Imagine stepping into the role of CEO, right?
Like right in the middle of a global pandemic.
Just the absolute most chaotic time you could
possibly pick. Right. And you're staring down
this roster of, I think it was 1 ,400 employees
scattered all across the world. Yeah, across
23 different locations. 23 locations. And you
decide that your absolute best first move is
to hand out your personal private cell phone
number. to every single one of them. Which is
just, I mean, it's unheard of. Not a routed corporate
line, you know, not an assistant's desk, your
actual device. Your actual device ringing in
your pocket. Exactly. OK, let's unpack this because
welcome to the deep dive. Today, we have a really
fascinating mission. We really do. We are exploring
this radically accessible approach to leadership
and workplace empathy, drawing from excerpts
of a speech called The Open Door Policy and an
article titled The Open Line. Yeah, and the goal
here is to really dissect the mechanics of what
actually happens when a leader just completely
dismantles traditional corporate boundaries.
Right, like operationalizing, treating employees
as entire complex human beings. Because it is
a massive structural pivot. We are looking at
a first -time CEO taking the reins at a company
appropriately called Talent. in early 2020. Yeah
early 2020. So she steps into this role right
as the COVID -19 pandemic just shuts down the
globe. Exactly. Yeah. Accompanied by significant
political unrest obviously. Right. And suddenly
she is managing a global team. And because of
the immediate lockdowns, she has never even met
90 % of them face to face. I mean, the logistics
of that alone are staggering. You're trying to
build, like, organizational cohesion and a unified
culture entirely through a webcam. Yeah, it's
incredibly difficult. The physical isolation
just creates this massive psychological barrier.
So... To dissolve what she calls the remote fourth
wall, she takes this incredibly bold action.
The cell phone number. Right. She gives her personal
cell phone number to a roster that grew from,
I think, 1 ,300 to 1 ,400 people during this
period. And on top of that, when she actually
was permitted back into the physical building,
she outright refused the traditional executive
corner office. Oh, wow. So where did she go?
She basically packed up and moved her workspace
right down to the main floor to be exactly where
the action was. Huh. So she is systematically
rejecting all those symbols of corporate hierarchy,
right? The ones that dictate, like, distance
equals authority. Exactly. Because the traditional
model relies on insulation. You know, you have
gatekeepers, you have the rigid org chart. Right,
the layers of management. Yeah. And those mechanisms
are explicitly designed to protect the executive's
time and cognitive load. So by removing them,
she is signaling a completely different operational
framework. Uh, I have to push back on the reality
of that framework, honestly. How so? Because
my immediate reaction to reading this wasn't
like admiration, it was sheer logistical panic.
Oh, totally understandable. I mean, handing out
your direct line to 1 ,400 people, it feels like
leaving your front door wide open in the middle
of the bustling city. Yeah, it feels like a recipe
for disaster. It really does. It feels completely
counterintuitive to basic corporate survival.
I just kept thinking, isn't this asking for total
catastrophic burnout? Right. Like, how can anyone
actually run a global company dealing with supply
chains and board meetings and pandemic protocols
if their phone is ringing off the hook 24 -7?
With every minor grievance from 23 time zones.
Exactly. Well, what's fascinating here is the
psychological mechanism of the safety net. Okay,
what do you mean by that? You intuitively expect
a non -stop barrage of calls, right? But the
CEO actually notes in the sources that she doesn't
get as many calls as she would like. Wait, really?
She wants more? Yeah. Because the frequency of
the phone ringing isn't actually the point. The
profound lesson is that the act of giving out
the number is the intervention itself. Oh, I
see. It establishes an immediate baseline of
psychological safety. So it's not like a hotline
for complaints. It's a statement of trust. Exactly
that. When a leader says, I am literally in your
pocket if you need me, it shifts the entire power
dynamic. It tells the employee they're valued
enough to bypass the bureaucracy. Yes. While
simultaneously placing the responsibility on
them not to abuse that access, it creates autonomy.
Right, right. People don't call. because the
anxiety of being disconnected or ignored is already
resolved just by holding the number in their
hands. It's like having a fire extinguisher in
your kitchen. Oh, that's a good analogy. Like,
knowing it's under the sink completely lowers
your anxiety about cooking, but having it doesn't
make you want to go around starting fires just
so you can use it. Right? The mere presence of
the tool just changes your psychological state
in the room. That is a perfect way to frame it.
The open phone line acts as an anxiety reducer.
which actually lowers the overall volatility
of the organization. That makes a lot of sense.
But, you know, we have to look at where a concept
like this originates because that kind of radical
structural empathy doesn't just spontaneously
generate because an executive attended a weekend
seminar. No, definitely not. It is forged. And
the source material traces this directly back
to her roots, forcing us to look at her childhood
to really understand the resilience she brings
to her leadership model. Yeah. And here's where
it gets really interesting. Because she grew
up on a farm, right? She did. But the sources
are quick to clarify that this was not some trendy,
modern farm -to -table pastoral lifestyle. Far
from it. She lived on a plot of land in a trailer
with absolutely no electricity, no running water,
and no indoor plumbing. Just pure, unvarnished
survival. Right. Just 10 years old, navigating
those incredibly intense conditions, she has
this massive epiphany. Yeah, she realizes that
while she can't control her difficult physical
circumstances, she has a definitive, unshakable
choice in her mindset. She could succumb to what
other people assumed a kid from a trailer was
capable of, or she could use it as a stepping
stone to rise to the occasion. And that realization,
at just 10 years old, is the discovery of an
internal locus of control. She recognized her
own agency in an environment that was essentially
designed to strip it away. But you know in business
we hear that hard knocks origin story all the
time. We do. Very often. Usually the narrative
goes that extreme hardship creates these tough
hardened like no excuses leaders. Right the whole
I suffered so you have to suffer mentality. Exactly.
They suffered so they demand perfection and thick
skin from everyone below them. So looking at
her trajectory I have to ask. Does experiencing
that kind of trauma actually make someone a more
empathetic leader? Or does it actively require
conscious choice. Right. Does it require conscious
choice to translate your own personal pain into
an understanding of other people's struggles?
Because it seems like the default setting for
corporate survival is just to build thicker walls.
It absolutely requires a highly conscious active
choice. The default setting is definitely self
-preservation, which like you said usually manifests
as that hardened archetype. Right. But the sources
highlight that she utilized her history to construct
this fundamental core belief, which is that everyone
has a lot going on outside their job. Just baseline.
Everyone is dealing with something. Exactly.
She remembered her own experience of actively
hiding the reality that she had no running water
at home. Wow. And she took that memory and applied
it to her workforce, realizing that every single
employee she interacts with is carrying an immense
load. of hidden challenges. Which fundamentally
changes how you view a team. Completely. Because
instead of looking at an employee's output like
a machine's baseline capacity, You have to account
for what's running in the background. It's kind
of like having background apps draining a smartphone's
battery, you know? You look at the screen and
it seems fine, but you can't see the five intensive
programs running invisibly just consuming all
the system's energy. Oh, that's exactly it. And
if a leader doesn't know those apps are running,
they just get frustrated that the phone is lagging.
And her open door policy acts like a power saver
mode in that analogy. Oh, I like that. By acknowledging
those hidden struggles exist, She actually reduces
the cognitive load her employees spend trying
to hide them. Right. They don't have to pretend
as much. Exactly. She doesn't view her team as
cogs in a corporate machine. She views them as
complex humans navigating their own fluctuating
energy reserves. She could have chosen to be
hardened by her past and built fortresses. Instead,
she chose to use her past to dismantle them.
So she builds this incredible, like, lived -in
foundation of empathy as a child. Yeah. But then
she has to actually enter the corporate world.
And let's be honest, the corporate environment
is inherently driven by fiduciary duty and profit
margins. It's not exactly known for warm hugs.
No, it is structurally designed to prioritize
shareholder value, not to warmly embrace human
complexity. So how does a farm kids hard won
empathy actually survive the friction of modern
business mechanics? Well, it survives because
it was explicitly validated at a critical high
stakes juncture in her career. OK. The sources
detail a major inflection point during her time
working as an individual contributor at Concur
Technologies. Right, I remember this part. This
is really the moment where the abstract idea
of empathy collides with harsh reality. Yeah,
because she faces an unimaginable personal crisis
while working there. Her daughter becomes ill
with a brain tumor. Yeah. I mean, in a moment
like that, your job, your targets, your quarterly
metrics, they immediately evaporate. Of course
they do. You are simply a parent terrified for
your child's survival. And the psychological
toll of that is absolute. The background apps
we just talked about. They're suddenly consuming
100 % of the system's battery. Absolutely. And
the founder of Comper, Steve Singh, finds out
about her situation. Right. And he doesn't just
send a generic corporate sympathy card. He doesn't
just refer her to human resources. No. He steps
in and offers to personally help pay her daughter's
medical bills if her insurance falls short. Which
is just incredible. It really is. Think about
the structural difference between a company offering
a standard employee assistance program pamphlet
and an executive stepping directly into the terrifying
financial trenches with you during your family's
darkest hour. And we have to look at the business
mechanics of that decision, too. What do you
mean? Well, from a strict traditional corporate
governance standpoint, there is zero immediate
financial benefit to the company for doing this.
Right, right. There is no measurable return on
investment on paper for paying an employee's
personal medical debt. It defies the standard
logic of maximizing shareholder value in the
short term. Completely defies it. It is a decision
made entirely on the premise of taking care of
a human being. And the CEO herself summarizes
the lasting impact of that intervention with
a brilliant quote. She says, once you see it,
you cannot unsee it. That phrase is really the
crux of her entire leadership philosophy. Once
you see it, you cannot unsee it. Yeah. Because
if we connect this to the broader structural
picture, we see the multigenerational ripple
effect of leadership actions. What Steve Singh
did to concur wasn't merely a compassionate gesture
for one individual. Right. It was more than that.
It served as the empirical proof she needed.
that empathy and aggressive business growth can
actually coexist. But it only works if you operationalize
your beliefs. You cannot just draft a mission
statement about caring. You have to build infrastructure
around it. Which explains exactly how she structured
her own company, Talent, years later. She didn't
just bring the sentiment with her, she brought
the architecture. She elevated emotional health
to be a core... corporate pillar, placing it
directly alongside financial and physical health.
Right. So it transitioned from being a fringe
soft benefit to becoming actual structural infrastructure.
And that infrastructure is what allows a company
to weather a storm like a global pandemic. Yes.
Which brings us to the ultimate stress test of
her whole human approach, right? Attempting to
apply this philosophy at scale when the entire
world went into lockdown. Because the reality
of remote work is that when an employee logs
onto their computer, Their outside responsibilities
do not magically vanish into the ether. No, they
are right there in the room with them. Exactly.
And as a lifelong working mom who works from
home, she fundamentally understands the friction
of this juggling act. Oh, for sure. She knows
the reality of trying to lead a strategy meeting.
while a toddler is screaming in the next room,
or while trying to coordinate care for an elderly
parent. And her strategic response to that friction
is to demand what she terms uninhibited authenticity.
Right. I am so fascinated by that phrasing. She
explicitly tells her employees that she does
not want them to try and be like anyone else
because, as she puts it, we already have one
of you. It is a highly effective way to frame
cognitive diversity. Yeah. It really is. But
it also introduces a massive operational challenge
because uninhibited authenticity requires creating
a culture where employees have the psychological
freedom to be exactly who they are transparently
on both their highly productive days and their
deeply flawed days. Which is hard to do in a
corporate setting. Very hard. And to model this,
the CEO is famously transparent about her own
mistakes. She actively discusses the days she
messes up. explicitly to prove to the organization
that flawless perfection is not the baseline
expectation. But let's look at the HR reality
of that for a second. If you demand uninhibited
authenticity and you tell people to bring their
messy whole selves to work, what happens when
that messy self clashes with a hard client deadline?
That is the big question. Right. So what does
this all mean for accountability? Does radical
empathy just become a free pass for missed targets
and lowered standards? Because I feel like that's
the fear every traditional manager has when they
hear the phrase whole human approach. It is,
yeah. That is a critical tension. But the framework
she utilizes doesn't abandon accountability.
It reframes it. How so? Well, psychological freedom
is not the same as a lack of responsibility.
What uninhibited authenticity actually does is
remove the performative tax of corporate life.
The performative tax? Yeah. When an employee
is struggling and they don't have to waste 20
% of their cognitive energy just pretending everything
is fine, they can communicate a delay earlier.
Oh, I see. They can delegate more effectively
and they can actually solve the work problem
faster. You aren't lowering the standard. You
are removing the friction. that prevents people
from reaching it. Which completely flips the
narrative that being accessible is a drain on
leadership. It really does. Because we have this
CEO who gives out her cell phone number, demands
you bring your messy reality to work, and openly
admits her own failures. On paper, that sounds
incredibly exhausting for her. It sounds like
a fast track to burnout. Exactly. But the sources
highlight a deeply surprising mutual benefit
to this accessibility. It is not just the CEO
constantly bleeding her own energy away to stabilize
her team. No. She explicitly notes that she gets
incredible energy from these interactions. Yeah,
she does. The relationships, the one -on -one
calls, the direct learning experiences, they
actively feed her capacity to lead. And this
raises a really fundamental question about the
metrics we use to evaluate business. Right. Like,
how do we actually measure a company's success.
The standard market conditioning tells us to
measure it purely in quarterly earnings, profit
margins, and shareholder value. Which, obviously,
those are baseline requirements. Right. If the
business isn't solvent, the culture doesn't matter
because the jobs disappear. Exactly. But synthesizing
her approach reveals a different ultimate metric.
Her true north isn't merely delivering on financial
targets. It is about combining authentic, individual
human energy. Yeah. She wants to create an environment
that allows people to live a big life both inside
and outside of work, ultimately leaving a proud
legacy behind. A big life. Not just a prestigious
title. Right. Not just a successful career trajectory,
but a fundamentally big life. The paradigm shifts
entirely. The company ceases to be a machine
that extracts value from people and instead becomes
a vehicle that empowers people to generate value
for both the market and themselves. We have traveled
a truly incredible conceptual journey today.
We really have. I mean we started in a childhood
trailer without plumbing examining how the seeds
of an unshakable conscious resilience were planted.
Yeah. We navigated through the corporate friction
of fiduciary duty watching a founder support
a panicked mother through her child's medical
crisis. proving that profound compassion has
a structural place in business. It really does.
And we arrived at a first -time CEO staring down
the unprecedented isolation of a global pandemic,
deciding the most strategic move was to give
1 ,400 people direct, unfiltered access to her
pocket. It serves as a definitive masterclass
in translating abstract empathy into immediate,
tangible organizational infrastructure. It really
does. And so I want to turn this direct... to
you, the listener, navigating your own professional
landscape right now. Yeah, think about your own
context. You might not be a CEO. You probably
do not have 1 ,400 employees looking to you for
guidance. And frankly, you probably do not need
to hand out your personal cell phone number to
everyone in your division. Probably shouldn't,
actually. Right. But what is your specific version
of this? How can you actively dissolve the fourth
wall within your own team, in your workplace,
or even just in your local community? How do
you move past that performative tax? Exactly.
How do you foster genuine, unfiltered human connection?
Because when systemic crises occur, That underlying
human connection is really the only infrastructure
robust enough to actually sustain us. It is the
ultimate safety net. And I want to leave you
with a final lingering idea to mull over as we
wrap up today. It's something that deeply struck
me in the source material. In passing, almost
casually, the CEO mentions a stark reality. People
run companies, quote, until computers take over.
A remarkably prescient comment given the current
technological trajectory. It really is. As we
hurdle toward a future that is increasingly dominated
by artificial intelligence, by automation, and
by remote algorithms optimizing our every minute
for maximum efficiency, Will this specific brand
of messy, radically accessible human empathy
become the single most valuable corporate asset
in existence? Wow. Is the capacity to truly structurally
care for another human being's invisible struggles
the one thing a machine absolutely cannot replicate?
That is a powerful question. Let that marinate.
Because when the terrain gets murky and the rigid
structures fail, we don't look for better algorithms.
We look for an open door. We look for an open
line. Thanks for diving deep with us.