COOK: Great ingredients for creating community at work

[00:00:24.250] – Paul Miller

Welcome to Rewilding Work. I’m Paul Miller. Rewilding Work captures stories and examples of how change makers and senior leaders are transforming the world of work across their organizations. We talk I talk to leading change makers in organizations like Cisco, the IMF, Fidelity and Disney. So today, I’m so happy to talk to a Co-CEO that I have admired greatly pre-pandemic during the pandemic and post-pandemic too. Rosie Brown has a family story that brought her to be Co-CEO of the incredible and delicious UK Home Ready Meals Company COOK. Not those meals where you get all the ingredients and cook up a feast, but one where you pop a wonderful and diverse range of dishes into the oven or microwave and eat your heart out. Community values, quality and innovation. And that’s COOK. And that’s Rosie. And after the chat, I’m joined by two fascinating and inspiring expert commentators to reflect on what Rosie Brown shared. So do subscribe to the DWG channel so you get alerted to each new episode. And now let’s hear from Rosie. Great, Rosie, fantastic to have you here. So, COOK, for those that don’t know that’s only people outside the UK is a UK leader in what I regard as fantastic, quality, ready-to-cook meals.

[00:02:09.970] – Paul Miller

And community is at the heart of the COOK philosophy. Was cultivating community always part of the COOK intention?

[00:02:23.150] – Rose Brown

I think so. COOK ultimately stemmed out from a family business, and we are a family business now, and we had very strong family values growing up, which included community. So my parents had a very strong faith and it was a real lived faith that they brought into the house. So we’d always on Sunday lunch, have sort of lonely people or round the meal table, which, as grumpy teenagers, we didn’t always appreciate, but it taught us the value of kind of inclusivity and getting together, I think. And so right, from our kind of upbringing and the origin of COOK, those values of the human experience, eating together, the power of food to kind of nourish body but soul too, have always been absolutely core, I think.

[00:03:19.390] – Paul Miller

And when you started COOK, how did you bring that philosophy, that community inclusive kind of ambition, intention, into the business?

[00:03:34.230] – Rose Brown

Well, I came from an investment banking background.

[00:03:38.250] – Paul Miller

Because your brother had founded the company, is that right?

[00:03:43.960] – Rose Brown

That’s right. So my brother had founded the company and I joined three years later in 2000. And I had come from an investment banking background where community is not part of the business model. But it was a really informative few years because it taught me a lot about company culture and how it can leave people feeling and the experience one has in different cultures. And the investment banking culture was not one in which I thrived particularly. I lacked purpose, I didn’t buy into the bigger picture. I think that informed a lot of my thinking about when I then came to COOK in 2000 in an HR role. How do we want COOK to be? How do we want it to feel? How can we keep these family values alive? And you know that COOK was founded by Dale and Ed, so my brother and a chef. Dale, and they couldn’t have been more different, and yet they had an extraordinary friendship. Ed was a sort of public schoolboy. Dale was brought up in care east End. In the East End. On the face of it, nothing in common, not even the same age. But they had this extraordinary bond of friendship that was already in the company when I arrived.

[00:05:01.650] – Rose Brown

And it was just about how, as we grow the company, we’ve now got about 1600 team members. How can we scale relationships? And I think as we were growing the business, there was lots of advice on how to scale profits, how to scale business, how to scale product, but there was very, very little advice on how on earth do you begin to scale that start-up culture and keep relationships strong and healthy?

[00:05:26.490] – Paul Miller

I know you’re opening a new shop tomorrow in Nottingham.

[00:05:30.900] – Rose Brown

Yeah, Northampton.

[00:05:32.100] – Paul Miller

Sorry, Northampton. And I’m interested in when you open up a new shop and what was the previous shop you opened before that?

[00:05:42.270] – Rose Brown

Oh, York, probably.

[00:05:43.790] – Paul Miller

York. So how do you create community when you open up a new location? Because obviously people can buy their meals online, but I know that the in-person retail outlets are very important in the COOK philosophy.

[00:05:58.700] – Rose Brown

Yeah, absolutely. I think hospitality and giving every customer a warm welcome, something to eat, tasters they come in, is really important to the experience of COOK. But I think we’ve got an internal and an external part of that question. And the internal bit is we create community by recruiting the right people, recruiting very values aligned people, training them very well, trying to create that sense of belonging through the training, through events, through relationship with their new manager, through relationship with other shops that might be local. So they begin to feel part of something that’s good and where they’re very welcome. So I think we do a lot to try and create that community internally.

[00:06:41.270] – Paul Miller

What would be an example of what you’re talking about? Just so I can kind of get a feel of that.

[00:06:46.930] – Rose Brown

So when we open a new shop, we will have several days where we train new members of the team together, which is a kind of established training program which talks a lot about the brand, why we’re here, what we care about, and then as well as the more practical kind of health and safety and how to do the job. So there’s a significant training program, but a manager typically would also be in another store for four to six weeks previously and have built up connections with other store leaders. And then the area leader will be very hands on, rolling sleeves up. When you open a new store and you’ll get lots of experience, people visiting that store. So you create a sense of community internally as you open that store by welcoming people in together, which is very powerful.

[00:07:40.690] – Paul Miller

So no, I was just going to sorry, to with the new shop in Northampton, when will you visit that?

[00:07:48.790] – Rose Brown

Very soon, in the next month.

[00:07:50.650] – Paul Miller

Wow, amazing. Okay.

[00:07:53.110] – Rose Brown

Yeah, no, we love going and seeing new stores.

[00:07:55.630] – Paul Miller

Do you get very excited when you’re going to visit a new store?

[00:07:58.570] – Rose Brown

Yes, of course. Yeah, it’s really exciting opening new shops.

[00:08:02.070] – Paul Miller

Right, and do you think about what you’re going to wear and all that sort of stuff?

[00:08:06.360] – Rose Brown

I probably don’t think about that as much as they probably should.

[00:08:10.510] – Paul Miller

Okay, so for a hard nosed chief financial officer, investing in community takes investment. It doesn’t just happen. What do you see the if you like, return for COOK financially from the investment in community or do you not think of it like that?

[00:08:34.150] – Rose Brown

So the honest truth is we don’t think about that. I think you can tie yourself in knots trying to measure everything and some things in business can’t be measured and sometimes the most worthwhile things in business can’t be measured. So we don’t work on measurement too much. I think it’s more a value system that we live, that people matter and also sort of common sense philosophy that if you care for people, they’re going to care for your business. And ultimately we know that as human beings we thrive when we’re in rich relationship with others. There’s so much research. I think the Harvard Grant study is very interesting, which is the longest running study of human happiness and their conclusion after decades of research is happiness depends on the quality of our relationships. And so I’m really interested in, well, why wouldn’t that be true at work? Why wouldn’t we want to create community at work? Because that’s how people will thrive and when people are thriving, they do a great job and the business thrives. So you can’t have a thriving business without thriving people, in my view, more of a value system. Yeah.

[00:09:46.990] – Paul Miller

And I know that you’ve put quite a lot of attention into the structure and the pay remuneration in the company. How do you approach that?

[00:09:57.630] – Rose Brown

So about ten years ago we were a traditional retail business, we paid everyone a bonus and increasingly as the company grew, we found we were having more and more conversations about money rather than about building a business and doing something great on the high streets and giving people a great experience. It became all about the money and I read Dan Pink’s book Drive and got rather carried away and so we decided to invest in pay at that point and so we raised everyone’s basic pay. We became a living wage employer, which was way ahead of what the market was doing at the time. And we scrapped all bonuses and we said, actually we’re going to motivate people by paying people a good wage, taking money off the table, and then say, let’s get on with building a great company. And we introduced a profit share at the same time, so everyone got a share of profits. And that was a real game changer for us because we went from stop worrying about everyone’s money and other people’s local delivery area, taking my sales, and then we’d open a new concession and someone would be worrying about that.

[00:11:10.630] – Rose Brown

All rightly. And fairly I would have been too, if I was a shop leader. But actually, we said, actually, this is about growing a great business, providing great service to our customers, doing something purposeful and good in the world. And it’s not bonus systems are very individualistic. And actually, we’re a team here at COOK, so let’s do a one COOK profit share, let’s pay everyone a better basic, and then let’s get on with building a great company.

[00:11:38.860] – Paul Miller

Yeah. And I know you also have gone from human resources to human being, so you’ve sort of fallen out of love with human resources. And I know what you mean. It feels like a very industrial we’ve got these resources, they’re human. We’ve got other resources that aren’t human, and we’ll sweat our assets. So what’s the thinking behind that?

[00:12:05.350] – Rose Brown

Yeah, we decided to kill HR.

[00:12:10.170] – Paul Miller

How did HR feel about that?

[00:12:11.920] – Rose Brown

A few people survived HR were on board, so we actually called them the People Team at COOK. And I think it’s just a really symbolic way of saying people are not resources. You know, they are not resources to be used by a company in the pursuit of profit. And so I think it got us thinking about what is the role of HR, the HR function, is it there to serve the company? Is it there to serve the individuals? And I think that’s an ongoing tension. But certainly at COOK, I encourage our people director very strongly to be very focused on the people working for us and not serving the managers all the time. And obviously there’s attention there, but what is the shop floor saying? What is the kitchen floor saying? We employ a lot of people in retail and manufacturing, so sort of entry level jobs and what’s going on there. I’m less interested in some ways in what sort of managers higher up the organization are saying, I’m like what’s going on at the front line, and is the People Team really serving that group of people?

[00:13:16.270] – Paul Miller

And you’ve taken on people who’ve come from quite difficult backgrounds sometimes and so on, and I know that’s an important part of your outlook and approach. I’m sort of thinking, I’m getting back to that scene with your parents when you were growing up and finding people who needed help.

[00:13:36.870] – Rose Brown

Absolutely. So we have a raw talent scheme, and our raw talent scheme employs people with barriers to work. So people, homeless, addiction, prison, all sorts of mental health issues and helps get them back into the workforce. And that is absolutely a direct thing that’s come from my parents and how they behaved in terms of including everybody and this idea that there’s room for everybody at our table and being intentionally inclusive and reaching out to people in our communities who are struggling. And so, yeah, our raw talent scheme is an amazing thing. It transforms lives and it’s incredibly rewarding and actually a real privilege to be part of it. But our culture has been enormously enriched by it because actually, it’s made everyone, including me, a little less judgmental, little bit more a little bit kinder, and you feel you’re part of doing something worthwhile. It’s been enriching for our culture, for sure.

[00:14:41.690] – Paul Miller

And I know that one of the things that COOK does, which reminds me of something that DWG does. We have something which we call the Big Brother House, where a couple of times a year, all the management team all live together, COOK together, just kind of be together. And I know you do something similar and what is it you do and why do you think that’s important for you?

[00:15:05.090] – Rose Brown

Yeah, so a few years ago, we took the senior leadership team away and instead of hiring a hotel, we hired a house.

[00:15:14.900] – Paul Miller

Right. Where did you go?

[00:15:17.670] – Rose Brown

Where was it? Cornwall, I think. All right. And when you go away together and you’re living together and you’re loading dishwashers together and you’re cooking together, it becomes very authentic. There’s no room for the corporate mask or for any of the other kind of politics that can creep in and you form bonds that when you’re living together, that you simply don’t. If everyone can go back to their hotel room every five minutes, you have that hangout time and that preparing meals time, the clearing up meals. And all of the best kind of business ideas are formed around the kitchen table.

[00:15:57.090] – Paul Miller

Everything happens in the kitchen, doesn’t it? Every party happens in the kitchen, every business meeting.

[00:16:04.070] – Rose Brown

Kitchens are where it’s at. But actually, those strategy sessions, we sort of do two of them a year, and they’re so powerful because they keep the top of the organization absolutely united, absolutely working together. And I’m a great believer in if the top of the organization is role modeling what relationships can look like at work and really operating in a really functional way, then the rest of the organization tends to follow suit. So for us, that’s been really powerful. And, yeah, we’re off to Wales in June.

[00:16:39.810] – Paul Miller

Oh, fantastic. That’s great. And I know that COVID was obviously caught everybody off balance. What was it like for COOK and what have you learned and gained and lost through the experience?

[00:17:03.990] – Rose Brown

COVID was traumatic for us like it was for everybody. Commercially, it was good. So suddenly everyone wanted loads of frozen food in their freezer. Commercially, it did us a huge favor, really, and we had a plan that we were going to roll out local delivery vans to our whole shop estate over the course of the next three years was our plan. And we did it in the end in three months, because we were like, Go, go. And we were stealing and begging and borrowing secondhand ropey old vans from anywhere. So commercially, it was good. I think the challenge was all around people, so keeping people safe, so we were operating manufacturing environments where costs went through the roof. We had to split shifts, keeping everyone safe. Then we had our shops that stayed open throughout and we moved to counter service overnight. So it was an extraordinary experience of leading through something like that while staying open and keeping everyone safe and informed. I think so. I think my big learning was about communication, the importance of communicating. Ed and I, who I run the company with, we communicated every single day to the company during that period because we were making decisions so quickly and every day we’d send out, this is what’s happening today.

[00:18:30.290] – Rose Brown

And I think that was really powerful in keeping us connected and united commercially. It was good. I learned a lot about communication and leading through a crisis. I’m glad it’s over. And I think we’re still now in the process of getting some of our discipline back that we had pre-COVID that went during COVID. COVID just became about keep the train on the track and keep everyone safe. And now we’re kind of finally getting back to a place of instead of surviving, because obviously then we came out of that into inflation and it being quite brutal for the last three years. We could be in a place of creating and thriving again.

[00:19:12.100] – Paul Miller

Yeah. So, finally, tell me about Churchill’s pig and what’s the tale behind that?

[00:19:19.810] – Rose Brown

So, Churchill’s pig is Churchill. Winston Churchill once said, a dog looks up to a man, a cat looks down on a man, but a pig looks the man in the eye and sees his equal. And that is essentially how we like to operate with everyone at work, is we all have different roles and responsibilities, but that doesn’t make anyone any more important than anyone else. So that plays out in a few different ways. So Ed and I hot desk in the office, so we don’t have big power offices in the corner. We work with everybody else. We have a Churchill’s pig week every week, every year, where we invite feedback, where we’re not getting it right. It’s a wonderful value that gives people permission to speak up. So, you know, when people say, oh, I’ve got a bit of Churchill’s pig you know to brace yourself, but it gives people that permission to say what isn’t going quite so well. And so we do that once a week, once a year, sorry, for a week, and get enormous feedback from right across company, which is incredibly helpful. We also try and do that on a weekly basis in each individual site as well, so people can pop messages in the pig questions, feedback, things they want answers for.

[00:20:34.650] – Rose Brown

But again, it’s that communication piece. But Churchill’s Pig is also about not getting too hierarchical and how leaders behave in COOK. So I actually believe that humans tend to organize themselves into a bit of hierarchy anyway, so a little bit of hierarchy isn’t a bad thing because it actually just speaks to what’s there already and it’s open and honest. But I think then it’s about how the leaders in that hierarchy behave. So are they serving other people or are they being served? So, yeah, Churchill’s Pig is all about seeing each other as equal and as valuable as each other, regardless of the roles we’re doing.

[00:21:16.810] – Paul Miller

That’s great. Well, Rosie, thank you so much. It’s been lovely, as always, to talk to you. And thanks for coming on.

[00:21:25.020] – Rose Brown

Lovely to chat to you. Thank you for having me.

[00:21:32.990] – Paul Miller

And now I am delighted to be joined by two expert pundits for today. Abigail Wilmore is the Chief People Officer for innovative German beauty and skincare brand Dr. Barbara Sturm. And prior to that, Abigail was Chief People Officer for the fashion brand Stella McCartney. So the bottom line is that Abigail always works in cool and hip places. Céline Schillinger is the author of new leadership bestseller Dare to Unlead, which was Porchlight’s 2022 Leadership and Strategy Book of the Year. And I love mentioning this, but in Céline’s long list of accomplishments, she was awarded in 2017 the status as a Knight of the French Order of Merit. And we Brits love achievements like that. So welcome Abigail and Céline. So, Abigail, having listened to Rosie Brown, what’s your main reaction to what she talked about?

[00:22:38.930] – Abigail Whilmore

Well, first of all, I kind of really want to work there because she made me feel I just loved the amount of time spent focused on what is the right set of ingredients that they need there. Obviously, they talked a lot about onboarding and a sense of belonging and that this is such beautiful family values at the very heart. But it was really the amount of focus that they have on really caring for people and how they’re going to help their people to thrive.

[00:23:12.190] – Paul Miller

That’s great. And how about for you, Céline? What was your main reaction to what Rosie talked about?

[00:23:19.550] – Céline Schillinger

So I entered this interview, this video, with curiosity, but I was on my guard because I’m a bit wary of conventional CEO speak. You can hear a lot of the same words in every CEO speech. And my alarm bells went on in the very first seconds when you and her talked about community. Community being at the heart of their philosophy and the company being a family business, because community can be a buzzword that is being used very much and family can be quite exclusive and it can feel not so welcoming for people who do not belong to the family. So I was like a bit, but then, oh my God, that was amazing. I was won over completely by what she said. It was absolutely amazing. I loved that it was not just words, but actions, very concrete actions related to, for example, payment structure. Bonus. There was a lot of consistency, a lot of coherence, I found. And the intention around inclusion was, again, not just buzzwords, but actions. And to be sure, I went to their website and I searched a little bit and it was all very coherent. So I really loved it. I thought it was amazing.

[00:24:52.910] – Paul Miller

That’s great. And it’s really interesting. So you think that the whole community thing is a bit sort of community washing, that people talk a lot about community, but while COOK may be an example of doing that, that a lot of organizations sort of pay lip service to it.

[00:25:11.910] – Céline Schillinger

I think they do, yes. It’s one of those words that have been overutilized, probably, and that can be interpreted in many different ways. One way, which is pretty, I would say exclusive, which there’s insiders and outsiders in communities, and that’s really not what I’m looking for. I feel that work is one of the rare places where we can still bring together people who are very different, who do belong to different communities, or who do not feel they belong to communities at all. So there are maybe other words that are, for the moment, a bit less utilized, communality collegiality togetherness, that kind of thing. But I think that’s what she meant really. That’s what she means, I would say. And that’s what they all mean. So it’s really remarkable.

[00:26:11.240] – Paul Miller

Yeah and Abigail, why do you think that community, if we take this as part of what Céline is saying, why do you think it is that community is not given its real status in many organizations? Because all organizations work in communities, localities, groups of people, neighborhoods and so on. Why do you feel like we don’t really put that front and center, Abigail?

[00:26:39.950] – Abigail Whilmore

Well, definitely in profit making businesses, it is about the lens on profit. And she was talking about the fact that there isn’t a lot of tracking and measurements, which I also really like, but most organizations are about tracking and measurement and of course, we do need to track things in order to be able to improve. And I do also feel that one of the ways to assess kind of the health of an organization is kind of the interconnectedness of social interactions that happen outside of anything formal. And you do need to kind of track that or understand that to assess that kind of measurement. But yeah, most businesses are not focused on that. They’re focused on getting people around a strategic plan that is mainly focused on profit making and numbers or growth. And it’s much more about doing rather than being, whereas a sense of community I always feel, regardless of if it’s many communities coming together, but, yeah, it’s a sense of being together and connecting together.

[00:27:55.130] – Paul Miller

And I kind of got very excited about COOK just before the Pandemic and then during the Pandemic. And, I mean, I knew them as a fantastic company that made ready meals. However, when I met Rosie and I heard what her real approach was, it was and the way that they bring people who’ve been in prison, difficult situations, that they really place so much emphasis on the local community. I mean, she was so excited about going to think it was Northampton to open up the new branch and you could really sense that that really mattered to her. Abigail one of the things that Rosie talked about was that they killed off HR and replaced it with human being versus human resources. It’s so amusing and innovative, isn’t it? What’s your take on where HR is at at the moment, post Pandemic? To what extent are humans still resources and not beings?

[00:29:03.950] – Abigail Whilmore

I am really happy to feel a big part of this movement and shift towards human being and kind of doing away with kind of the words that I feel like big consultancy firms often use, like workforce, staff, human capital, those kinds of words, which they just don’t feel right anymore. I mean, the pandemic really shone a light on what HR can really do. And I feel definitely at the forefront of pioneering this move away from the old kind of style of HR, which was really just called personnel, to moving right to today and beyond in terms of using the word people team, using titles within people, teams that are much more about community and inclusion and really kind of focused on the experience that people are having at an organization or a brand that I think just feel much more real and more easy for people to understand what HR actually does.

[00:30:14.870] – Paul Miller

Yeah. And Céline, how about you? Where are we on this journey from human resources to human being? Is this another thing that organizations are paying lip service to?

[00:30:27.910] – Céline Schillinger

You know, Paula, what I found extremely interesting here is that it was not just a matter of changing the label, changing the name, but also doing things differently. For example, encouraging the people team members to pay attention to individuals, not just to managers, not always serve the managers. This is quite radical. This is quite a radical shift. So the tension will always be there in human resources or whatever you call that department, but it can be better handled. One thing I would modestly encourage HR to do even more of is to pay attention not just to individuals, but to groups, to networks, to communities, communities of practice, et cetera, because I find that a lot of those groups are somehow somewhere in the blind spot of HR. I also love what Rosie said about paying attention to what happens really on the front line. That means she is not just depending on intermediaries or data or reports or to form her judgment, her opinion about what’s happening. She is going there very often what’s going on there. It’s really, really important. I love that.

[00:31:42.050] – Paul Miller

Yeah. Abigail I mean, Rosie’s values and COOK’s values are explicit and open. Her parents, inclusion, giving people a chance, raw talent. What can we learn, do you feel? I mean, it’s a family story. She talks about early days with her parents and so on, but what can we learn about that kind of courage to bring those things? What can larger organizations learn I guess?

[00:32:07.580] – Abigail Whilmore

I think it’s really imperative that all organizations actually create opportunities for their people to give back on top of other kinds of benefits and things, but actually look at it as giving back helps people to feel good about themselves. Everybody kind of wants to give back, but then never finds the time to do it. So more and more organizations should be investing in ways in which to help their employees give back because it helps our mental health, it helps our own well being, it’s good for our communities and it’s just good all round. So I think it is imperative that more and more businesses offer that. And I know many companies now that are allowing people to work kind of one week, two weeks by volunteering their time for different organizations. But the more organized a company can be about that, the easier it is for people to actually give back.

[00:33:07.710] – Paul Miller

Yeah, absolutely. And at my prompting, Céline, I talked to Rosie about living together as a management team, which COOK does and DWG, where I am does. Do you think there’s a way to adopt that in larger organizations that somehow feels acceptable? I mean, we get tremendous value when we spend a week actually sharing all the kitchen, the coffees, the chats and so on.

[00:33:40.390] – Céline Schillinger

I think it cannot be imposed. It might feel weird if you right away do that with people who you have not cultivated some personal relationships with. The quality of relationships is really key and before you bring everybody to a week together and again, it’s wonderful, it’s amazing we can do that. I am worried of those leadership retreats which can be quite luxurious and trigger a sense of exclusion among other people as well. So there are ways in which you can develop the quality of relationship among the leadership team and it’s really important to do so, for example, by talking about the quality of this relationships instead of just talking about the business, the numbers, the things we need to do. I think it’s really key to keep time and really make it a focus. What is the quality of our relationships? And I’d like to maybe add two things which I will remember, I will keep with me for a long time. From this interview, the first thing you mentioned, courage. And I think. This is what should inspire probably a lot of people who will listen to this interview, the courage to attack some of those sacred cows in the corporate world.

[00:35:06.260] – Céline Schillinger

For example, performance management. You have a lot of companies saying, oh yes, we want to be more human, but they keep sticking people into their nine box and do not change anything to their performance measurement system. Here what they did. They increased pay, they scrapped old bonuses, they introduced profit sharing. This is quite radical and I believe absolutely needed. The current mainstream management systems, performance management systems are completely outdated. They trigger all the wrong behaviors and consequences, and yet very few companies are actually addressing this issue. And the second thing that will also stay with me is that they’re not just doing that for being nice or to support their values. They understand that the value of relationships is in the relationship themselves. They are not building a community in a utilitarian way. They are building a community because they believe in the value of the community itself, not as a means to achieve something else, but itself. And I think this is really what a lot of I mean, everybody should understand that we are living in a world where the work is the relationship. Relationship is not just what enables good work to happen.

[00:36:29.810] – Céline Schillinger

The relationship is the work today.

[00:36:32.510] – Paul Miller

I love that. It’s not the objects and the things, it’s the relationship between things and people. And I think what I take from what you’ve both said is that it’s less about the kind of format or the steps. It’s actually about the quality of what’s happening, the quality of relationship. And Abigail. Any final thoughts? Things I haven’t asked that you’d like to share?

[00:37:03.110] – Abigail Whilmore

What stays with me from listening is the fact that they’re really willing to experiment, which does take courage. And I’m sure they’ve had to pivot on other things, which she didn’t get to mention, but I think experimenting together with a continual feedback loop of being able to listen to your employees about how they feel about things means that you are crafting the future with them. And that is just absolutely critical. And even though a lot of businesses talk about doing that, I don’t think many are doing it very effectively.

[00:37:35.550] – Paul Miller

Sure.

[00:37:36.130] – Abigail Whilmore

And so that definitely stayed with me.

[00:37:39.090] – Paul Miller

Yeah. And any final thoughts, Céline?

[00:37:42.280] – Céline Schillinger

Well, thank you so much for letting me and many other people, I guess, know about COOK and Rosie Brown and this community. It’s amazing.

[00:37:51.430] – Paul Miller

All right. That’s such a lovely thing to say. She’ll be very, very touched by that, I know that. Thank you so much, Abigail. And thank you so much, Céline. It’s been wonderful having you on and reflecting on my conversation with Rosie Brown, Co-CEO of Cook.

[00:38:06.100] – Céline Schillinger

Thank you, Paul.

[00:38:07.070] – Abigail Whilmore

Thank you.

[00:38:11.630] – Paul Miller

I love Rosie Brown. And what a fantastic conversation with our pundits, Abigail and Céline. Rosie even got past the test set by Céline. I’d never thought of community washing before, but now I’m on alert for that. So, three seeds to plant for today. Number one, what matters is relationship in work, not the format or lavish leadership retreats where the numbers get crunched. But we need true relationship connection, so we need to focus on the quality of relationships rather than superficial appearances. Seed number two. This is the courage era in work and in life, where we need to muster courage, bravery. Staying and playing safe is not sufficient. And we need to trust our intuition and beliefs and have the courage to act just as COOK does when employing people who’ve been in prison. What an example to follow. Third seed to plant performance management. God, don’t we hate that? Needs a radical makeover. As we move from human resources to human being, it is the being that matters, not the resources. Please subscribe and like, right here, so you get alerted to each new episode. See you next time.