Redefining Work in a Post-Pandemic World with Laura Martin

Laura

Can you design work? Can you design a team culture where there's freedom to experiment, where there's freedom to code? Maybe collaborate in ways you hadn't thought of before? The best ideas aren't going to come from your senior leaders in any given organization. The best ideas are going to come from the experts doing the work. Create the space for them to share those ideas.

Gillian

Welcome to Future Works. This is a podcast dedicated to the conversation around innovation within the workspace. Here on this podcast, we’re sharing research and inspiration. We’ll be diving into conversations with leaders, scrutinizing case studies, and nerding out on theories and psychology—all around what it takes to reinvent solutions within the workforce industry. I’m Gillian.

Michelle

And I’m Michelle. I couldn’t be more excited for this conversation.

Gillian

I’m so excited to talk, and even more excited to co-host with you. I’m really looking forward to leading our listeners through a candid conversation with Laura, our guest here, who we’ll introduce in a second. We’re going to talk about work culture, how it can be better, and why it’s different.

We’ll also acknowledge the fact that the world of work is changing. The way people work looks different, but somehow, expectations have increased. Pressures have increased as well. So, we’re going to talk about that and unpack it. Laura is here to explore what’s changed in organizational culture and how we can lift up the people who are keeping our businesses thriving and influencing our day-to-day in the workplace.

We’ll dive into the defining factors of organizational culture, discuss how to activate and improve it, and explain why that’s so important. This is something we strive for on this podcast—leaving people with actionable ways to make a difference in their organizations starting immediately. No matter where you sit in the company, you’re going to leave this conversation with something to bring to the table.

That will make a difference not only to your team and your organization, but also to your job. So, with that said, let me tell you a little about Laura Martin, who’s joining us today, and then we’ll let her introduce herself. She has an incredible background. Laura is a human-centric leader who’s paved the way for many companies and the people who hold those companies together.

As an HR exec with 25 years of experience building teams and igniting internal culture, she’s currently a consultant. Her diverse professional background spans finance, ops, and HR, which has allowed her to really dive deeper into finding that sweet spot between what keeps people and teams going and businesses thriving.

So, Laura, thank you for being here.

Laura

Thank you, Gillian.

Michelle

Can I just say one of the things I love about you before you introduce yourself? What makes you so unique is not only that you’ve “done the thing,” but you’ve also paid attention while doing it. And now you share that knowledge with everyone. You don’t gatekeep. You’re so unselfish with your knowledge, and I love that you’ve taken your experience and are helping others start ahead.

Laura

Thank you. That means so much to me. Early in my career, a mentor once told me, “Never let a peer make the same mistake you did.” I’ve carried that with me throughout my career. It brings me great joy to share what I’ve learned so others can make new mistakes. But thank you for the kind words. I’ve been fortunate to have had a very nontraditional career path. I like to call it my “Choose Your Own Adventure” career.

I started at Target Corporation right out of college and ended up spending 17 years there. If you had told me at 22 that I’d spend 17 years in retail, I would’ve been shocked. But during that time, I did 11 completely distinct roles. As you mentioned, Gillian, I was in and out of HR, I worked in finance, in operations, and even did a stint in corporate, which was certainly a learning experience. I had the wonderful opportunity to chase interesting work and work for leaders who inspired me.

It really gave me the flexibility and freedom to round out my skill set and, frankly, take on opportunities that on paper I wasn’t really qualified for at all. One unique thing about my time at Target is that after my late 20s, every role I took didn’t exist before I stepped into it.

That’s something I’ve carried forward in my career—stepping into new roles with new problems to solve, which is really invigorating. When I left Target, I went in the opposite direction. After a short sabbatical, I joined a very small leadership development company, where I was about the 50th employee.

I went from leading a team of 80 at Target to joining a company smaller than my department. It was such an eye-opening experience, and I loved it. I started doing a combination of product consulting and client work. Over my six years there, I built a client success organization and set up operations. By the time I left, I was also running product content creation and the coaching functions—basically overseeing all the teams involved in creating and delivering the services we offered to clients. It was a wonderful experience, and I took so much from it.

The only reason I left was that I got a call from a CEO looking to hire his first Chief People Officer for a growing local company here in Minneapolis. It was a role I had always been interested in, but my resume didn’t exactly scream “traditional Chief People Officer.” It was an opportunity I just couldn’t say no to, and it was as much fun as I hoped it would be. I loved leading the People function. From there, I moved into a larger global organization as head of HR for the U.S.

So, I’ve really enjoyed both my consulting work and my practitioner experiences.

Gillian

I think it would benefit all of us to hear from Laura about how you define work culture—trying to emphasize the core components so we can all gut-check our meanings and level-set before we dive in.

Laura

Yeah, absolutely. It's one of those big words that everybody has their own definition for. I think we've all heard the phrases, you know, "culture eats strategy for breakfast" or "culture is the way things actually get done around here." We've heard those for years. You know, I've spent so many years working with large global organizations to realize that there really is no one company culture.

So, I think about culture more as the experience—what it feels like for people in a particular work context. That can vary significantly, location by location, team by team. When I think of Culture with a capital C, I think about what it feels like to be a colleague or an employee in a specific work environment.

Even in my 11 different roles at Target, there were some overarching, macro-level cultural elements. But the day-to-day experiences were wildly different, even within the same organization.

Gillian

And who is behind building and developing culture within an organization? I mean, your role—Chief of People—was that part of the job?

Laura

Chief People Officer, Chief HR Officer, yeah.

Gillian

Well, it’s a cool-sounding title, but what does it mean? And what does it look like in other organizations?

Laura

Yeah, I think it depends on the layer, right? Certainly, there are components of culture that are set at the top—what’s important to the organization. One thing I don’t think gets enough true attention is company values. And I don’t just mean what’s on the website or the deck with mission, vision, purpose, and values.

If every single employee can’t quickly articulate the company’s values, they aren’t actually shared values. But when that’s done well—when the organization is explicit about the behaviors that matter, the things that will be rewarded, and what’s expected—it can have an outsized influence on culture.

That said, every single one of us can shape the culture of our teams, whether we’re leaders or individual contributors. Every interaction you have with someone is an opportunity to leave them a little more or a little less engaged in what they’re doing. If we all take that seriously, every one of us has the power to influence what it feels like to be on our team.

Michelle

In my experience with a few different organizations, I’ve worked in one department, then had to do something cross-functional with another department. If I was in a healthy culture, going over to another department made me happy to return to my team.

But in an unhealthy culture, it was like, “Oh man, this team feels completely different.” What do you think contributes to those feelings in a larger organization?

Laura

So much of it depends on the leader. Not to put all the pressure on leaders—because we have hard jobs, balancing our day jobs with leading people—but the truth is, leaders have an outsized influence on what it feels like to be on their team.

A lot of it comes down to what the organization pays attention to—correcting behavior as well as rewarding it. Change follows the focus of attention. So, it’s important for organizations to reflect on what they actually pay attention to. Regardless of what’s written in cascading goals or on the website, what gets rewarded? What gets noticed? What gets people promoted? Those things, whether intentional or not, directly shape the culture of a team and how decisions get made.

For example, does the organization empower decisions to be made where the knowledge is closest, or does everything have to go up the chain and back down? It feels very different to be on a team where you’re told you’re empowered but can only approve a small degree of action—beyond that, you must wait for the next meeting or quarterly review. That dissonance between what you’re told and what you can actually do is significant.

The smartest organizations are intentional about designing reporting structures and decision-making processes. They also rely on shared values. With strong shared values, you don’t need as many policies or procedures.

For example, at a previous company, we had four core values, one of which was “Clients trump prospects.” That was a bold statement! I was the Vice President of Client Success, and in that organization, it was amazing to live out that value. Our sales team would drop anything to help me talk to an existing client—they weren’t just chasing new logos. No one asked, “What’s the upside or revenue tied to this?” If it was a client, I could get anyone’s attention.

We also built our product roadmap by listening to existing clients—not chasing the next big logo. Even in all-team meetings, we celebrated client stories, not just pipeline numbers. Because that value was truly shared, our retention and NPS scores were phenomenal. Clients even volunteered for reference calls. When you align priorities and rewards around shared values, the outcomes are unbelievable.

Gillian

I want to ask more about values because they can be done in so many ways. They can be written and shared but hold varying levels of meaning. They might be endorsed by teams—or not. There are often external-facing values and internal ones.

From your perspective, how often do teams get to participate in creating these values? Or are they usually decided by leadership and handed down in a deck?

Laura

Yeah, that's a great question. I think some of it depends on organizational size. You know, the larger you get, the more likely values are going to come out of a conference room with a bit of a think tank or, frankly, more likely, a third-party consultant. In smaller organizations, especially in the earlier stages, it’s easier to genuinely solicit input.

But I think that in any organization, you can set up listening mechanisms to hear from the teams. What are they experiencing? Where are they seeing dissonance between what we say our values are and what actually gets done around here? Having a system to give your team the opportunity to share their actual lived experience is so important.

Ultimately, that feedback should help shape the culture and values. And it’s not something you want to be changing all the time, right? As organizations grow, there are natural evolution points where you might say, "It’s time for a refresh." For example, we might have said, "We are entrepreneurial." Entrepreneurial might be one of our core values, but as you grow, you may reach a size where it’s no longer feasible for every colleague to make independent business decisions like an owner. At that point, you could start tripping over conflicting strategies in different parts of the organization.

So, while there are natural growth points where you might want to refresh values, it’s not something that should change on an annual basis. Values should shape decisions—helping people make the best choices in their specific context without needing to plan for or have a standard operating procedure for every possible scenario.

Michelle

Ooh, I feel like this idea of a listening mechanism is maybe the first time I’ve heard it described as a necessary step. Can you dive into that? Maybe not a deep dive, but, you know, a 33-meter dive?

Laura

Yeah, absolutely.

Gillian

What does that look like?

Laura

The classic example is the employee survey, right? And now, of course, there are a million flavors of that. From my consulting days, I’d say most of those surveys don’t yield meaningful insights. You really need either a skilled partner or someone internally who knows how to construct questions—questions that ask one thing clearly and don’t result in muddy data.

The traditional survey is fine, but a better way is ensuring that leaders are regularly talking to their people—weekly check-ins, asking the right questions. This is where I’m a huge believer in coaching. I spent a lot of years deeply immersed in the strengths-based coaching approach, and I’ll die on that hill. It’s the way to unlock human performance and potential.

Equipping leaders to ask the right questions, listen effectively, and create a safe mechanism for feedback to be gathered and shared is critical. I also believe we’ll see a surge in smart technology that can confidentially and meaningfully gather employee sentiment. What exists today isn’t quite fit for purpose, but I know there’s innovation happening in this space.

As we get smarter about leveraging generative AI, I think we’ll see tools—not monitoring or surveillance tools (those are being built, but I’m not advocating for them)—but tools designed for genuine listening. These tools could surface insights like, "Here’s something to think about," or "This might be a concern," and even suggest questions for leaders to dig deeper into what’s really going on. Technology can absolutely be a helper—not Big Brother, not surveillance, but genuine listening.

Gillian

Well, I mean, with remote work, there's just so much less real-time feedback being shared in conversations. Exchanges are so project- and deliverable-focused. There's not a lot of reading the room in terms of energy. I love hearing about tech that's being built to get a pulse on how people are feeling—without being able to look at them, walk around, and see what's going on.

So, when you're trying to convince leadership to invest in culture, what are you telling them? In terms of the impact it would have on their business, performance, engagement, and numbers—how are you justifying it and making a case for investing in culture?

Laura

Yeah, I think the phrase I've used over the last several years—and there’s been a bit of a renaissance around this—is employee experience. Right? That’s different from culture, but I think it’s been the doorway I’ve been able to walk through, both within my own organizations where I’ve been head of HR and with organizations I’ve consulted for. It’s really about thinking through how to deliver a compelling employee experience.

And I don’t mean things like ping-pong tables and snacks in the office—though I like those things. My last company had dogs in the office, and I’ll admit, that was probably the thing I talked about most during my first six months there. I thought it was the best thing ever. But that’s not what I’m talking about when I say employee experience.

What people aren’t really recognizing—and I’ve said this for years, especially in my IT days—is that people aren’t widgets. Yes, we talk about human resources, but our folks are not interchangeable. If you really want not just performance and engagement, but discretionary effort and outcomes, you have to create the conditions in which people can use their brains, tap into their strengths, and find the intrinsic motivation to contribute.

The more prescriptive you are, the less room you leave for people to find their best way to deliver outcomes. I’m not saying throw your processes out the window, but I am saying we should question: Does everyone with this job title need to do things the exact same way? Or, if they’re clear on the outcomes, can you design work—and a team culture—where there’s freedom to experiment? Freedom to collaborate in ways you hadn’t anticipated?

The best ideas aren’t going to come from your senior leaders. They’re going to come from the experts doing the work. Create the space for them to share those ideas—and love that.

Michelle

That’s a bar right there. I know.

Gillian

Yeah, we need to be hearing that more often. And that’s the point, right? Creating a platform for leadership to celebrate their teams and acknowledge how crucial they are to what’s happening.

Laura

Oh, absolutely. We hire smart, amazing people, and then, in too many contexts, we just hand them a list, like, "Here’s what you do," and expect everyone to do it the same way—just shut your brain off. And we’re leaving so much potential on the table. We’re leaving a lot of contribution, discretionary effort, and business outcomes on the table because we don’t create the space for our teams to find meaning and their own way of doing their work.

Some of this comes from my own experience—I’ve made up most of the jobs I’ve done. So I realize I’m a bit of an anomaly there. But even in more defined roles, where I wasn’t the only one or the first person to do the job, there were still ways to be creative and take control of how I spent my workdays.

Gillian

Definitely. I’d love to dive a little deeper into your experiences. I’m curious—what cultural problems have you been forced to address, even when you didn’t want to? When it got really hard, what were some of the challenges you faced in your job?

Laura

Yeah, I think… I’ll go back to my Target days. Truly, I have nothing but glowing memories of my time at Target. But at least during the years I was there, Target was known for being extremely collaborative—almost to the point of being very consensus-driven.

That meant decisions were often made before the meetings. The meetings themselves were more about ratifying and documenting those decisions. For a long time, I struggled with that. But I eventually realized that, whether I liked it or not, even as a fairly senior leader, I couldn’t change it.

So I got over myself. I learned to have those “meetings before the meetings.” I’d go door-to-door with PowerPoints. It took longer, but I became so much more effective once I accepted that this was the way things worked. I chose to be there, and I made peace with the process. I didn’t have to like it, but I operated within that context and found success.

It was night and day compared to my next company, where I discovered I really love small companies. I’m addicted to the pace at which decisions get made in smaller organizations. It doesn’t make them better, but it makes them a better fit for me.

Another example comes from my first Chief People Officer role. We had a leader who, by all metrics, was wildly successful. Clients loved this person. Revenue was growing. The quality of work delivered to clients was very high. But the team reporting to this leader? It was a revolving door of tears. This leader was unbelievably difficult to work for.

I had a conversation with the CEO and, ultimately, the executive committee. I said, “We have a decision to make. Are we going to be an organization that tolerates talented bullies?” Different organizations make different choices about that. I had my opinion, but it was up to us to decide and stick to it.

We realized, no, we are not going to be that kind of organization. So, this leader was removed from their position. It was a difficult decision. It led to tough conversations with clients. But it was the right decision. It brought our stated values into alignment with our actions, which hadn’t been the case before.

Gillian

Well, that gives my younger self hope. I’ve had my share of bully bosses throughout my career, and it’s such a shame. It’s so heartening to hear about organizations taking a stand, especially when those bullies have the metrics to justify their place in the room. Too often, those metrics overshadow the personal experiences of their teams.

Laura

Yeah.

Michelle

I wonder, as someone who, in my career, most often kind of sits in the view from the cheap seats and not in, like, the C-suite, I feel like I experience that usually on a peer level. And, man, "talented bully"—that is such a lovely phrase to use. I have sat in organizations, watched my peers work for that talented bully, and felt absolutely helpless.

So where, you know, in this creation of culture and pushing those shared values, how does someone who sits in the cheap seats kind of influence, like, "Hey, this has to stop happening," especially when it doesn't feel like you have a choice? Like, I need this job, I need to stay here, and I can't make the choice to do something.

Gillian

And it's, yeah, it's scary. It's a scary thing. The voice.

Laura

At will. You're vulnerable, right? Especially if this person is your direct leader. And so, you know, I would like to say, having been in HR about half of my career, "Talk to HR." But the reality is that that isn’t always a winning answer, and I completely understand that.

So I think, you know, a couple of paths everyone should feel empowered to take are: one, what can you control in the situation? How can you try to create expectations in terms of what interactions should look like, always in the context of, "This is what I’m contributing, and this is what I need from you as my leader"?

What I would always advise people is don’t focus on the feelings—which I hate to say—but if you’re working for a talented bully, that’s probably not going to be a successful approach. Focus on the outcomes. For example: "Here’s what I know I need." I’ve even said to leaders myself, "Something I know to be true about me—I need context. If you ask me to do something and I don’t know the story behind it, I won’t feel confident that I’m delivering precisely what you actually need. If I don’t have additional context into what’s behind the request, it’s not that I don’t trust you. This is just a thing I know to be true about me."

I always encourage people to find those things you know to be true about yourself that you can articulate to your boss to help them get the best out of you. Most of us can at least have that conversation. For example: "Hey, when you send me revisions and it’s just criticism, it sends me into a headspace of feeling a little bit paralyzed on how to move forward. It would be really helpful if you could highlight: 'Yes to this, this, and this; no to that, that, and that.'"

There are likely ways you can convey to your leader how they can get a better contribution from you by adjusting their approach.

The other advice: always find your advocates within the organization. Are there leaders you respect, leaders you admire, that you could ask to be a mentor, an advocate, or a sponsor? The worst they can say is no or, "I don’t have time," and you’ve lost nothing.

Whether or not your organization has a formal mentoring program, the best mentors I’ve had in my life weren’t matched through mentoring software. They were mostly women I deeply admired, and I worked up the courage to ask if they would have a coffee with me. Ultimately, they became advocates and sponsors.

So everyone can, regardless of personality type. If you’re an introvert—I’m an introvert, a social introvert—but I still have to gear up for conversations like that. Everyone can reach out to someone they respect in the organization, ask for a connection, and see if there’s an opportunity for that person, who might be in a different power dynamic with that leader, to help influence change.

There’s no risk in that.

Gillian

Yeah, wide open. And I think back to what you were saying earlier about having those conversations around communication and preferences for how you’re receiving or giving feedback. Those types of conversations are so beneficial to have at the start of the job.

Laura

Yes.

Gillian

That also shows a level of empathy and confidence and kind of control that will set an incredible tone for the work you’re about to do.

So I love that. I want to switch gears a little bit and acknowledge the changes in the world of work that have presented themselves over the years. I want to know more about—I think you were already in your head of people, chief people officer position back then, correct?

Laura

I actually was still doing that when sort of like everything changed, right? In 2020, I was still at the leader development company, and that’s actually probably what led me to make the change back into a practitioner role. We were so lucky at this company. We were already a remote-first team. We were already living and breathing in a world of Slack and WebEx, and I ran products, client services, and coaching from right here in my office in Minnesota.

This was a Los Angeles-based company. So when everything shut down—not everybody, of course, many, many workers still went into work—but when knowledge workers and office workers stayed home, it was business as usual for us. We were able to really help our clients through some of that transition.

Laura

Because we had been operating this way for years, that was just the strategy of the company. We found that we could hire incredible caliber talent by saying, “This position can sit anywhere within the United States.” That was rare ten years ago. Now it’s not such a competitive advantage, but we were so incredibly lucky that I had already learned to do this and to lead remote teams.

I do think the overnight flip, and how difficult so many organizations found it, really didn’t create, in my opinion, new problems. It exposed existing problems in how work was designed. Personally, I think it was a gift that we were invited into each other’s homes. People didn’t have a choice but to talk about their children with their colleagues because they were right there behind them, and they were trying to be their teacher. You met everyone’s pets.

It exposed that we all have lives outside of work, and equating time in the office at your desk with your contributions and value to the company has always been a mistake, in my opinion. I’m not a mom myself, but most of the women I’ve worked with over my career are. Celebrating the folks who can take long lunches, make every happy hour, and be the first in and the last out was never the right benchmark for who was actually contributing the most to the company, the bottom line, the team, or the culture.

In many ways, it just exposed how work wasn’t working. That’s actually part of what drew me to move into the chief HR/chief people officer role. I’m not into things like payroll, benefits, or employee handbooks. Those are all very important, but that’s not my jam. That’s not why I came back.

Laura

There’s a sea change in culture—a sea change in how organizations need to think about making work work for everyone. That was really appealing to me, to come back into a practitioner role, to be part of that solution, and to freely experiment on my own. I’ve had many lively, spirited conversations with CEOs who simply want everyone back.

I have a little bit of an allergy to anyone talking about going “back” to anything because the thing before wasn’t amazing for everyone. Let’s look forward to what we want work to be next. Let’s stop yearning for how things were five years ago because it wasn’t amazing for everyone.

Michelle

I think, as a mom myself, I underestimated how flexible I really needed my schedule to be. And then, you know, my parents are aging, and I think there’s that to consider as well. Like, I love being able to say, when my sister called with this huge medical emergency, “I will come work with you from your hospital bed.”

She didn’t need me to do anything, but being able to say, “I can literally sit next to you and get done what I need to,” felt like such a great change from my previous job. Before, it was like, “Nope, I’ve got to be here. I’ve got to be in person Tuesday to Sunday. That’s my schedule.” There’s no way I could have just dropped everything and gone. That feels like such a good gift.

Gillian

Absolutely. I know. I think about how I became a mother during the pandemic, and I often think about the women I used to work with in the office who were moms, but I never saw them be moms. To this day, I still don’t understand. I actually didn’t realize that daycare usually ends at 4 p.m. because nobody told me. These mothers were pulling it off, and I had no idea.

What a change it’s been and what an exposure it’s created—like, giving us insight into the reality of what’s happening in our lives. I also just love that it’s resetting what’s important in the workplace.

I’m curious, stepping into actionable thinking here—what are some great enablers for building culture? Whether it’s tools, meetings that should be scheduled quarterly, or people that should be hired, I’d love to hear more about what people can really put into action. Small, big, aspirational, or attainable—what are your thoughts?

Laura

I actually was still doing that when sort of like everything changed, right? In 2020, I was still at the leader development company, and that’s actually probably what led me to make the change back into a practitioner role. We were so lucky at this company. We were already a remote-first team. We were already living and breathing in a world of Slack and WebEx, and I ran products, client services, and coaching from right here in my office in Minnesota.

This was a Los Angeles-based company. So when everything shut down—not everybody, of course, many, many workers still went into work—but when knowledge workers and office workers stayed home, it was business as usual for us. We were able to really help our clients through some of that transition.

Laura

Because we had been operating this way for years, that was just the strategy of the company. We found that we could hire incredible caliber talent by saying, “This position can sit anywhere within the United States.” That was rare ten years ago. Now it’s not such a competitive advantage, but we were so incredibly lucky that I had already learned to do this and to lead remote teams.

I do think the overnight flip, and how difficult so many organizations found it, really didn’t create, in my opinion, new problems. It exposed existing problems in how work was designed. Personally, I think it was a gift that we were invited into each other’s homes. People didn’t have a choice but to talk about their children with their colleagues because they were right there behind them, and they were trying to be their teacher. You met everyone’s pets.

It exposed that we all have lives outside of work, and equating time in the office at your desk with your contributions and value to the company has always been a mistake, in my opinion. I’m not a mom myself, but most of the women I’ve worked with over my career are. Celebrating the folks who can take long lunches, make every happy hour, and be the first in and the last out was never the right benchmark for who was actually contributing the most to the company, the bottom line, the team, or the culture.

In many ways, it just exposed how work wasn’t working. That’s actually part of what drew me to move into the chief HR/chief people officer role. I’m not into things like payroll, benefits, or employee handbooks. Those are all very important, but that’s not my jam. That’s not why I came back.

Laura

There’s a sea change in culture—a sea change in how organizations need to think about making work work for everyone. That was really appealing to me, to come back into a practitioner role, to be part of that solution, and to freely experiment on my own. I’ve had many lively, spirited conversations with CEOs who simply want everyone back.

I have a little bit of an allergy to anyone talking about going “back” to anything because the thing before wasn’t amazing for everyone. Let’s look forward to what we want work to be next. Let’s stop yearning for how things were five years ago because it wasn’t amazing for everyone.

Michelle

I think, as a mom myself, I underestimated how flexible I really needed my schedule to be. And then, you know, my parents are aging, and I think there’s that to consider as well. Like, I love being able to say, when my sister called with this huge medical emergency, “I will come work with you from your hospital bed.”

She didn’t need me to do anything, but being able to say, “I can literally sit next to you and get done what I need to,” felt like such a great change from my previous job. Before, it was like, “Nope, I’ve got to be here. I’ve got to be in person Tuesday to Sunday. That’s my schedule.” There’s no way I could have just dropped everything and gone. That feels like such a good gift.

Gillian

Absolutely. I know. I think about how I became a mother during the pandemic, and I often think about the women I used to work with in the office who were moms, but I never saw them be moms. To this day, I still don’t understand. I actually didn’t realize that daycare usually ends at 4 p.m. because nobody told me. These mothers were pulling it off, and I had no idea.

What a change it’s been and what an exposure it’s created—like, giving us insight into the reality of what’s happening in our lives. I also just love that it’s resetting what’s important in the workplace.

I’m curious, stepping into actionable thinking here—what are some great enablers for building culture? Whether it’s tools, meetings that should be scheduled quarterly, or people that should be hired, I’d love to hear more about what people can really put into action. Small, big, aspirational, or attainable—what are your thoughts?

Gillian:

So be human. Don’t leave. Yeah, yeah, a door that doesn’t.

Laura:

Exist where we’re.

Gillian:

Okay.

Laura:

Something else—one of my leaders that I worked for many years ago used to say: if there's a point of frustration, ask yourself, is this a problem we’re going to solve? And if so, let’s stick with it. Let’s be like a dog with a bone and solve it.

Or is this just a thing we have to live with? If it’s the latter, then let’s not waste any more time or energy talking about it.

In the toughest climates I’ve worked in, people tend to grind on the same frustrations forever. I literally heard someone say—at a company I won’t name—that they’d been dealing with the same problem for 12 years.

Oh my word. That sounds like a new problem! How have you sat with that for 12 years?

So, is it truly a problem that needs resolution? If yes, find the owner or escalate it. But if it’s something that’s just not going to change, like a deeply ingrained organizational culture—say, Target’s consensus-driven nature versus my personal preference for moving faster—then accept it.

Fix what you can, and don’t waste your best mental energy chewing on something you can’t change.

Gillian:

How do you gauge someone’s true connection to values in an interview? It’s such an important question, but I get the same generic responses. From a hiring standpoint, what questions can we ask to identify someone who genuinely holds strong and meaningful values?

Laura:

Yeah. I think it depends on whether you’re trying to uncover someone’s personal values or assess how their values align with the organization’s.

Gillian:

Values in the workplace.

Laura:

Exactly. I’ll give credit to this marketing company where I was the head of HR. We had employees certified to conduct a dedicated values interview. It was the first gate for anyone coming into the organization.

They called it “set.” I don’t believe in measuring for fit—it can lead to bias—but this was different. It wasn’t about fit; it was about explaining the organization’s values and assessing whether those resonated with the candidate.

From there, candidates went through technical and interpersonal interviews. I loved this approach.

They would ask questions like: How would you rate yourself? The number itself didn’t matter; it was more about the thought process. For instance, if one of the company’s values was brave (which I love), they’d ask: What does brave mean to you? How would you rate yourself on it? Can you give an example from your life when you were brave?

Listening to their stories, hearing how they define the value and how they measure themselves, is incredibly insightful.

Gillian:

That’s so helpful. Thank you! Brave as a value is one I’ve seen often, so thanks for sharing that.

Laura:

This was the only place I’ve seen it in action, but I talked about it constantly while I was there. It was particularly useful for holding people accountable for addressing their own concerns.

We gave employees not just permission, but an expectation to address issues directly. And we made that clear from the start—no surprises. It wasn’t like they hit their annual review and were suddenly told to be a certain way.

The transparency helped attract people who thrived in that context and deter those who thought, That’s not me. And that’s okay—not every organization is for everyone.

Gillian

Amazing. This was so, so great. It's just wonderful to start out. Our podcast was such a wonderful conversation.

Laura

Well, it was such a pleasure speaking with you ladies. Thank you so much for the invitation and I wish you all the best with this podcast. I think it's such a great, great conversation to carry on.

Gillian

Awesome, Laura, thank you so much and thanks all for listening to FutureWorks. Till next time.