Women leading Investing and Finance

Transcript

thank you Jennifer for being there for being available and agreeing to join us um I think they they as as I was just mulling over what what has happened over the last whatever number of years I I was reminded of the uh the first time that I that I met uh Jennifer I was working at a a large um uh computer science and artificial intelligence Research Center here in in Silicon Valley our lab was part of a large Research Center um so we were doing all sorts of fun and cool stuff and uh thinking about the way uh the way these systems will work way down the road and at the same time our the uh the corporate infrastructure the I.T infrastructure for our our organization was really really not not very impressive at all but I joined there was uh it was it it felt like a I was stepping back in time from from the corporate point of view uh in terms of as I say in terms of the information infrastructure and um so uh somehow or other the um Jennifer was introduced to uh to our organization and came on board as um uh to take over the uh the I.T operation and it was a it was amazing that it was like night and day over the uh over the time that uh that Jennifer was with us a lot changed there was a lot more uh attention to to moving the systems forward and and improving the cyber security among other things and um so we were very uh we were very fortunate to uh to be able to recruit I think Jennifer you had previously been at uh was it Cisco and that was uh so it was coming from coming in with a good um Edward uh set of credentials if you will anyway uh so uh Jennifer was with us for about four or five years and when she moved on to greater things uh she left behind a very impressive uh a very impressive Legacy so we're really pleased to when that when Irene he said who who do you think we should we should bring on here Jennifer was the first on my list so I'm I'm really pleased that we were able to uh to get you get to join us and join us this morning and um uh so that's it basically I'm looking forward to seeing you but perhaps in Dublin in uh in a month or so when I'm over there terrific John thank you so much what a what an intro thank you so much John um I will kick this off then so welcome everyone to our women's investor webinar group um just to set the scene a little the aim of this series is to empower women with financial literacy and access to experts and Investments because a large section of eligible investors I.E women are not participating in the private markets and we want to change that um as most of you know link two we democratize the private markets and democratizing is opening the door to everyone so we want to change the fact that a large section of eligible investors women are not participating so it is why we have ladies like Jennifer coming to speak with us so we can learn from our experience and it is imperative that we learn from one another by creating community and kind of avoid any sort of sideline watching um just to reiterate this as a space where we connect learn and ask questions so please do ask questions there is a q a chat at the bottom and at the end obviously come over and ask the person um this is a conversation that should all matter to you whatever your gender so Jennifer I thought I'd kick things off by just getting a better idea of your backstory I.E the kind of beginnings of your career and the forces that have shaped you so maybe if you just want to kick it off um that's a long career I hate to inform you um so forces that that influenced it um I started off as a geologist which is the mother of all systems thinking um and that has been the underpinning of everything I've done in my entire career um so system thinking has been at the heart and center of everything I've done um I have worked as obviously as an engineer but then discovered pretty early on that I was the wrong gender for that as they very kindly told me to my face in those days um and yeah um and then I worked for uh Accenture and uh basically got the equivalent of computer science degree and as John mentioned ended up being a CIO down at Stanford Research Institute but all the way through that I had bopped in and out of corporate world doing my own work at various different ways and one of the things I got really clear on for myself initially and then eventually as I did more research um it became more you know my understanding of it became more General um was that women do actually lead differently um and first of all I thought it was just me and then I realized this it was it was definitely not just me um as I started interviewing I interviewed a couple hundred women and I ran workshops for them and what I was really trying to get to was the numbers that we're seeing in terms of the impact the gender balance teams have and why is that happening what is the underlying cause uh because I had the privilege um when I left geology to work with one of the world's leading thinkers in cognitive Linguistics um Fernando Flores and I learned a tremendous amount from him in terms of understanding the importance of language and distinctions and understanding that if we can put language around things we can understand them so much more effectively because that's obviously how we learn and how we communicate and our sort of you know one of our our most valuable things as human beings to be able to learn and think together um so that's why when John reached out I was fascinated by what you're doing and delighted and honored to be here amazing thank you um so obviously we're here to talk about what women do differently when they lead and um the majority of people at the top of organizations are men those are just the facts and although there is a great deal of public interest in ensuring more women become leaders um too many in my opinion suggested Solutions are founded on the misconception that women ought to emulate men so the thinking is is if men have most of the top roles they must be doing something right so why not get women to act like them well the reality is there are Mormon at the top because they've encountered fewer obstacles not because of lack of competent females right um so to touch on touch upon what you were just saying is that if we are to achieve an increasing number of women in leadership positions we need to acknowledge that men and women lead differently and that is a good thing right like that is a good thing that we have different brains um and I struggle to make sweeping statements because it also means dealing in generalizations averages and kind of treating societies of two homogeneous entities but Neuroscience has produced increasing evidence that men and women are on average innately different um leading to different natural characteristics Tendencies and talents um so sort of in a nutshell we think act and Lead differently and this kind of stems from primitive Beginnings but my question is what does female leadership look like or what does it mean to you well um I mean I think before I answer that and and to emphasize your point is uh you know there are all models are wrong and some are useful the the Charles box Pros right and I think that if the important thing for me as I've been doing this work is um we learn by binaries there are no binaries in nature nature doesn't do binaries nature does the entire Spectrum on so many vectors we can't even conceptualize it or we're only just beginning to um so I think what we're talking about today at least for me is it's a model in the context of all models are wrong and some are useful and it's uh it's binaries because that's how we learn the fastest and that's our crude rudimentary way of approaching something so much more diverse and fabulous and in nature right um so so with that caveat you you know solidly put there um I think the difference that I've seen through my research is that women concern themselves with different things than men do and to your point of well men are in more senior positions therefore they must be doing something right I would say that as a society we are doing so many things wrong at the moment um that it is time for us to radically rethink what we value and what is leadership um and that said in the context of you know our entire planet's on fire and we're going to burn ourselves off it pretty soon and as a geologist I know the plan is going to outlive us and it's just going to shake us off like please um and I'd rather not be around when that happens um so I think women concern themselves with different things they concern themselves more um with with with harmony with connection the interconnectedness of all things and they also concern themselves more with um things that are generous of things that produce value for greater numbers of people and things that produce well-being there was some beautiful research done um in 20 2011 let me just look at my notes here for a second in 2011 and it was included in um John garzema's book The Athena Doctrine um and his book was fantastic because they did interviews all over the world I think it was 640 000 people um and they came back and they said the majority of in 14 different countries those people came back and said we think the world would be a better place if if men land more like women um and so the big issue has been defining how it is that women lead and what they're doing differently and then in addition to that there was a Gallup poll in 2011 that said that gender by quality of life that the countries that were more gender balanced in terms of their leadership right across the board in all sectors business Politics the whole lot um that they actually had a higher quality of life um asthma and measured through the Gallup polls so I think that there's ample evidence and specifically in the startup Arena there's a lot of evidence um to say that uh women are doing something different and it is and I believe it's primarily because we focus on different things and we pay attention to different things and we value different things so um in a bit of research for this because I was trying to understand like what women's perspective of other women you know what qualities of their mind what is um female leadership to them and just a bunch of friends that I know contemporaries I know yeah who are in like sort of like um CEO positions and like I've got a list and I thought I'd just like put it out there and you can comment as to whether or not we disagree so one girl said um her advice was don't lean in when you've got nothing to lean in about and then she commented on that saying there is a trend of telling women to lean into qualities like assertiveness boldness or confidence but actually I don't think there's ever been a correlation between leaning in and being good at something in a logical world we would promote people when they are competent rather than confident betting them for experience expertise track record relevant leadership qualities such as intelligence curiosity empathy integrity and coachability which I thought was quite an interesting perspective yeah um the second girl said know your limitations we live in a world that celebrates self-belief but it is far more important to have self-awareness the third was put your people ahead of yourself it's a very hard it's very hard to turn a group of people into a high performing team when your main focus is yourself people who see leadership as a glorified career destination surely should not be in the position of leaders because they will inherently be less interested in making others better yeah and the fourth and final was don't command empathize throughout history we have told women that they are too kind and caring to be leaders but the notion that someone who is not kind and caring can lead effectively is at odds with reality we are not living in medieval times 21st century leadership demands that leaders establish an emotional connection with their followers and that is arguably the only reason to expect leaders to avoid automation which I thought was awesome yeah fabulous um so a couple of things on that mayor a woman called Mary Parker follows in the 1920s wrote about the concept of Power with versus power over um and I believe there's women are more um aligned with the idea of Power with and therefore are much more inclined to empathize and engage and the data is pretty good around the engagement numbers that um women-led teams have a higher engagement rate by I think it's about six percent which is significant enough when you're dealing with you know highly valuable head count um so I think what's showing up particularly in a generation that's been brought up in a social world is that if we're not able to engage with each other create space for each other include each other empathize with each other um and share power with each other that we're not worth working for and I think that's becoming abundantly clear in terms of people doing their site doing the quiet quitting people who deciding you know the great walkout that's happening with senior women at the moment if they're discovering it's just not worth it yep um so you are renowned so it's kind of leaves me on the next day which is your renowned as a master of innovation practices um uh so who increases the capacity of leaders teams and organizations to fuel Innovation one of the things I read about Year my research is that you believe one of the biggest untapped air Arenas is gender balance as gender balance team is the biggest engine of innovation I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more to that um and also Define innovation Define innovation um so there's there's so much being written about that has been written about Innovation and if you type Innovation into Google you guess and and you look at images you get hundreds of light bulbs because we've been brought up in a world where we think that Innovation is a product and it's synonymous with a product and and what that has done is it's focused us entirely on the things it hasn't focused us on um social Innovation on innovation in spaces that have to do with service that have to do with well-being that have to do with quality of life we're not as our understanding of that isn't as deep or as automatic um and there's more and more data coming out every day the gender balance teams not only do they produce Better Business returns but they are also more Innovative um and again I believe that it comes down to what women focus on and how they lead so invariably women tend to be more interested in how do we when they see the world differently um some of that is social some of that is biological we're not sure which and I don't think it really matters I'm much more interested in the phenomenon than I am necessarily in the exact you know Origins biologically um but I think if you if you look at um what women are doing when they're leading is their propensity to connect and include is much stronger so they'll be more inclined to be still and listen than they will necessarily to be the smartest person in the room doing all of the talking um and I think some of those qualities like deep perception the ability to be able to release the ability to be able to create context the ability to involve others looking to inclusion and the ability to be able to observe um a level of synchronicity that is not necessarily linear those are the sort of things that allow teams to be able to ask different questions that allow them to be able to make Quantum leaps in their understanding that increase their chances of crazing moon shots in the Innovation space one of the wonderful researchers that I work with um said at one point and I think it's just so true is that 30 of the work of any research team is asking the right right question and there is more there was actually an article out from Kellogg the other day that said gender balance teams do better work and they couldn't put their finger on why it was but they concluded from all of the data and that it was a pretty heavy research project that they did to get to this um but they said uh I feel like it leads to better outcomes and I think it helps to make make the process more generous and fun so they're not they're kind of dancing around what it might be but they know that people are asking different questions and if you have a diverse team asking questions from very different perspectives um your chances of creating something that is truly Innovative or higher yeah and I just to kind of pull some threads from that is Innovation is also how you apply those inventions those light bulb moments in different ways to kind of obtain value um and presumably having a gender balance team having these different Minds the application of that is like completely diverse as well which makes it more interesting yeah and then I think that if you you know to your earlier point of you know Define what is innovation so Innovation isn't the light bulbs it is the adoption of new practices in a community that serve that Community um there's a beautiful work that's been done by um Denim and Dunning and I worked with Bob Denham and they're basically saying to be a successful Innovation team you have to build a deep understanding of the fact that it is adoption of new practices in communities um and it's not it's not necessarily the thing it's not always the thing and we've made a thing so maybe so Innovation does not happen in silos basically um but but also the light bulb which is which you're specifically saying is not the um Innovation moment but the ideation moment perhaps happens in silos uh well interdisciplinary Innovation is the biggest opportunity that we have yet to fully tap and again more data on that um but the if if we continue to do our ideation and our innovation in silos um we're going to we're not going to be able to solve some of the huge problems that we have and we're going to miss out on some of the big opportunities um so I think the the everything needs to be the silos need to be broken down the silos have to do with territorialness and ownership which tends to be more masculine way of leading not necessarily a healthy one but certainly one um and I would say that by bringing women um by women engaging in The Innovation process our chances of increasing interdisciplinary Innovation are higher and that's the holy grail for Innovation today okay um I wanted to slightly move on and talk about um progress um kind of where we are today I'm reluctant to mention the UK at the moment at this moment in time but um I just have a few interesting stats from the UK which is where I am right now um so in the UK the original challenge was the lack of women in the boardroom um which now represents the area of the greatest progress um but we need to achieve the same gains and more for women in leadership especially the CEO where women remain sort of few and far between um there is obviously no shortage of experienced capable women ambitious for themselves and their companies Etc um but the continuing theme Here is um there's so much more work to do to ensure the opportunities are there um and I I read that the appointment rate today is um significantly skewed in favor of men with almost two out of three available roles in the year going to men um so with that context it kind of leads me on nicely to talk about the company that you're involved with which is how women invest um so for context everyone here Jennifer is a founding LP of a BC firm called how women invest which invests I hope we're getting this right across two funds that leverages a network of 14 000 um women to identify high potential female Founders and provide the startup view um so I'm gonna play devil's advocate here and ask some contentious questions um but why do we need a gender lens when investing because we'd be we don't need a gender lens when investing we just moved really stupid not to use it um I was talking to one of the investors um that does the internal investment work from Johnson and Johnson and he basically said to me he said look there are so many brilliant women out there and only two percent of venture money goes to women I would be a complete idiot not to cream the top off the top 25 percent so if we're in agreement that um genius and intelligence or equally distributed across genders which I think we can safely say they are um the not investing in women leaders is just silly foreign yeah and then I actually found some stats on this which is um 40 of us companies are founded by women um and women-led startups generate 10 more in cumulative Revenue over a five-year period yeah it's only 2.4 of venture funding goes to women Founders despite as demonstrated the great investment opportunities that female founded companies bring to BC are obviously Surplus so clearly the VC ecosystem is is broken from this perspective um okay so another contentious question um the argument for some Venture capitalists is that there aren't enough female founded companies that qualify for funding is this true obviously not I'd suggest that they take their socks off and start trying to count um so there are plenty of them the the thing is they're not able to see them because there are so few women Venture partners and they have difficulty understanding identifying identifying with interpreting translating the opportunities as women are bringing to the table um which is why how women invest is so effective um so I'm one of many limited partners uh there are two general partners are doing a phenomenal job and then there are um 249 limited partners and we did that very intentionally um because when we wanted to bring women into the investment sphere same similar to to your mission um and it you know obviously under slightly different umbrella but we also wanted to um be able to have that network available to to women Founders as we funded their companies and has proven to be incredibly effective yeah so one of the things I came across in the research is um uh is that FEMA LPS influence more diverse and more profitable Investments and in 2019 women made up only 13 of LPS at BC firms in the US which begs the question perhaps the problem begins there um right yeah um what else did I discover that I thought was very interesting um female Founders bring in more money a BCG study showed that business is founded by women needed higher Revenue um I think Morgan Stanley calculated that 4.4 trillion are lost in this revenue for women and minority-owned businesses so all really really interesting um I wanted to touch upon more of underrepresentation um and my opinion is that today um investing is very much still a boys club um and I recently read this book called investing rules the do's and don'ts of the world's best investors um which is a combination of contributions from the world's best investors um but I couldn't help but notice that off the 67 contributors there was only one woman voice um the rest were distinctly male and pale by the way this book came out earlier this year um it stubbed as a kind of fresh selection of the most interesting and eloquent exponents of a wide range of investing approaches but there's just one female voice um and to be clear the books um contributors are excellent investors it just seemed really gailing um to be told that 50 of the population merits only a 1.5 representation in this book um and so like there are iconic investors female investors and everyone would benefit from capturing their ideas on paper um which would do obviously the world of investment a great service um but my issue is that as long as women are underrepresented underrepresented or ignored future Generations surely will believe consciously or subconsciously the investment is just for blokes um and I guess I mean obviously you cannot answer this question but like why are we not hearing these voices and um you know how do we how do we change this and how do we encourage more women to take on sort of leadership positions and be heard well first of all I think we've got to make it um somewhere they want to stay I talk to lots of women who are in there at the peak of their careers mid-careers um and they basically say it's no fun it's not worth doing I'm not engaged anymore um I'm dealing with the level of myopia that you're talking about you know that that obviously clearly revealed in that book and they're dealing with it every single day and it just gets exhausting um one of the things that I've been working on to try and solve this problem is you know you can't see what you can put a name on and I think that we and you mentioned lean in earlier the idea that 50 of the population would lean in and try and behave like the other 50 to me is an absolute slap in the face for the genius that is the diversity of nature um so what I'm much more interested in is can we identify and Define what it is that women are doing differently and can we put language around it and you know to that effect I've done a lot of work in that area and I've brought it out to women and once we give women language as to what it is that they're doing their understanding of it their appreciation of it their strength and knowledge in that becomes much much more effective um and I think men are stuck they don't know how to talk about what it is that women are doing one of my interview questions was to say how many times do you get invited into a room to do that thing that you do that is so valuable um but we don't know what it is could you please come in and do your thing and every woman I asked laughed because they know how true it is so I think we have a situation where um the majority of well-intentioned men which I think is the majority are very interested in what women do differently but they don't know what it is they don't have language for it they don't understand it they can't make sense of it they don't know how to Value it they know it's valuable but they don't know how to define it um and if there's a you know if we were to delineate and say that there's 50 of the population who like to have tools and Frameworks that would be them and so I think you know part of the work that needs to be done is to Define what it is that women are doing differently and and also then to be able to give man tools and Frameworks that allow them to be able to understand that because I think a lot of this blindness is cognitive blindness um is is just ignorance I don't think it's malice I think it's just ignorance and I think the people who that book and many others like them are just missing a whole chunk of understanding that we need to bring to them somehow because Enlightenment is required yeah um so the other thing I I sort of researched on was that only one in five women um in the UK hold Investments um and the concerning Discovery is that the crypto World which obviously is erupting um seems to mirror the tech and finance worlds in terms of gender so twice as many men as women invest in crypto um and seeing as this industry is kind of in its infancy um women need to set the precedent that they have a seat at the table um however I wanted to touch upon with that in mind um your commentary on on language around this Arena and obviously this is a much deeper dive but do you think in this investing World in leadership roles language is very masculine versus feminine and that makes it kind of harder for um it just creates a different environment I'm just curious as to what to elaborate on your common on language in the investing space well I think it's interesting and you know these stats better than I do but I think it's interesting in terms of how women invest that they tend to buy and holds longer they tend to get to know the companies better they tend to um build you know Partnerships relationships to shareholders for longer periods of time so they're not doing the highly speculative you know hyperactive knee-jerk investing um so I think that they're I I think it's definitely worth um understanding that you know maybe crypto isn't a place where a lot of women want to invest because it doesn't have the longevity it doesn't there isn't a deep enough understanding it's way too speculative right now and just because men are investing there doesn't mean it's the right place to invest I'm not invested and in theory I should be because I know a lot about it but I'm much more interested in what's going to stay the course what's going to generate value for Humanity as opposed to what's going to make me a quick book and I think that the majority of women investors are more interested in the generational impact of new technologies than they are in you know can I accumulate more wealth that I can take with me which kind of goes back to that common um of my friend who is like um you know if if you're a type of person who looks to to get the zero CEO role um for you know financial gain and you're clearly in the wrong wrong position um I want to touch again on this one question but really drill down into it is what do we have to do to encourage more women to take on leadership roles I think women are interested in taking on leadership roles I don't see anyone shying away from them I just see the obstacle course being so ridiculously difficult um I think the you know the lack of understanding on behalf of many male leaders um around what it is that women are bringing to the table makes it exhausting for women because they're doing two jobs they're doing their lean in job behave like a man or you know run your teams like a man report like a man do all of those things and then they're also having to double back and do all the you know build the engagement make sure we have the inclusivity working make sure all the voices are heard make sure that we're actually more Innovative because we're able to listen to people more effectively build Partnerships across the organization like women are doing two jobs at work as well as multiple jobs at home and I think we've created an environment where they're just saying hey why bother um you know it isn't worth it it's it's way too much lifting to make it interesting and I think the really smart organizations are going to be the ones who are going who are saying who will be able to say if we can craze an environment where women can truly Thrive without having to do double the lift that men have to do then we will be more Innovative we will be more productive we will be more effective and we will have greater longevity in terms of our our value to society and I think the opportunity is there it's just a matter of really diving in and creating a different playing field right now we've got a playing field that is tiny it's half of what we're capable of and I'm interested in how do we double the size of the playing field and our understanding of what is leadership so that we can open the door for men and women to sit anywhere the hell they want on the Spectrum but add value in ways that are much much more valuable for society as a whole if we keep you know burning our fossil fuels producing more things consuming more things spending more things buying more things you know we're running out of roadway and We Know It And so the shift that we have to make is very aligned with how it is as women lead and so if someone said to me you know how do I build my sustainability agenda I would say bring in more women because they're more attuned to that they're more attuned to the generational impact that we're having um one of my questions is going to be what are your goals in this space actually kind of just kind of just answered but is there anything else you want to add to that in terms of goals um in this Arena go my personal ones personal ones and ones that you would love to see you know happen amongst businesses yeah um I would love to see a couple of Genius you know board chairs or CEOs recognize the opportunity and be able to understand the shift that their organization needs to make to be able to leverage the opportunity that is gender balance I did a presentation down to Stanford about a year ago and I said I listed off all the impact and corporate performance the gender balance can have and the numbers are double digits in some places and I said okay hand up anyone in the room who's got an okr for this year that delivers those type of returns and everyone laughed at me as I expected that they would because they saw the irony and I said so if you wanted to go after those type of returns and you knew you could do it through gender balance what's stopping you and so I think that's the question that I would like to see answered in the next you know three to five years before we find ourselves at another major Milestone of self-destruction do you think um where companies are getting gender balance right has anything to do with industry Focus or is it to do with the leader at the top uh I think it has a lot to do with the leader at the top and I don't know if there's anyone who's really guess who's right I find it hard to find women who say you know work is fantastic and I love what I do um I think they say I love what I do and work is an obstacle course that I survived because I love what I do so much and I love who I work with and I respect them deeply and so I've yet to come across an organization where I could honestly say they're doing an incredible job of gender balance and they've really opened up the playing field I mean I'd love to meet them um biggest lesson learns um during your entire career in terms of getting yeah um biggest lesson learned I think is the power of learning together yeah um the power of learning in community the power of other people's perspectives the value of different interpretations um I think the people who self-ascribe you know the lifelong learner uh moniker I think is those are the people who really learn well in community learn well together learn well from other people and I was thinking about it today is the fastest Learners on the planet are children all of their learning is social mimicking and social you know learning from others and yet we bring people into organizations and we expect them to just learn um and we don't give them that rich environment where they can actually learn so deeply and so quickly from each other actually that is a really nice lead on to one of my questions which is um do you think much of this problem stems from education systems um teaching kids teenagers adults um how to learn from a very male um perspective or male constructed structure structure yeah absolutely so I think we start you know kids in kindergarten with the understanding of binaries our whole construct around how we learn based on binaries and we started off the conversation we're talking about that is really based on sort of linear you know Cartesian thinking um and if we can't break ourselves out of that and move ourselves into much more systems thinking now some of the um kindergarten the the pre-knes garden and the Montessori schools do work very hard to try and help children understand you know complex adaptive systems which is kind of what we're dealing with and yet we try and impose control on them and manage them through you know this our binaries and I think we make it incredibly hard for ourselves and that's how we've constructed our understanding of leadership as well um I can see Koreans come on but I have I have one more question um um if who are some of your role models um that you've experienced um over the course of your career um well remember I've only ever worked for one woman once for two weeks it was magnificent but it was only two weeks um I would say that Mary Robinson is definitely one of my role models now obviously completely biased um and I've met her a number of times I think she's fabulous um so she's definitely one of my role models in terms of her ability to be able to understand why we do what we do in service to humanity and she spent her entire career and her life in service to humanity and she's also you know on the elders and she's also recognizing the significance and importance of our responsibility around custodians of the planet um so yeah she's my role model I think she's fabulous fantastic so Jennifer and Irene this has been fascinating and you've opened up so many questions in my mind um as I'm sure we've opened up our questions with the audience's mind please do put your questions in the Q a we do have one pending which I want to get into by James long but before we go there James just hold on one minute and um it's really fascinating to me how we talked about communities and what that means I mean we've been saying here at Global investor conference and linked to is in general that what we have helping us in assisting us grow is our community of investors and we didn't actually understand that uh until several months after we released this platform uh for um investment democratizing Investments right we thought we needed clients we needed customers we think we thought that we needed investors and that's all true but it turns out the best advocates for any company is the community who's supportive of their vision mission and Leadership that is being developed in culture and so we wanted to thank our community for helping us understand what this means because we had no idea that this is what's happening uh so thank you all uh linked to community but the question really also is as we look at the what happened during coved and as we see we talk about covered the great resignation quiet quitting and we look at all of these in conjunction I mean we can dive deeply into any one of these and sort of extract some thoughts but let's look at it as a collective and think about covered great resignation and quiet quitting this seems to be accelerating or has accelerated over the last two to three years the trajectory seems to be upwards to the right and the age groups and demographics are also particular in a particular sector of the economy can you help us understand what is happening there don't ask small questions Karen please um so obviously my perspective that's all I have is um I think that Humanity did a recess and you know the whole idea of getting back to normal I don't think we want to get back to normal I'd like to avoid getting back to normal as fast as I possibly can um because I think that there was a little window of Awakening that if we ignore it we ignore it as our apparel um and I think that you know I got asked this it was really interesting by a very very senior um person the other day who does scientific advisory for a Fortune 50 company and and he says you know what do you pretty much the same question and and my response was I think people have learned the importance of life and family and relationship and community and I was at an exhibition in Dublin um because I mean Dublin at the moment I was at an exhibition last week an installation last week 10 000 people in Ireland died of covert which is a huge as a percentage is a huge number and um artists did a thing which they called last lace which was they did this beautiful installation in a park which was really an experience of the magnitude of the impact that showed the interconnectedness of all of the lives that were lost and I think we're reaching for something incredibly valuable here which is our understanding of relatedness or understanding of connection or understanding of community and I think if we can keep our minds and our focus on that what we're going to emerge without the other side is going to be so much more valuable and I don't think we have an answer yet but I think we're definitely in the question I'd like us to stay there yeah yeah thank you and I can see a lot of study research and questions need to be asked to effectively understand that and then pick out the best parts of it um but you know the other question really to uh to address today is like hey there are companies that are going through quiet quitting which is expensive whether people are female for any organization and how do we actually um see that you know please see that like before it starts to happen how do we identify the situation and the control for it or manage for it yeah so I think you know Irene and I started our conversation earlier by talking about women care about different things um I think that the pandemic shifted all of us men and women towards caring about something that is more akin to what most women care about um which is which is well-being um and I'm obviously not speaking for all women but I would say there's a general sense of well-being is more important than GDP um GDP is important but well-being is all equally important and I think what we're doing now is we're turning to our corporations and we're saying if your purpose is at odds with mine I'm leaving I have the option the choice to leave and I think particularly that's impacting women because if you're in the business of making money for the sake of making money while you're destroying their planet for future generations and you're creating you know reducing people's quality of life well then I'm in all you know I'm not interested didn't staying there it's not even conscience or Integrity I'm just not interested I don't want to play the game anymore so I think purpose becomes really important for companies to be able to understand and align and recalibrate like they don't have to shut down they need to recalibrate what their purpose is and how it aligns with both both men and women but more particularly the Next Generation who are much more um I would say aggressive questioners of what really is value okay so the uh two more questions before we get to James's question um when we talk about you know we've we've heard the buzzwords lean in lean out various things be like the other man or be the woman or be the voice or whatever the case is if you look at it one of those things yeah one of those things is very male dominated environments but what I'd like to also ask you you you've built companies you're an Innovative you work with with lots of Corporations and you know we're focused on hey only two percent of the women actually get funded but I'd like for you to take a step further into that uh story a little bit yes if we do fund women more and when not if when we do it's not about you being a woman that is the reason that you're being funded yeah yeah and so how would you then spread that message that you really have to be what you really have to be what to get funded no even after you get funded so that's the first step right yeah second step is getting in the room second step is being funded and then third step how do you run the organization do you then default or do you do something different or are you doing something Innovative and how are you running the organization yeah so I think that um some of the work that I did that was really um startling for me was I ran public workshops Across America to road test my thinking I was like come on come on I want to see what you think um and it was fascinating and women walked out of those sessions saying I have never understood my own leadership in the way that I do I feel so much more at home in my own skin a lot of things that I found slightly scary because that's a big responsibility um so I think if I was I am a VC as a VC what I'm looking for from women leaders is that they're able to stand in their own strength in their own part as women that they are not trying to emulate their male counterparts the reason that we're investing in them is one they've got a fabulous business proposition they're doing something that is different and much needed by Society but also that they're able to do the things that we know that women do better in general which is you know higher engagement more inclusivity you know sharing power with the rest of their team being more Innovative that they're able to stay the course on all of those things um and do it under pressure and I think one of the benefits of what uh how women invest are doing is if you're a woman CEO you're surrounded by a community of other women who are predisposed to support you in being you as opposed to support you in being a leaned in version of you where you lose your the actual power you're bringing to the table the difference you're bringing to the table um thank you uh so James has got two questions out here and I want to actually talk about the first one and then the second one which will follow the first one what is your thought on the rise ultimate appointment of Liz truss and the culminating resignation I know you don't want to touch this hot button but let's give it a shot um I so you know we start off joking about this earlier and we said women often get invited to do the cleanup um I think there's a big cleanup happening right now in politics in a lot of countries um where people are just so fundamentally dissatisfied disengaged and disenchanted and women are trying to step into that breach um and I think it's an incredibly difficult space to step into because you're you're speaking to an entire Society of disenfranchised people are going to be fed up with what you do no matter what you do and the level of cleanup you need to do is absolutely enormous along with rebuilding trust which takes a long time and a lot of patience and I think that you know Waltzing in at the last minute when the thing's about to explode it's probably not the wisest so could this then have been irregardless of whether it was trust or a male politician would the same would have happened in the same way I think it would have happened slightly differently but I think the end result would be the same I mean I'd you know to ask someone to rescue a situation that is so far gone um at the tail end of an enormously well let me just say it's unwise decision um I don't think gender has got a whole lot I you know that's a somewhat unrescueable situation so you put anyone in there they're going to suffer foreign let's just see what the new agenda is with the new prime minister and if it's the same you know my phone in any politics it's you've got to get the support of the dogs that are surrounding your offense otherwise you know you're going to be eaten alive so it depends what the environment looks like and how much handshaking could you have done before your tail can wag well I think the way that you you talk about that as you know you've got to get the support of the dogs I think it's really sad that our political system has got to the point where it's doggy dog as opposed to you're a political server your yours your civil servant you're in service of the people and most of politicians seem to have completely forgotten that right I mean we're paying their their salaries we're paying for them to be there and they're in service to us so I think step number one is find someone who understands that they're a public servant yeah that would be that would be my primary criteria all right thank you for that we wouldn't delve into that anymore the second question is 6.4 percent of the s p companies have women CEOs it appears that their entire leadership teams have a greater percentage of men why is this and why not appoint more women if so I believe this would create a domino effect and spill over to other companies and opportunities yeah so a great question but I think there's um you know to some of our earlier points is women are are to some extent not putting their hands up because they look at it and they go I really don't want to get out of bed at five o'clock every day and go doggy dog it's not fun for me I don't enjoy it I'm not going to be at my best and so we haven't reached the Tipping Point yet where we're actually able to produce high functioning teams that are not all about competition and territory territoriality right so you know the women that I talk to the majority of them are saying yeah it's just not that interesting and the fact that I have to go in and educate people all day every day makes it really exhausting so I think what we're you know the the the opportunity or the it's not that we have to fix something but I think the opportunity is that we we actually open up the door and try and change the way the game is played um I don't think it's getting more women in to play the game it's changing how the game is played and that's not easy no it's not easy and so um we're getting there to time but I have one burning question maybe several more but one I have to ask the background is a geologist right yeah and I'll give you an example we have a situation there's two there are two sides of this thought petroleum and its derivatives are in short supply and will run out and that's why we have this whole issue of pricing and then the derivatives of petroleum which affect weather and so you look at these two things tangentially tangentially and you've got this new electric and clean energy business erupting as well as control and prices of petroleum related bases but if you look at your background as a geologist isn't petroleum or the the source of petroleum continually being regenerated because it has been for a gazillion years will we actually ever run out um well so I think we're talking about orders of magnitude here like if you look at the time scale in which the petroleum got generated um as one hour we are slipping in at the last nanosecond now if you want to wait for that cycle to regenerase itself um or of humanity waits for that Target to regenerate itself we're talking about billions of years we're not talking about you know the last nanosecond so the amount of Destruction that we've done in the last nanoseconds like if you're invited to a party and you come in one second before the door closes and you blow the entire place up and you kill you know what is it 64 of the other participants that have come to the party this is pretty much what we're doing so you know will the planners regenerate more Petroleum in the billions of years after we're gone yeah probably I'm not waiting for that good well thank you so much um see uh we don't want to forget that you've uh your new books coming out tell us a little bit more yes I have a book coming out next year it's called The Innovation mindset and it is designed very specifically to help um mid-level and uh director VP level career innovators um to innovate more effectively together and improve productivity and Technology adoption wonderful thank you let us know uh very much yeah if you've got some blogs or podcasts that you've done previously let us know about that we can we can identify those sources to our listeners here today um I hope you all had a great time all of you that attended if you enjoyed this let us know that you did we like to get that some sort of feedback on that if you'd like to see something else that we can bring to link to learn let us know about that too um again just sign up for the global investor conference which is December 7th and 8th that should be fascinating uh this will be our last link to learn for this year and then we go straight into Global investor conference so Jenny you're closing us out with our last link to learn for the year thank you so much closing statements for us do I yes I think my closing statements are mostly thank you it's been an absolute pleasure and a delight I mean you're great Shelly fabulous to see you there Sally and I worked together a long time ago and John really appreciate your intro and green thank you so yeah it's been been a pleasure and really delighted that the intersection of how women lead and and um in you know democratization of investment are coming together because I think that's one of the great levers uh in terms of how we change the game here for people so thank you thank you everybody thank you for being here today thank you John thank you Charlie thank you to the link to team that makes this possible uh and thank you for our guests that make it interesting and uh we enjoy learning from you Irene take us away or or shut us down Jennifer thank you so much we learned so much um and it's been a pleasure to host you thank you likewise cheers everybody thank you all right hi thank you