Innovation with Natalie Sheils

Jacqueline Conway  00:00

The organisational peak is a perilous environment. It’s more complex and challenging than anything that’s gone before. And as a consequence, both executive tenure and corporate longevity are decreasing. To survive and thrive at the perilous peak, executive leaders need to balance their functional leadership or focus on execution with enterprise leadership, that is ensuring the organisation adapts and our new world. That’s what we’ll be exploring in the advanced executive leadership podcast. Welcome. I’m your host, Jacqueline Conway. I’m the founder and managing director of Walden Croft, a consulting practice dedicated to helping executives and executive teams anticipate, navigate and lead at the paperless peak. We all know that we need to continue to innovate and evolve if we’re to remain relevant and competitive in the world that we’re never in. Technology is one of the key drivers of the change that we’re experiencing. Although it’s not the only one. And today’s conversation, I’m speaking with Natalie shields, the Chief People Officer at Mosaic group, her in the mobile application space, we talk about how to structure to allow for innovation, and what that means for leadership.

Natalie Sheils  01:25

I’m actually born and bred in Africa. I am South African by origin. And I like to class myself as a product of globalisation. What that means is that starting from my education all the way up to my work experience I’ve had before, I’ve been fortunate enough to be exposed to a lot of cultures. And with that, you know, a lot of international travel opportunities to learn around different sectors as well. That got me into an interest into consulting background, where I started off focusing management consultancy, through my interest in things like HR organisation development, I then started kind of focusing specifically when it comes to the human dynamics within the workplace, as well as all the other kind of strategic things that I that enable an organisation to operate at its efficiency, let’s put it that way and to reach its mandate because every organisation exists with particular mandate. And while I work for multiple kind of organisations, helping them think through a lot of their logistics, on the strategic side of things on the people side of things, expansion, etc, I realised that I actually like working in the tech sector. Okay, I loved the dynamicism of the tech sector, the level of disruption, the agility, the quick thinking, and with it, I was able to see firsthand the impact of innovation. How one organisation can go from obscurity to suddenly being something that changes the way that we live our lives day to day. I like to use the example of Chad GBT, because that’s the one that everybody’s thinks about right now, even though I always say it’s a level one AI technology in the grand scheme of things, but it’s only turned the only turn one like one day or two ago. But it feels like it’s always been here. And we think about the advancements, the advancements that it’s done in that short period, that is a reflection of the power of innovation that happens within the tech sector. And its ability to transcend not just the workplace, but also our lives and how we go about doing things and then how it impacts us in the work world as well on how we find meaning out of life out of our jobs. And so that’s something that pulled into me, and I’ve been in tech since then.

Jacqueline Conway  03:43

Okay, fascinating and so one of the things I’m really interested in is in the tech sector, more than many other sectors, you are both the vanguard of the change. So you are, in some ways, creating the change in the world. But you are also trying to stay ahead of that. And you’re the recipients of it. So you are working in a world that is changing because of technology. Not only that you are creating, but that is also in the marketplace. And so how do you in mosaic? Think about the future. How do you know, for example, which mobile brands you want to acquire? How do you know, in advance strategically, what feels like the next rate bit to place if we could put it like that?

Natalie Sheils  04:37

Yeah, I think it’s, it starts by having the right type of leadership in place. leadership that’s forward thinking. People with a passion for sort of the areas that they focus on. It’s very, very important, whether it’s product leaders who are deeply meant in the world of product deployments in the strategies, the trends that are happening in the product space But in marketing, we’re thinking about things like digital marketing, I mean, digital marketing feels like a new thing, just two years ago, it became a new boom, right? And thinking about sort of the the impact that happens when it comes to technology within that space. Same thing for me as, as a people professional, that passion that I have for a child, you know, at the same time, coupled with my passion for technology and recognising how these advancements in technology then impact my space, that becomes the first thing that you need in in an organisation like mosaic, because then those leaders are the ones that are keeping tabs with what’s going on with industries and how they will disrupt their particular functions. And then you need leaders who are quite frankly, very, very, not just strategic, but involved in what the organisation is all about, not just as values, but ultimately, what is the foundation and the basis of this organisation. And so it’s very important that all of our leaders are passionate about what they do within their spaces constantly looking for opportunities for them as a group, not only within our functions, but generally, in terms of how the business can can continue to thrive, grow, disrupt. And quite frankly, it’s also a survival mechanism.

Jacqueline Conway  06:15

Yes, indeed. And, and you mentioned a bit about your, your background, too. So your South African and this kind of internationalism, this globalism that you that you bring to your role. I mean, that that is, in some ways, so essential when you are working in a in a big multilateral world. And in an organisation that works across nations. It’s multinational in that respect. I mean, what impact does, having people with that kind of outlook, having that, those those kinds of perspectives in being able to look to what might be important and coming down the line,

Natalie Sheils  07:01

We have a business that’s only not only b2b, but mostly b2c as well. So there’s that close relationship with you have to have a close relationship with consumers and understanding what our consumers look for what they want, what trends will will impact how we’re able to provide services to them. But I think one of the, for me, one of the advantages I come from my background is that cultural intelligence, that ability to apply open mindedness, the ability to build rapport very easily with people from various backgrounds to be curious, to be willing to learn to start from a point of not having the answers or assuming the things are a certain way. But recognising that there is a difference in thought, when we talk about diversity, and that’s the culture intelligence bit, I think the there’s a, there’s a difference in diversity in thought in terms of what every culture or every person delivers. And that allows you to then be able to build rapport collaboration is an important thing to be able to write, ask the right type of questions, build the right type of strategic partnerships. And that’s and I think that’s one of the catalysts and the advantages for me that come from from having this background. That’s that’s very globalised.

Jacqueline Conway  08:23

Is that something that you know, from winning your HR hat now? Is that something that you’re looking for in the people that you’re bringing into mosaic?

Natalie Sheils  08:31

It’s essential, not not only because of, of just generally the way that it makes sense. But there’s ample examples of how that goes wrong when people don’t have that sense of cultural intelligence or diversity of thought. And as an organisation that needs to be agile, that needs to be innovative, you need to recognise that ideas and innovation can come from anybody. To do that. You need to be an organisation that can build an entrepreneurial mindset and spirit across all employees. That means an openness to experiment to have people have the confidence to bring up ideas to problem solve, and to be open to failures. The biggest kind of bridge that most people don’t always recognise is actually the biggest cultural difference between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, massive difference, and the amount of friction that has existed just by not having the cultural intelligence went from a leadership perspective, is something that I’ve seen firsthand. And so it’s important to us that we’re constantly educating our people around around being open minded around that diversity of thought and not just sort of, you know, the diversity as we understand it, but I think the the one that now, a lot of people are very apprehensive on is that openness of of that difference differences in thoughts.

Jacqueline Conway  09:51

So I’ve got two questions on the back of that, but first is about how you, you know how you do that where you’re talking about, you know, the idea come from everywhere. So how do you do that sort of listening? And the second one is a really about what do you need in senior leaders in terms of their capacity to open themselves up to not necessarily being the ones who have the answers? No, I think we all intuitively know the ideas. And really great ideas are generated across the organisation. And sometimes it’s those people who are farthest from the strategic Apex if you like that decision making body, but who are potentially closer to customers who’ve got a really valuable perspective. But actually being able to hear that perspective to do something really useful with it is the bit that a lot of organisations fall down on. So how do you create some sort of listening mechanism, where you get to hear those things

Natalie Sheils  10:53

That really goes on this is this is now sort of very much in the HR element space. But it goes down to not only sort of cultures, but the processes that you create within your organisation, even if it’s things like how you go about setting goals, for example, whether you’re somebody who does a top down approach as a business, one of the best ways we’re able to do that is obviously to think about it from an OKRs perspective where each individual is involved in terms of his own sense of accountability, in terms of team goals, the way that we structure things, as well as prioritising the success of a team versus the individual. Right. And so that could come from the way that you reward you know, that you reward individuals and and organise it and teams. That emphasis on sort of the success of a team allows that, that barrier around me as a manager, Laurie to me, but rather, how is your team performing? What ideas is your team able to, to come up with an execute and how do you then reward that team to continuously come to the table, it also lowers. It also allows managers to be open to people coming forward with ideas, experimenting, being open to failure. And then there’s also sort of when we talk about the concept of agility, or the Agile best practices, being able to test and experiment within teams, I would even say sort of carving out a team within each depending on your specialisation as a business, but whether it’s within a product team or engineering team, where you’ve got your, your team that test and innovate some sort of allowing as well for Tang ability within your teams, that’s a crucial one as well. And allowing them to sort of run sprints as well around ideas. And that’s a that’s a very, very helpful mindset. But also importantly, is as an organisation having innovation intrapreneurship is part of your values. And again, going back to things like reward structures, that becomes a crucial one and I cannot speak to it more how important that is today, more than ever, for organisation if organisations if they intend to even begin to compete in the next two, three, level on for five years, especially in the space of disruption, that is happening across industries, right, it’s absolutely morphing business models. And it’s important that organisations are able to adapt, thinking innovatively, and that innovation is not always not gonna come from outside, it’s most likely going to come from inside. And that won’t happen if people are not comfortable with that psychological safety with the values of the organisation that says, hey, we’re all about innovation, all about ideas, bring them forward.

Jacqueline Conway  13:37

So when you talked about them reward and innovation, I mean, just I mean, this is quite nuts and bolts, but how do you how do you reward differently for innovation than you would for general kind of everyday performance?

Natalie Sheils  13:51

Yeah, I cannot speak any better or talk to an organisation that does any better than Google. Right? Google has centres where they create for people to be innovative. Whenever someone comes up with an idea, and Google thinks it’s a fantastic idea, and they invest into that idea. They also offer equity to the individual on the teams that actually creative idea, and they’re able to able to go work on that idea. And so that’s, that’s the kind of out of the box at the same time. intrapreneurial thinking that reinvesting into the organisation mindset that companies should start to think about. And that’s one of the ways that you can do that. And I would argue, that is why Google continues to be the forefront of innovation.

Jacqueline Conway  14:34

And what about an mosaic? Is there anything kind of that’s, that’s different from the norm that you’re doing the around award? For and specifically for innovation?

Natalie Sheils  14:43

We do kind of the same as Google because we want not only are we an incubator have sort of reached, you know, acquire organisations, we also create our own sort of new apps and new ideas. Okay, and so when teams come up with that, we actually do sprints we actually have the teams Oh, and work on these particular products and projects, we actually give more equity for that team that’s focused on that particular new Apple product that they’re that they’re working on. We give, we do invest into them as well, in terms of thinking about what type of sort of setup with they need as a team, they get a lot of visibility to mosaic leadership as well and kind of thought, thinking, some mentorship as well, from our leaders in order to kind of push through some of these ideas. And we’re open to testing, we’re open to testing, we’re open to a little bit of failure here and there as well. And so that’s how we go about on rewarding that.

Jacqueline Conway  15:40

What you’re seeing the about the channels having to be open, therefore, between those teams, those those agile teams that are doing sprints that are really at the clinical face off of trying new things out, and the resources, the political buy in the strategic buy in that they might need from very senior and the mentorship as you mentioned, that they might need from very senior leaders.

Natalie Sheils  16:10

I mean, it’s really mosaic if you think about mosaics business model around sort of us having to sort of innovate. But you can always, you can only think of acquiring so much. Right? It’s actually cheaper to supply and do some research and development. And so that was very, very much intentional. But it’s also just the fundamentals of design thinking, right? How do we create systems and designs that allow us to problem solve that allow our people to be able to think outside the box. And so that’s how we sort of set up for us at Passaic. It’s important that everybody goes through agile training. Everybody, it’s part of when you join the organisation, we talk about agility, about agile, the Agile fundamentals, we run our goal setting our OKRs everything that we do under the principles of agility, we do our best to create decentralisation within our teams. So even though you have sort of the hierarchical aspect aspects of saying I’ve got a CSV, we’ve got directors role got all of that we also allow for a sense of decentralisation, I can even speak within within my team as well, and allow our leaders that we have underneath us to actually operate like, like leaders.

Jacqueline Conway  17:22

You’ve talked about having to train everyone in our jail best practice. But what else do you look for, for very senior leaders in, in, in tech leadership? I mean, is it the same, one of the things I’m interested in is in organisations like yours, where you have to simultaneously be designed for innovation and also designed for control? Because there has to be, particularly if you’re part of a, you know, fear in a group wide structure that are that are financial implications for doing things in a certain way, you know, one has to operate with good governance. So how do you balance the kind of formal structures that have to be in place with the less formal structures that allow for some of the things that are strategically important for allowing the organisation to do the things that it needs to do?

Natalie Sheils  18:19

I think when we’re we are that thing called strategic mindset. That’s, that’s a crucial one that we look for when we’re hiring, it makes a big, big picture thinking. At the same time having the strong operational background, right where you can you have led particular certain teams, the viewer, you understand the risks, you understand the governance, you understand what’s important, especially for public trade organisation, at the same time, you’re able to actually understand what mosaic group does you actually understand able to understand what your area does, you actually able to think about how you can add to them as a group? What challenges exist? This is these are things that we question and we like to, to dig deep into when we’re hiring senior leaders.

Jacqueline Conway  19:04

You’ve mentioned a couple of times allowing failure because of course, every great innovation has come about because somebody has tried and it’s extremely rare for somebody to try and succeed first time around the there is an almost an inevitability that there is trial and error involved in that which is another word for failure. Lesson two, and so how do you tolerate failure? What culturally do you need in the organisation to not to be comfortable with the uncertainty of not knowing if this thing that you are progressing will will work or won’t work?

Natalie Sheils  19:47

The important thing as well as to whenever we do try new things, they’re always in in a small dose, okay, right. So in forms of MVPs, if I can put it that way, those minimum viable product or single Okay, what is the small solution and what we’re trying to solve for. And then we have matrixes that we’re looking for to measure to say, Okay, we’re doing this well, we’re doing that we have those Sprint’s that we then create, so they are processes in place that allow for constant feedback and communication around whether something’s working or not. But by virtue of us as well, understanding that, in order for us to be able to compete to thrive, we need to take some level of risk. And that risk is one that we we can tolerate in a way that’s controlled, sort of the way that I that I mentioned. But that is an important facet of things, if we do not allow ourselves to take a little bit of that risk, understanding what our ultimate goal is, it then becomes, it’ll be challenging to innovate.

Jacqueline Conway  20:48

Is that part of your strategy process?

Natalie Sheils  20:51

Nearly three months in the year, end of the year, where all we’re thinking about strategy, we’re constantly thinking about strategy, you know, what are the areas we’re going to be focusing on? It is marketing has to come to the fold and say, This is what we’re going to be. This is our impact things. Of course, the CEO looks to her team, she looks to product look to marketing, to then say, okay, what are we trying to achieve? What are the technologies that could disrupt come back to me with ideas around where we should be focusing on what’s working well, within our current products, where the risks that are happening with some of our products and applications? Where do we need to pivot? And then we will, they will pitch things and then we start to think from the Human Resources side of things. Okay, this is what we’re going to do, what’s the skill sets and capabilities that we’re who will then need within the organisations for us to be able to try all these things? Do we have those skill sets internally? How do we create exposure to this experience and skill set for some of our teams? If we’re going to hire externally? What are the key things that are missing internally that we’ll need from somebody externally to be able to do this.

Jacqueline Conway  21:54

You’re talking there about technological disruption as it relates to your own product, product portfolio, your own strategic place in the marketplace. But of course, there are disruptions that happen at a bigger scale, that might not be related to technological disruption. And, of course, you know, we’ve all been through, you know, the biggest disruption that most of us experienced in our professional lives with COVID-19 and lockdown. And, and, of course, that was an inflection point, wasn’t it that a great many things have changed within the HR sphere as an unintended consequence or a second order consequence of lockdown, not least of which is the propensity for people to want to do hybrid working now, in a much bigger scale than it was pre lockdown. So as well as your capacity for anticipate, you know, I call it a kind of anticipatory capacity within your C suite and across the organisation to think about what are the disruptors in that technological place? How do you have a space to think about that outside of technology, but what else is happening around the other big things that are happening in society that may have an end a huge impact on not just the products you make, but organizationally, just some of the kind of core things that you believe are that you that you do right now.

Natalie Sheils  23:28

Because we understood that despite COVID That was where the trend was going, despite Trek COVID That’s where the trend was going. And so we were already prepared a lot. How did you I mean, it’s it’s quite Yeah, I mean, it became because we operate in a tax base, it became it was having conversations with people, we recognise that some of the skill sets that we needed from time perspective, it wasn’t easy to just say, look, we’ll just find them in the US. We just went through a whole exercise actually. We were planning around where we open our own new operations for for the business. So I was leading that that particular exercise actually worked with Gartner as well, to try and uncover some of the areas where you know, where we’ll be, there is a saturation of specific skill sets, there isn’t one right? Not at least if you want it from a robust perspective, you will find that there is some countries that will invest heavily in creating developers, some countries will invest heavily in in the AI, engineering space, all the the bootcamps all the educational institutions will most likely be focused on that they would be subsidised learning for people to be able to go into those industries. So that became very obvious to us that as a company that’s focused on marketing that’s focused on product that’s focused as engineering if we want to great marketeers, we had to look in the US we had to look in the UK if we wanted great data analysts, suddenly we had to look in the US we had to look in, we had to look in Croatia, Croatia, right? Who would have thought. If we wanted to have some fantastic developers, we had to look in Croatia. But we also had to look a lot in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, the amount of developers that were there was just Outstanding, outstanding. At the same time, we looked at the political situation in eastern Europe, where a lot of them were now migrating and kind of moving. And then you looked at the political side of things governmental side with the with the introduction, introduction, the upcoming introduction at the time of digital nomad VSAs, the sense of open borders, openness, how that was opening, not just in Europe, but across Brazil, because it was very obvious to me at least, that this was where the future was headed. And so the proposal then was, then we should be looked, because we want to hire the very best we should be looking at how do we then start to hire across and open that up for our for our people as well. And we found that it was also a very good retention mechanism. Doing that, because we didn’t force people to come to a certain office, we didn’t limit ourselves to where we could find talent. Of course, we had to be thoughtful around what it meant from a timezone perspective. And started to think about how we make sure that our teams are able to collaborate and all of that. And so when this disruption of COVID hit, we were pretty much in a healthy place.

Jacqueline Conway  26:27

So you had anticipated that and you were, you were ahead of the curve, on remote working, any other disruptions, whether they are politically, socially, technological, technologically, anything else that is a disrupter that perhaps you’ve you are seeing coming and that you’re trying to get ahead of the curve.

Natalie Sheils  26:49

And yeah, the big one is, the generations that are now coming into the that are in the workplace, the generation that is, yes, we’re extending the, the length of time people are able to work which creates across across the globe, which creates a very interesting situation from a diversity perspective. And I think a lot of people are not thinking about that when it comes to diversity around what a certain generation understands to how they prefer to work, right, and how a new generation prefers to work. The biggest disruption we’re going to have is an influx of generation that’s coming in today is a generation that’s not read necessarily into the hole. These are my credentials, this is my nine to five, this are my skill sets, they prefer flexibility, they prefer to learn in a way that’s flexible, which is fantastic for the era that we’re heading into, which is going to be very much skills based. And I can go on and on about that one. And sometimes it might not seem positive, but you know, it is what it is. But we’re at edit into an era where it is going to be about skills it’s going to be about your portfolio is individual versus your CV and your resume and credentials. But the combining of these different generations means that we need to be able to brand ourselves in a different ways organisations, we need to brand ourselves in a way that’s multifaceted. That’s also able to create a culture where people can work with with each other, but also thrive within that culture, recognising that the learning patterns are different for people, and how people show up at work is also very, very different. And I think that’s a trend that is only going to add more complexity and will accelerate and will only accelerate more with the advancement of technology. Yeah,

Jacqueline Conway  28:43

I mean, it’s fascinating, isn’t it, because if we even think about values, the value sets that each subsequent generation has, is different from previous generations. And that’s not to say that any are right or wrong or better, or whatever. But they are different. And so when you put all of that, in together, what you may get is, is a great level of innovation and creativity that happens when you’ve got different perspectives, kind of clashing, or or or integrating with each other. And yet it’s harder, isn’t it is that we know that it is harder to work with people who who are not like us, and who don’t don’t think like us who might have a different value set. And I mean, have you thought about any of the kind of practical ways that you help people do that? Because, I mean, we could just sort of throw them all together, couldn’t we? And just sort of stand back and see get on with it, but I don’t think any of us would think that that would be the best approach. But I don’t know what is the best approach they know what is at least an approach to multi general, multi generational work teams.

Natalie Sheils  29:59

I think I think what we try and do and I think that for me, I think that is probably going to be when we talk about when a lot of people think about diversity inclusion, and they think about all the practices that we need to put together when it comes to diversity. And this is often the one that slips under the table, or people don’t recognise. And I think when we are talking about that diversity of thought, diversity of learning and creating those values, it’s going to be very important that as leaders and HR departments are talking about that, that they’re actually using this as the case studies and examples. In the same way, if people go through bias training or something along the lines of that, the same way, there needs to be, hey, how does learning show up for this generation for that generation? How should we be thinking about how we work together, how should we be be open minded, and again, creating an environment that’s not individually competitive, but also thinks about the team as a whole, and, and allowing, or other fostering and empowering our people to start to learn from each other as well, when we think about those very important skill sets to not only today, but going forward, that ability to constantly be learning is not just about learning around technology.

Jacqueline Conway  31:15

It used to be that some of the ways that we embedded a strong culture happened in a physical location. And so we were well practised in doing cultural work with the assumption that people would be cooled or heated, or at least cooler, catered some of the time, but in a dispersed work environment where people are geographically dispersed, and all of the work is mediated via technology, so on on teams, or zoom or, or some such, that that has a huge implication on how do you then embed and create and embed and sustain a robust company culture.

Natalie Sheils  32:01

What we try and do it music is create the the many organisations within departments where if you’re a product department, it’s very important that you as a leader, as a team, have your product Sprint’s you have your product meetings, you have your team buildings, it’s important that we’re also allowing people within certain apps to be able to cross work on different projects with other sort of product managers as well. We now have knowledge sharing sessions between engineering and product as well, where they get to know each other and actually share a lot of best practices together.

Jacqueline Conway  32:41

And I had mentioned I would circle back to the HR piece, because all of these things are have a huge impact on the way that you think about people in the organisation. And so it’s a massive transformation for HR, isn’t it?

Natalie Sheils  32:57

I often get asked, what is the future of work? And that, and I will also say another comment that I often get, which is it’s going to be very interesting to see how the interaction of AI data and other technologies and HR come together. What a lot of hrs miss, is that what the future of work will be, we have the opportunity to actually shape it if we do not, we can talk about how that will not necessarily go well. And we have the opportunity to not only be bystanders in how the interaction, the interaction between AI and the HR function and data works, we have the opportunity to actually shape that, right. And we need to be active in doing so.

Jacqueline Conway  33:40

And so how do how do you or how does one help to develop C suite leaders for this new world.

Natalie Sheils  33:50

This is where the CEO has to take charge. This is where the CEO and this is it’s not accustomed to C suite for CEOs to go back and say, Look, this is what I want from you. But the CEO, the CEOs have to lead from the very, very, very top. People in HR people and culture can obviously help with that as well, if they have that mindset that we that we talked about sort of strategic commercial aspect. But I cannot stress this more than I can that I’m gonna say right now. It is important for business survival, that is leadership, be constantly learning. They don’t need to learn about everything under the sun, but they need to learn. They understand their industries very well. But they need to also be very close to all the disruptions that are happening within those industries, disruptions to their own roles, because the first roles that are going to be disrupted are not just going to be a low level work like things like payroll automate its knowledge working, its knowledge working that is getting disrupted, right.

Jacqueline Conway  34:51

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