like has taken many twists and turns so sometimes you just have to breath deep.. It's what I learned when faced with a difficult situation. Remember what others see is different to what you're seeing it in yourself. Most people aren’t waiting to catch you out. That's true, the organisation I work in actually as well. There are so many people here that actually want to help you find your own version of success, you know, and a culture that values and respects all these different styles and approaches. I’d love to see more people take up that mantle.

KATZ: Yes and I've had the joy of working with FIS, and I've seen you in action. I’ve seen teams across FiOS and felt that ability to be 100% themselves, and to be vulnerable. And that's way too rare. And it is incredibly powerful. And drives impact

ISABEL : Everyones version of success is so different. relationship success was made differently to show different styles and different images. We ned to broaden this I think, move away from stereotypes.

KATZ: One of the things that I find a lot when we're working with companies is that people talk about diversity and inclusion in a particular way. Which doesn't feel very sexy, but let's strip all that away and just say actually, as you said, let's create an environment where people can show up and be 100% themselves

ISABEL: Totally agree, totally agree. It's not so one dimensional the notions of diversity. How do you get much clearer about, much broader . I used to work in a company prior to FIS where we came up with this construct of “being yourself at work” That was the umbrella concept that we use for everything to do with inclusion and diversity and it really helped to harness energy and invited people to engage with it in a way that they could relate to others and predetermined singular solutions of what diversity should or shouldn't be so they still use that construct today. So that's great to see.

KATZ: I want to hear more about that. Tell me more about that.

ISABEL: I remember sitting in a room with a lady, Hayden, she was called, and we came up with this idea of how we wanted to engage people more broadly around I &D and I can't remember whether we were on the phone to pitch this idea to do a campaign with the Guardian , I can't remember if we were actually on the Guardian at the time when we just brainstorming and coming up with ideas, I said “Be yourself at work: And we literally stood up and high fives each other in our excitement. YES!! We’ve landed it. It was amazing. We got people tweeting and sharing posts themselves with the hashtag, ‘Be yourself at work” Giving them an identifier as to what it was that they wanted to be at work. It was just so inclusive. It was really great. I wonder if she remembers high fiving but I said you do remember high fiving her and it's got a new journalist. Yes! That moment when you're ideating, hen you're co creating and just come up with something that's right. That’s the one. You could never come up with on your own, but you can come up with it with and for multiple people.

KATZ: Brilliant, brilliant. And not surprisingly, so your last story.

ISABEL: My third story is that, you know I've long believed you know that that you don’t have to have all the answer to lead a function. as long as you surround yourself with great people and you're savvy enough to know that there's a lot you don’t know. So I've used this approach consistently. In my first ever HR role for example, the first thing I did was hire someone to work at my side with a solid background in HR operations. And if someone asked me how many people work in my team like literally say 70,000. Which is technically true: all colleagues across the world. And we really try to bring this to life in so many ways. So, we wanted you to redefine how we were doing performance management. Rather than a few dozen HR people sitting in a room and deciding what was going to be done, we told our employees: “we’re going to redefine how it's done. And we started with crowdsourcing the new name. So that's how we ended up with this name of Performance 365. We have this intent that performance should be regular should be based on dialogue anytime feedback, and we ended up with data.

We did surveys and statistical modelling with focus groups. We co-created what the approach should be and what the solution should be. We ended up with 250 champions across the company, not just to create it, but then to drive and implement this new approach. They did the most extraordinary job. It was just amazing watching it unfold, launching in ways that resonated with their environment and their local culture. We ended up with a local radio show, branded doughnuts in Minnesota and bingo in Sydney, it was quick, it was a real compelling. There was a clear business case for dialogue, because we know that people who receive more regular feedback are more likely to say.

What was great about it was this idea that we weren't coming up with the answers based on the people trying to solve the challenge so we've got incredible participation there as well to implement it. And we get really good feedback on the quality and we used a similar approach to co-create values and culture so we had a massive acquisition at FIS a couple years ago. We said again: “We’re going to get together with everybody and they can tell us what they think our values and culture should be. Now we're coming together. So we engaged over 20,000 of our colleagues in total, through focus groups and workshops and all kinds of surveys. It was just amazing. Such talented people around me with performance I worked with this lady Kindai and so many others who've fed in and co-created. Josh on my team. It was just so much fun and then with culture. I worked with EX consultant called Nick and working hand in hand, running all these focus groups and culture interviews and getting people to tell us what values and behaviours were important to them. We ended up with three core values: One team , Lead with Integrity, Being the change and all the supporting behaviours . When we launched it, people felt that they’d had a part in it. We’ve had a stake in it. We estimated over 75% of our leaders were involved. About 20,000 people touched it in some way so of course the implementation of that for created approach is going to be stronger, maybe co creation should in your Framework too.

KATZ: I completely agree with you. Listening to that story makes me horripilate, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck standup with pleasure. So you’re ust taking on a very senior role in HR, it's not really your thing, the pushback could have been terrible. So what do you do? You give people a voice. You don't tell them what's going to happen, you ask them what should happen. Also one of the things that we find is that we ask :”what behaviours or your culture is based upon,” and they'll say: “Oh, I've got no idea. Hang on a second, I'll go and have a look in the HR folder.” Well, that's not what behaviours are. Actually if you don't co create with people, it's the same as bringing in a branding agency to do your branding. Its crazy.

ISABEL: I totally agree. I think it can be a little bit aspirational but it needs to be authentic. People need to see them, they need to be able to touch them and have examples of what they are. That’s one thing that Nick and Heather on the Employee Experience team have been doing so beautifully as well. “How do we translate that into reality for folks so that employee experience actually matches brand. And hey understand and they recognise the values and the behaviours when they see it. Using all these networks of people who are passionate there are so many great people at FIS that want to help them do the right thing.

KATZ: There are. You are very aware that you need to reward people, you need to recognise, you need to incentivise these behaviours, people need to internalise what these behaviours actually look like when they're manifested. So many haven't quite got that yet. They have a behavior list. We have a corporate idea. Amazing Stories.

ISABEl: Could I just sneak one more in because I've always had a problem with scope creep and I have got one more to share

KATZ: Ok. You can have four.

ISABEL: I’m gonna give you four, because this is something that's happened relatively recently and I think it really embody so much of what's going on in that CREATE framework. So one of the teams that I run is a Global Learning team. They deliver on our training. When the pandemic was declared and everything moved online. 95% of our employees were working online in a matter of weeks. It was a very difficult time. What we saw was a huge uptick in people accessing online learning and training materials and so on, Someone approached one of our learning leaders in the UK and said: “My partner works for a local government organisation. We loved one of these forces you did on resilience and could she he have access to the materials. When the learning leader came to ask me if she could have access I suggested we should do something else.I said : "Imagine if we actually put out all of our learning material out there for the community. What if we turn this on its head and rather than here's one individual who would like to access it. What if we just made it freely available for folks who might need it because we put so much investment and time into thinking through all these elements of pivoting and resilience and thriving in a virtual world and the well- being focus. And so we came up with this construct of FIS community classroom and started running these monthly sessions that not for profits and Government Organisations could sign up to. I always think about when people are trying to come up with an idea and trying to get it over the line, I always start with that “what if?” scenarios. “What if we really did this. What if we could have an impact in a different way?” The things that I thought were going to be barriers, around IP or with our legal folks saying we shouldn't do this or somebody saying this was gonna be challenging, none of them were there. People wanted to do it. They wanted to do the right thing and they could see the impact and the potential impact it could have. So don't create perceived barriers. If you have an idea that you want to implement, I think you'll be surprised. You might come across other unexpected barriers but you might be surprised how your perceived barriers are not the ones that are going to cause you a challenge.

KATZ: so true. And I love that. So actually you went to a meeting where everybody's busy being busy. They’ve got massive challenges with life-work balance, and you say: “Imagine if we could just give things away to these groups” Of course, people are inspired, they have a purpose, then people want to jump in. I always find that the more your teams have a sense of real compelling purpose, the more productive and efficient they are.

ISABEL : I totally agree, totally agree. That’s that EMPATHY point as well. It’s about creating that scenario that people can relate to and the vision, be vision, something they care about. There is something about purpose and vision that you're putting out there for folks to buy into that creates that ENERGY and EXCITEMENT. What is the difference you're going to make

KATZ: Isabel, this has been the most extraordinary and as always incredibly inspiring session. Brilliant stories. I llove the fact that you totally broke the format.

ISABEL: Thank you for the opportunity. Thanks.

KATZ: Before we leave, co-creation being our thing. What shall we call this episode of humans leading humans.

ISABEl: Does it have to be something really pithy? Could it be something like Better Together. There’s something about how getting more brains than one is really the leitmotif for everything that I'm doing here. It’s not about Isabel, it's about what we're able to do as a team or with all these multiple voices so maybe you can play with that and find a title.

KATZ: Absolutely beautiful and Better Together is what this will be called, Thank you so much Isabel you are an inspiration. Lovely listeners. I hope that you enjoyed that as much as I did but I fiercely believe that everything can be better. Always. So I want to hear your thoughts. What did you love?what resonated? What could I do better? What do you want more of.

Who do you think deserves to join my list of imaginal guests?

So if you've got any suggestions or comments, or of course a story that might inspire listeners. Please, DM us on Twitter at @beepmindshift or just DM me on LinkedIn Katz Kiely.

Next week's guest is Vint Cerf who will share, warts and all stories about how the Internet came to be. And thereafter the interplanetary internet. So as I said, if you're thinking what you're doing now is complex, just imagine that God I can't honestly I can't wait for that, I have a bit of a fangirl.

And then the week after that I'll be talking to the incredible Harley DuBois from Burning Man. As I say Burning Man changed my life. We've got a lot to learn from here. And then the week after that, it's John Hagel whose new book, “The journey Beyond Fear” launches today, so do go out and have a look at that. It seems extremely relevant after hearing Isabel’s stories of fearlessness.

You have been listening to Humans, Leading Humans, towards the future of work that works for people.

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