Meet Erika Yuag. As the community strategist and internal consultant for the Developer Division, Erika focuses on four major components to drive organizational effectiveness: community cultivation, knowledge management, experimentation, and leadership development.

• Opening and introduction.
• 3:30  Robert - introduction and theme set up to Who's There:
• "How might we accelerate the matching of passion, meaningful change, and overall better satisfaction within and outside of organizations." Erika Yuag
• 4:55   Erika - How can you use your organization as a platform to express your purpose and achieve your life goals and personal passions
• 5:38   Satya Nadella - CEO, Microsoft has describe a mission around people empowerment, allowing you to use Microsoft as your platform
• 6:55   Called a 'Challenger' as I was noted for not taking the paved path for my (others) career
• 8:30   Find opportunities to enact my purpose and passions by sharing outwardly with others who can help me connect
• 10:15   Help to drive culture change at the grassroots level so people learn to empower themselves - "Go for it!"
• 12:25   I said to my manager "have you ever thought about not defining a role with a title? Keep it vague, don't box me in as the 'Culture PM",
• 13:30 Allowed me to jump in and out of teams, facilitate people match-making for cultural engagement, then tinker to find the collective intelligence from those around you.
• 15:05 Apply a 'propose solution hypothesis' approach to explore and incrementally or dramatically create better outcomes with the people you work with
• 17:20 Curt - Are there ways you are empowering people to communicate outward what they have to offer their organization?
• 18:50 Erika - We need to ask who are the people that really care but not doing 'it' yet? Are those in authority, our leaders aligning what we are trying to accomplish with those who can explain the 'What' and 'Why' and turn it over to others for the 'How'?
• 19:45 Example: The 'What' = Diversity and Inclusion. The 'Why' = D&I drives business success by enabling and bringing out the best in others. The 'How' taps individual talents, skills, and passions to unleash the process for the mission
• 21:00 My role? The connector, a.k.a., match maker of individuals to join and experiment, discover, and share within the community
• 22:55 Robert - what mechanisms for empowerment do you teach?
• 23:30 Erika - Experimentation mechanism. Crowdsource ideas on what might make a difference in D&I. The division breaks into teams to workshop the problems into the themes
• 25:00 Hypothesis Progression Framework - customer driven engineering book - tinker with themes in D&I space
• 26:00 Erika - my role is to disseminate the output to the local level and to the systemic top down via town halls and all hands to help it become real
• 27:15 Curt - empower people with authenticity at work, which can scare those at top. How far do you let people be authentic
• 28:15 Erika - People should be true to their own nature while aligning with business standards of conduct and the organization's values framework
• 31:15 Robert - Shift discussion to traditional Total Rewards design vs. what's totally rewarding in my life
• 32:45 Erika - Steven Covey's Habit #2 - Begin with the end in mind illuminates that we have one life and reward can only be defined by one's self.
• 34:30 Feel rewarded by alignment by personal purpose and Microsoft purpose ('empowering the planet'). Move on my purpose here or start anew.
• 37:00 Curt - How does Microsoft support individuals to learn skills aligned with business needs and personal life goals?
• 39:20 Erika - To learn in different ways  we help people diversify their perspectives on a day to day basis which in turn drives innovation
• 41:55 Erika - The sky's the limit. Anything is possible when we find other people to help expand the chances

Meet Rebecca Braitling, founder of UpSpiral Leadership, feeding deep passion for developing better leaders and more positive workplaces

Opening and introduction

1:40​​ The UpSprial Leadership mindset: thinking bigger, acting bolder, and collaborating better to create positive change in the world

3:30​​ A personal transition from litigating human resources issues to joining HR to solve human problems before they became issues in law

6:25​​ We are all different in what motivates us and it's important from a rewards standpoint for our organizations to recognize this distinction

11:20​​ A pandemic silver lining - seeing our colleagues in personal spaces reveals more of the whole human beyond just a co-worker

12:45​​ Leadership Forum Community study on 'leading' through Covid - discovery that greater flexibility and autonomy, not fear, has resulted in greater productivity and work/life happiness

14:25​​ Finding stability in rocky times and new practices for connecting and celebrating successes in a virtual corporate world

19:15​​ Total rewards realized by challenging self-development to think bigger about purpose rather than just growing into a new position

22:20​​ Needs, thus rewards, vary throughout our lives and may actually be very simple to provide

22:50​​ Tools to discover individual aspirations and informing organizational leaders toward a more synchronous relationship

26:05​​ Inspiration comes from a well-articulated vision, vision for Individual, Group, Organization, and Society realized through visual storyboard sharing

29:55​​ The more we focus on our differences makes it worse, rather, focus on what is common and our strengths and on what is possible.

31:30​​ Closing

Meet Enrique Rubio, founder of Hacking HR, where HR leaders share, support, and collaborate on HR transformation in this new era.

4:00​ How the pandemic has put a spotlight on underlying human issues

7:50​ HR potential to become THE trail-blazer leading people and organizations into the future work

10:30​ Once a minimum threshold of fairness in rewards at work is met, I view my total rewards are in the freedom to make decisions, to create, to be me at work, to learn from mistakes, give me credit when I succeed

17:00​ Specialization in work confines ones social identity, success in future of work are for those who can connect seemingly disconnected thoughts through multi-fields of expertise in distinct verticals or diagonals

20:00​ If you don't know where people are moving from/to, you can't offer that talent the best incentives to work for you.

21:00​ Learning curve for fields of work as never been shorter in history

23:15​ HR today 'trends to zero' on how well organizations know their people. What's learned outside can benefit inside.

30:00​ Inclusivity, diversity, and how to overcome the biases of Artificial Intelligence

38:40​ HR leaders embrace the principle of putting humans in center the work to make sure they find meaning, purpose, direction and growth for better outcomes

44:00​ Organizations could aim to foster enjoyment in work

47:30​ Innovation in people fist - the relevance of Tony Hsieh and his approach for Zappos

54:00​ We are actually not Human Resources, but rather we are resources for humans

Meet Todd Cherches. CEO and cofounder of BigBlueGumball, a NYC-based consulting firm specializing in leadership development, public speaking, and executive coaching, as well as a Founding Partner of the Global Institute For Thought Leadership. He is also a three-time award-winning Adjunct Professor of leadership at NYU, and a Lecturer on leadership at Columbia University. Todd is also a TEDx speaker, and the author of "VisuaLeadership: Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life" (Post Hill Press/Simon & Schuster, 2020).

Post Interview Reflection

1:35​ Passion Skills Matrix helps each of us find our work/life 'sweet spot'

2:40​ Viewpoint of corporate path and non-traditional path

3:25​ Value of coaching for confidence and comfort to knock down barriers Highlights

5:50​ Welcome Todd Cherches and Who's There? ! set up

6:40​ 'VisuaLeadership' thinking - Top 50 business books for 2021 by Thinkers360

7:45​ Backstory on bad managers, must be a better way! Learned from reading 1,000 business books

10:00​ Don't light a fire under people, light a fire within them!

11:15​ Passions Skills Matrix helps people define what's important to pursue and make changes for

11:30​ Leadership qualities, values, and vision necessary to effect changes

12:00​ Hierarchy of followership, begins with trust, core values, listening, vision. Create alignment by 1) Having a vision and 2) communicating it in a clear, compelling and inspiring way

13:40​ What keeps you up at night, and what gets you going in the a.m. Accentuate worries and inspirations

14:10​ Human Resources versus a resource for humans

15:40​ How organizations set up workforce for success, it's essential to create compelling reasons for work

17:15​ Modern careers are not a linear path, rather, a roller coaster ride with exhilarating highs and terrifying plummets

20:00​ Work aligned with values can be freeing to know to navigate a more transient model of working

21:20​ Exponential change alters how leaders lead when the times are so Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA)

24:00​ Lead to the opposite of VUCA, with Calm, Certainty, Simplify, Clarity (CCSC) then decide, act, move on

26:15​ Building teams for winning the quarterly stockholder report OR the 2-5 year vision

27:45​ Helping workforce members express their passions/ambitions begins with trust

31:00​ Carve a sculpture of an elephant by carving out everything that doesn't look like an elephant!

32:10​ Adapting to the post-pandemic when virtual and hybrid (virtual/in-office) changes the rules The Three Vs: Are you seen? Visibility. Are you heard? Voice. Are you making contributions? Value.

35:00​ Managers duty to provide resources and remove roadblocks (R&R), while Leaders duty to create strategy to set up people for success

39:00​ Who's There? ! Important for leaders to embrace workforce as mobile independent agents to arrange motivateds for productivity

Robert and Curt discuss the origin of their relationship and how the concept of Who's There?! came about.