[MUSIC PLAYING] STEFANI KLASKOW:
Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining today
for a talk on the topic of leading through times
of change and uncertainty. We're excited to be here today
as part of the IamRemarkable Week. My name is Stefani Klaskow. I use the pronouns
she, her, hers, and I'm the director of
our pharmaceutical and over-the-counter
industry here at Google. And I'm so pleased to be
here with all of you today to be moderating this session. IamRemarkable is a
global initiative that strives to empower
everyone, particularly women and
underrepresented groups, to celebrate their achievements
in the workplace and beyond. At the heart of the program
lies a 90-minute workshop. During this workshop,
participants learn about the importance
of self-promotion in their personal and
professional lives, and they're equipped with the
tools to develop this skill. To date, IamRemarkable
has reached and impacted 250,000 participants across 150
countries and 800 companies. IamRemarkable Week has been
running since September 8 and through the 15th, and
is a virtual experience featuring talks, workshops, and
confidence-boosting challenges. Its goal is to
celebrate the power and diversity-- the power
of diversity, equity, and inclusion and
allyship, while empowering everyone to celebrate
their achievements. So today, I am joined
by our esteemed partners at GlaxoSmithKline, GSK. Louise Kristensen is the
global head of partnerships for GSK Consumer Healthcare. Her purpose is to be a
value-based leader who challenges the
inequities and empowers others to be themselves. Louise has championed and
launched the IamRemarkable program at GSK. We are also joined by Crystal
Coller, the global director of marketing for Centrum
at GSK Consumer Healthcare. With a passion for
diversity and inclusion, Crystal works every day
to champion DEI efforts across the company. Louise and Crystal
have played key roles in leading the launch of
IamRemarkable globally at GSK, impacting nearly 800
participants across 39 markets since May of last year. We are also joined today by
Allan Thygessen, president of the Americas and
global partners at Google. Allan leads Google's advertising
business in North and South America, as well as the Global
Client and Agency Solutions team. Allan is an advocate
for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is
the executive sponsor of the IamRemarkable program. Thank you all for joining. So let's take a minute to
get to know each other. Each of you is personally
passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but what
drives that personal passion around DEI? So Crystal, you shared that
you grew up in the South and how that has influenced
your passion and experience around DEI. Can you tell us a little
bit more about that? CRYSTAL COLLER: Absolutely. Thanks, Stefani, and
thank you so much again for inviting us and
having us here today. IamRemarkable teaches
us, and we talk a lot in the workshops around culture
and community, and the impact that that can have on
influencing our abilities and perceptions of not only
ourselves, but also others. And when I reflect back on
growing up in the South, it's a mix of
different experiences that have impacted my
approach to be more inclusive and to be more
respectful of others. And whether it's the
journey my husband and I have been on as a mixed
race couple living in the US, to meeting one of
my best friends at university first day in
French class, who grew up in Dubai with different
religious beliefs than I did, to recognizing
that I didn't quite fit the mold or
stereotype of what it meant to be a Southern belle,
it's been an evolution for me. So I'll never say no
to some fried chicken, but to that last
point, as I started to think about what I wanted to
do in my career, at that point in time in my
community, I didn't see a lot of representation around
what I would deem as women in corporate America. A lot of those jobs
and roles that I was kind of interested in
exploring were held by men, and I didn't necessarily have
sort of those role models in a woman in corporate America. So that's not to
say that this isn't the case across many
different states or many different
communities, but that was my perspective
and my experience. So by the time I
made it to university and had the opportunity to get
a higher level of education, I really started to get involved
in the international community, the international dorm,
the scholars community, and met many people from all
over the world that really opened up my eyes to different
cultures, communities, how they were raised,
different beliefs. And that really spurred
my need and interest in travel and
culture and adventure and to do so with an open mind. And I wanted to make sure, as I
continued on my career journey, that I worked for a
multinational which would continue to give
me those opportunities and to extend and make sure I
was still growing as a person and learning more
about the world. And even from a
mentoring point of view, kind of back to the point
I made around the community and the women in my
community, I purposely made a concerted effort to
be intentional with learning from not only
those women leaders within the organization, but
also diverse leaders as well. STEFANI KLASKOW: Great,
thank you so much. And we're definitely
going to dig into that reflection of yourself
in leadership a little bit later in this conversation. Allan, like Crystal, you said
that your upbringing really is at the heart of
your passion for DEI. So can you tell us
a little bit more about the values that were
instilled in you growing up? Oops, Allan, we're having
a technical difficulty. Give us one second. ALLAN THYGESSEN: How about this? Does that work? STEFANI KLASKOW: We're
good, we're good. Yep. ALLAN THYGESSEN: OK. So I grew up in Denmark
and spent the first 24 years of my life there. And both my parents had
big careers, but really, my mother had the bigger one
and was just an incredible role model for-- at a time when there were far
fewer women in the executive ranks, whether it was
government or private industry. She was really a
lighthouse for that. And I saw firsthand
how powerful that was and frankly, that was
normalized for me. That was the way
it's supposed to be. Of course it was that way,
since Mom was that way. And so I think
that's number one. Number two, I think
very deep seated values of fairness and
equal opportunity, I was raised with those. And even though I've now
lived in the US for 35 years, those are still really
foundational to me. And so that's how I approach
trying to lead our teams, and the underlying reasons why
I am so supportive of our DEI initiatives. Yes, there are other
rational arguments you can make about diversity
brings about better business outcomes and more
holistic decision making and fewer blind spots,
and all of those things. And those are all true. But for me, it really
starts with the core value that it's just
fundamentally unfair to treat people differently. And I think that started
with me as a young child and it was ingrained
in me, and I still feel very strongly that way. STEFANI KLASKOW: Thanks, Allan. I think you saw a lot of
us nodding our head as you were sharing that story. I know for me in particular,
I want my daughter definitely to see that this
is the norm, right, a woman executive. So thank you for
sharing that story. Louise, you have lived
in Hong Kong, Shanghai. You have worked across Asia. Now you're based in the UK. How has that global
experience or that worldview shaped your point
of view in DEI? LOUISE KRISTENSEN:
Yeah, thanks, Stefani. So I made a personal
decision in my early 20s that I wanted to live and
work in other countries. I grew up in a small community,
in a small village in England, and we didn't travel
a lot as a family. And I knew there was a
big wide world out there and I wanted to see it. So I left England. I went to Hong Kong
with a suitcase, landed, went to look for
work, and that was really the start of an absolutely
amazing 10 years. And living in Hong
Kong and Shanghai and working across
Asia allowed me to have a greater
cultural context and social understanding
across communities. Meeting people with
different points of view and different experiences
in life is so important. And I grew as a person. And in fact, I talk a lot about
how it made me who I am today. I was out of my comfort
zone on many occasions. I was stretched. But I met so many people
who have enriched my life, and I carry these experiences
and I carry these friendships for life with me daily. And that really
built up my desire to really lead as a
values-based leader and do that in
everything that I do. And so with my teams, for me
it's so important that I always advocate for all voices
on my team to be heard and to really make sure that
the experience I've had, that I can really take that and
I can use that in my day to day and I can help it drive
the decisions and the way that I empower others as well. STEFANI KLASKOW: That's great. Thank you all for
sharing those stories I know that everyone online
appreciates the honesty and authenticity
of those answers. So let's move on a little bit. So the focus of this
conversation today is leading through times
of change and uncertainty. And this past year, we've
seen unprecedented changes in our lives and in our
business, but the truth of it is that change is the
norm in business today, and resilience is really one
of the most important skills that employees can cultivate. So Allan, I'll start with you. How have you helped Googlers
navigate change and build resiliency? ALLAN THYGESSEN: Yes. Well, I think now, of
course, the world looks, let's say, a little bit
more manageable and planned. But if we put ourselves back in
February or March of last year when there was just tremendous
uncertainty about the duration and severity of the
crisis and whether we had remedies to address it, I
think Googlers felt pressured-- of course in their jobs,
but equally or more so about what was going to happen
to them and their families, how are they going to take
care of their children, their elderly parents. And resilience
became a core theme. I think one of the things
that a crisis does, though, is it gives tremendous clarity. We were able to identify what
was truly important, which was the health and
wellness of our teams and supporting our
clients with empathy. And that's really all
that we focused on for a couple of months. And then we could tell,
as the fog was lifting and people were ready-- in many cases, not all. We took a segmented view-- different clients had
varying degrees of readiness to hear about how
should they respond to this change in
the environment and the pace of change. So as you point out, Stefani,
change was always a constant, but the pace of
change had been upped. And I was incredibly proud
of how the teams leaned in with that across many
different sectors that were undergoing enormous change. So if you think about
the travel industry, obviously, travel was
down 90 plus percent, and whatever scraps there
were were hard to find. Retailers, most of
whom had not built out full e-commerce function,
their pick up in store, had to completely change their
product sourcing and logistics, customer loyalty, everything. And that went across literally
every sector of the economy. And these would
normally have been changes that companies
would have struggled to manage over five
years, and some of them we had been talking to
them about for five years without getting very far. And suddenly we were able
to, with great urgency and great clarity, move forward. And I think-- and people are
able to do amazing things when there's clarity, simplicity,
and obviously resilience. And so making sure
that we and our clients were not overdraining
the batteries, were taking care
of things, and then focused on the very few
things that were absolutely both critically
important and urgent. I think that there are a
lot of lessons for that for our day to day now. I'm not saying
things are done here, that everything is
perfectly normal, but we're in a period
of greater normalcy. And losing those habits
of both resilience, but also of clarity and
purpose of decision making and communication, I think
would be a terrible shame. Because I think if you
ask everyone-- clients, your own employees-- it was much easier. There was more clear
delegation and people felt empowered and as a
result, were resilient. LOUISE KRISTENSEN: Mm-hmm. STEFANI KLASKOW: Yeah, well,
obviously in the health care industry, we certainly
saw that great change in the pace and
change and the focus, and we did amazing
things in health care, and the industry
overall is very proud. Louise, let me pass
it over to you. GSK has been through some
significant org changes, including a joint
venture with Pfizer and the upcoming spinoff of the
consumer health organization. How are you helping your
employees navigate this change and build resilience? LOUISE KRISTENSEN:
Yeah, so for me, it's really important to
recognize that everyone's going to have their own
personal change journey and look to create the space
with individuals and teams to support each other
through our change curve. And for me, it's been really
important to empower people to share when they're
not doing OK as well, and that it's OK to
say we're not having an OK day with the change. And that's across the board,
to your point, Stefani, with the changes that we're
going through as GSK, but then to Allan's point and
the pandemic, all of the constant change
that we have in our lives and creating that space. And so for me,
that piece kind of has been a piece
that I've certainly tried to shift to consciously
create space for those moments, because those discussions
where you just ask someone, are you OK, and sometimes you
can get a superficial kind of line on it. But just going,
are you really OK? And some people want to talk and
some people haven't, but it's also allowed us to
talk about change and to share how we all manage
change in different ways. And then on top of that,
equipping teams with resources, so managing and having the
space for self-reflection and where you are with
your journey is key. And then helping to
build resilience. So it's a constant conversation,
and I think that's important, not just we're having
a moment of change in our organization,
let's support, but let's have this ongoing
way that we can manage change together. And then I think
also importantly, it's critical to give
ourselves space for self-care. And we've created
wellness days in GSK as well, so no meeting days,
and we take the space-- it's a personal, you
want to do on that day, to recharge and reset
energy and to do things that help us manage our wellness. And I also really
believe that it's important to stay focused
on the positive of what change can bare. To really change can bring. It's really quick to focus
on the fear of change, and we all do it
as humans, but how do we keep focused on the
work that we're doing? How do our priorities line up
to the bigger company strategy? And I think when
you start to make those mental connections
with what you're doing and the work that we're
driving, it kind of helps to imagine the future
and the possibilities to come. So that's a little
bit of the way that we look at managing
the constant of change and helping to build resilience. STEFANI KLASKOW: Well,
thank you for sharing that, and I couldn't agree more. And great kudos to you during
this hard time, because it takes a very strong leader to
create that psychologically safe environment where
their team feels like they can share that they're
not having a great day or that things aren't going
well, and feeling the comfort and ability to be
able to do that. So Louise and Crystal,
also, one of the ways of promoting successful
change within an organization is to align with
a common purpose. So how has the
IamRemarkable program helped to serve as a common
purpose for GSK employees? Louise, do you want to
start with that one? LOUISE KRISTENSEN: Yeah, yeah,
great, I'll kick that off. So it was important
for us to ensure that culture-building
work [INAUDIBLE] at the heart of our partnerships
as an overall guiding purpose. And we're really proud
of the work streams that our GSK and
Google teams drive to support diversity,
equity, and inclusion day in and day out. And when you shared
IamRemarkable back with us in 2020, we were
excited from the get go. We only had to listen
to the ambition once. And we have made this a
priority since that day in our partnership and
in consumer health care. And I'm going to
hand over to Crystal to bring it to life
a little bit more on how we've driven
that program, and really now how we've
started to embed it into our overall purpose. Crystal, so I hand to you. CRYSTAL COLLER: Yeah,
that sounds great. Thanks, Louise. And to kind of hit on the
point Louise made around some of the changes we've
gone through around merging two different cultures
of Pfizer and GSK together in consumer health
care, to what Allan talked a little bit about around the
global pandemic and the change that we all experienced--
whether or not we were GSK, Google,
across the board, right, we remember that too well. It took a couple of
months for us, actually, to come back to IamRemarkable
and revisit the program. We knew it was still a key
pillar and key deliverable for us to land at GSK
and that had a role to play, but not only to help
promote diversity and support underrepresented groups
and representation within the community, but also
to maintain human connections and to do it on
a personal level. And traditionally, these
workshops, as many of you well know, are face to face. And a couple of us
had the opportunity, two of the original
facilitators, Tamara Savitz and LaTanya Ford. And I had the opportunity
to do this face to face, but we had to take a step
back and reevaluate and say, OK, well if we can't
do these face to face and we're not going to be
able to pull that power through and the intimate moment
that you have in that workshop, what can we do on
a different scale? Can we do this virtually? Can we do it digitally to
help bring this to life? And we said yes, absolutely. And so on May 1, with the
help of Jen Shap, who's one of the Googlers that I
worked with in particular, we landed our first
workshop internally at GSK with about 16 participants. And it was a huge win for us
and we were super thrilled, and we had such positive
feedback from that workshop. What really made the success
of the program, though, and I think this speaks
a little bit more to kind of that purpose piece
is that this became really a grassroots movement. It was really that
nature that helped drive the success
of the program, and our key call to
action for attendees was, name one person
that you would recommend the workshop to that
you think could benefit from going through
this discussion or participating in
a 90-minute session. And over a few months,
just through that word of mouth and that
recommendation, we saw huge scale. We saw an uptick in across
different business units, different teams, different
markets, from Australia to Canada to India and Brazil. It's that credibility
that really kind of drove the recommendation from
a colleague or someone that you trust in a time of so
much uncertainty and change, and a lot of change
happening at one time. It wasn't a top down initiative. It wasn't a, here's your
LT member saying you have to attend this
90-minute workshop. It really was a
natural recommendation that resonated with others. And for me personally,
I know it gave me a lot of purpose
and satisfaction in driving this type of scale
and this type of program, and I know I can speak for
some of our facilitators that would say the same. And I think that
that's really the role that IamRemarkable had to play. STEFANI KLASKOW: You know,
it's such an amazing story, because I remember years ago
when IamRemarkable was first brought to GSK and how
successful it was in person, and to see how you have
developed this program and really used the
personal engagement and the human
connection aspect of it to help the team through
this really hard time has just been so amazing to see. So we thank you for
continuing with it and editing as needed to make it
work for this really hard time. So let's move on to
some more questions. So when there is time
of significant change within a company,
building culture becomes even more important. So Allan, how has
Google built an employee culture in this virtual world? And I see that you're sitting
in an office right now. I am still at home. So how are you going to
continue that culture in that kind of world where
some of us are in the office and some of us are home? ALLAN THYGESSEN: Yeah. Well, look, I don't know that
we know perfectly exactly how that's going to play out. But let me just say init-- I would say Google
has historically relied on its offices
as gathering places. And we've invested a
lot in them and there were a lot of
services available, and it was all with the idea
that bringing people together in person, whether
it was over a meal or in well-equipped
meeting rooms and so on, would foster creativity
and collaboration. And we're a matrix oriented
organizational structure, and so there's always been a lot
of emphasis on collaboration. And we knew that once we
couldn't all be together in the office, that some of that
would become more difficult. There were some positive things. It was easier to have a
more equal participation and engagement in meetings. If everyone's
virtual, then there's not that feeling
of if I'm remote but half the group is in the
office, that I'm losing out. So that's positive. And I think for certain
types of reviews, I think that's something
that we may actually sustain on an ongoing basis
exactly for that purpose. But what people draw
from the office, I think, you need to think about
other ways to deliver that. So one on ones can't just
be transactional check-ins about the 15 plates that
you're spinning right now. It has to be about what's
going on with you more broadly. How can we help you solve
some of the things that are weighing on you? Do you need to take
some carer's leave? We introduced various
leave programs. We've always had, I think,
generous parental leave, but we introduced other leave
formats to help with that. We changed our perf
evaluation policies to adjust for that and each
employee's availability during the pandemic. And we tried to rethink
events because obviously, many of our events
used to be in person, whether they were in-house
or with customers. And we tried to find ways to
make virtual events engaging. And I think--
look, I don't think there'll ever be a perfect
substitute for the kind of one on one engagement
that you can get and the serendipity of bumping
into people at an event. Those are two things that
are hard to replicate. But if you really work
at the understanding the virtual environment and
how to make it engaging, I think you can make a lot of
progress, and we've, I think, made tremendous progress, both
in our in-house and external events that way. And we'll carry a
lot of that forward. In terms of how we are
mapping this going forward, we've said that if
your job allows it, you can apply to
work fully remotely. And for a lot of
folks, particularly with our technical jobs that
don't have day to day customer interactions and that are
capable of working very independently, at a
place in their career where that can work, we've
got a good high teens percentage of employees
that are in that situation. And so we had a situation--
we had a process for applying for that. For the rest, we
said first of all, if you're not in
the right location and you could work from
a different office, you can apply to transfer. So many of my teams
could do their work from many different locations. If you're working, let's
say, as analytical lead, supporting GSK and
many other companies, well typically,
you realistically had a choice of offices,
and we allowed people that flexibility and a lot
of folks took us up on that. And then assuming you are
mapped to a particular office, we said, well, how
about three days a week? Two days a week, you are free. You could come in the
office if you want. It'll be available for you. But we'll have three
days a week and we'll anchor in the business org
that are on the same days, because part of the point
of coming into the office is that you want to be there
with other people there. So we made it Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, but obviously if GSK wants
to meet with us on Monday, then we'll come in on a Monday. So-- and then to add
to that flexibility, we added four weeks a year where
you can work from anywhere, including internationally. And so I think we're
trying to come up with models that give people
so much more flexibility than they've ever had
before while attending to the needs of
developing our people, enabling group work, and
then for client-facing teams, being close to clients
and engaging with them. And yeah, have we gotten
that exactly right? Well, I don't really know yet. We're not-- we haven't
really implemented that yet. We had been hoping to
be back in the office. In fact, I had
planned this trip-- currently sitting in
our New York office-- around being here for the
opening of the New York office. Well, unfortunately,
we've had to postpone that by a few months. So now it's scheduled
for January. So we will see when we
get to the spring and-- but I am hopeful
that we have created a model that acknowledges
all the diversity of people's situations, the work that they
do, the needs of the business, and as a baseline, just
created so much more flexibility for people. And then we have
to figure out how to do some of these
hybrid meetings that I was just talking about
and other hybrid activities, and what work really should
be done in an office versus should be done at home. And we're developing a
lot of best practices that are around that right now. But I don't think we
have all the answers, and until we're really
doing it at scale, it's a little bit hypothetical. So ask me in six
months, knock on wood. [RAPS DESK] STEFANI KLASKOW: And also a plan
that really takes into account how successful the
teams have been from working remotely
with giving people the flexibility of the
hybrid work schedule. Thank you for sharing
all that, Allan. We appreciate it. Crystal, can you
tell me a little bit about how GSK is investing
in culture and people? CRYSTAL COLLER: Absolutely. And Allan noted on the Monday
meetings-- we'll avoid. We'll schedule more Tuesday,
Wednesday, later in the week. [INTERPOSING VOICES] STEFANI KLASKOW: I'm always
happy to come to the New Jersey office on a Monday, so. CRYSTAL COLLER: Yeah,
exactly, exactly, exactly. But yeah, no, just great
question, Stefani, and I think IamRemarkable, as we
talked a little bit about, was one of those
levers, I think, that really helped create
and strengthen our community, not only just building
the skill set, right, around self-promotion
and talking more openly about our achievements,
but to do so in this virtual working
environment which we've just talked a little bit about. And it's a change
in pace where you don't have that FaceTime with
your team or your managers. So I think that
that was definitely a way for us to help
facilitate that, to build that
skill set and build that confidence in our
employees to be able to do so. People were hungry to take
a moment out of the day, actually, to focus on something
other than the day job. I remember at the
onset, there was a lot of back to back meetings
in this new kind of way of working before we
really felt that rhythm and we really started to adapt
to that new way of working. So 90 minutes to
focus on me and myself and reflect on my progress
and my accomplishments and what I wanted to
get out of that session was a breath of fresh
air to be able to do so. I recall one of our
facilitators mentioning they were in a session with
a colleague they had never met before, which I
think was also a really special part about this
program and doing it virtually, was that you might
be in a workshop with a colleague in Brazil
that's in R&D because you're in marketing and you
would have never met them before because you
were based in the US. So bridging and
building that sense of community in a virtual
environment was really unique. But that person in
the session actually said that they felt so empowered
from the IamRemarkable workshop that they had put
themselves forward for a promotion because they
were now able to see themselves in a different way. And that story is
just one of many that I'm sure we hear not
only at GSK, but also just across the
IamRemarkable program, that often people are walking
away from these sessions not only with a different
perspective of themselves, but also their
accomplishments and the people that they work with. So whether you're an associate
brand manager based in Brazil or you're the CMO
based in the UK, the playing field is
leveled and you're a person and you have a story,
and you have a time to sit and reflect on
what makes you you. And it's not about the title. And so to date-- I know, Stefani, you mentioned
this at the beginning-- I'm pleased to say we have
broken the 800 mark for GSK employees across those markets
to elevate that conversation around self-promotion. And that's just based on
what we were able to impact as of May of 2020. So there's definitely other
pockets in the organization where facilitators
have maybe come across this program in
a different way that haven't come through
necessarily what Louise and I have been driving. But strengthening the community
during these big moments of change as we continue
to evolve and become that new organization,
IamRemarkable has played definitely a key role
in helping us invest and drive that new way of thinking and
new way to approach culture. STEFANI KLASKOW: Thank you
for sharing that story. And I'm sure that story
about the person getting the promotion or applying
for the new role, hearing stories
like that must keep you going with this,
right, because we know it's a lot of work that
both you and Louise put in. So I'm sure that's your payoff,
right, those great stories. Louise, what culture
are you looking to build moving forward at GSK? LOUISE KRISTENSEN:
Yeah, thanks, Stefani. So I'm really excited to
talk about our culture that we're looking
to build and that's really going to drive
our purpose and strategy. And so to your point earlier
on, as a consumer health care business, it's clear that
what we do matters, but also so does how we do it. And so we talk a lot about
how everyone in our company has a role in creating
and shaping our culture, and especially as we
move to [INAUDIBLE].. And that's important
because culture, just like we talked
about IamRemarkable, isn't going to kind of
come top down and plug and play and let's go. We have to live and breathe it. We have to genuinely feel it
and feel the energy of it. And so we've developed
our culture behaviors through a process of discovery. So we involve colleagues
across consumer health care, understood current
ways of working, and really started to
imagine possible futures-- what could that look like,
what could that feel like? And then we set out
a culture that's going to best support
our purpose and strategy, and we've focused
on three areas. And the first one
couldn't be better aligned with IamRemarkable and what
we're talking about today, because our first one
is "keep it human." And "keep it human" is our
dedication to our consumers, to our customers,
and each other. And it's this-- and it demands
unmatched understanding and empathy. And that is so key,
because we need to approach everything with
the fact that we're all humans. And what is it
that we need to do and what is that human
understanding that we need to have to really show empathy? So I'm really excited,
as we move forward, of how IamRemarkable can
continue to really build on what "keep it human" means. The second area
we're talking about is doing what matters
most, and this is prioritizing the
important and challenging the unnecessary. You know, I think
sometimes we all have many things
on the to do list, and especially when we're
having a very busy day, it's easy to pick off
the simpler things just to feel like we've been
a bit more productive. But actually, are they
really the things that matter most and are
they the things that are going to help
us grow to where we want to be as a consumer
health care company? And so having that laser
focus on the fewer, bigger, better is so important. And then when we have that and
we have the prioritization, how do we go beyond? And go beyond is
about an energy. It's not a thing,
it's an energy. It's an energy that's going
to drive us to be better, to move at pace. And constantly,
again, [INAUDIBLE] are we going to
make sure that we are focused on the right
things at the right point? And so we started to embed these
attributes in our day to day, but again, we've
dedicated a lot of time to talk about them as teams. If we're going to build a
culture, we have to talk. We have to have
people feeding back on what does this feel like. It's one thing to talk
about our culture. How does it practically
work day to day, and what do we need to
kind of embrace as teams and work together on? So we've started to recognize
each other by these behaviors, because that's kind
of the starting point. It's not a list that
comes down that we're going to check off of. It is starting to build. And so I'm really excited
A, about our culture, but how IamRemarkable
lives as part of that. And it's a real
enabler of the way that we're going to drive
those new behaviors. STEFANI KLASKOW: That's great. Thank you so much
for sharing that. I think one thing
that really stuck out to me in that, Louise, is like,
culture just doesn't happen. And you sharing out your vision
shows the true intentionality and thoughtfulness that
goes into that approach. So thank you. That was good to hear. So Crystal, I want
to take it back to a little bit about what
you mentioned in your opening statement. Let's talk about the importance
of diversity in leadership. It's often said that you
can't be what you can't see. And to drive
meaningful inclusivity, it's important to
have representation at every level in a company. So Allan, when you stepped
into the role as president of the Americas at Google,
you set out big goals to get more women and people
of color in leadership roles. Can you tell us
a little bit more about why this is
important to you and why you're such a vocal
advocate for diversity in leadership? ALLAN THYGESSEN:
Yeah, I'd be happy to. So even before
taking this role, I'd been a staunch advocate
for getting more women in leadership and
we've, I think, made very substantial
progress on that. So that was a
continuation effort. And I think when we started a
lot of our leadership program to build up the
middle management layer of next generation
female leaders, we were-- maybe 25% of our
directors and above were women in the
business side of Google, and it's now well over 40 and
I fully expect it to get to 50. You know, exactly when
that's going to happen, but it's going to happen. We have the talent. We are doing everything we can
to remove every obstacle so that everyone can be successful. So I think that
was on a good path. But it was very clear
to me, to your question, that we were not nearly as far
along and not in nearly as good a place on minority
representation and success. And so I really
tried to apply myself to that problem over the
last four and 1/2 years. And I think we're
at an earlier phase. There's some green
shoots, you know, and I think you
can't make progress on what you can't measure and
what you don't talk about. And so we really started to
look at looking at hiring, at retention, and at
progression, and then at indicators of sentiment. Those were some of the key
variables that we looked at. And I think hiring is often the
one that most people focused on, and appropriately so. You can't fix the problem
without fixing hiring, and we, I think, made very
substantial progress on that with a variety of changes
to our hiring practices, and I'm pleased
with how it is now. But if you just
hire and then they come into a system
that doesn't allow for the success and
encouragement and nourishment of everyone, you haven't
really advanced, certainly not with respect to leadership. And so now it's a question
of retention and progression, and we've gotten to
a place now where retention is equivalent
across different groups. That took a while. And I think progression
is next, and we're making progress there, but it's
not where we want it to be. So-- but I feel like
there's a surge of progress. There's all kinds
of things we can do, both on the manager side and on
helping individual employees, and this is becoming
something that leaders are evaluated on at Google,
and appropriately so. I think on top of
all that, you also have to be intentional
about leadership recruiting, and so that's another
top focus area. You can't make
tremendous progress without building a model that
organically grows leadership from within, but you should
complement that with external. And so that's another
key focus area right now. But overall, we're
making progress. I mean, at the Google
level, so I'm just talking about the business org. And it's a slightly easier
problem on the business side than, let's say, the
engineering side, where there are some genuine
differences in availability of supply and people who
are appropriately trained. But even there, I think
we're making good progress. We set a goal of improving
minority leadership representation by
30% by 2025, and I think for Black plus
leadership, for example, where we've already improved by 23%. And so there's
progress being made. It's slow, hard work,
but I know I am, and I think Google leadership
is very, very committed to that over the long run. And you have to work at
all levels of the org. You want every individual
employee to take responsibility for creating a better work
environment for themselves and for everyone on their
teams, because that's a huge part of the experience. I can say a lot
of things, but you know, what matters is
the lived experience in the individual teams and
do the people feel heard, do they feel appreciated? A manager is sensitive to
the different circumstances they have. And there's a lot
more to do there, so. But progress. But way too early to
declare any form of victory. STEFANI KLASKOW: Yeah. And I love how you started
off the conversation by saying you can't acknowledge what-- you can't fix what
you don't acknowledge or you don't talk about. And I've certainly noticed,
being a part of one of your teams,
that we've learned how to have those
difficult conversations or what some people
might think are uncomfortable conversations,
and have made great strides. So thank you for being such an
ally and such a leader on this. Louise, what are
some of the efforts that GSK is doing to embody
diversity in leadership? LOUISE KRISTENSEN: Yeah, agreed. So our approach,
which is focused on our people, our
business, and community, starts inside our company. And we're committed to
being more proactive so that our own workforce reflects
the communities in which we operate and that GSK leadership
reflects our GSK workforce. And so GSK leaders are
responsible for ensuring inclusion and diversity
is an everyday reality for their teams, and it's
a fundamental expectation of each and every leader. So we have Keep
Growing campus in GSK with lots of different
materials to support inclusion and diversity for
GSKers, and we've made sure that inclusion
and diversity is a real focus of our
development leadership program. So across the board,
how do we make sure that that is embedded in
everything that we're doing and that we have a common way
that we're really making sure, across the board, our teams
see that and they feel that and they have the
support with that? STEFANI KLASKOW:
Great, thank you. And Crystal, as someone who is
deeply passionate about driving change, you have
really demonstrated, in particular through this
program, IamRemarkable, that leadership
comes at every level. So how are you thinking
about continuing to foster DEI at GSK? CRYSTAL COLLER: Yeah,
thanks, Stefani. I think obviously,
IamRemarkable has been one of those tools
and vehicles, right, to deliver some of that change. And before I answer a
little bit more directly, I want to tap on
something that Louise just mentioned when she
talked about ensuring that we are representative of
the communities that we serve. As one of the world's leading
health care organizations, when we talk about the real
consumers and the consumers that we serve in
those communities, this is diversity
of age and gender and sexual orientation
across the board. And as we say in
my line of work, it's more than just a demo
that we're going after, right? There's so much more to that. And so making sure that our
brand communications and from a marketing perspective
reflects that diversity is an absolute must do. And part of what
we've been able to do to drive some of that
change, a couple of us in the Marketing
EDGE organization got together and
formed what we've coined the coalition
of the willing, which I think Jerry Daykin I have
to thank for that name. And for those of
you that might not have heard the term
Marketing EDGE, it is a team within our
marketing organization at GSK. That's a bit of
probably a new term. The aim of this group
is really to make sure that we keep GSK on the cutting
edge of marketing for today's connected consumer,
but to make sure that we're really driving that
relevancy in our brand comms. And this coalition, this group
of people that came together, really are all passionate
about driving that real change and encouraging diversity
and inclusiveness across every aspect of
the marketing campaigns that we can touch. So that includes,
for those of you that maybe aren't as close to
marketing, not just the talent that you see on the screen
at the end of the day or on the TV channel as
you're flipping through, but it's behind the camera. It's the production crews. It's the content, the
design, the media buys, everything that goes into that. And I believe one of our
colleagues, actually, who's in media and digital
spoke on a panel last week during IamRemarkable week
for a panel around leading with empathy and change. And to quote her,
it's the small things that can make the big changes. So shout out to Kat for that. And I think that that
really embraces the answer to your question, Stefani. It's that leadership doesn't
have to just come from the top. Together, when we bring
our collective expertise to the table, we
really want to try to focus in and create
the culture and the change that we want to see. The small changes can add up and
sort of this concerted effort from different players
within the organization, even at an organization like
GSK and Google that's so big, can drive that change. And if we encourage others-- and I personally work to
amplify the great work that's being done across
the organization and to champion some of
those colleagues that are doing great work where I can-- that really is going to
help drive representation and making sure that we
have the voices lifted up within the organization that
are driving that change. STEFANI KLASKOW: That's great. Thank you, Crystal. Actually, let's build
on that a little bit. Let's talk about how your
values as a corporate culture do need to shine through
in the marketing efforts that you are putting out
there for your consumers. So Allan, Google
recently launched All In, an inclusive
marketing toolkit that-- out to the broader
marketing community. Can you share a little
bit more about how that came about and the
traction that we've seen so far in different industries? ALLAN THYGESSEN: Yes. Yeah, I'm very proud
of that program and of our marketing team. I mean, they've been working on
inclusive marketing for years, so it's not--
wasn't a new thing. I think there was four
or five years of work that went into this. And of course, you
got to be-- you know, we've made a lot of
mistakes along the way, and so I think first thing
Lorraine and team would say is let's be very transparent
about all the ways in which we failed so that
others can learn from that. But I think the
cumulative effect is there's a really
impressive toolkit available, and I think we can send out to
the attendees a link to that. And we even-- then
once we had sort of the sample toolkit
ready, we went out and did interviews and
presentations privately before the public launch with
over 600 marketers and agency team members to
get their feedback. And as a result, I think this
really incorporates the best practices and learning
from across the industry and has been extremely
well received. And I mean, when I do executive
reviews with the CMOs and even boards, this is a
top of mind topic and they're very, very
keen to hear more about it. And so if it's of
interest to you, I hope that you will
take a look at the kit. It's so important. And as I also said, it's not
just about who's on the screen. It's about what stereotypes
are you reinforcing? And you're looking at the whole
supply chain for marketing and what's the messaging. And I think that once you
see all that goes into it, it's very comprehensive,
but at the same time, incredibly intuitive
and commonsensical. And once you think
about it, you'll be like, well, of course
we should be doing that. So please take advantage of it. We'll share out how to
access the materials. STEFANI KLASKOW: Thanks, Allan. Crystal, anything that
you want to add to that? CRYSTAL COLLER:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I
talked a little bit about the diversity
and representation and the coalition
work that we're doing within our own
marketing culture, and driving sort of purposeful
and positive representation in the work. And I think to
Allan's point, one of the key objectives for us
in the coalition this year, which I think Louise spoke
a little bit about briefly, was we wanted to
develop the capability within for our people
and our brands. And so we launched
an e-learning module that really is
more around the end to end kind of inflection points
within our marketing process, where we can actually
challenge each other, where we can utilize
tools like the All In playbook that Allan's
just spoken about, as well as other external tools like
the Unstereotype Alliance 3P framework to make sure that we
are unstereotyping that work. And insights being one
of those first pillars, I think it's a
great piece of work that Allan and the team that
Google's put together, really, that speak to unpacking
and better understanding these different
underserved communities and how can we actually make
sure that we're weaving that into our marketing process
at the onset of that journey. STEFANI KLASKOW:
Great, thank you. And Louise, just quickly,
you focus on a lot of global partnerships. So how are you thinking
about that from a partnership perspective? LOUISE KRISTENSEN:
Yeah, definitely. So really made sure
that diversity, inclusion, equity
are embedded as part of our core joint business plan
and our scaled global partners, and that it's an expectation
across our joint teams. And so we're creating
work streams and goals that drive better representation
or more representation behind and in front of the camera. And we've worked this year to
create a partnership diversity program for marketing
in collaboration with our procurement
colleagues, and this is where we're really driving
inclusion and diversity commitments and goals. These are joint commitments
and goals with our partners, as I said, kind of
equal accountability. We're beginning this
with the US, where we're going to focus goals
across talent, brands, and spend together,
and really making sure that we build this out. So I think it's the core
central part rather than-- we've never looked at
these work streams, and you can attest to
this with IamRemarkable, they're not kind
of add-on programs. They live and breathe and they
enable everything that we do. So yeah, that's a
little bit of how we're kind of making sure
that these were actually essential to the
partnerships that we have. STEFANI KLASKOW:
Great, thank you. So we have about
10 minutes left. I'm going to open it up to
some questions, which I already see a bunch coming through. So Crystal, this one is for you. What has been the most
challenging moment of yours in GSK when-- in the
IamRemarkable journey, and how did you get through it? CRYSTAL COLLER: Hmm,
that's a good question. Challenging moment. I'm not sure if I would
word it as "challenging," but I think probably
one of the problems and/or issues we
wanted to try to solve, when I think about launching
the program and kind of driving the scale and really embedding
this into our ways of working, is the re-engagement
with our community. And it's actually
something we partnered with some of the Google
team on to kind of think through was, how do
we continue to engage with such a passionate
group of individuals and make sure that
we continue to help them evolve their journey? Through the program,
right, there are recommendations, tips
and tricks, and definitely a community of
resources where you can continue to evolve your
skills around self-promotion. But we wanted to tap
back into and re-engage with our community and
those that had gone through and participated
in the workshop. And so for our one
year anniversary, we actually came together
and we ideated around a couple of topics
that were really resonating in the workshops
that a lot of the facilitators had participated in. And we said, OK,
this one's really popping to the top on how
to make your work visible and how to make sure that we
are driving the opportunity to make sure we have a forum
to share our accomplishments, and how to continue
to do that as we evolve our ways of working. So we launched micro
sessions at GSK in conjunction with
our Google partners that were really 25-minute
snippet meetings over lunch or at the end of the day,
depending on your time zone, where we kind of unpacked
this topic of visibility. And we had Google kind of
come in as guest speakers to talk about it from not
only a different corporate perspective, but also
their personal experiences as they've grown
in their career. And then also was led by our GSK
facilitators, which gave them another opportunity outside
of the IamRemarkable workshops to lead a discussion
and play a role and help champion and
inspire our community. And we had great success rate. Hopefully, we'll get more. We're actually launching our
second round of micro sessions on another topic
around performance and utilizing some
of the tools that we have at GSK in the latter
half of this month. But again, that was probably
one of the challenges we did-- I guess "challenge" is
the appropriate word-- that we did have
to navigate, was how do we want to reconnect and
re-engage and make sure we're driving that skill set home? LOUISE KRISTENSEN:
Maybe I could-- STEFANI KLASKOW:
That's great and-- oh sorry, go ahead. Go ahead, Louise. LOUISE KRISTENSEN: No, I
was just going to build. I was thinking about what
the most challenging moment for myself was,
and it was actually saying the words
"IamRemarkable," to be quite honest, at
the first ever workshop. I didn't realize how challenging
that was going to be. So yeah, it just took me
back to my first workshop. STEFANI KLASKOW: Likewise, I
very much remember that feeling as well. But Crystal, it's
actually ironic because you shared the story
about how one of the sessions was on how to make
your work more visible. We have another question
that just came in. And Allan, maybe I'll
send this one over to you. How can employees who
are working remotely ensure that their work is
visible in a hybrid work environment, and
how can managers be inclusive to make sure that
they're getting what they need? ALLAN THYGESSEN: Yeah, let
me start with the second half first. I think obviously,
it's super important to avoid biasing
yourself towards people that you happen
to see in person, and really focus on
the output of work. And to avoid bias
there, I think it's important-- obviously to the
extent that their work lends itself to objective
measurement, like a salesperson, that you start with that. But beyond that, taking
input from others so it's not just about who
you know, but I think you rely more on feedback from
others as a holistic assessment of them and their work. You can take--
make sure that you have quality time with them
individually to understand what they're working on. I think those are all good. But I don't want to create
a Pollyannaish picture here. Look, I think there
will be managers that will find it hard to
disregard the fact that there are some people that
they can see and engage with in person and others
that they only see on video. And so if you choose
to work remotely, you have to be
conscious of that, and you have to
treat your engagement with your internal partners,
customers, and managers the way you would an external customer. And when it's really important,
you show up in person. Working remotely doesn't mean
that they should never see you. I think you could be very
strategic about those moments, but there are certain
moments where I think it's important to show up. And I would recommend
that people really think carefully about that. And also understand the dynamics
of how their manager works and what they've seen
of how that person likes to see and receive feedback, and
then you tailor your engagement with them according to that,
because a little bit more important when you're
not seeing them in person and you lose some
of that context. So I think-- I mean, in a way, you think
about it a little bit, there's some selling
involved, right? And you got to learn to put
the best picture and image of yourself forward, and making
sure you do that in the most effective manner and
not be mechanically tied to overreliance
on seeing them in person or overconfidence
that you can just do everything via Zoom or GVC. And I think some people are
on the side of both of those. And obviously, making
sure that you're great at your core job and
producing output that's objectively measurable
and that others can see, I think, is always in my mind
the strongest starting point for promotion and recognition. STEFANI KLASKOW: Thank you. That's an honest answer, thanks. Crystal or Louise, anything
you want to add to that? CRYSTAL COLLER: Yeah, if I can
just add or build on that, too. I think-- so given
that this was actually the topic of our micro
sessions that we had in May, one of the things that had
popped up from that as well-- and I agree with
some of the points that Allan put out
there-- but I think one of the interesting
pieces, if we tie it back to the culture that
we're trying to build, and what IamRemarkable has
also brought to the table, it's not only just
about self-promotion and sharing those
accomplishments and making your
work visible, but I think it's about
building a culture where we want to lift up and be
allies for others, right? And I think that's this idea
of sponsorship and allyship and making sure that we're
elevating those voices and amplifying the
work that's being done not only by ourselves,
but also by some team members. And I know some
people find sometimes that's easier than
self-promotion, and I think that that's
another avenue that we started to unpack a little bit
in micro sessions that's also a helpful takeaway. ALLAN THYGESSEN: Can I say-- STEFANI KLASKOW: Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] ALLAN THYGESSEN: --I
love that, Crystal, and if you can find a way to
reinforce that as culturally encouraged behavior and have
that feed into what managers see and evaluate, love that. So kudos. [INAUDIBLE] STEFANI KLASKOW:
All right, great. Quick lightning round. I personally can name 100
reasons why each of you are remarkable, but in
the spirit of the program, I'm going to throw it to you. Tell me why you are remarkable. Louise? LOUISE KRISTENSEN: I'm
remarkable because I never give up, whether it's driving
for transformation and change in my day to day
work or just striving to be the best possible role
model that I can be to my kids. STEFANI KLASKOW: Thank you. Crystal? CRYSTAL COLLER: Was
similar to Louise. I am remarkable because
when I find something I'm passionate about, I'm 110%
committed, whether it's scaling IamRemarkable, learning about
a new country I'm traveling to, the color orange, if you
haven't guessed, my favorite. My dad always said, whatever
you do, do with your might. Things half done are
never ever done right. And I think I really
embody that spirit. STEFANI KLASKOW: Thank you. Allan? ALLAN THYGESSEN: Yeah. I would say I think I'm
remarkable because I strive to be fair at all
times and I really work hard to enable equal
opportunity for everyone. STEFANI KLASKOW: Thank you. I agree, the three of
you are remarkable. And thank you so much
Louise, Crystal, Allan for participating, for your
openness and your candor and your honesty. And thank you for
the work you've done for the IamRemarkable
program at GSK. Thanks, everyone,
for joining us. ALLAN THYGESSEN: Thank you. CRYSTAL COLLER: Thanks, Stefani. LOUISE KRISTENSEN:
Thank you so much. Thanks. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING]
