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Topic: Developing talent
Podcast: Rapid Response

Be relentless – so your team can be fearless

Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson
Faced with long odds, how do you keep your team motivated and moving forward? Alexis McGill Johnson is focused on building hope. As president of Planned Parenthood, Johnson is preparing for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade -- and modeling a sense of relentlessness for her team, so they too can be fearless.
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Podcast: Rapid Response

How flexibility creates momentum

Crate & Barrel’s Janet Hayes
Crate & Barrel CEO Janet Hayes started her role in August 2020, when stores were closed and the future of retail was uncertain. Her move? Lean into digital and sustainability for her brands, and flexibility and trust for her employees.
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Podcast: Bonus

5 secrets to keeping your best employees

Collaboration drives performance in the modern economy. Yet the uncertainty and dislocation of our pandemic experience has unsettled workplace expectations and cultures. Managing a team today requires a new mindfulness about physical and mental health, what motivates performance, and how to build creativity in remote, hybrid, and fluid conditions. In this special episode, we share five moves that are essential to building a successful team spirit right now.
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Podcast: Episode 92: Must Listen

How setbacks create momentum

Compass’ Robert Reffkin
As dangerous as obstacles and setbacks may appear, they can also present opportunities. Robert Reffkin, founder and CEO of the real estate platform, Compass, knows this well. The trick, he says, isn't to avoid obstacles at all cost, but rather, to identify them quickly as resources you can harness. “You can't do great things in the world if you don't have that entrepreneurial, ‘I can do it’ energy,” Reffkin says. “And how do you get that energy? You dream a big dream.”
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Podcast: Episode 88: Must Listen

Asking the uncomfortable questions

Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel
The ability to ask the right questions at the right times of the right people is an essential skill for every entrepreneur. For Michael Seibel, managing director at Y Combinator, action sometimes needs to take a back seat to asking: "Is this working?" Michael learned early on that by stopping to ask the counterintuitive question, he gained the wisdom – and avoided time lost to big mistakes – that ultimately propelled him forward.
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Podcast: Rapid Response

Upskilling and the war for talent

Guild Education’s Rachel Carlson
How do you win the war for talent? Send your frontline workers to online school. That's the pitch Rachel Carlson has made to businesses from Chipotle to Disney, Walmart to Waste Management. As co-founder and CEO of Guild Education, Carlson helps workers get online degrees and certifications as a free employee benefit. To meet the ongoing need for upskilling, Carlson says, company-sponsored classes should be as ubiquitous as company-sponsored health plans — because the ROI is astonishingly high.
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Podcast: Rapid Response

Why real estate matters more than ever

Compass’ Robert Reffkin
"We may not be able to survive this," thought Robert Reffkin, founder and CEO of real estate platform Compass, in early 2020 when pandemic lockdown rules essentially outlawed U.S. home selling. Yet now, the housing market is booming, and Compass has successfully IPO'ed. Reffkin shares how he kept his team together, why he stayed optimistic, and what businesses lucky enough to have benefited from Covid times owe their communities.
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Podcast: Episode 82: Must Listen

Frustration is your friend

Houzz’s Adi Tatarko
Frustration is an important signal: it indicates an opportunity, a problem to be solved, a path to scale. Adi Tatarko founded the online home-design site Houzz with her husband after their own home reno turned into a nightmare. By building a tool that flipped their frustration on its head, they've grown Houzz into a bustling platform and marketplace for homeowners, designers, architects, craftspeople. Learn how to identify frustration – and flip it.
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Podcast: Rapid Response

Loneliness at work

The Lonely Century’s Noreena Hertz
Even before the pandemic forced us to stay home, loneliness was snaking its way through our lives, says economist Noreena Hertz, affecting everything from how we vote to how we work. The author of The Lonely Century, Noreena has advice for businesses about how loneliness impacts productivity, the bottom-line advantages of in-person connection — and why kindness is key to retaining talent.
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Podcast: Rapid Response

A virtual-first workplace

Dropbox’s Drew Houston
Drew Houston knows if Dropbox is going to design for the future of work, then its own workforce needs to live in that future, right now. He discusses Dropbox's move toward the virtual-first workplace — and how its benefits extend far beyond pandemic times.
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Podcast: Episode 70: Must Listen

How to sell without selling

Nike’s Phil Knight
Great branding is about identity – and it’s about matchmaking too. No one knows this better than the legendary co-founder of Nike, Phil Knight. When he and his partner, Hall of Fame track coach Bill Bowerman, started the sneaker company, they never tried to force-feed customers a product just to drive up the bottom line. They focused on one thing: making an excellent product for people who believed in the edgy Nike ethos. Because they knew, when there’s a mismatch between product and market, the bottom usually drops out. Instead, they told the world who the are, and then did everything they could to find their ideal customers. And made history. Cameo appearance: Eddy Lu (GOAT).
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