Full Transcript

You’re listening to Agile Ideas, the podcast hosted by Fatimah Abbouchi. For anyone listening out there not having a good day, please know there is help out there. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Agile Ideas. I’m Fatimah, CEO at AMO, mental Health Ambassador and your host. Before we get into today’s guest, I wanted to remind those who are interested in anything to do with projects, pmo governance and transformation that I’ve established the new PMO Playbook newsletter, and you can find more details in the show notes at also at thepmoplaybook.substack.com. It is a newsletter filled with detailed and practical how-tos in those fields. Now on to today’s guest. Today’s guest.

• 00:55

I met, coincidentally, in a Women in Technology panel recently and just was so fascinated by her story and her storytelling abilities that I thought I had to get her on the show. Her name is Baishakhi Connor. When Baishakhi was eight, she wanted to be the President of the United States. Growing up in a tiny Indian town, on a healthy dose of fiction, anything seemed possible. At 12, she realized a one-way flight to the US would cost many years of her household income. So, her presidency dreams were replaced by a search for ways to explore the world from near poverty line status, from her tiny town start in life, Baishakhi has gone on to carve a diverse career spanning four continents. Now in her 40s, she continues to stretch her boundaries in ways she could never have imagined at eight. She has a senior management role in one of Australia’s largest retailers. She joined her first board role a few years ago. She volunteers, she mentors, she writes, she speaks, and she makes time to learn new things, currently flexing her muscles into powerlifting.

01:59

Baishakhi lives in a tricultural, tri religious family with her husband and foster daughters. As a foster mum of two, a step-mum of four and a step-grand mum of six now seven, as she tells me in this episode, her life is a busy blur of family, fun and food. So please join me in welcoming Baishakhi to the show as we discuss all things women in leadership, cultural diversity, overcoming adversity and cultural stereotypes, finding your voice and leading people. Hey Baishakhi, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

• 02:35

I was definitely keen on talking to you, considering hearing a little bit about your background and your story when we met not long ago, and I found it really interesting and we didn’t have enough time to get into too much then, so I thought I’m going to take advantage of this, get you on the podcast and then ask you all the questions that I wanted to ask you back then. So that’s pretty much where I’m, where I’m going to go with this. I did share a little bit about your background already, but, in your own words, tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you, um, and what’s brought you to today in terms of your, your life?

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 03:09

um, well, I, I was born in a small Indian town and when I was very young, I actually thought I would be the American president somehow. Um, just read a lot of fiction that sounded like a nice thing to do and had no idea of politics or anything else otherwise. And then I think in a few years, maybe when I was 10 or 12, realized, well, even to get to the US needs more than our household annual income, so that is way beyond what we could even do. Um, so all I could think about was just how do I explore the world from this little place that I’m in? And when I was um in middle school, someone’s sister got a job in a software company, and then, in a couple more years, she said oh, they’re sending her to us for work. And I’m like, what do you mean? They’re sending her. This kind of thing happens like work sends you somewhere. Um, and that’s where my kind of aspiration went. Oh, maybe I should get a job with this thing called a software company, which I didn’t know what it was.

04:20

Um, that then eventually led me to engineering. I did become a software engineer, and that’s how I went on my first ever airplane flight and first ever time that I left India to some other place. But as I explored the world, I realized that I actually enjoyed the world of business far more than pure technology, pure software. I wanted to solve much broader problems using technology or may not be using technology, so I just wanted to be broader. So I did an MBA and then switched to the world of finance, of strategy, and then eventually so during my software days, I had met an Australian and married him and eventually just came to Australia following that and now work in large corporates doing that strategy and finance and broad-based business solving and changing businesses for the better, which is what I love doing.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 05:19

What an interesting story of you know, and there’s no reason why thinking that when you’re, you know, eight years old, you said, and thinking about wanting to be the president of the US and all that sort of stuff, and just being having those sort of aspirations, it’s great because that led you to a number of steps as you outlined. I read in your in my research that you, I think when you were offered a position in the US with one of the companies you were working at that you received notification that your visa was approved at 6pm and you had to fly two hours later. Was that your first flight ever? Yes, that was my first flight ever.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 05:57

If it wasn’t my first flight, I would have said no. So basically, I did know that I was going to work with a US client but, of course there’s visas involved, right?

• 6:05

So, I sent my visa application and that’s about it. I was still kind of working for that client, but from India, and I had nothing else to it than that. And I was actually at 6 pm shopping to go to the US because it’s a colder country, I’ve been told, and I was buying things to go to the US and then I got this phone call. This is in 2003, so this is well before. You know, electronic tickets and electronic transfers etc. Were common. So, I got a call at 6 pm.

06:37

I had never been in a flight before to say, oh, you’ve got a flight out. So, it was in Bangalore. So, there was a domestic flight but then an international flight to US. If I had known what flights involved, I would have said no, but I didn’t. So what I had to do and Bangalore traffic is notoriously bad and some of your guests might notice but I had to go back to the office to get a physical ticket and physical dollars to get back home where I would share housing with friends, pack whatever I could for an indefinite period and then get to the airport and go. And when I went there it was kind of about flight time.

• 07:18

But even then, I didn’t know what a flight involved, right? So, I thought I was just late, and they said, oh no, that flight’s left, you can’t make that flight. Do another one. So, I got a new domestic ticket, but at the international place I reached the counter with about 15 minutes to go to the flight time and I thought I was fine because I had only ever been in buses and trains. So therefore, if you make the time, you’re fine, right, and they were just gobsmacked because I’m like, but it’s still 15 minutes to go, what do you mean? I can’t make it. And then they escorted me through customs and immigration and to the plane. And then I realised there are things called boarding passes and whatnot. I didn’t know all that, but I did make the flight, and I did get to the US.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 08:05

And what did your parents say when they realised suddenly that their daughter’s left?

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 08:09

So, I was not in the same city as my parents right. So, before the first domestic flight I didn’t have time to call them.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

08:16

Yes.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 08:16

And at the second place, when I was about to fly out of the country, I called them to say I’m in this different town and I’m just about to fly out of the country. So that’s when they just got the phone call. And when I got to the US again, this is before phones just worked across countries etc. So, I had to get a calling card I don’t know if you remember they used calling cards to do international calls and I didn’t have a car or anything in the US because I just landed there. Not that I know to drive, which is another story, but I couldn’t have a car or anything in the US because I’d just landed there and I was with a note to drive, which is another story, but I couldn’t get to a store for about three or four days. So, they didn’t hear from me for another four or five days maybe, until I could get to a store, get a calling card and come back and then tell them okay, I have arrived.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 09:01

Wow, I have a daughter now, so I would be absolutely beside myself if I didn’t hear from her when she left the country.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 09:08

I do tell my mum that, because when I first left home when I was 15, we did not even have a telephone at home, so not just a mobile phone. We didn’t have a phone at home. It wasn’t too far from home, but there was no way to just instantly communicate. So, I would write letters, and I would go back home at term end, which would be like every three or four months or so, and she was fine with that right. And now, if I don’t do a video call with her every single evening, she will text and call frantically, like Mom what happened.

• 09:39

You used to wait for months to hear from me.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 09:42

They’ve gotten you used to all this technology so you can’t get away from it. You know, when you sort of said that example of your story, I’m thinking, oh my God, like the courage or fearlessness that you had to have to be able to do something like that. Now, for some people probably they just didn’t think twice about it. I know, when I first travelled, I was absolutely terrified, so I needed courage to do it. Where do you get like you would have had to have some sort of like fearlessness to just say yes and do that. Where do you get that from?

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 10:18

A bit of. It is just where you’re from right, and it’s the same in Australia the people in big cities versus the smaller towns far away, like if you want to do a certain type of study, if you want to have a certain type of job, there is no choice in your place and therefore you just have to. So, I think the initial bit comes from that dreaming or aspiration, or even understanding the possibility that there is something out there that you want to chase. And some of it, of course, comes from my parents, who had the. They had to fight much more than I did, fighting society to send their daughters to expensive schools, and which opened up the world for me. So, I feel like they paved the path. But once that was paved and I could kind of dream something that may have seemed impossible, then that kept me going.

• 11:24

I said this to someone else recently about the Olympics, where Australia does so well, and she was saying you know, despite the population, et cetera, it does so well in the Olympics. And I was saying, when I first moved to Australia and I did no swimming and I went to learn and there were little kids who were swimming laps around me, of course, but their trainer was already. This was 2008 or 9 and their trainer was already saying if you want to make 2016, you do this, which is already talking of the commonwealth and Olympics, and that thing of just making it seem possible and as soon as something comes within the realm of possibility, like all of these um Olympians will show you, like, how much they put into it.

• 12:11

It’s almost like once you can dream it you can chase it and it’s kind of that dream takes something, but once it’s there you can then chase it just because it’s there and make a sense.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 12:26

I think, um, having like you have to start by having the like said the impossible dreams to begin with to be able to chase something. So, I love that, and I know that, um, from reading some of your work. You talk, you do. You’re a prolific um content writer on linkedin and your stories are absolutely fascinating. I don’t know where you get these I mean, obviously they’re your life stories but just the way that you write them is so entertaining and sometimes so thought-provoking and touching. And I read in one of your posts that you credit your mum for being your role model and for some of the challenges she had growing up, and so she’s supported you on your journey.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 13:05

Yeah, absolutely. Just again watching her achieve so much, I think by today’s absolute standards it may seem just nothing, but coming from where she came from and back in the 50s and 60s, growing up in a small town as a woman, and then she was the first woman in her family to go have a job, and then she continued that job after she got married, continued that job after she had kids, which even my mother-in-law, who lived in Australia, didn’t do, and it was actually. I’ve now learned that Australia had the marriage bar in the public service until the 60s, which is like I just had a stereotype about Western worlds that it is just so far developed.

• 13:55

But I think for women all across the world it has been tough for a very long time, and to see her just do those things that not many women around her were doing again it kind of gave me that almost what you asked before, that courage Like if she can do it, there are things that are possible.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 14:18

It’s such good insight because obviously now, many years later, and obviously you’ve been here for quite a while there is still probably the um, the presence of self-doubt or sort of that imposter syndrome. I was something. I was at an event the night before and a lot of women in the room particularly the younger women who were sitting there just saying that they feel like frauds, and they feel like they just doubt themselves and the question came up what’s the difference between self-doubt and feeling like an imposter? And I know that you’ve spoken a little bit about imposter syndrome before. Can you share a bit of your thoughts on that?

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 15:03

I think everyone has a bit of that, maybe if you have to be very, very arrogant to not have that. But if you want to chase impossible dreams, it is hard. You will go and do things that you have definitely not done before and probably no one that you know has ever done it before, and sometimes some people literally do things that no human has ever done before. When you do that, it’s just normal to have that sense of can I really do this? It seems impossible. At the very least it is challenging.

• 15:45

But on the flip side, as you do it more and more and it gets somewhat easier or at least more possible for you, the flip side kicks in on am I really doing this well enough, hard enough? Meeting my own high bar, etc. And there’s so many questions in our own mind that it feels like, oh, it’s only a matter of time. Questions in our own mind that it feels like, oh, it’s only a matter of time. Someone will find out that I actually don’t 100 know exactly what I’m doing, whereas that not knowing 100 is just a function of it being something new that no one else has done before. Um, but it’s, it’s quite normal. I’ve met a lot of men as well, like it’s just a function of it being challenging that it makes you feel like an imposter.

• 16:38

I think particularly then when you add in and both of us have names that are less common in the world that we are living in and then when we look different or have an accent, it then adds to that because you don’t even look or feel like you immediately belong yes, and therefore that then adds an extra.

• 17:02

They’re just about to find me out that I don’t have that extra edge which will make me fit in here. So, it is yeah, it does. It does come in all the time and I always like my writing often reminds me that many others are on the same track, because so many others then come and tell me, comment or kind of privately message me to say that they are on the same track and they help me just as much as I help them. But also, in just in real life, I try and surround myself and meet a lot of people who we can help each other on that track. It was the same thing about saying yes to meeting you after we had you know the panel together, because we can just get to know each other better and help each other and hopefully support each other on that that this is common among so many of us.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 18:02

A hundred percent, and particularly being a female, obviously from both being from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, but just as an executive leader in Australia’s second largest supermarket, it’s not something that would have come by easy. I’m sure you’ve had huge amounts of challenges on that career trajectory. But before I talk about career, I wanted to ask I know that you do support a lot of people who have maybe come from you know a migrant background that are trying to settle into Australia. And there’s a lot of people who have maybe come from you know a migrant background that are trying to settle into Australia and there’s a lot of challenges they face.

• 18:37

I regularly get a lot of messages asking for advice and you know how I do, you know, get an opportunity here and it is very challenging unless you come through like a large consultancy or a large business. So, what’s the? What’s the um? What advice can you give to someone listening now that maybe, like you, wanted to migrate um, you know, to another country, meet Australia or otherwise, um to help them get, get further ahead in their journey? Um.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 19:08

I almost I’ll tell you the four steps that I often tell my clients. So, the first step always starts with you. So really reflect and reflect hard enough on what is it that you want to do. This will help you really clearly articulate to whoever you meet so they can be, they can clearly understand who you are, what your strengths are, where you want to go. This articulation is really important. This reflection is super important. That’s step one.

• 19:39

The second step is to relate and create a very genuine network of people who will help you. And this was super important in the very first year that I came into Australia, and I started from zero. Really, I just knew my husband. I didn’t know anyone else. I started from zero. But then I reached out, initially to strangers and as I made connections, I asked each of them to give me two more connections and two more connections and build from there. But also emphasize the word genuine.

• 20:13

You’re not doing this just to keep it on a kind of a tracker of network. You are trying to build genuine relationships and some of these will not work out, but build very, very close, genuine relationships and at the start, with no kind of, it’s not. Can you get me a job. Is there a vacancy there? It’s genuinely to get to know you, to understand where you work, to understand, perhaps, the market better because I’m new to this market and to understand how I can help you as well.

• 20:47

Once you do that, see how you can represent yourself better in two ways. One is through documents, so whether you have your profile, your cv, your cover letters, but also linkedin etc. So, people who see written articulation of who you are can understand you. And then secondly, of course, ultimately you have to go through interviews, whether they are informational, informal interviews or formal interviews for a job. But it all starts with your reflection and your relationships. Without those two, no matter how good a CV you have and how good an interview you do, you’re not going to get kind of lasting success in where you’re trying to get to.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 21:39

And it’s all good advice. You’ve obviously done a lot of that hard work on LinkedIn with. You know you’ve got so many people that are now looking to you for advice and feedback, and I think you’re right. I think you can’t connect with someone and on the first connection you’re asking them to help you find a job, because that’s not. You don’t know that person. You’re going to give them a reference or a testimonial. It’s like meeting someone and in five minutes later you’re asking them to get engaged. It’s just. I mean, it may be in some cultures, like my family’s background, that’s normal, but generally speaking, you know that’s not really the right way of approaching it. So, yeah, I think you’re right and, as you said, reflect and articulate on what you’re actually looking for, because it may may not be clear to you, and if it’s not clear to you, how would it be clear to others? So, I think I really like that. I think that’s definitely the worst.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 22:25

So, I obviously like you. I get a lot of uh requests for advice, um, and for these days for more kind of extended advice. I do set a price for it just to have actual, serious people come to me. But for even for just on the spot advice, the worst are if you’re asking for something straight up, and even worse if you don’t know what you’re asking for and why. So, if you just tell me here’s my cv for your reference, it’s like who are you? Why are you sending me a cv? Why me? And what are you even looking for?

• 23:03

Instead, if you took the time to connect with me and then tell me I am looking for these kinds of roles in these kinds of companies because this is my aspirations you’ve taken the time to reflect and articulate, and then you tell me, okay, because I’m looking for these kinds of jobs in these kinds of companies, I’ve realized that you either have had that experience or you’re currently in something like that. Can I perhaps ask you a bit more about your company, or be more about your company or about your experience at that company or something? So that is something I can share. Otherwise, if you’re asking me about my employer who employs 130,000 people and has a talent acquisition department to do that. It’s a very little influence I have unless I am the hiring manager, and then even in that case there’s likely going to be an application process etc. So, there’s very little I can do with a random CV on the spot, especially if I don’t know what you stand for yeah, 100%.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 24:03

And, like I said, if you get to know them over time, through their content, through their posts, through you know them giving back or whatever it might be, um that they’re talking about, you get to know them and then maybe you might feel more inclined to refer someone in, not on the basis that you work with them, but on the basis that you have a bit more, um, clarity about who they are and what they stand for.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 24:22

So, and I’ve definitely done that once I’ve gotten to know people and of course, again, I tell them I can’t really refer you because I don’t know you, but I will connect you to people. So then that is what I do, so I might connect someone to you saying this is what they want to do and they’re in this sector. It seems like it’s in your sector. I think it will be an interesting chat if you connect.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 24:44

That’s all I can do Absolutely, and you know, early on we talked about how one example in your career and I’m sure there’s many more where you said yes to something and obviously it led to where you are today we met at an event recently where you know volunteered our time and you know I said, yes, come along. And then we met, and I met several other people who I’ve now had yourself and others on the podcast as well, which has been amazing. So, can you tell me about another example where you’ve said yes to something, be it recently or early on in your career, and what that led to?

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 25:19

I’ve said yes to lots of things. So very early in my career I said yes to a lot of these overseas assignments and that really opened up just a world of possibilities for me, like what happens beyond the little place that I knew. Over time I then said yes to changing careers completely and sometimes stepping back for it. So, I went from a career in technology, so I used to be a programmer, business analyst and then SME and I switched from that, gave up my work to do a full-time MBA and get into investment, banking and management consulting. As I did that and I realized that I wanted to be more involved within the business, I then took quite a significant step back in pay and said yes to going into industry and I love that far more. And then I’ve said yes to coming into retail, which calls the first ever retail job for me.

• 26:36

More recently I have then branched off and said yes to speaking assignments, which is where I’ve met you and opened myself up to a lot more writing publicly as well. Like initially, there was just so much self-built pressure, perhaps like that imposter syndrome you were talking of, like who on earth is going to read my writing and my story, and it just never hit publish. So, it all adds up in kind of going and doing things that seem so far out of your comfort zone or seem at first stage like why would I give up on a perfectly good job and a comfortable job to do something completely different? But that has then led me to far more opportunities than I could think of.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 27:21

And you know you gave several examples there of yes, but you also gave an example of no, because you took a step back. As you said, you had to take a step back to go in another direction. Why is that important? I mean, there’s probably people listening that are at a crossroad of their career. I met someone um the day before yes so who you know is a lawyer and doesn’t like it, so she decided to get into communications. But she’s had to take a step back and sometimes I think there’s some um voice in our head that tells us that we can’t go back, that we might perceive ourselves as failures or other negative words. At least I know I’ve had that experience. What advice can you give to someone who maybe is at that crossroad, thinking about taking a step back to move forward?

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 28:09

It’s hard, but it’s a bit of redefining what success and happiness means to each of us and at what time, and it is different for each of us. There’s different over time for each of us as well, and when I first got the investment banking job, by my own measures, I was the most successful. I had got into and graduated from the most elite business school in India. I had gotten a job on what’s called Day Zero, which is like part of the most elite jobs there. I was getting paid really well, I was working across the globe and doing these big mergers and acquisitions, and I was engaged to the love of my life. It was like it just seemed by my measure’s life was perfect. And then I got laid off and then I had to redefine what success really means, because for the entire year after that I moved to a new country, I got married and I didn’t find a job. And if just having a job was going to be what defined me, there was no me in that year. So, it forced me to redefine, and it needs that reflection work of redefining what does success mean to you? And if it is money, at the time and sometimes it has to be right we all have to pay our bills and we all have to do things, and sometimes it’s a very valid measure of success, but sometimes it is also, um, actually money in the longer term, rather than money immediately.

• 29:51

It can be free time, which is a very important success metric, which many of us are starting to realize is important, um. So, in my investment making job, I did 120-hour weeks. I sometimes do 50, 60-hour weeks now and it feels like, oh, that’s, this is nothing. Um. So free time is a good success metric. Time with my family is a good success metric. How much travel am I doing is a good success metric. And you have to do all of these together. So, to your um other friend who was a lawyer and had moved to another place which doesn’t pay as much as law, the success metric is different, right? So, it’s like am I enjoying this? Do I have job satisfaction? Do I have time in life? Am I meeting my family and my relatives often enough? Am I traveling as much as I want to? So, when you put all of that together, it then becomes less of a. I have stepped back and, moreover, I have moved towards the measures of success that I think are important to me at this time.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 30:57

And the success measures perhaps are a way to a way that has been described to me by others is its sort of like you’re non-negotiable. So, I guess now, and in your own words, you’re a recovering workaholic. I was going to ask you about that. But you know, 120-hour weeks is nothing to sneeze at. How do you, you know, going through that really traumatic time in your life where you know you were laid off at what felt like the best you know part of your life? How do you bounce back from that? How do you have, find the resilience to?

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 31:39

you know, get up and you know keep moving forward and obviously you’ve done that well. Um, it has changed over time. So, in that first instance I was probably less resilient than I wanted to be, like I wasn’t in the best place, because I also used that year to reset right. So what? I had tied all my identity to that job and that money. I am better now in tracking the controllables, so I then go.

• 32:08

What can I control? I can control the number of people that I meet and that is all I will track, because I cannot control the number of jobs that say no to me. I cannot control whether or not I get a promotion right now. I cannot control other things in my personal life, like I couldn’t control whether I had a biological child. You can’t always control where exactly your relationship goes. So therefore, let’s figure out a few things that we can control.

• 32:40

I want to control the number of times I exercise each week. I want to control the number of people new people I meet every week, slash every month. I want to control the number of people I reconnect with. I want to control the number of people I reconnect with. Um. I want to control the number of holidays that I want to go to. I want to control the number of times I go meet my mother, who lives in India. So, I track the controllables that will ultimately lead me to my goals and the goals are, of course, different in different times of my life. But if it’s a job that you’re tracking towards, then track the number of applications, track the number of people you’re networking with. There’s no point tracking how many rejections you got, because it’s going to happen, you’re only going to take up the one job at the end of it.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 33:25

And perhaps, to your point, you don’t know why you were rejected. I’m sure you’ve been rejected for roles that you thought you could have done with your eyes closed. I know it certainly happened to me as well, and we can’t take that as a reflection on us. It’s a reflection of whoever made that decision in that time, and you know whatever data or data they looked at or didn’t look at. But I like that the tracking, the controllables I think that’s a really good way of describing that.

• 33:48

Um, and that is a really key part of in the mental health space that you know we get taught about and learn about as well, one of the things, um, that I know now you’re much better managing your time and organizing, not managing time, managing not to do as many hours as you did, so not being as much of a workaholic, which I know you’ve talked a bit about. Um, how do you stay organized? Just to reiterate to those listening, you’re a foster mum of two, a stepmum of four and a step grand mum of six, plus you do weightlifting, plus you’re an executive manager at Australia’s second largest supermarket and you’ve got your side hustle. So how do you stay organised?

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 34:28

We’ve just had a new grandchild, so I’m now step grand mum of seven.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 34:32

Oh, my goodness, he’s very, very new.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 34:34

Congratulations the. The biggest thing that has changed from before to now is prioritizing. So, if I’ve made my mind up, I want to do three exercise sessions a week and my non-negotiable is two. So, I make sure that those two go in the calendar and no matter how tough or whatever work is, that is it. It’s almost like that’s my. Instead of 24 hours a day, I just have the 23 or 22. I just don’t have that time because that is now blocked for exercise.

• 35:10

Um, and if there are, I used to be, I would do the work and then, if I could make it, I would go to the family dinner or family things. It’s like no, my family dinner on the Friday starts at this time. I’m out at 5 pm, I’m out. So, my it used to be that my other things revolved around work, and now I know, of course, that I have a paid job, and I have to do certain hours and I more often than not do go far beyond my contracted hours. I just have a very senior role.

• 35:48

But they will not eat into my family time, my exercise time, my keeping up with other people time. They are my non-negotiable and I even my side hustle. I only do Saturday early morning, Sunday early morning meetings and that’s it. If people book, it is only during those times and then if I’m doing like resume reviews or something, I have a turnaround time that makes sense. I have a seven-day turnaround, which means I have at least one weekend. Whichever way you cut it, I have at least one weekend. So, then I know I am only doing it on the weekends and around family times. Pretty much every weekend I have a family something because I’ve got a very big family, but I always know that that’s my most time I will devote to that and therefore it just happens within that time and beyond that work can’t cut into it so you’ve.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 36:50

You’ve flipped it on its head, so it used to be work, work, work, work, work, and then I’ll find time for everything else, and now it’s the other way. I like that. I think it’s smart. You described two really good productivity techniques there. You talked about um effectively batching, which you talked about doing on weekends, for example, and then you also talked about um, um scheduling it in your, in your diary, so it becomes, like you said, a non-negotiable um. I think that’s really great. I think the two simple things that people can do today, and it makes such a difference because you probably yeah, if I don’t schedule exercise, it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen, and your family and your partner probably already know about these things as well, so that helps.

• 37:27

And let’s be honest, not many people are up on Saturday and Sunday mornings, right? So, kids are probably sleeping.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 37:32

Yes, yes, that is the reason. There you go. It’s from 7.30 am to 9.30am. Yes, my teenagers are sleeping.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 37:43

They don’t need you at that time. Very good, I want to come back to you. You know your career, more recent years, where you’re in obviously a very senior executive position, and you know myself and I’m sure many others like me not just female males as well. But you know there’s a lot of interest, I think, and a lot more attention on women in leadership nowadays, maybe more so than five or ten years ago, yeah, and you’ve carved a really diverse career spanning, you know, four continents and all of these different experiences. I want to sort of here from you what advice you can give to others that are climbing the corporate ladder to help them to, if that’s their desire to help them to get there, and any advice you can give them along that way.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 38:38

It has taken me a long time, and perhaps um longer than a few others, but I did have to learn many skills to be in the western world, which in itself is new to me, so most of the first decade to understand that. So, where I come from and you’ll have a bit of cultural thing of this as well, familiarity with this we are a hierarchical culture. We say yes to seniors, no matter what it is, and there is no negotiation. We let seniors speak first, etc. Which then for a long time I acted like that and when I was working in India that worked well, because that is what was expected when I worked in the other countries, in many ways it just didn’t work A I just said yes to whatever, which meant it led to those obscene hours to make up for what was just impossible, led to those obscene hours to make up for what was just impossible.

• 39:43

And then it also there was less discussion I allowed. So I did a lot of detailed work and therefore had a lot of knowledge, but I was not sharing that because I was deferring to the seniors to talk, which is what was expected in India, because I just assumed that they are chiefs and therefore they know it, whereas one of them had to take me aside and say but you’ve done this work in detail and I would really value if you could tell me what you’ve learned. And that was such a great advice from that person because I then became a bit more comfortable in speaking up in meetings et cetera. So, these all took me time. Um, that’s.

• 40:25

Those are kind of the softer skills that you have to learn to get ahead. How do you build your support system within the organization? How do you build a strong operational as well as strategic network in a large business? Where do you get your answers from? So, it’s not so much just the core job that you’re doing that you need to be good at. You also need to be good at getting buying from others, marketing the job you do, talking about yourself and the job that you do and the job that you can do and eventually, as you get more and more senior, lobbying for resources, getting resources, unblocking roadblocks from your team, etc. There are so many other things. The only other thing I’d say is I have many friends who have now realized they don’t want to do this, and they have now realized that what gives them joy is individual contribution.

• 41:28

And they don’t want to take on team leadership et cetera. Whereas I do get joy from building teams and leaving teams that will take on what I’ve created and keep that going and I love seeing that happen. So, there are differences. Again, that going back to that reflection piece is so important to go what really gives you joy. But if this is what gives you joy, then you have to be okay with not just doing the job and expecting your hard work to be just seen. You have to go out and shout it from the roof and expecting your hard work to be just seen, you have to go out and shout it from the rooftops.

• 42:02

You have to go get the buy-in. You have to go build the relationships, you have to go build the networks to make that, embed that and change people’s behaviours, to take your recommendation forward. And that’s a whole different skill to just um doing your job it’s um.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 42:18

It’s a really good um example because you’re right, you, you hit the nail ahead with that um. Second last comment where a lot of times we do things and we assume that people are seeing or paying attention, but everyone is so busy if they’re anything to go by your schedule they’re really busy and people don’t have time to get their head above water and when they’re focusing on their role particularly if they’re doing as many hours they just don’t have the time to go out and seek that. So, you’re right, I think that was one of the things that was really important. I know for myself is making sure that people knew where I was contributing.

• 42:52

Or, you know, putting your hand up to be the chief fire warden when they’re looking for a volunteer, putting your hand up for those extra hours when you can, maybe early on in your career, you can do that more Certainly. I could do more before having a child. So, I think those things there definitely bring all that together and you also were spot on with maybe that’s not what everyone wants to do and it’s okay to change your mind. I know that, like there’s a point in time where I changed my mind and then went into business land, and that’s fine too. But, like I said, you’ve got to reflect and know what it is that you want, and changing your mind is okay. Anyone can do that anytime they want.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 43:33

That’s what I’m telling my 17-year-old. She’s in year 12 and she’s trying to, of course, choose a university course and, like every other 17-year-old, she thinks this is it, this is life. If she makes this one wrong decision, that is it. It’s like no mate. Change your mind all the time in life. 100%.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 43:53

My younger sister, I think, changed her. She won a scholarship, and I think she changed her university degree five times, and, in the end, she never finished the university course anyway. So, it’s like she wasted the scholarship, but anyways, um, yeah, you’re right, you absolutely can change your mind. And I just want to touch on leadership. You, you talked about, obviously, managing a team, and I’m sure you’ve got a large team that you, that you manage what? What would be some? Um, what would you be your best advice? Um, I was going to say secrets, but your team might be listening and therefore they’ll know your secrets. But what would be your best advice? I was going to say secrets, but your team might be listening and therefore they’ll know your secrets. But what would be some advice you can give? For you know managing, you know complex, diverse teams.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 44:33

Bring them together often and give clarity at the start. What is the outcome you want to achieve? Like if we were all successful together as a team? What would the world look like in a year from now, in three years from now? And I do a lot of goal setting that are bottom up as well, to go unconstrained. If you were thinking of it like a post it brainstorming and you didn’t know what others were thinking to, to encourage us introverts as well to go just tell me what you would do and, from a collection of that, build this vision and dream, make that vision and dream very, very clear and then really focus on the execution. So, what process do you need? What tools do you need? What resources do you need? And that becomes my job through the year. So, if that dream needs to be built, this is what I need to do. I need to go and fight the corporate politics to get make sure that we do get the funding, the resources, the tools, etc. So that clarity is there, but the focus on execution is also there, the focus on measures and dashboards so we can all collectively track. We said this was our aspiration. Are we still on that path? Has the world changed? Do we need to change, etc. That becomes very clear.

• 46:04

And then there comes the more complex people management thing. So, every person is so different. What motivates them is so different. Sometimes not every person is in the right role for themselves and sometimes it needs very difficult conversations on I think you’re great in these things and not in these things and this particular role isn’t the best fit for you because of that.

• 46:34

And those conversations can be quite hard. They’re. They’re much harder actually than when I had the rare occasions where someone was just not the best person, not the best team member at all, and not playing by the rules. That’s an easier thing, like you’re just not good enough for this team and we’ll have to part ways here. The more complex conversations are. You have such great potential. I need to find you the right role for you, but this isn’t it, and those are harder conversations that you have to give time to and then therefore bring different people together and talk to each other to. I know you didn’t understand that’s what they were saying, but this is because you are coming at it from different ways, either because you’re functionally different, like specializations are different, or your thinking is different, or your culture is different, so it can be equally fun and frustrating at the same time.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 47:35

You’re all humans of course, and the complexity of managing. Now, you know dispersed teams and all of that, and we won’t get into that because it’s a whole other story and a lot of companies have different perspectives, and we don’t want to get anyone into trouble. But you know the whole managing complex teams and dispersed teams. It is an easy job and, as you said, not everybody wants to do it. Some people just want to individually contribute or be crazy, like me and in, you know, working in a business. So, um, as long as you. Again, back to what you said at the beginning, and there’s that rough self-reflection and being aware of that. So, um, I think that’s some sound advice. Um, Michelle, we’re almost out of time.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 48:11

My last question for you today is if there’s anything else that you’d like to share with our listeners, a call to action, a piece of advice or a question to ponder today um, we talked a lot about a career and my one advice is for the career to be going strongly, you need to make sure that everything else beyond the career goes strongly as well, and which is why, in my introduction, these days I talk more about who I am as a person and who I am as a mother or stepmother or grandmother, what I do in my life outside of my career, and the help and support that I have got from my parents even now from my mother, and definitely from my partner, my husband and unless all of those things fall in place, it is very, very difficult to really have a strong career. So, while you have to do the work to get ahead in your career, make sure you’re also focusing on all the other things that go around our professional lives to make sure that we are strong enough and resilient enough and courageous enough in our careers.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 49:25

Amazing.

• Baishakhi Connor Guest

• 49:26

Very well said.

• Fatimah AbbouchiHost

• 49:26

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Please share this with someone or rate it if you enjoyed it. Don’t forget to follow us on social media and to stay up to date with all things Agile ideas, go to our website, www.agilemanagementofficecom. I hope you’ve been able to learn, feel or be inspired today. Until next time, what’s your Agile idea?

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