Navigating Non-Linear Leadership | with Milica Wojno

Building a Coaching Culture - #129: Navigating Non-Linear Leadership |with Milica Wojno === Milica Wojno: [00:00:00] whether it be the past to where we are today and the path ahead, it is absolutely non linear. It is this complete convoluted line that no one knows where it starts and ends, but what's important is just to know that it's non linear and that's okay. J.R. Flatter: Hey, welcome back, everybody. J. R. Flatter here with my distinguished guest, Melissa Vojno. And, uh, she and I have known each other for, gosh, a few years now, right? [00:01:00] She's on the other side of the world in Australia. So thank you for getting up early on a Saturday morning. Greatly appreciate it. so I want you, if you don't mind, take an opportunity to introduce yourself. I'll, I'll remind you who our audience is. It's leaders, aspiring leaders, who are competing and succeeding in this global 21st century world of which I know you're right in the heart of that. So take some time and tell us who you are. Thank you. Milica Wojno: So I work in professional services and I lead a team of about four, but cross, cross globally. So I've got some staff in India and I've got some staff here in Australia. I still think of myself as like a fairly new leader. It's, I'm still kind of working out how to navigate, you know, There were ways things [00:02:00] work in this sort of male dominated industry, to be honest. so it is a bit tricky and I still feel like I'm learning a lot every day, regarding being this new leader in this, in this environment. but yeah, it's, it's a good experience. J.R. Flatter: so you say you're relatively new to leadership. How long have you been in a leadership role? Milica Wojno: I would say, Just under two years at J.R. Flatter: And what are your biggest challenges? Milica Wojno: the moment. I would say it's the generational gap between the staff that I, I lead and the, how can I say? The, the bosses that have views about how certain things should work and the sort of very old school ways of thinking where they expect certain things. But The new day and age staff don't think in the same way [00:03:00] and it's very tricky to navigate to try and do the right thing by your staff but also try and meet the requirements. Of those above us that don't fully understand that things have actually changed and that they're different these days. They're not the same as that they were. You know, the working environment is not the same as it was 30, 40 years ago. J.R. Flatter: I mean, you're, you're exactly describing, the ongoing conversation that is the heart and soul of this podcast. And the professor, I'm the facilitator, I'm the The chairman, so my voice, I have this pulpit in every session and I'm saying the same thing over and over again. It's so refreshing to hear you come and say, you know, exactly what we've been saying all this time. I'd love to dig into that, with as much as you're comfortable sharing. you could look at the camera and see I'm, I'm one of those people that you're frustrated [00:04:00] with. I'm of a generation and gender, is a stereotype, but there's a lot of predictivity to the stereotype that we grew up in an analog world that was centralized command and control. Technology moved at a relatively slow pace. If you remember, there used to be something called Moore's Law, and they would tell you How long will it take for the speed of a computer to double, if I'm remembering correctly? well that's long gone. we don't think in those terms anymore because inversions, right? When I was, Just learning about computers and learning how to use computers. We had versions of everything and everything's updated constantly. Now, every time you turn on the app, it's the latest and greatest. so. I'm not going to pretend to know what generation you are, [00:05:00] but I suspect the team that you're describing, who's mostly frustrated, might even be a bit younger than you are. And so it's even further removed than I am. And my, my generation and I are at the tail end of the, of our careers. lot of us have already retired and there's a few that'll be here for maybe another decade. And then most of this boomer generation will be retired. But if you could do your best to put yourself in the shoes of your team and tell us what's frustrating them. Milica Wojno: it's not necessarily the work itself, I suppose. I think it's more of the way of working. So it's, it's things like, you know, working from home versus sitting at your desk and at your computer from eight, you know, from eight to five, whatever. It's, The difference in these days, when you, you know, when you get sick, you don't go to the office, even if you are only a little bit [00:06:00] sick, to try and not spread it anymore. Whereas, when I was younger, we used to go to the office, no matter, unless you were dying, you were, you know, you went to work. there's a much bigger focus on, family, work life balance, and even pets. So, I know that there are some people that they have pets and those pets are their children. I'm proud to say that I'm actually one of those. I've got two human children and two furry children, and I love them all very, very much. And sometimes you'll find that, you know, if, if you've got obligations with regards to your furry children, that the old bosses don't understand, they're like, oh, but it's just a dog or it's just a cat or, you can't need to stay home for your dog. That doesn't make sense. And they don't realize that. That's what's important to the people now. it's about that flexibility. It's about being able to take your dog to doggie daycare or doggie school or whatever and not be judged for it. it's about, not about having to have bimon seat for, you know, nine hours straight. It's, it's about working from anywhere at any [00:07:00] time. So it's, it's more of the way of working and things like that, that I think are more frustrating. J.R. Flatter: and I'm not being quiet academically, I'm being quiet because I'm generally thinking about what's the next best question. And, because I get it. I find myself frustrated from time to time with those very topics, but I'm also very bottom line focused. And so what key performance indicators do they want versus keeping their seat warm and being there from, I think you said eight to five, nine to five, how do they want to be measured? What, what is their measures of success? Milica Wojno: I think it's more in line with that balanced scorecard kind of thing. I can't remember all of the points of it, but it's not just about the bottom line anymore. it's about all the factors that contribute to that. So yes, obviously work needs to get done and bottom line needs to grow. That is obviously an important factor, [00:08:00] but the difference now is that it's not the only thing. You can't sacrifice everything and everyone around you, just to increase that bottom line. Sometimes you do need to invest in other areas. Sometimes you do need to Spend some time on team morale, social things. Sometimes you need to give a staff member some time off because that's what they need for their mental health or whatever it may be. and yes, while that doesn't necessarily add to the bottom line directly, it's an investment into the bottom line going forward. J.R. Flatter: it's a very non linear value proposition, what I hear you describing. mean, at the end of the day, revenue has to exceed expense, and as a for profit business, which I, know that's who you work for, as a for profit business, returning in value to stakeholders. But where I always come at this Most often is from a recruiting and retention [00:09:00] perspective. talk to me a little bit about that. Milica Wojno: So from a recruiting perspective, I mean, in our Let me actually just take a little step back in, professional services. You were mentioning, you know, revenues need to exceed costs. Absolutely. I mean, that's, then there's no point otherwise, if it's not a for profit, right? but you must, in our sort of, or in my kind of work, our costs, our staff, our, we provide services, we provide professional services and without those people, there is no, there is no product, there is no revenue, there is nothing. So. If that means that you need to, certain instances, spend a little bit more so that going forward you can spend less, so see it as an investment, I believe that it's worth it. In terms of, recruitment and you said, you mentioned retention I mean, these days people are jumping, jumping to other companies. As often as possible, if they find something that they don't like, they're leaving. particularly in our [00:10:00] industry as well, staff turnover is quite high. and the only way, and that costs a lot of money as well, right? It costs money to find people, to pay recruiters, to, for the, you know, The cost itself to the people that are left behind of all the things that they need to do itself is also quite a burden. and it also affects the culture, right? It affects how everyone feels. If people keep coming and going, it affects how everyone else feels about, you know, and then they think, why did they leave? And then they start talking and then it just becomes a bit of a vicious circle. So not focusing only on those numbers, sometimes investing a little bit more in your people and Taking a little knock on the, you know, financial side could be worth it long term because of all of those other reasons. To keep the staff longer, to protect the culture, and to also then potentially recruit people that are more in line with, you know, what you believe. J.R. Flatter: Yeah, again, I'm agreeing with everything you're putting out [00:11:00] there. was doing a little thought experiment with myself a couple days ago. You could theoretically recruit and hire yourself into bankruptcy. Because if you think about how business works, and we hire people all the time, and I know you do as well, there's a cost to recruit, there's a cost to educate, and then there are other costs associated with both of those, direct and indirect. And then once you get past that curve to entry, you've recruited them, you've educated them, you've integrated them into a team. And then they leave and you have to repeat that cost before you've received the value. You could literally recruit yourself into bankruptcy if you don't keep people long enough to retain sufficient value that your recruiting and, training costs could exceed your [00:12:00] revenues But even, you know, let's, let's bring it back into the real world. It's not free to lose someone, right? And what does that cost? There has been a lot of research on cost of leaving, but it's all been based on the person leaving and why, what made them leave. I don't think we've done a lot of research on what is the actual direct cost of losing a valued employee that you've recruited, that you've trained. You made part of a team and now you've received some value back. It takes, you know, a year or two. You're brand new in your leadership role and it's two or three years old. So whatever that costs to hire and train you, they haven't received it back yet. And so if you leave, it's a negative investment. Milica Wojno: It's interesting, um, the way you talk about, The cost of someone leaving, we actually, one of the things that I do in my [00:13:00] practice and valuations is valuing a workforce. And the way that we value that interestingly is the cost to recreate it. And, and it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily mean, you know, It's not necessarily based on the on the cost to the company. It's based on the recruiters time It's based on time it takes to get them, you know, trained up, get them productive, get them integrated as you said into it and you're right there is that cost is there but somebody told me, saying the other day, I think it was, it was quite an, old saying and they say something like, what if you invest in your people and they leave versus what if you don't invest in them and they stay, right? So you've got to make that either way. you've got, just got to keep doing the best you can and you've got to keep doing, making that investment. Otherwise you, you're going to lose out. Yes, you might lose out financially, but if you don't, you'll lose out in every other way too. J.R. Flatter: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. It's the, it's the classic conversation between the [00:14:00] CFO and the CEO. The CFO says, what if we educate them and they leave? And the CEO says, what if we don't and they stay? So part of the equation, I've never worked in your industry, so I've, I'm an outsider looking in. But one of the things I've noticed, in America we have a saying about horses, ride them hard and put them up wet. Which means you ride the horse until the horse is so exhausted it can't continue and then you just put it in the barn and ignore it. the proper care of a horse was you'd be, you would ride it and brush it and feed it and love it and it would become a valued asset to you rather than So one of the outsider looking in impressions of your industry is that it doesn't care that it rode you hard and put you up wet. It got what it wanted out of you. do you think that's sustainable into the 21st century? Milica Wojno: Definitely not. [00:15:00] And that is the way that the majority of those in charge and firms like these think today. do the whole riding and what, what did you say? Riding hard and leaving them wet in the barn without taking care of them. But truth is, is that they might win in the short term, financially, as you said, but long term, it's not going to happen. J.R. Flatter: You know, I always talk about the global labor market. and we've tried, and I don't think the, experiment was terribly successful of hiring support services globally because Even though I know where you work and what you do, you might be able to pick up and go do that in another geographic location in the world, but it would take a lot of time to figure it out. And it's not as transportable as we used to think it is. And to some extent, the global labor market that we're trying to attract and retain is kind of localized in [00:16:00] some ways. And so the resource that you are and those that work. for you and around you and alongside of you. It's not unlimited. It's a scarce resource. The fundamental rule of economics is scarcity. And so labor, good labor, hardworking labor is scarce. So what should we change to attract and retain the best and brightest? Milica Wojno: You cannot only focus on the bottom line, you need to start focusing on looking after the horse in a manner of speaking. You need to invest that time and yes, sometimes you'll end up investing and you know, not all investments will be a success. it's the way it works. You can't put your faith in everyone and everyone will, follow through. It doesn't work that way, so yes, but that doesn't mean you don't still keep trying to invest and keep trying to find someone and attract these people in the right way, in the way that [00:17:00] they, they value rather than the way that just is about making money. J.R. Flatter: So there's a famous economist in America, he actually won a Nobel Prize in economics that said the only responsibility of a corporation is to maximize profits. It was Milton Friedman. I think he was absolutely right, but I also think he didn't say it was a straight line. that's where I keep us hearing, continuing to return to is this non linear, you and I, when we've long, long ago, uh, used to say emotionally intelligent 21st century leadership is non linear. And it sounds like you're struggling with a linear Leadership style above you, and perhaps even alongside you, when a non linear 21st century style is what's needed. Milica Wojno: Exactly. Like you talk about yourself as one of those people, but you [00:18:00] think differently. that's what makes you different. You see things the way that they are now in the 21st century. You haven't been stuck in that way of thinking from, you know, I don't know, hundreds of years ago, whatever. you've evolved. That's what makes you different. J.R. Flatter: Hmm. speak for my generation a little bit, and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but, you see this repeated cycle, this thought of, it worked for me, This is how I was educated and this is how I've been taught and trained and treated. I'm getting close to 50 years in the labor force, and it's, we're well into the 21st century now. And actually management studies started in the early 20th century, but it was all about how well could someone shovel coal. They had a guy, his name was Taylor, and he actually studied workers shoveling coal, what was the most efficient way for [00:19:00] a worker to shovel coal. That's where it all started. it's just such a blinding flash of the obvious of nobody shovels coal anymore. Well, they do, but not with a shovel into a furnace. I always said I'd never wanted to be. The best buggy whip maker in the world in the 21st century, right? Back in the 20th century when we had horses, we would snap a whip at them to make them run a little faster. what I hear you saying is that they're, they're leading coal shovelers and you're not coal shovelers. Hmm. You've coached me. Thank you. I've got a new way of looking at this right now. What does a traditional arc of a career look like now in the 21st century? What do you think, if you were predicting for this team of young people that work for you, what does the next 30 years look like for them? Milica Wojno: I think it's definitely non linear, um, some of them will move faster [00:20:00] than others, some of them will. change, you know, what they want to be doing, you know, what they're doing now versus what they're going to be doing five years from now, 10 years from now, 30 years from now. It's going to be one of those squiggly lines. It's never going to be, oh, after two years, this is going to happen. And then after two years, this is going to happen. It's just not like that anymore. It's completely all over the place. I mean, I know myself, I changed careers number, a number of times, to get to where I am and I don't know what's going to happen five, ten years from now, right? I mean, all I know I could be doing something completely different again. it's completely non linear. It's completely dependent on other circumstances of life, of your family, of your own wants and needs, which, you Generally, and you know, normally will change and if that happens people are not scared to take career breaks and you know, not study and just go. there's a girl that I used to mentor at a previous, at my previous, at a previous podcast. place that I worked and she was, [00:21:00] she was on that track. Like, she was brilliant. She was like, she was a superstar. She was on that track. She was growing. She was going faster. She was ahead of the curve. you know, jumping up to become, really high up really quickly. And she was doing so well. And she, unfortunately, one of her friends, um, took their, took their own life. and it took her months to kind of, Recover from that. And subsequent to that, she decided to take a career back. She completely just stopped. She left. She went to go live in a small town and probably bartending or waitressing or something, just completely, she just needed to get away from. You know, she didn't want this, the linear life that she had foreseen, that she had always wanted. She just, her perspective completely changed and she just went off to do something else. And I hear more and more about that. I hear more and more people doing crazy things like that. I mean, when my parents used to work, for example, they would work at a company and stay there for 40, 50 years or whatever, you know, and just until they got the golden handshake at the end of, You know, when they're [00:22:00] retired, it's not like that anymore at all. It's not even like staying in the same career anymore. It's jumping from, you know, being an accountant to being a bartender to then, I mean, who knows what she's going to decide five years from now. She might go back to it, who knows, or she might, I don't know, become a doctor. I mean, I don't know. but, The point is, is that it's completely not linear anymore. It's, there is no way to know what that line is going to look like. All I know is that that line is absolutely, as you said, non linear. That's definitely a good theme for our, um, for the day. It's a lot of the stuff is completely not, not linear. J.R. Flatter: So, in another decade, you're going to be in charge. I mean, you're already a leader, but You and your peers are going to be CEOs, if not already. So the MBA for a hundred years was the way to become a leader of a corporation. If you wanted to become a successful leader, you found a good MBA program and you went to that program and you [00:23:00] came and you got rode hard and put up wet again as a brand new MBA, and found your way very likely into the c-suite. Into the executive suite. What's the path now? What should it be? How do we prepare you to be a CEO a non linear world? A digital AI non linear world? Milica Wojno: mean, I myself have done an MBA and I'm pretty sure that the things I've learned are very different to the things that somebody else would have done in their MBA many years ago. What I do know, however, is, I mean, I've studied various degrees in my field and various, you know, gotten various qualifications. And what I, what I realized after. Studying quite a lot in my life was that eventually it starts all becoming repetitive. There's only so much, how can I say, theoretical or technical things you can learn. so I don't think that learning the theoretical or the knowledge kind of the [00:24:00] qualifications or the degrees is the way. It's much more learning about leadership, about how to. Understand other people. Maybe it should be about, I don't know, behavioral analysis and understanding people better and, you know, psychology to help people through whatever they're going through and supportive and teach people to think first about the person as a human being rather than as an employee. Maybe that it should be something like that. J.R. Flatter: You're causing me to think very deeply. That's why I'm pausing. I'm not pausing for effect. Milica Wojno: That's good then, I guess. J.R. Flatter: No, yeah, absolutely. you know, you mentioned something several minutes ago, and it's something that I've learned in the last several years as I started interacting with Gen Z. And you know, Gen AA, which comes after Z, if you look on a spreadsheet, what comes after Z, AA, they're coming. They're in grade school already. they'll be in the labor market in the blink [00:25:00] of an eye by the time you and your generation or the majority of the C suite, they're going to be in the labor market. And I can only imagine what the world looks like, their expectations are going to be. But mental health, thinking about and acting upon one's mental health has become common. Whereas in my generation, I won't speak for everyone, but I would suspect the majority still looks at it with a bit of a jaundiced eye. Like, really? so talk to me about that a little bit if you don't mind. Care of self, whole self. Milica Wojno: yeah, definitely, when, I mean, I come from a family that has depression and, in those, like from my parents side, in those days, there was no medication for it. It was just kind of like, well, kind of just grit and bear it, deal with it, you know. It was never treated it as, you know, the. The disease that it is, whereas these days [00:26:00] they're finding, as everybody knows, that it's way more common than anybody actually realized, and probably even more so affecting your work or people's work than any other kind of disease. as I mentioned earlier with the, The lady that I used to work with, she had a career break because of some mental health things. I mean, there've been so many different exa there are so many examples of that. It's crazy these days. Okay. Let me, another example is, When I mentioned earlier about, um, you know, these days you, you, you have a little sniffle and you don't go to the office because you don't want to spread anything, you know, it's more out of respect for everyone else. Whereas in the old days, you, you, you know, you used to go to work unless you were dying. And from a mental health perspective, it's similar in the sense that In those days, you couldn't take a day off or stay at home because you were having a bad mental health day. Like, people didn't understand that that wasn't even a thing. [00:27:00] Whereas these days, it's okay to have a bad mental health day and, take a day off for that. Interestingly, I'm finding that there's a lot more support available for mental health types of issues for staff. despite that, you still get the comments from the old school generation that they just don't understand that part of it still. And I think, despite the fact that society and everything, everyone has moved on from it being this like, Oh, whatever thing to an actual real problem and real disease, There's still taboo about it at the top, at the top, but in these companies, people still don't fully understand and respect it and still comment on it and judge it. And, but I guess it's going to take some time to really get through to everyone. J.R. Flatter: Now, I have an appreciation for what you're saying, because I find myself, for much simpler things, one of my team members is out on [00:28:00] holiday this week, and I try to communicate and demonstrate that taking breaks is important. But my boomer self wanted to say something a couple of times, sarcastically, then I reminded myself, don't do that, knucklehead, you gotta talk the talk and walk the walk. And I've done my absolute best not to communicate with this person while they're on holiday because they deserve and need that break and will come back refreshed. Any closing thoughts as we head out the door? Milica Wojno: I guess. Maybe just echoing in terms of the theme that the past is non linear, whether it be the past to where we are today and the path ahead, it is absolutely non linear. It is this complete convoluted line that no one knows where it starts and ends, but doesn't matter what it is, what's important is just to know that it's non linear [00:29:00] and that's okay. J.R. Flatter: You just reminded me of the yin and yang of Taoism. You know, the, the circle with the two half circles and depending on who you talk to, what the two sides stand for. And I began to think of them lately as control and chaos, but not chaos, I should say autonomy, freedom. Control and freedom. We need control in organizations. The reason we get together in organizations is that we achieve more together than we would independently. So you're probably getting ready to eat breakfast and I'm getting ready to go have dinner. I didn't go have to go find what I'm going to have for dinner, grow it, catch it, do whatever it was that someone else, we worked as a team, as a society, and somebody's going to have my dinner ready for me. That's why we organized in the first place. So we need some control, but we also need [00:30:00] freedom. And my generation, I think, would lean toward control, but it sounds like the generation we're trying to hire and retain wants and needs freedom. And what is the right? You know, another part of economics, I'm not an economist, but I guess I'm an amateur economist, is the idea of seeking equilibrium. We're constantly seeking equilibrium. Which, we find ourselves in a time of seeking that right equilibrium for this new millennia. [00:31:00]