AMY: Hello. Welcome to Episode 210 of Greater Than Code. I am one of your hosts, Amy Newell. And I'm here with Rein Henrichs. REIN: Thanks, Amy. And I'm here with our guest Harini Gokul. Harini is a global technology leader, an investor, and a civic volunteer. She is a cloud industry leader with 20 years of experience driving global business strategy for technology companies including Microsoft, AWS, and IBM. Harini has built and led global, multi-disciplinary organizations in the United States and Europe to accelerate customer transformation in the cloud. She is dedicated to accelerating the success of highly scalable companies founded by women and non-binary individuals. She sponsors and invests in organizations to accelerate the advancement of women and POC. She is an investor and an active participant in the Pacific Northwest, European, and Indian startup ecosystems. Harini, welcome to the show. HARINI: Thank you, Rein. That was a lovely introduction. I know that that was a mouthful, but I'm five things. I'm a mom. I like technology because it solves human problems. And I want to make sure that everyone has a level playing field in technology, especially underrepresented segments and folks who have last names and first names that may be hard to pronounce. REIN: Well, you're exactly the right sort of person for us to be talking to. So, Harini, what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? HARINI: So my superpower -- and I didn't even know I had one. I think there's a lot of people who sort of go around saying, "I can do this." But you don't really know it until someone points it out to you. And it's been pointed out to me many times these past few months that my superpower is getting sh*t done. I like to talk. There are many people who like to talk. I like whiteboarding, I like ideation; I like all of that. But what I really enjoy is translating those to action. So making things happen would be the more polite way of saying it if I was on a stage on Grace Hopper, as an example. But in this podcast, I know I can say getting sh*t done is my superpower. And I am proud of it. And I use it a lot, all the time and especially these past few months. AMY: Yeah. I feel like since the pandemic, suddenly things that you didn't even need to think about how to get done suddenly they've all piled on. REIN: Like getting out of bed in the morning. AMY: Yes. HARINI: Exactly. Who knew we would be teachers and professionals? I'm hiring and getting -- I haven't met half of my team because I've hired them during a pandemic, and they've come on board as faces on a Zoom call. And I think it shows a new resilience, but it also shows the need to say what's important and what's not important and give lots of grace so I'm not beating myself over things that are not important. So I get the important sh*t done. REIN: That makes sense. I also wanted to mention that we have Arty Starr joining us as well. Hi, Arty. ARTY: Hi. I'm happy to be here. REIN: So Harini, how did you acquire your superpower? HARINI: I started as an engineer. I went to engineering school and I saw how people thrived on ideas and whiteboarding and just these equations and math formulas that would go on for pages. And I loved that, and I looked at that and I would go out into the community outside my school which was full of wage workers and I did not get a response. And I couldn't get an answer and people would be dismissive. They would go, "Oh, no. It's so important because you write these white papers that take you all these places." And yes, they take you all these places. But where are we taking the community around us? That's been the question I've tried to answer from day one is to say, "How can we put our learning, our education, our technology to use for those who need it the most? And that's what makes me have a bias for action and drive to take ideas and translate them for scale and impact in the broader world. AMY: So you asked, “How can we put our technology to use for those that need it the most?” It's a great question. And your superpower is getting sh*t done. So how do we get some actual traction around these types of initiatives with putting our technology to use for those that need it the most? HARINI: It's sort of three-fold. One is let the people who are experiencing the challenges today be part of your solution. I would start there. Co-creation and co-shaping the solutions is super important. I think the reason we see a lot of investment but not a lot of impact is because the community that's often shaping the solution is not living the problem. So if someone tries to tell me what it is to remote school a six-year-old and you do not have kids, then it's very likely that your idea of a solution is going to be different than my idea of a solution. So I'll start there, which is invite those who are experiencing the challenge to have a seat at the table and to co-create the solution. Second, I'm a big believer in public and private partnerships which means that these problems that we have whether it's learning, whether it's skilling, making sure that all of our workforce is skilled for the next generation of work, making sure that all of our children get the right education at school at the right age. Third, we all have an equal opportunity to jobs and to be a part of the workforce. All of that does not come -- they're not single dimensional issues or solutions; they are multi-dimensional. They need our public institutions and communities to step forward and invest and work on it together to identify areas either geographies or segments that need the most investment and have a long-term plan. AMY: What are some of the obstacles do you see to that taking place? What are some of the things that we can do to facilitate those types of transactions? HARINI: I would say there's a greater awareness of all of this. There are many different forums at a global level, at a regional level that I've highlighted the need for such partnerships to come together. And the pandemic is shining a light on it. I always think about every crisis being an opportunity. And this crisis has presented the opportunity for us to do different and do better with women in the workforce, with underrepresented segments in our workforce, and making sure that we are sort of setting the stage to do better going forward. The obstacles I think are fairly artificial. We constrain ourselves by how we have done things before. So I'll give you an example. Often, in order to get one of those highly-skilled, highly paid roles at a tech company -- and I'm saying this thinking tech is sort of the future of where we are. We need more of us to be a part of the tech revolution so we can shape tech to look like us and to work for us. But in order for us to be part of this journey, the entry barrier is sometimes as simple as having a four-year degree. Unless I have a fancy degree from a fancy college, I am not considered good enough to be part of these institutions. And to me, that's an artificial barrier that's long expired - that idea that you have to have a four-year degree from a specific school in order to be good to work at a large corporation has expired. And we need to say goodbye to it sooner rather than later. Community colleges, continuous learning, other options to learn, as well as learn on the job should be encouraged and companies are doing that. They see the opportunity with the apprentice programs. I live in the Seattle area and I see lots of great efforts being done to move forward and scale our apprentice programs. But we need these to be done at much bigger scale with much bigger impact. It's not drops filling a bucket; we need a waterfall of these efforts. AMY: I think the piece that you just said about needing a four-year degree and also how the pandemic has really shone a light on some of these problems -- My 17-year-old is a senior. We're looking at colleges now and the pandemic has just upended so many things about college education, which is a thing that I know I've been saying since I opened my first 529 plan for my kid when he was born. Something has got to change so that college isn't becoming more and more out of reach and yet still required so that everybody ends up with all this massive student debt. And my hope is that this moment that can change because there's so much upheaval in the university systems right now. HARINI: Exactly. And I think we recognize that as our tech sector grows, it is benefiting a small homogeneous group of people, folks that can afford this expensive student debt you just talked about. And women of color, Black, Latina, native women, we make up 4% of the computing workforce. And so this economic exclusion has a real impact by putting up barriers where they are the most damaging. And this hurts not only the individual going through the process, but it hurts families, it hurts communities and the entire ecosystem. So we are seeing generational inequities being reinforced by economic exclusion such as the price to pay to get a decent education. AMY: And then this piece of that is specifically about women and the barriers to entry, which again, I think the pandemic has only made more visible just how little we have invested in childcare and education and actually thinking about the needs of working parents, specifically working mothers where the pandemic hit and everything has just fallen apart for everyone even quite privileged folks. HARINI: I think that's such a good point. When you look back over the past 6 years, 10 years, we were seeing signs of progress. Despite all these structural challenges, there were more women in technology, in corporate America, more women coming into the pike, more women progressing. I think we had 20% of women in the C-suite; we had women on boardrooms. And you're right that the pandemic has put us back in a very significant way where women have taken on disproportionately childcare, they've taken on the roles of being teachers. And as a result, they are questioning their value add to the workplace. I've had women tell me that there are days when they cannot see themselves put one foot forward. So these are heavy burdens and they've been navigating these burdens on their own because there is a perception that if you speak up, you may be considered not good enough. And the more you do this on your own, it's a vicious cycle. And of course, some of these challenges are larger for some groups of women that we've talked about both economically worrying about layoffs, worrying about where our jobs are going to go. And even if you don't have that economic perspective, you're still worried about performance and the guilt of not being a good mother, the guilt of not being a good employee. I go through it on an everyday basis. AMY: Yes. I feel you so deeply on that. All of that. HARINI: And the question is what are we going to do? Back to the structural changes, if we don't do anything, you are going to see the largest attrition of women from the workforce in this generation. And that will set us back not only for what we see now but think about two, three decades from now, these women who could have become CEOs, these women who could have run for president, these women who would have sat on boards do not exist because they had to leave the workforce during the pandemic. So what I agitate and advocate for is how do we come together to understand what is driving women out of the workforce and how will we keep them there not just to survive so they can make it day by day but so that they can thrive? AMY: Yes. And I think one huge part of that is also something you said, recognizing this isn't a problem that we can solve individually as individual women, as individual parents. There's so much in the society that tells us that if I just do more self-care, or manage my time better, or prioritize better. There is no individual way out of this problem. This has got to be businesses saying, "Hey, we need these women in our workforce. They are providing value. So we as a society need to invest. We need to solve this problem because yes, this is just generationally going to set us back and businesses back". If you believe that working mothers have anything to add to business, we need to address this in a very powerful way and not as just one-off individual, so someone got a nanny and somebody one of their kids is going to school and with just these piecemeal solutions. HARINI: Agreed. We need a massive blueprint. We need a blueprint for our country, and in our world, and globally. And the future of your next great leader, your next great inventor, scientist, engineer depends on us coming together to create that global blueprint. REIN: One of the interesting things about a crisis is that it's an incredible director and focuser of intention. During a crisis, you really see where people's priorities are. And what we're seeing in a lot of these cases are things that many people already knew, specifically the people who are already experiencing it but things that are new to some other people and are just now being made visible and laid bare. And there are no longer things that people are capable of ignoring. So for example, I don't personally have any stake in childcare, but I see now as someone who cares about other people why it's so important. AMY: Yes, I think that's true. And for me, certainly I always sort of understood this but having all of these extra things that I was relying on in order to have my career and also be raising children and having them kind of yanked away all at once -- And recognizing that I could have those supports because of being able to pay for some of them -- Having that all yanked away at once yes, has really been focusing for me. HARINI: Agreed. And to Rein's point, it is broader than just the individuals. So as individuals, we experience loss, we experience a sense of here are the things that we've lost as a result of the pandemic whether it's your grandparents babysitting your kids. To your point, we took for granted that that system existed and it's gone away. I would also say as somebody like Rein as an example if you're not personally going through it, why should you care? And I've been asked that before. And I say, "You care because the larger economic balance, the larger economic growth, and success depends on having this part of the workforce engaged." As an example, if you lose many senior women, and lots of companies are at risk of attrition both at a senior and early in their career women, the financial consequences are significant. Was it the McKinsey report that said that women when they are represented at the top companies are 50% more likely to outperform their peers? And I'll just leave it there. So having a greater proportion of women leaders lets your company outperform your peers by 50%. That's a competitive advantage, that's an economic advantage that we are now putting at stake by not providing the structural support that some of these women will need because of the times we are in. So this is not just something that mothers and women should care about and/or parents should care about. Everyone needs to care about this because our economic success and growth is dependent on having the segment engaged in the workforce. ARTY: I feel like our reasons for doing things and companies need to expand considerably beyond financial incentives, beyond being efficient. We're kind of getting to this mode of technology advancement giving us all of these capabilities. And at the same time, we've got this machinery that operates and optimizes for money and investment. While at the same time, we've got the social fabric of our society, of our culture kind of falling apart and those things being disconnected. And the machinery continuing to focus on optimizing for that local financial profit means continuing to drive the system to a place that isn't ultimately good for the people. We all ultimately suffer for that. And you talk about these blueprints and free-thinking these blueprints and this crisis situation exposing a lot of these problems at a big picture level. And I think one of the big parts of what we need to do is take a step back and go, what is it we care about as humans, and what is it we live for that gives us joy in our lives? All of these things that we go and do in these companies, why are we doing all this stuff? Because all of these things that make the engine go are just things that make the engine go. And what is it that really matters? What is it really that matters to us as people? And if we take a step back with respect to designing these blueprints, I think that's where we need to start is our core values of what it is we want as people, as humans, is what's important to us to have it in our societies. And then from there, after we anchor around what it is we actually value, then start rethinking how we build all of these systems to support people. So I feel like as long as we're trying to make the existing system still work, we're going to fail at that ultimate initiative because, in this adapted situation that we're in, in this crisis, I don't think the system model fundamentally works. I think we need to rethink how we support people. HARINI: I love that. And I think there are so many important points here. One of them is we have to stop thinking of this period in time, this COVID pandemic period of time as something to be managed through. We lose the point of the moment we are in if we are just trying to get through it. And I do think to your point, we are starting to see a new system come into play. Life after COVID will never be the same as life before COVID. And if it is, shame on us because we've lost an opportunity to course-correct and reshift things fundamentally. We also know from everything we see -- and I feel privileged and honored to be a part of advanced tech work and be a part of technology. As we shape the world of the future, we see the world with the fourth generation of tech coming our way with extended reality with AIs advanced adoption and use cases. This has to be a fundamental siren call so it's flexible and sustainable for everyone and create a blueprint that will require long-term thinking beyond sort of immediate profits. It would require creativity because we have to think outside the framework we give ourselves today. It will require strong leadership, the ability to stand up and speak when he doesn't want to be heard. And then a laser focus on the value of humans to a cause and to an organization. AMY: I would love to hear your thoughts on -- I think you're just absolutely so on the dot in terms of shame on us if we come out of this and we haven't managed to make any profound changes in things that we now see are obviously just very wrong about our systems. This is going to require long-term thinking, and this is going to require creativity. And one of the things that I know that as a manager and a person I'm struggling with now is that we have now been under this extraordinary chronic stress for almost a year in addition to whatever chronic stress we had going on before we entered the pandemic. And under those conditions, you're stressed, you're anxious. You're worried at a very basic level about things like safety and security. Those are conditions that are really hard to think long-term and creatively in the midst of. And so how do we manage to make that space to rethink our systems while, as you said earlier, sometimes just getting out of bed, taking that next step, just getting through it is all that we can think about? HARINI: I think that's such a great question. It's something I ask myself every day. Are you surviving today, or have you done a little bit more than survive? And I've learned to be kind with myself the days I just need to survive. But also, like I said, I like to get stuff done. I like to get sh*t done. So I set aside time and I engage in communities like yours that help me broaden my perspective, help me sort of think differently and think with others. I'm a big believer in partnerships and coming together to make change happen. And I think we see the right communities coming around us, the right rallying points around us. And now it's how do we come together to create a center of gravity that helps us focus on the infrastructure, the fundamentals that need to be fixed while we are flying the plane, so to speak? We're reconfiguring the plane while we fly it. And that requires some crazy amounts of skill. But I have to tell you I think we can do that. We can absolutely do that. And I think we've got a lot of support, we've got sponsorship, the mood is right, the people are there. Our needs are real. There could not be a better trifecta of things coming together to make changes. ARTY: I love your optimism and attitude with reframing this crisis as an opportunity. And thinking about that same question, we were talking earlier about how a lot of the people that are in a place of privilege to be able to do something about things are also people that are suffering in their own ways or are stuck in a position of struggling through surviving in the day and struggling with their own sense of loss. And so you've got a recoil sort of effect of people trying to bury their heads in the sand and stuff. At the same time, I also see that same thing you see of just inspiring energy, really inspiring people going out there and making waves, and making change, and making space for new things. And I feel like for the people that have the opportunity to do that, for the people that have the energy to go out and do that, that it's important for those people to be a light and create space to invite others into it like only be there part-time. And if we all make an effort to create space, to broaden those circles, to invite more of those people in that can't be there all the time, that gets us working more in that direction. HARINI: I love that. I think while each one of our lived experiences is unique and we really cannot speak on behalf of others, there is value and there is so much. It's so powerful to force multiply, to amplify another person's needs when he, she, or they don't have a seat at the table or are unable to take their seat at the table yet. Those of us with more privilege, those of us that have a megaphone need to use it for all the right reasons and purposes. And I see some of that, I see the right signals. And that's important. The question is how do we keep shaping the signals to a place where we get outcomes, we get some fundamental changes in infrastructure of how education is shaped in our countries and communities, of how everyone's encouraged to go to college as an example or get an education? How do we not only bring the right people in but grow them as they go through their career? What does the mentorship and coaching look like for somebody who doesn't come from a background that has networks? We function differently. And how do you provide them that network and that support? And then finally, what's the tone from the top? What's the leadership perspective on making sure we send the message that every individual is unique, brings unique value, and is respected for that? I believe we can address these because one, we're talking about it. I remember when I was thinking about having my son many years ago, one of the things that gave me pause was what if I have to leave work at 5:00 p.m.? How would that look? Will I get penalized at performance reviews? Will I get mommy jobs? And that's a real thing. When I started talking about it, I had so many other women leaders and teams tell me, "Oh yes. This is what I do. I take my call and I'm picking up my son. But there is no way that somebody on the phone could know that I was picking up my son." We've hidden our multiple facets of our lives for all of these years. At work, we are single-dimensional. We are this machine that's going to deliver great value, be super-efficient. And we've sort of put all the dirty laundry literally behind us where no one can see it. And that facade stayed up until February and March this year because we could leave the laundry at home, go to work, be this mega efficient employee, come back and then take care of the laundry. And in the past six months, it's been blown apart because now you're on Zoom. You're seeing what's behind me. And some days, it is my six-year-old running behind me during Zoom meetings because he has a break from school. And I struggled with that when it started. I said, "Oh, does it make me look less professional?" And then maybe a couple of months in, I came to this realization that this humanity is what more of us need. More of us need to be seen in multidimensional hues, all the gorgeous hues of our lives, whether it's our children, whether it's taking care of aging parents, whether it is doing errands, whether it's the contractor coming home and making a racket during one of your conference calls. So this is what leads me to even have this conversation because I don't want to be here and say I am this investor, leader. Yes, I'm all of those, but I'm also a human trying to figure out how my six-year-old son does his first grade homework. AMY: Yes, absolutely. And you see people are getting COVID hair. I'm going gray. And as a woman leader in tech, this idea that tech is incredibly ageist, and now suddenly I'm beginning to look older. And there's just all the mess and all the stuff that's been hidden is just, as you've said, so much there. And people have less energy to care about it too. I wasn't feeling well the other day. And I was in a meeting sitting up in bed with my robe on eating ice cream out of the container. But that was how I was going to be able to show up. I wanted to show up and do my job. And I was like this is where I'm at right now - I have a migraine, but I'm here. But it's been interesting because for me as someone who's been for the last several years very publicly talking about my struggles with mental illness. As someone in engineering and as a leader, helping people feel that they can talk about those things that are really going on in their lives so that they don't have to hide it. Nobody has to put on this facade of I never feel terrible. I feel terrible a lot. And it's much easier to just show up and say, "I'm feeling terrible, but I'm here. I'm here to work." Rather than both trying to work creatively and act like there's nothing else going on in my life. That unlocks productivity, when you don't have to pretend anymore. HARINI: Exactly. I think that's a very powerful statement. When you don't have to pretend anymore, you'll unlock productivity and I think you let your real self thrive. And that to me is a fundamental shift in how we will work and live going forward. We've been talking about our work and our life coming together for such a long time and technology has accelerated that convergence. But we hadn't quite adjusted how we work to this convergence. And this crisis is taking us kicking and screaming into that next stage of maturity for us where we are forced to examine what it is to be sick and show up at work, what it is to be professional at work. There are Zoom attires - The top up is work and the bottoms down is you can put shorts on if you're in 70-degree temperature. But I also think beyond the surface issues, there are deeper fundamental issues we should examine. What does it look like for all personalities to thrive in this remote world of work? I know of many extrovert personalities that have traditionally loved the water cooler at work. They use that as an opportunity to energize themselves, get ideas. What is the virtual water cooler? Introverts who get energy from their own time did well. But then does this mean that if you don't show up on a Zoom call the way you would at work that you would get penalized, people see you as being less present? I don't know. But I think these are questions we should ask ourselves. What does performance review and evaluation look like when you are not working with people in a room? When you're working across Zoom screens and other offline mechanisms, what does creativity and collaboration look like? I can get my day job done but to collaborate, to get on that whiteboard and start drawing things with my fellow colleagues, how do we enable that? And then, of course, all the societal issues, childcare, and healthcare. And you talked about mental wellness, which I think is another blessing of this crisis is we've started being more open and transparent about what are some issues that we need to talk about more and highlight more and have solutions for? So I think there's a series of things starting from productivity moving on to wellness. We should use this as an opportunity to re-examine the truths that we hold today and see if they work in the future. REIN: One thing I've been thinking about while this conversation has been happening, I think is really important is Amy and Harini you've both been talking about how this crisis is also an opportunity and the specific ways in which it is an opportunity. One of my mantras comes from Virginia Satir, which is make abstract things concrete, make hidden things visible and make covert things overt. And what I think is happening right now during this crisis is a lot of things that were hidden are becoming visible, people's metaphorical laundry. A lot of things that were covert are becoming overt, like the burdens of childcare and putting kids through school and things like that while also holding a job. I think it's becoming less and less possible to not see these things, to ignore these things. And the opportunity here is that this can lead to empathy. But I think there's a trap that's very easy for folks who think like us to fall into, which is I get the sense that everyone talking here today thinks that these things are important because they care about other people because we have moral systems that are based on mutual aid and solidarity, based on caring about the wellbeing of other people. And I think that the trap is that there's another moral system which is the conservative moral system, which is based on individual responsibility and individual prosperity. And I think the trap is trained to convince people to care about other people by adopting that language. And so when we talk about how people can become more productive, for example, I think we're falling into that trap. When we talk about the benefits to the business and the profitability of the business, I think we're falling into that trap. I think that what we need to figure out how to do is to use the language of solidarity, of nurturing, of care, to get these concepts through and not adopt this frame that everything is about individual responsibility and individual prosperity. I don't mean that as a rebuke of anyone here. It's just something that's been on my mind a lot. HARINI: These are shared experiences. You could have a certain perspective on how our countries need to be run or what individual responsibility is and still, both have kids and struggle with it, and try to pay mortgages and to get everyone thinking on the same page. And I think that's an impossible task. What you need is I think going back to the word you used is empathy. How do we empathize with the experiences we are having and invest in understanding each other's experiences? I think that's job number one, is seek to understand before we think about how to solve a foreign issue or what decisions need to be made. Because you're right, that people come to the table with different solutions. I've learned that it is important to seek to understand and empathize for what someone's going through because we are in different positions of privilege, of power in organizations, in our lives. And there is a huge need for joint public-private partnerships. I'm a big advocate for that. As we go through this, there's a collective accountability and responsibility to come up with a solution. I think this is beyond each individual trying to solve for himself or themselves or herself. AMY: Yeah, I agree. And I know what you're saying here, Rein. I think about this a lot in terms of should people be able to talk, for example, openly about their mental illness just because the result of that is that they can be more productive at work because they don't have to hide how they're feeling? No. It's a way to say how this is going to impact the business, which is it's not actually going to have a negative impact if people let their facades fall. It will have a positive impact on the business. At the same time, fundamentally, the reasons you want to be able to be authentically yourself are not profits but because that is fundamentally important to us as humans, to be able to connect as humans. And so holding both of these things given that we are living in a capitalist system, given that businesses need to make a profit to stay in business and that generally there needs to be active business that is able to have productivity in order to have a good economy. Given that, I think that sometimes we end up trying to hold two things in your head at once. And they're very hard to do. And I think the first step to figuring out how to do that is to acknowledge that that exists, that that tension exists, and that there's a piece of me that is going to couch everything in, you know, this is good for productivity, this is good for business. At the same time, there's a part of me that says "Fundamentally, is business the be all end all of my life? What does it look like for me to live a good life? And how do I just acknowledge that those two lines of thought are going on at the same time?" REIN: So it's really interesting that you said being two people because George Lakoff points out that people are of two minds very literally about these things. There are people, and I'm probably one of them in some ways, that take a personal responsibility stance towards some issues but take a solidarity and nurturing stance towards other issues. And so these worldviews are our frames through which we perceive the world and they shape our understanding of the world. The question is which one of these are we activating by the language that we use? And the issue here is that by activating one of them, we weaken the other one. When one of them is activated, it reduces the activation potential of the other one. And so people are of two minds. And which way you get them to think about an issue really makes a big difference in the outcome you get. HARINI: It's such a good point. There is so much to us than what we put forward in any of the spaces we live in, whether it's work, whether it's in our communities, with our families. And Rein, where my mind goes when you talk about the duality and sort of the struggle between the two minds is as a leader, thinking about organizations and setting up people for success, I think you're right that the crisis has created a feeling of solidarity. It's fostered I believe empathy, more understanding, and points to signals that we support people as humans and whole people recognizing that there are multiple different things some of which may conflict with the way we live our lives or our understanding of the world. ARTY: I feel like another part of this duality is to understand even if you take a completely rational perspective on things and you try and be really cold about everything, that we are interconnected as people and that all of these systems are interconnected. And if we try to optimize for ourselves at the expense of everyone else, we end up suffering as individuals ourselves because the system becomes unsustainable. So the people that have the capability to help bridge that duality to lead with compassion and solidarity, I feel like our anchoring core principles still very much need to be there in terms of caring about our whole selves, our whole humanity as the priority. And we need to be able to take a step back and look at the system through a rational lens and to be able to translate to other languages where it makes sense because I don't think from a fundamental level that these things are necessarily incompatible. It's just that when you approach it from a rational cold perspective and exclude that perspective of compassion, you end up blind to some of those fundamental natures of our interconnected humanity and those effects of connectedness, those effects of why we're not able to be productive when we have to hide and put on these facades every day and why they break down. So we've got this forcing function now that creates this opportunity where now we have to deal with the fact that we're whole humans and have all these multiple aspects of ourselves. And we can look at this facade breaking down as part of this crisis situation and a terrible thing. Or we can turn this around and see this as an opportunity, see this as a forcing function for us to have to realign around our core humanity. HARINI: Beautifully said. I love that. If we orient how we appear in the workplace or appear out in societies back to who we are as whole people and whole humans, that has to be a positive outcome out of this crisis. And then we start reframing our societies, our structures, and our policies around serving the whole human. AMY: I also think just taking a systems approach and with the interconnectedness piece, when I'm looking at an engineering team that isn't -- whether there's something that's not quite all firing on all cylinders it's a systems problem. You need to understand that from a bunch of different perspectives because it's not just one person sitting alone in a room shipping code by themselves. There's a whole bunch of things going on at the personal level at the level of what's going on in that person's life, at the team level, at the company level, and then at the society level. And you're sort of seeing all of those things at once. For most of us, many of us just maximally at this point in time. So many different things are going on that not taking a systems approach and only thinking about the individual level, it's not seeing reality. It's not how things are actually working. So it's not dealing with what's in front of us. REIN: To go back to Arty's point about rationality, I think it's important to remember that rationality doesn't transcend human brains. It's still situated in the brain and the body. But the point is that rationality isn't some superhuman capability to understand the world. We're rational based on the foundation of the way we perceive the world. And so the conservative worldview is completely rational. We disagree with it on moral grounds, not on rational grounds, things that make no sense to us rationally make complete sense to other people based on their different frames and understandings of the world. So I think it is true that rationality isn't enough. But we also have to understand where rationality comes from and that it is dependent on emotion rather than something separate from emotion. AMY: Yes. And I think if you look at the science there, the science of human consciousness -- But yes, absolutely understanding that our thoughts are rooted in our consciousness and the way that our consciousness works is rooted in our bodies, it's rooted in interpersonal relationships, it's rooted in systems. So again thinking about and trying to find a string to pull us back to how do we -- REIN: I've got it. I've got it. AMY: Okay. Good Go. REIN: Okay. So the point I was trying to get at is that we're not going to make progress by having arguments by trying to out rationalize people who think different. We are going to make progress by engaging with their empathy. HARINI: This is an interesting thought. Diversity by design and how we systematically designed for things is important. What I don't have a good response for is -- You're right - I think our country is deeply divided. And there's a part of it that breaks my heart that we're so deeply divided about such basic things like my right to my body. REIN: And to be clear, I'm not just talking about the country. I'm talking about our workforces, managers who believe in personal responsibility, managing employees who believe in solidarity, and nurturing things like that as well. HARINI: Yeah, I think there's a degree of leaders have to learn. Well, it sounds so condescending to say that leaders have to learn to be more empathetic. That's like a crock of whatever. I do think we have to see people as humans. I will go back to that. And I think before we were in this treadmill of sort of trying to get to a quarter close and do things, we did not allow ourselves to be seen as humans. And we were not seen by others. I think life is bi-directional. It's two ways. It's how much I share with you and how much of it you want to hear and what you hear when I say something, so maybe it's three-dimensional. To go back to the point where I think we've freed ourselves up to say, "You know what? I don't care. I'm going to be sick and sitting in a robe and eating ice cream. And you are going to see that. My six-year-old is going to run behind me in conference calls, and you are going to see that and that is my whole self. That is the whole self that I am. And this is what I want to present to the world." And there's a degree of how it's getting received that I think we are talking about now. And what is the responsibility there of leaders? Some of our structures are hierarchical than others. As an example, who pays you is a hierarchical structure. How is that received? And I do see a movement from where I sit and we all have unique -- We all see our truth the way we want them to see it. I see a move towards empathetic leadership. I see a move towards understanding beyond the numbers, understanding the context of people where they come from and solving for that, and addressing and supporting that. Is that enough? Is that everything? No. Is that a step? Yes. Do I take baby steps? Yes. And do I take those baby steps kicking and screaming into much bigger solutions? Yes. AMY: Absolutely. And I think in tech, the move that I've seen towards thinking about empathetic leadership and hearing people start to talk about that more and realize that even management is a skill that needs to be developed as opposed to just put the most productive engineer into the management role. And across leadership, seeing the popularity of Brené Brown, for example, and her approach to leadership I think is really promising. And yes, to be taking those baby steps and celebrating recognizing that there is this push and pull. Every time there's a push for more businesses thinking about the moral consequences of their technology, there's someone else who says, "No, that's not our job." But our baby steps are heading in the right direction towards hopefully a better world even if they're pushing up against the tide." REIN: Harini, I think to get back to one of your very first points, the question for me here is what do we do with this? How do we make it practical? How does it change the way we do the stuff we're trying to do? The way we get sh*t done. And for me, I think it's about knowing what sort of story to tell that will be effective in the short-term, that will be effective in getting the result that you want and also understanding sort of what the larger ramifications are of choosing to follow a particular narrative. Some of the most effective people I've seen at D&I, for example, are able to make the business case for their work - it increases productivity, it lowers risk, and so on. But then they also are able to tell the empathetic story about how it improves personal wellbeing. They can tell those stories and they know when to use each one is a thing that I've noticed. HARINI: Yeah, that's hard. So I'll start with a couple of different thoughts and hopefully, it'll make some sense later on. REIN: Maybe more than I'm making. HARINI: No, no, no. Well, I'll start with just D&I being this -- In an ideal world, you would not need D&I. You would not need a person, an individual, a team dedicated to D&I because it would be how we do business. And I do struggle that the folks who are given the mantle of D&I sponsors or champions are often the people who need support the most. So we take an overworked mother, we take a person of color who's already struggling against all of these burdens and give them another task of figuring out what the solution to their problems should be. And so I have this sort of first reaction to that. The way I think about it -- and I am a glass half-full (crisis is an opportunity) person as you've come to know in this past hour. And so where I go is I look at the world ahead of us not like a year from now, but 10, 15, 20, 50 years as much as you can look forward in a tech world. And I think about what's coming down the pike and what we are shaping around us. And I think about technologies like AI that uniquely positions us to design the world around us. And so there are business decisions that are being made; there are societal decisions that are made; there are ethical decisions that are being made. And what I see is the opportunity for us to have a seat at the table to shape that world that comes forward. Somebody, I think this was Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas who said, "If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu." I don't remember who said it. But I love that line because that's my starting answer to your question, which is we need to have a seat at the table to design the world that is shaping around us. How do we look at the opportunities to make sure that everyone gets a fair shot at jobs, at education, at skilling? I do a lot of work in education and 65% of children that enter school will work in jobs that do not exist. I'll leave that there - 65% of children who enter school will work in jobs that do not exist. So how do we start to future-proof education, and skilling, and provide education and training not just for those children but for the current workforce? I think are things to be thought through. How do you think about the ethical impact of what data we put out there? How we shape that, design more inclusive systems and services? Is another consideration. So I would look at what's coming in the future or what the future is shaping up to be and work backwards from there to say what our areas of investment look like. I feel like I talk about this at ad nauseam - it's education and skilling. It's about having the right jobs. Once you get to your job or you work for somebody, it's having the right infrastructure to help you thrive in it. Parental leave is one, childcare is another having the flexibility to demonstrate your talents the way you wanted to showcase is another one. I think the way we think of performance reviews and talent is archaic. So there's an HR of the future that is happening as we speak. And those may seem more tactical. And those are the conversations to have because it's not easy. You could be at Davos and have the big strategic conversations - we need to change the world. And back to my getting sh*t done, how are we making that real? We make it real with policies, with how we treat people every day. And so I want to see some of these fundamental areas start to change and start to have solutions. AMY: I feel like I could have another six-hour conversation with you about performance reviews and how to get everybody's unique contribution and nurture that. But we're also short on time so another time perhaps. HARINI: Yes, agreed. I think what we need is broader bridges. All of us bring a unique set of strengths to our communities, to our workplaces, to our families, and understanding what my strength is and leveraging it is not easy, but that is what each one of us needs to commit to do. ARTY: I think that is the shift in the story. And the narrative that you mentioned here is that we are shaping this world around us and that we have the opportunity to design this new world to be however we want it to be. We can come to the table with compassion in our hearts. We can invite people to the table that are actually feeling and experiencing the problems and have these conversations together and co-design these solutions together and that we have the power within ourselves to make the future any way we want it to be. I think that is the story. That is our story now in this age. HARINI: Yes. But I think there's a reality to that story, which is when we have conversations about making a better world, we have to be careful and intentional about better by whose yardstick? Technology does not impact everyone equally. The rising tide is not lifting everyone up the same way. I think our opportunity looking forward is we have biases that exist today in many of our models. How do we not systemize it in the new world of work? As an example, as we build models for AI, how do we design so we're not amplifying biases and or disadvantages that exist today? When we define a better world, all of us need to have a seat at the table to be able to co-create, co-shape solutions. And equity-centered design is a big practice. I think I've heard and I learned a lot about it every day. But it sort of needs to be the core yardstick by which we measure ourselves and our successes. REIN: I think that seems like a really good thing to move to reflections on. AMY: I look at the notes that I took during this conversation and a couple of things really stand out. The first is this idea of if we end up back to normal after the pandemic, then shame on us. But that is not to minimize the real struggles that people are undergoing during this crisis and the days that we are just able to survive. So that should be celebrated, some days just surviving is enough, especially those of us who are more privileged - I'm employed, and I have housing, and healthcare, and safety. What is the next extra thing that I can be doing that's just a little bit more building the future thriving a little bit each day? So those were the notes that really stood out to me in this conversation. REIN: I keep thinking back to one of the first things that Harini said which is that to make these changes effectively we really need to go to the people who we're trying to help and figure out from their perspective what they need. This reminds me of Sidney Dekker's defer to the expertise of the people who are doing the work. It also reminds me of an article by Steven Shorrock that was titled "Change to change for change with and change by", which is really about how do you interact when you're trying to make some change in another group? What is the model that you use? Very often the model is change to, which is I make a decision, and then because of my position of authority, I just tell you what it is and now you have to go do it. I think empathetic models are change with, which is where you get together and you figure out the change together. And then there's change by which is where you go to them and you say, "I want to empower you to make a change. What is the change and how can I support you?" So I think it's really important for those of us who do have some amount of power, authority, ability to make changes, privilege, to think about those models and to think about how we're engaging and how we want to involve the people we're trying to help in the changes. AMY: I love that. I've been thinking about a lot of those same things. And Harini, this was such a wonderful call. I'm feeling really inspired after listening to a lot of the things you said. And you started with your superpower of getting sh*t done. And then the things that you've been talking about on this call are huge. They're not small things like I'm going to get a bunch done and have a productive day. You're talking about getting sh*t done at such a huge grand level of looking at this crisis we're in and a way forward and how we can design blueprints of the future and building the type of future that we want, getting that kind of sh*t done. And that's phenomenal. It's inspiring. And kicking back and listening to this and thinking about things that I could do to help facilitate these sorts of things to create space for these sorts of things, the one idea that resonates a lot with me is this idea of blueprints of design. If we put the problem on a whiteboard, if we think of it as what do the blueprints look like for this new kind of society we want? What are the seats at the table? Who do we invite? How do we create space for people to come and join in this conversation? How do we facilitate a conversation around these things that are important to all of us with creating opportunity for education, and skills, development, and jobs? And how do we incorporate those things in the blueprints? I feel like if we look at all of this as a design problem, and we invite people into it, and we start those conversations, we together as a people have all the power within ourselves to get sh*t done and make those things happen. I am so inspired. So thank you so much. HARINI: That was so articulate and so well-put. Thank you. You said it beautifully. I would say I feel like I'm going to be repetitive because if I reflect on this call, I think there are three things. One is the sense of urgency on our problem statement. These past few months, the pandemic has threatened in a significant way to disrupt the gains we've made. And it has been a blessing because it's forced us to open up the curtains and show folks what backstage looks like. Now that we have a clearer understanding of who we are, of what challenges we face, I would like us to translate that into strategic solutions and blueprints that address this crisis. Because I think as technology continues to shape our world, transform every part of our world, we cannot afford to have 50% of our population not play a leading role in shaping the future which is what we are thinking about. If you see the significant attrition of women, you will have 50% of our population not have a seat at the table. And so this conversation amplifies that sense of urgency for me of highlighting the problem and how we need to come together to co-shape, co-create solutions, systemic sustainable solutions that set in place new fundamentals and the new structures for the work that lies ahead. AMY: That was just amazing. Thank you so much.