Inclusive Hiring Practices (EP.45)
Last Updated
October 9, 2021
Three members of the Toronto-based company Generator discuss their approach to inclusive hiring practices as recently demonstrated during their call for new organizational leadership.
While the search has concluded with their recent appointment, you can still check out the archived position posting here. Two consultants mentioned during the episode: Zainab Amadahy and Angela Sun.
Guests: Sedina Fiati, Kristina Lemieux & ted witzel
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guests
SEDINA FIATI is a Toronto based performer, producer, director, creator and activist for stage and screen. Proudly Black and queer, Sedina is deeply invested in artistic work that explores the intersection between art and activism, either in form or structure or ideally both. Sedina is currently Artist-Activist in Residence at Nightwood Theatre and proud founding member of the Black Pledge Collective. Sedina was the co-chair of ACTRA Toronto’s Diversity Committee and 2nd VP of council for Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. Sedina has worked with Generator since 2018, focusing on providing mentorship, program development and coordination for the Artist Producer Training Program. Upcoming projects: Switching Queen(s) (devised street performance), Last Dance (a web series).
KRISTINA LEMIEUX (she/her) is an accomplished arts manager with more than 20 years of professional experience. She is also a contemporary dancer. Raised in Treaty 6 territory (rural Alberta), Kristina lived in Edmonton, attending the University of Alberta, for 10 years before heading to Vancouver where her passion for the arts has driven collaboration, creation, and innovation in the Vancouver arts scene for over a decade. After working with Generator in a freelance capacity for several years, Kristina made the move to Toronto in January 2017 to take on the role of Lead Producer of Generator. Kristina has worked with many of Vancouver's leading art organizations: Brief Encounters, Arts Umbrella, New Works, Out On Screen (Queer Film Festival), Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration, PTC Playwrights Theatre Centre, Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists/West Chapter (CADA/West), Tara Cheyenne Performance, Made in BC - Dance on Tour, Theatre Replacement, Progress Lab 1422, The Post at 750 (110 Arts Cooperative), Vancouver International Dance Festival (VIDF), Up in the Air Theatre (rEvolver Festival), Music on Main, and Vancouver Art Gallery. She co-founded Polymer Dance, a group dedicated to bringing dance experiences to non-professional dancers. Kristina remains tied to Vancouver through her project Scaffold, a coaching and skill development service designed to support performing artists and groups. She is the co-founder and Creative Producer of F-O-R-M (Festival of Recorded Movement) and works frequently with the Dancers of Damelahamid and Coastal Dance Festival. Kristina is passionate about generating dialogue in the arts and, to this end, earned a certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement from Simon Fraser University. In all that she does she works to support independent artists across performing disciplines in finding ways to make art outside of the currently prescribed modes.
TED WITZEL (he/him) is a queer theatre-maker and arts leader based in toronto / tkaròn:to. primarily a director, ted is also variously a dramaturg, curator, teacher, writer, translator, designer, and performer. he has worked in theatres in vancouver, montreal, stratford, ottawa, london, berlin, milan, palermo, stuttgart, ingolstadt, baden-baden and bad hersfeld. ted is currently the artistic associate for the stratford festival lab, overseeing the company’s research and development programs. these include a broad portfolio of new works in development, systems-change initiatives, creative residencies, and a collection of artistic explorations and programs that aim to help imagine the future orientation of the company. in 2018, he was selected as an artistic leadership resident at the national theatre school, and was a member of the banff centre’s 2019 cultural leadership cohort. ted was in the inaugural cohort of the york university/canadian stage MFA in directing, and has been artist-in-residence at harbourfront centre, buddies in bad times (toronto) and institut für alles mögliche (berlin). ted also runs an independent theatre collective called the red light district and is the board chair at generator performance. recent directing credits include: susanna fournier’s what happens to you happens to me (canadian stage), elizabeth rex (theatre@york), the scavenger’s daughter (buddies/paradigm) and LULU v.7 // aspects of a femme fatale (buddies/red light district).
Co-Hosts
TIM CYNOVA (he/him) wears a multitude of hats, all in service of creating anti-racist workplaces where people can thrive. He is the Principal of the consulting group Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. and has deep knowledge and experience in HR and people-centric organizational design. He currently leads curriculum design in WSS’s areas of expertise: from sharing leadership and power to decolonizing the employee handbook and bylaws; talking with humans to how to hire. His book, Hire with Confidence, based on his experience leading hundreds of searches and “retooling” the traditional search process to center anti-racism and anti-oppression, is scheduled to be published in Winter 2021. In April 2021, he and WSS produced the Ethical Re-Opening Summit, a one-day online convening that explored the question, “How can we co-create a future where everyone thrives as we move into this next stage of a global pandemic?” In August 2021, Tim closed out his 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, the largest association of artists in the U.S., where he served in both the COO and Co-CEO roles, and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made this commitment in 2013. Additionally, he serves on the faculty of Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR; he's a trained mediator, and a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled 3,902 miles across the United States.
LAUREN RUFFIN (she/her) is a thinker, designer, & leader interested in building strong, sustainable, anti-racist systems & organizations. She's into exploring how we can leverage new technologies to combat racial and economic injustice. As part of this work, she frequently participates in conversations on circular economies, social impact financing, solidarity movements, and innovative, non-extractive financing mechanisms. Lauren is a co-founder of CRUX, an immersive storytelling cooperative that collaborates with Black artists as they create content in virtual reality and augmented reality (XR). Lauren is currently the interim Chief Marketing Officer of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), where she focuses on amplifying the stories and activism of the YBCA community. Prior to joining YBCA, Lauren was co-CEO of Fractured Atlas, the largest association of independent artists in the United States. In 2017, she started Artist Campaign School, a new educational program that has trained 74 artists to run for political office to date. She has served on the governing board of Black Girls Code and Main Street Phoenix Cooperative, and on the advisory boards of ArtUp and Black Girl Ventures. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck, a podcast about, well, back a few months ago, my colleague Kate Stadel and I were chatting about alternative hiring practices. I forwarded her information about Greyston Bakery's Open Hiring Institute. And in return, she emailed me a link to a job posting that blew me away. The posting was like none I'd ever seen before. It included a multitude of options for people to learn more about the position and the organization, including an audio version of the application packet and various treatments of the text for different learning modalities and screen readers. It included office hours for interested candidates to speak with members of the hiring committee, a timeline that detailed each stage of the search, and even a section at the close that credited those on the team who created the post. I found that post to be truly inspiring and such a breath of fresh air.
Tim Cynova:
Many workplaces these days are looking for candidates who bring diverse experiences to be part of what they hope are inclusive, equitable anti-racist and anti-oppressive processes and teams. Yet most organizations post and conduct searches as if it were still 1994. Over the intervening months, I forwarded that posting to countless people as an inspirational example of what a posting and search can and should be. And in turn those people forwarded the postings to even more people. The most frequent question people have asked in return is, "I wonder how the search went." Well, on today's episode, we get to find out. I'm joined by three members of the Toronto based organization Generator. Kristina Lemieux, Sedina Fiati and ted witzel.
Tim Cynova:
You can find the organization online at generatorto.com. In May, 2021. The search committee posted that description as a call seeking new leadership for the organization. And like many of you, I can't wait to hear how it all went. Then later in the episode, we'll chat with podcasting's favorite co-host Lauren Ruffin to get her take on the topic, but first Kristina, Sedina and Ted, welcome to the podcast.
Kristina Lemieux:
Thanks so much for having us. I'm Kristina Lemieux, she, her. I'm the current lead producer of Generator, although I'm on my way out, which is what has led to this job posting being circulated. I have a 20 year career that has spanned coast to coast of so-called Canada, working primarily in the performing arts, dance, theater, opera, and those sorts of things.
Tim Cynova:
Well, to ground in the conversation, Sedina and Ted, how do you introduce yourselves and the various work that you do?
Sedina Fiati:
Hi, my name is Sedina, I am the outgoing artist producer training program facilitator at Generator. I'm also a member of the strategic advisor committee and I was on the hiring committee for this job posting. Otherwise have over 20 years experience as a performer, producer, creator director, activist, facilitator in theater and in film. And my career has mainly been based in Toronto. It's been a real pleasure to be on this particular journey through Generator for the last three years and where we've gone and where we started. So, yeah, I'm excited to talk about this job posting and how it really sprung out of our organizational culture. Yeah. Over to you, Ted.
ted witzel:
Hi, I'm ted witzel, I pronouns are he, him. I am the board chair at Generator, and I guess I kind of chaired the hiring committee, but that more felt like just wrangling the hiring committee or holding the meetings. It was a fairly democratic process and thankfully we didn't disagree a whole lot. I don't really feel like I chaired it. I am an artist I'm primarily a theater director and performance maker. I am also sometimes a writer, a video designer, producer, the many hats of making very strange performance. And my grown-up job at the moment is that I'm the artistic associate for R&D and the director of the laboratory at the Stratford Festival in Ontario.
Tim Cynova:
For those who might be unfamiliar with Generator and its work. Can you give us an overview?
Kristina Lemieux:
Yeah. So Generator is a mentoring teaching and innovation incubator that works with performing artists and into any sector to increase their skills and competencies around producing their own work. So what that looks like for those of you who are listening from outside of Canada is that our sector is primarily funded through public grants given to us by the federal provincial and municipal levels. So a lot of our work is helping artists understand how to receive funding from those institutions, what to do when that money comes into your bank account and how to manage that as well as how do you make a show happen from idea through to sharing with an audience and beyond. Yet, we run a variety of programs all around that aim. But the other thing that's really important to understand about what we do is we work with a very small number of people each year, because we're building years long mentoring relationships with folks working towards helping them achieve what they'd like to get out of their career or what kind of life they'd like to have alongside their artistic practices.
Tim Cynova:
As I mentioned in the opening colleague, Kate Stadel forwarded your posting a couple of months back when we were talking about different hiring approaches, alternative hiring practices. And I had shared the Open Hiring Institute at Greyston Bakery that famously hires anyone who applies for a job. And then the next thing to send your job posting, your position posting for the leadership search. Can you walk us through what the search was for and how you all approached it?
ted witzel:
The search was for near leadership and someone with the vision to rethink our model. So in Kristina, when she decided to leave her current position, gave us a very long runway, but transition work has been underway since last summer. So we've had about a year to plan for the transition, which has made this a lot easier. And Kristina has been very active in that process, which has been very helpful. And inside those conversations that we were having after Kristina decided to move on from the role, we asked ourselves initially as a board and in conversation with the Generator staff, "What did we want generator to be moving forward?" Generator itself evolved out of at prior organization, the small theater administrative facility. And that main transition was in moving from being producers for hire to training artists, to produce their own work and take the means of production into their own hands.
ted witzel:
And then Kristina came into finalize and build that new iteration of that has been called Generator. And in rethinking or in thinking about our future, we were very open to another phase of evolution. And I think as a board, we err on the side of risk prone or had they been risk averse. So we really wanted the conversation around this transition to be wide open. And we did a bit of a value setting together with Kristina and the Generator team and felt that we were committed to who we currently serve, which is independent artists, generally working without organizational, like year over year funding, working off of project grants and on a project by project basis. And with small teams, we knew that that is the sector of our community, that we still want it to be supporting, but we were really open to a transformation in how that looked.
ted witzel:
Also last year in response to some calls for accountability, we conducted an equity injustice organizational review, which was led by Zainab Amadahy who offered up a report with some findings from interviews from our various community members, alum of our programs, staff and board members that she had spoken to.
ted witzel:
And so we wanted to integrate a lot of that feedback there. And in spite of the relatively small scale of the organization, we're working with an annual budget of about 150,000 Canadian a year and a staff that is one full-time and three part-time. There was a real desire for decentralizing the leadership structure or looking at collaborative models and having community involvement in the search. It wasn't just Kristina who was deciding to transition out of her role. We also had several staff Sedina included, feeling like it was time to take their next steps as well. So it left the landscape pretty wide open for us to invite proposals for what Generator could be and how it could be staffed and organized and structured and how it could meet the needs of those communities. Sedina, do you want to jump in and fill in any blanks?
Sedina Fiati:
I think it's important to say that the job posting grew out of the overall culture of Generator, which is a space where we're really questioning and trying to re-imagine the live performance sector. We're all activists who work at Generator, just like blatantly. We have very blatant and cone of silence, types of conversations about what we want to change in the sector. And a big part of that is definitely about accessibility. So anything that we do is going to have that lens of how can we do better to make sure that when we are recruiting, which we do a lot actually, a lot of the work that I've done too, in my role as artist producer training facilitator was just like, we had a very wide recruitment process to try to find the six people who would be a part of that cohort that we would support for the year.
Sedina Fiati:
And then also support throughout. Even though they finished the ABT program, we still kept supporting them, with an eye on equity. So really looking at trying to attract people from equity seeking groups, it's really important that when we put stuff out there that we're trying to model the kind of culture that we're trying to create. So I would love it if it just like this came out of nowhere, but clearly it did not like it really does reflect how we work and the ways that we're trying to think. And also just trying to even put forth to the industry, what is possible as you said, why do we keep recruiting like it's 1994? We have other options and we know what those are, so let's keep doing them. And let's not even just talk about doing them. Let's give examples, let us be the change.
ted witzel:
I think Kristina has been really great about establishing that anything the organization does needs to be a learning opportunity for the whole sector while we are working very one to one with the mentees and then Kristina put a lot of energy into maintaining those relationships. The next circle of our teaching is by trying to develop wise practices that are public domain are able to be borrowed, emulated, plagiarized outright by the community to know that this posting has been forwarded and forwarded by those who received those four words is exactly what we want. We want anything we do, if it is useful or relevant or applicable to another corner of the sector, steal it, please.
Kristina Lemieux:
We do work with a small number of people, but to that end, we have a resource called artistproducerresource.com, which is a wiki of all of our information that we have and teach in our programs around how to make all kinds of things happen. And in this year in the pandemic, we have over a fairly active blog where as much as our capacity allows, we've been writing about board governance and the various pieces that we're working on, we have a great intention. I just want to promise that we are going to write a blog post about this process. And talk to some of the people who are not on this call right now and ask them to contribute. So yeah, always looking at ways to lay bare what we're thinking.
Kristina Lemieux:
And we're also a very unusual organization inside the arts because we don't produce work and we are tired. So it also allows us to be an instigator of new ideas that allows us to push a boundary that other people have different consequences for pushing. So I feel in that an obligation to also say the things that everybody's whispering about in the corners that nobody feels like they can say out loud, and this call is part of that. And all part of that.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. That's what I find so amazing. That we're speaking specifically about the posting is still alive. You might've filled the position. We may or may not find out later in this call, but as a resource, Ted, as you said to borrow plagiarize, whatever Sed, as you're talking, I was thinking about organizations who see this posting or see your work. And it doesn't align with theirs. And like, "Let's just copy and paste this and put it out." How might that manifest itself differently when it's not aligned with someone's values, but it's like wishful thinking?
Sedina Fiati:
A wish can be a thing. Dare I say this. And I will admit to really being a person who is about self-help and about woo. But like as I look at my crystals on my window, so. I'm that kind of person. But I will say this, even if they copied and pasted some aspects of this and this didn't align with our organizational culture. And then they ended up hiring somebody who did align more with the job posting than the organizational culture, then they would have a conflict wouldn't they? And it would either turn out well, or wouldn't by attracting folks who align with what you want to be. Maybe that's just one step closer to getting there. But oftentimes what we have seen the flip side of that, with everything that's happening in the world and this real focus on hiring people from equity seeking groups as in leadership positions, my question is always, are they going to stay if your organizational culture hasn't shifted?
Sedina Fiati:
But if people are really open to it, I think they have an opportunity to shift the culture. So there's nothing to be lost. There's nothing to be lost because if you even just make a small shift in that way, you will feel what will happen when you attract candidates who maybe are more in line with where at least some people in the organization wanted to go.
ted witzel:
Being inside of institutions that are both scrappy and small, like this one, and also very large institutions. I'm a big advocate for large institutions taking brave steps that they may not be ready for yet because they will hurry up and get ready in the best case. Of course, like I said, as alluding to there are risks involved in that. And I haven't really thought through what would happen if a large institution whose values were disaligned with this ended up with a candidate who felt like a posting like this over promised a workplace culture that was not somewhere where they could thrive. I would hope that along the way` in the interview process, thinking about an interview process as a reciprocal relationship, you are both discovering whether this is a place you can work and whether this place wants you in there. I would hope that, that would act as a sort of filter, but I don't necessarily have a rigorous safety net that I can put out there.
Tim Cynova:
Well, let's talk about the process. How do you all feel that it went?
Kristina Lemieux:
I could see that. I mean, I just think it's just a very difficult question to answer. I wouldn't say I found issues that we didn't get what we expected. In that we thought we would get team applications coming forward, who were looking at taking on the wide variety of the things that were in there. And instead we got everyone interested in being a part of a team, but no one coming forward with a team in place. We had to shift and reconsider what our interviewing process is going to be like once we saw the applications were, because the plan we had envisioned wasn't going to work anymore because there wasn't a team to test or a vision to test. There was a piece of what the final team would look like coming forward.
Tim Cynova:
Can we dig into that a little bit more? Because you all mentioned the wide open search, we'll share the link to the post in the description for the podcast. So people can read this, you said in the post, really anything, any model that people coming together, people want to be a part of it. So I'm really curious to, you mentioned you had to change how you were going to approach this. If someone said, "Yeah, I have a three person leadership team coming in." What was that going to look like? How are you going to take that through the process? And then what did you need to retool about it?
ted witzel:
I mean, we had mapped out a pathway, which would be phase one of the interview process was going to be just checking in with values and alignment and skillsets and making sure that the people we were considering were people we really felt could do the job in a way that would be exciting and surprising to us. And then phase two of that process was going to be offering us up a business model, which we were going to pay them for their time to develop that Generator's consulting rate. And as we realized that we had a lot of someone offered up the metaphor of like, "I would like to be an avenger, but I don't know how to build the whole avengers." As we got a lot of single avengers looking for their super hero squad.
ted witzel:
We realized that the idea of asking for a full business plan didn't make sense because these people didn't have their collaborators chosen. And I was really surprised because the way I collaborate tends to be so relational and it requires a lot of trust on the front end for me. I was surprised to have so many people who were interested in being matched made, and that kind of threw me for a loop. And I think through many of us for a loop or it exposed that the assumption in the hiring pathway we had designed was based around that, which just comes from my own bias and how I conduct my own relationships. And I think I wasn't the sole author of this thing, but that I was part of building that pathway. And I think that bias manifested inside of that pathway.
ted witzel:
And so our pivot was to ask for the people who had applied to offer us a program design and to think about how to administer that program. So we were really getting them to dig deep in a specific creative impulse or intervention into the community that they wanted to make and present us with that as a way of manifesting their values, allowing us to see what their program design skills were, allowing us some insight in how they were thinking of staffing structure and from there to tease out what their leadership would look like and how it would be oriented within the communities that we try to serve.
Sedina Fiati:
Dare I say, maybe the sector wasn't quite ready for this. I think everybody was ready to talk about it.
ted witzel:
You dare.
Sedina Fiati:
I dare. And I will say it, I think everyone's ready.
ted witzel:
You dare.
Sedina Fiati:
Okay. So qualify that a little bit, everybody was ready to talk about these kinds of models and to put forth that this would be a good way to do it. And then we said, "Okay, do it." And everyone's kind of like, "Oh, I actually don't know how quite yet." So yeah, Ted, I completely agree with you. It really just tested our assumption that there was maybe one, two, three people, two or three people who are out there who wanted to get together as a team and say, "We have an idea of where Generator wants to go." And I don't think that that group of people existed or if they did, they decided not to apply.
Sedina Fiati:
I do feel like, and I'll say something controversial. And this is a hard thing to say as somebody who works as a known equity consultant. Change is longer than we think it is. And oftentimes people are like, "That magical person is out there." And they are. But they may not be out there right away to fill that position. I think there's a real feeling with Generator that we've done a lot of work with the APT program. And it's been around for six years to cultivate a wonderful generation of arts, leaders and our managers. And some of them are out there slaying the game, but I don't know that they were ready quite yet to take on the leadership of Generator as an individual or as a team.
Sedina Fiati:
But I have a lot of hope that they will be, I feel like the next round of Generator leadership will really yield the vision that we have now. I think we were just a little ahead of the game of taking the temperature of the industry right now. People are still thinking singular leadership, even as much as they want it to be a part of the team.
ted witzel:
With all of this, I should qualify it with, we are really excited about the candidate that we found. We were really lucky to be in many ways, our process, as it became responsive, was responding to the conversations that we had in that first round of interviews. And we carried a few candidates forward to the second round of interviews, and we were really trying to create conditions where those first conversations could manifest in a clearer articulation of the first interview and actually make that concrete and the candidate that we landed on, we did not land on a full co-leadership team yet. We landed on someone to begin to build a team around, somebody who wants to lead collaboratively and brought a really compelling vision for some of the program design that generator could offer and who we really feel will be a great mentor to the community that we aspire to continue serving, especially in the way that Generator bridges a couple of performing arts.
ted witzel:
We've had alum come through who are based in music as well as in theater, as well as in dance and lots of interdisciplinary practices that weave around and in between those standard categories. And I think that who we've got is going to be a great mentor to anchor that community there. The reality is with this scale of organization, this is not anyone's endpoint. The leadership of Generator is not like, "Ah, ha I have arrived. This is my whole career fulfilled." We are a scrappy small organization, and we hope that people are building their capacity with us and going on to lead in different arenas afterwards.
ted witzel:
And so it'll be interesting when we do that next search eventually. We hope that this current team stays awhile, but when we do move on to that next search to see that's when as Sedina says, I think we'll really see the impact of Generator's intervention into the sector in terms of the kind of arts leaders that gather around the organization and that are building their skills and capacities and will continue to, and will continue to support the organization in this reciprocal way as they go out and multiply the ideas that are being incubated with us.
Kristina Lemieux:
Look, the salary budget we put in the post is like $96,000. We're 18 months into a global pandemic. And the way that I had structured the staff team at Generator was that I was a full-time employee with three part-time employees who were very specifically hired part-time so that they could have active artists and producing practices outside of their work and along with their work at Generator. So now it's not the time maybe when people are really interested in jobs that pay $25,000 a year, because they have other concerns. And those other side practices are at are continuing to be uncertain about what they're going to look like as we move through the continuing or recovering pandemic, depending on what angle you're looking at it from on what day it is. So I think it was just a lot to ask of imagination for folks after a year and a half of having the rug pulled out. Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
How do you want to support artists, producers when they can't produce anything?
Kristina Lemieux:
Exactly.
Sedina Fiati:
But despite that, we still got such great people coming forward.
Kristina Lemieux:
Of course we did, there's so many great people.
Sedina Fiati:
Yeah. The candidates that did come forward were wonderful and we're really excited to announce the person who will be stepping up. But yeah, it's a tough time in the industry. And I think because of that, it's a time where we all can and have been imagining what it could be, but that's as much energy as most people have now. Is that imagining that ideation space, we've heard from people too because we did major outreach, it was a few people who took on that task to be fair. But there was a very long list of people who we reached out to one-on-one and some folks were just expressing overall exhaustion. They were just like, "I'm tired. And I can't really envision myself in this position at this time." We're combating that. And that's not something that we have control over.
ted witzel:
I also think that as a very activist little organization, we exist in many ways opposition, like we exist in opposition to the status quo of this horrible work-life imbalance of the perpetual burnout of the industry when it's active. And so I questioned whether our invitation was maybe too vast. It had too few parameters on it because opposition is a creative state and resistance is a creative state. And in our call it was like the only limiting factor was that we're a really small organization without much money, but there was not an active sector to say like, oh, this isn't working and this is inequitable and this is the thing that I want to fix and solve right now. There is a vacuum where an industry used to be. And there is a lot of questions about how it's going to materialize. So to design an oppositional vision without an object to oppose is a really hard thought experiment in a time when Tuesday is a thought experiment.
Tim Cynova:
I imagine you received resumes and cover letters. Maybe that's not true. So I guess, did you receive the traditional resumes and cover letters and, or, I mean, what other forms of expression did people or expressions of interest did candidates submit?
Sedina Fiati:
It was wonderful. We definitely got resumes, but we didn't necessarily get cover letters in stead of, or in place of a cover letter. We got video, we got voice memos, we got really a little mini essay because I think that was in direct response of course, to the style of the job posting was that please do respond to this in the way that is right for you and people really to take that to heart and they did that. So yeah, our review of that was like, okay, I'm putting my headphones on now. And listening to someone talk about what it is that they want to bring to Generator. So it was very refreshing. I think having those options, people use to them. And so that for me, what was one of the things that was surprising and wonderful at the same time.
Tim Cynova:
Can you talk through what the final process looked like? Because you detailed it on the website, here's the stages of the process. Can you detail expressions of interest? Did you then a review as a group, did multiple interviews, you mentioned the program development project that you compensated people for. What did the whole process tactically, I guess look like?
ted witzel:
Step one was put an extraordinary amount of labor and consultation into developing the posting. We had laid out the whole process. Step one was developing the posting and then actually pushed our staff capacity right to the edge. It took up a lot of energy and we can get into that a little bit more later because that I'm supposed to just overview the process. But I should emphasize that part took a lot of work. So we developed the posting and then with our strategic advisors and the board and some of our community partners, did a whole lot of outreach trying to get the posting in front of the right people. We extended the call to continue intaking. And we did approach several candidates who we thought would be interesting as well. We did a first round of interviews that was conducted. Oh, and then the review of those first application materials was done formally by the hiring committee, which was made up of board staff and strategic advisors.
ted witzel:
But also the rest of the people who were not on the hiring committee had an opportunity to offer feedback. They were available to be read by the rest of the board and the strategic advisors. We did interviews with the hiring committee and it was after that first round of interviews, which were really the values and competencies interviews that we said to each of the candidates at the end of those interviews. We thought the shape of this was going to look one way. We've got a lot of solo vendors, but no one coming to us with a full team. So we're going to have to reconsider what this next assignment is. And that's when we did the redesign of the second round interview assignment, it was initially going to be the business plan and ended up being the program design project. The candidates who were in that second round were invited to provide any materials they wanted to in advance, or they could do their presentation in a number of formats.
ted witzel:
They could do it just live on Zoom. They could do it prerecorded audio, they could do a prerecorded video. They could give us a slide deck. They could do any combination of those. They could give us a text document. And then after they had given us that plan, however they wanted to outline it. We had a second conversation to interrogate the plan a little bit. We didn't have set interview questions for that round. We had a Google Doc open that we were all in and jamming and questions and I was moderating and throwing those questions to the people who wanted to ask them because they were really meant to respond to the proposals that were being offered to us. And then from there, we went into deliberations and the deliberations did not take very long. That final project was really, really, it ended up being really, really helpful because it gave us a very clear sense of our candidate.
Sedina Fiati:
I just want to add something that we haven't discussed a lot. That is the strategic advisor committee. So as a result of what came out of the report that Zainab did, one of the things that was important was to come up with a strategic advisory committee to help lead Generator to the next step. A group of people, including mostly board members and an advisor, interview people to be on the strategic advisor committee. I am a staff member, but I submitted to be, and I was interviewed by that committee too. And then from the strategic advisor committee, we had a few meetings and from that committee folks said, "Okay, I want to on the hiring committee." And so all of those folks were instrumental in putting together the job posting, but most of which the Generator staff and Annie and Kristina really putting all of that work together.
Sedina Fiati:
But I think that, that pre-step is important. And a lot of places are doing this as we work in arts nonprofits. So having a hiring committee is nothing, that's not an innovative idea, but I think it's important to look at the composition of the hiring committee that those who are on there are oriented to where the organization wants to go. But yeah, that was basically our process. I've been involved this year with about three hiring processes for arts nonprofits. And they've all been pretty similar in that way, where we have a hiring committee put together an initial call, goes out, we respond to that and then surprising things happen. We're always surprised as to what happens after that first interview. And then from there, we're like, "Okay, this is how we want to proceed to the second interview." And then from there, it becomes very clear who should be the person.
Sedina Fiati:
And there ends up being some time. Things are always longer than we think it's going to be. We say, it's going to be a month, it'll probably be two. It might even be three. As we collect all the information and figure it out, Generator's wasn't that long. But I have been in another process that's been taking like about four or five months to do. That's just not unusual, but it's right. It's right to take the time to find the right person and to do things by committee, to do things as a group, it just takes longer to do.
ted witzel:
What Sedina is gesturing towards is that this is part of a longer process of organizational evolution. I don't know if it's necessarily a full-on transformation the way the move from small theater admin facility to generator was, but it's certainly a moment of evolution for the organization. So if I had to rip it out into three steps of that process, the first was to gather the strategic advisors. And that was really because the conversations that Kristina and the board have been having are that the board system is broken. The non-for-profit board system does not end up reflecting the communities that arts nonprofits serve. And often the people whose voices that you need in determining organizational direction, don't have the time to volunteer and not-for-profit boards in Canada must be volunteer. We wanted to create a paid body where people's labor was being acknowledged, that would allow more members of the community to have a say in Generator's future.
ted witzel:
The second stage of that is this leadership transition. And then the third stage of it is actually doing a governance review, looking at alternative governance models. And that's been a project that Kristina has been leading and offering provocations towards. And we're speaking with a lot of consultants and community members about how we might restructure and reinvision governance for the organization. We, as a board are trying to make ourselves barely relevant and to turn governance over a little bit more to the community, through paid bodies, that actually recognize what that work of organizational direction is.
Tim Cynova:
It's such a crucial piece that comes up a lot. Oftentimes when we're talking to staff of organizations around anti-racism anti-oppression commitments, and the next question is, "How can I get my board to buy into this? Or how can I convince my board, or how can I convince my board to be more risk prone when it comes to how we approach hiring leadership and thinking about multiple people coming in." So I'm excited for that research and piece to start coming out. Kristina, what's top of mind, as for people who have that question about how do I X with my board when they might be risk averse?
Kristina Lemieux:
Generator has a long history of having a board that has always been willing to come along on interesting journeys and try new things and put whatever things forward. But I think one piece that I coach a lot of small nonprofits with that we spend much time talking about is that you create your organizational structure and what happens in your rehearsal hall, or what's happening around your table at the office is a culture you love. And then you get to your board. That's a different world. And I guess my question, or what I ask people is like, "Why is that so? Why are you putting on a different clothes when you walk into that room? So there's a way in which what I work with the board and when I'm working with the board and orienting the new people that were oriented in the culture of the organization. And that we tell the stories of taking risks and iteration and trying new things and keeping it loose so that there's the opportunity to shift when you need to.
Kristina Lemieux:
And that just becomes part of the conversation always, so that they're ready and comfortable when you're like, all right, great. So we're going to take a year to do this gigantic shift and go to the community, and we're going to do this. We're going to do that. And it's a continuation of the story of how we've always talked about how we shift our programs. And we're always asking the question of what's working well, what's not working well, what's changeable, what's not changeable? How urgently does it need to happen? The idea that a board is a different place in the your organization is by design. And if we want to break those systems down, then we need to bring that culture forward into the board.
Sedina Fiati:
I would also add that Generator's board, I think in many ways is reflective of the community in the sense that they are independent producers or were independent producers for the most part of the arts. So they're really understanding and involved with the people that Generator serves in the work that they're doing. So they're not coming at it simply just as volunteers, which is nothing wrong with that, who care and who liked the arts maybe? They are folks who are deeply invested in what the sector is doing and how it can be better and deeply invested in serving independent artists.
Sedina Fiati:
So I think that that's what made it easier for us to embark upon this like strategic process, which I also will give kudos to Kristina for actually writing a grant last year in order to be able to fund this work. And that's one of the things, right? It's how do you, how, how has this work funded? The funding of recruitment and strategic change needs? It does need money and resources. So last year there was a grant put in that was successful for us to be able to embark upon this so that we were able to have additional funds to pay for the strategic advisor committee and the hiring committee as well. So when we're in a space of having resources to do things, it does make things easier on some level
Tim Cynova:
We're coming up on time. I feel like barely scratched the surface on all of the things we've talked about. But as we prepare to land the plane here, what's resonating for each of you as you think about this process that you engaged in, and created?
Kristina Lemieux:
There's a couple of things I want to just add or make sure that we say one thing we haven't mentioned is that knowing how unique of an organization Generator is, we've been planning for my departure in terms of creating a reserve fund for several years now. Basically the second I started, we started to create a reserve fund. So we had, by the time I gave my notice about $10,000 in reserve that we were able to use in conjunction with the funding that Sedina is speaking about to support this kind of thinking. So I think that there has to be an interesting in investment over the long time, knowing that this is going to take time in talking to peer leaders, the way I've described this process is that we were running a program.
Kristina Lemieux:
We are actively not working on other things because the amount of time that it has taken the staff and I to do this process is the equivalent of running a giant public program. And everyone's inspired, we're working with some other companies to do it, and I'm like, "Do you have time to run another program right now? And if you don't, then I don't know that I want to encourage you to do this process because it's that labor intensive." Especially the call creation portion of it, as Ted alluded an incredible amount of work.
ted witzel:
And I think what that points to is in terms of the expense, the expense here has been people and all of this has been a really human centered process and a labor intensive process. And it was really important to have a lot of people weigh in, in different directions on this. We consulted with an artist named Angela Sun on the accessibility components of this application, and she gave us some really important feedback to move forward with. And we continued to have her involved as a consultant through the various stages, as we were designing them to weigh in on accessibility for the interviews and for the program design assignment.
ted witzel:
There was also a lot of work that Annie Clark, our communications manager put into to building this call and then between the strategic advisors and the board, I would say there were probably about 15 people working actively on this program and on moving it out into the community on doing outreach around it, on building the timelines, on structuring it. And we also really built in from the beginning that it needed to be... It's like when you're directing a show, like one of the biggest, most important things is casting and building your collaborative team. You don't know what's going to happen when you put those people together. They're probably going to have better ideas than you. And so you have to allow for the time for that collaboration to actually impact the direction of where you are taking this program or process.
Sedina Fiati:
I think it's really important, a value that Generator has. And one that I'm working on it also at Nightwood that they also have is just around embedding relationship building into your organizational process. That's just something that we always do actually like when we think of recruiting for APT or recruiting for this, I always see a job posting as an opportunity to strengthen relationships and also build relationships with teacher, candidates and employees. I don't believe that anybody is a magic bullet of a person that is going to come and transform your organization with the magic wand. That's not going to happen. And you're not necessarily just going to find that person just because you snap your fingers or offer a bunch of money. It has to be an ongoing thing with every program you do. And with all of your outfacing communications to really be thinking how do we center care? How do we center people as Ted said in the work that we do?
Sedina Fiati:
That's where I'm at having gone through a few of these now, I'm just like it really is all about those relationships. And I'll also say coming from a place of somebody who's done executive search. If you have the funds, you can outsource this work to an executive search firm, because basically all the work that we did is exactly what an executive search firm does, full time they will do that outreach. They'll come up with the strategies, they'll help you pivot. But knowing that Generator didn't necessarily have that. And we also wanted to include the community in a very particular way. It basically needs the same amount of time. It's either you're going to outsource it to somebody else. If you're going to do it yourself, know that it's a significant amount of time and labor, but it's worth it. Because I mean, if you don't have a people-centered organization, then what do you have? If you don't invest in your people? I don't know what to say, where are you?
Tim Cynova:
And with that, our time has come to a close, Kristina, Sedina and ted, thank you so much for sharing your insights about this crucial component of crafting thriving organizations, and for being on the podcast.
Sedina Fiati:
Thank you for having us.
ted witzel:
Yeah. Thank you so much. Nice to chat.
Tim Cynova:
And now to reflect a bit on the topic, it's always a pleasure to welcome podcasting's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin. Hey Lauren, how's it going?
Lauren Ruffin:
Hey Tim, it's good to be back in the studio with you.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, very much so. And we're recording this on your birthday Eve.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
So how are plans, how the celebrating in festivity is going?
Lauren Ruffin:
Everything's going well, we got off to Chama New Mexico for the first time yesterday. Beautiful. Just the landscape is spectacular. So that was good. Everything else is rickety though. My body's breaking down. I'm 40 tomorrow. My body's like, "I'm going to make you feel every minute of that. Every minute of the 40 years you've been on this earth."
Tim Cynova:
Well, your pictures were wonderful from the time away. Although I must say with the new phone, the pictures are a little bit too good because I miss the Nokia.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I mean, I feel like a professional photographer. I'm an awful photographer, but I'm cranking out pictures now. They're just amazing.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. They're beautiful. The pleasure of sitting down with members from Generator, and I mentioned to the team that when their leadership search posting landed in my inbox, you were one of the people that I almost immediately forwarded along to. I mean, like you got to take a look at this both because of the structure and the format and what was included in different modalities for candidates. And also because it was for a leadership transition where they just threw wide open possibilities. They're like, "We're looking for leadership. You can put your name in as part of wanting to be a part of shared leadership team, or you already have a team. You could be a solo, whatever it might be." They described it as being risk prone, as opposed to risk averse-
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I love it.
Tim Cynova:
... just wide open search. See what happens. What were some of your thought initial thoughts when you first saw the posting?
Lauren Ruffin:
I mean, you and I have talked about this. I think people forget that the job posting is people's first introduction to your organization, and they did such a great job, introduced people to their organizations. For me that was the thing that stood out the most. And the level of thoughtfulness that they put into how the job description was structured, the timeline, everything that you would want to know. There's nothing more awkward than being in a job interview. And at the end of like, "Do you have any questions?" It's like, "Well, no, that questions, because you haven't really told me anything." But they've got the timeline, the process, who's going to be in the room? I just thought the whole thing was really dope.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Down to, we will pay you this amount of money for this project, which is, as we know, is typically not the case. It's you do all of this for free on your own time. And sometimes the organizations end up using that work product. Without hiring the person, without crediting them, without paying them. So the fact that Generator said, "We're going to give you $500 to do this project. It should take about this much time. This is our contractor rate for X amount of time. And you'll get it." I found really uplifting.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
It's a great example of how you could incorporate that into a posting process.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. So you just finished talking to them, what do they like? Are they like angels on earth? Tell me about, what'd you learn?
Tim Cynova:
They're amazing. They're a lot of fun. We set aside an hour for a conversation and could have easily run two hours. I talked to three of the people who are on the committee in the organization. And so they know each other, so there's a rapport there. And so that is obviously great. We talked about so many things. They mentioned their equity and justice review that pre-seated this, that led to the creation of a strategic advisory group. And then they talked about having to pivot during the process because some of their assumptions weren't playing out the way that they thought. One of them being that people would come as a prepackaged leadership team, they receive a lot of people who said, "I would be happy to be a part of this, but it's not like if the two of us poly, we're a three person team we're coming in. And this is our vision for the organization."
Tim Cynova:
So they had to sort of retool that process once they saw that they had a lot of interested individuals, but no one coming as a group. And then how that changed the project that they were going to work on. And some of the assumptions that they had about it being artists and having collaborators already. So you're surrounded by people versus that assumption that, oh, people are surrounded by there's the two of us that we're already packaged deal and you could drop in and think about what does that mean? Mm-Hmm Is it the times which we're living, where people are just exhausted? And they want to be a part of it, but it takes that extra energy that people don't have right now to piece this together or do people think about leadership teams in a different way than maybe artistic collaborations? So that was it really interesting to hear them start to unpack. And it really was. We flew was so much stuff. So whatever is in this podcast, there was a lot left. There could be easily be a second episode or even cooler if Generator just started their own podcast-
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh, yeah.
Tim Cynova:
... I just want to talk about it.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's really cool. I mean, I'm always just fascinated by folks who lean into new models of working. Work so stagnant right now. And even in the midst of what you and I have talked about, what a great opportunity in some ways, "Great opportunity." The pandemic was to really reshape work. And I feel like we're still having conversations about how do we get back into an office?
Tim Cynova:
I'm just noticing too in the news, the articles are starting to repurpose themselves in weird ways it's like they're pulling things back from four months ago and then putting back, like, "Maybe we won't be going into the office or what does it look like with different vaccine mandates and the uncertainty that's still uncertain as people are returning to the office." Yeah, being able to talk with the group. They're really open and they're like, "We want to share what we're doing so people can use it, plagiarize it, whatever. But part of our process is that we're creating something that hopefully could be of use to other people and other organizations," which is really inspirational.
Lauren Ruffin:
I had drinks last night with Katie who obviously was doing coms for not obviously to people who listening, they don't remember. But is doing coms with Poly Education Department here in New Mexico. And then the guy who I guess runs Sandia National Labs, COVID website, and then someone else who's moved out here from New York, but still runs ops for an agency in Midtown. And so we were all talking about just COVID protocols and how convoluted, just trying to figure out what day to day and what to tell people because they're all just to communicate that out. And I was like, God, like, I'm so glad [inaudible 00:51:36] closed their office in October of 2019. Because something we did not have to think about at all.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Thankful to this day.
Lauren Ruffin:
It'll be, I think when I reach those pearl gates of heaven or maybe the red gates of hell, I'll sit back and yeah. Reminisce on my life and be like, I made one good decision, Tim was there for it.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. The challenges that just keep evolving are real and I think about like that the psychic income or the psychic bandwidth, that things take that you can't be using elsewhere. A lot of times in the nonprofit sector, you talk about resource scarcity and research goes into resource scarcity. If you're all always thinking about having to make payroll, you start to make worse decisions in other areas. And I wonder about this psychic burden of the uncertainty around COVID and how that is impacting decisions that otherwise would be easier to make or clear to make. But because we're in this constant air area of things are changing, and laws are changing, and mandates are changing and then they're coming back and you got to brush off your masks again, or whatever might be happening. How does this actually play out in a people-centric organizational design workplace where everyone can thrive?
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm really curious. I wish I had sat in on that conversation with the Generator people. It just sounds like it was super cool. Did they talk about their Q and As?
Tim Cynova:
One of the things they said was that the staff capacity was really pushed to the edge in this process.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh yeah. Let's talk about that.
Tim Cynova:
And it's one of the cautions or heads up that they gave to other organizations who might be interested in approach like they took, if you are not going to outsource it to a search firm or something like the amount of time that it took them to craft the process, but just to get it posted to work through their advisory group, to work through the various team members so that people felt like they had a voice in it and then to get it posted and really get it out to the networks was a lot. And they have a relative small team. And so they ended with a really great candidate. So the end of the story is, and I believe they're announcing this week who the candidate is. So they found someone which was great, because there's another one of those questions where like-
Lauren Ruffin:
Did it work.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Cool process. But did this work?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
So they did find someone that they're really excited about, but they said looking back, it was a lot, lot of work. I mean, I think it's part of any process that's really intentional. If like you can easily post some generic posting and just take whoever comes in and then throw them some random questions and then give them a laptop or password when they walk in the door, and then let them be, or how do you structure it so that you're really searching for people of the knowledge, skills and abilities for that specific role? And into your earlier point, really showing them before they join the organization, what it's like to be a part of the organization? And then that last crucial step that often gets to aside, during searches, onboarding the person. It's usually the afterthought, as we both know, but to actually bring someone in to set them up for success is a really crucial, often thrown away piece.
Lauren Ruffin:
As you're talking, I started thinking about what, maybe the exact opposite of that intent I shouldn't say that open hire is intentional training, not an intentional hiring process. Do you know what I mean? What's the combination between where they were with finding that person that... and there's no such thing as a perfect person. But that candidate that really fits, versus open hire where you're essentially just bringing someone in committing to training them until they become a perfect fit. I mean, I'm dying to have a reason to do open higher at some point. I'm just fascinated by it.
Tim Cynova:
The model popularized by Greyston Bakery. We talked a little bit about that, where everyone gets a job who puts their name on the sheet. I've been fascinated by that for years.
Lauren Ruffin:
We've got to talk to them.
Tim Cynova:
I've spoken with their CEO during a conscious capitalism event, but not in depth. It's one of those examples where that organization got so many questions about their open hiring. That they created their open hiring institute for people to dive into open hiring. And figure out what pieces of it were right for their organization.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh man. That's so stoked. I'm excited to listen that whole conversation.
Tim Cynova:
It was a good one. Yeah. I was excited to dust the podcast microphones off and chat with the team. I hope we have the opportunity to record some more tracks. It feels like there's more conversations that are coming up about hiring. I'd really love to dive into equity audits.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh, yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Talking to a lot of people about equity audits, a lot of people are asking who does equity audits? And I found it really interesting that in asking organizations who've done equity audits, not many recommend the people that they worked with.
Lauren Ruffin:
And does that mean the person's done a good job and it made everybody uncomfortable or they just were actually awful?
Tim Cynova:
I think that's the question that we need to dive into.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh yeah.
Tim Cynova:
There's something really meaty there that I think would be useful to unpack.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Because I don't know the answer to that question, but that's what I'm being met with.
Lauren Ruffin:
So we should just have people on and say so was this actually a bad audit or are you suffering from what fragility?
Tim Cynova:
Was it a really good audit?
Lauren Ruffin:
Well, yeah. Was it really awesome or it made you super uncomfortable?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. So I think that's who we should start looking for people who have been through audits, who are willing to chat with us about it, because I think that's a question that's coming up now.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. So that's cool. Work. Shouldn't. Suck survivor series.
Tim Cynova:
You had another mini series that were running here on the Work. Shouldn't. Suck podcast. One of the other things I'm curious to dive into is I saw something, I believe it was produced in May or June of last year. It was. And I don't know if the chart was updated, but it's about organizations who provide or who don't provide was really they're highlighting sick leave amid the pandemic. Did you see that?
Lauren Ruffin:
No, I didn't see it, but Katie and I were talking yesterday about bereavement leave and organizations that require you to state who passed away in your relationship to them and to show proof they actually died. You all can't see me, but I have my wow face on.
Tim Cynova:
Right. At the point when you are grieving that person's loss and you're required to get documentation, that oftentimes doesn't even exist doesn't yet.
Lauren Ruffin:
Doesn't exist yet. Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
I mean, thinking about the timing, I don't think when my parents passed away, it was probably two days, three days before it even ended up in the paper. And then death certificates, you don't get those from the funeral home for a while. So like, yeah. That's one of those places where you can be an asshole employer or you can be human and humane and trusting.
Lauren Ruffin:
Well, why have you created an environment where your employees have to fake a death to get time off? What are we doing?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. There's an underlying issue here. That would be interesting to explore. I was chatting with an employment attorney a couple years ago because I was curious where the three days came from. And it's not universal, but a lot of places have around three days for bereavement leave. And so I was asking her where did that come from? We know where the five day work week and 40 hour work week comes from more or less, but she's like, "I'm not quite sure," but she was positing that it could have to do with travel, one day to travel, one day for a funeral, one day to come back. She said there could be some roots in Judaism where it is period of morning. The time you have to bury someone, but more or less, it's just something that took hold. It's probably a copy and paste from employee handbooks. I'm not sure why we do it, but we copied it from this employee handbook and you just keep doing it and we don't give any thought to it.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I also don't know many organizations who really hold to that three days. I should say I've been blessed to never work for one, I've always worked with... It says three days on paper, but it's kind of been like take as much time as you need. And people typically come back pretty quickly or the three days doesn't happen into session. I need a day here. I need a day there. I've got to go clean out this house. It's a parent. Or it seems to be pretty flexible, but there is something there about strict bereavement leaves that I think we should dive into. Especially as we're dealing with a country that's lost how many people in the last year, over and above our normal death toll.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Another topic, I think that'd be great. I think there's also something, there's inner locking Venn diagrams or circles on the Venn diagram of companies that don't provide sick leave amid a pandemic that probably overlap a lot with companies that can't, "Find people to work for them." Because they are shitty places to work or don't people enough to live. So yeah. I think we've got plenty of material for the podcast to keep going into season, I don't know, 18 at this point?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. It's the Simpsons, General Hospital, and Work Shouldn't Suck.
Tim Cynova:
Inclusivity, open hiring, really exciting stuff coming out of organizations right now, especially as a lot of organizations are hiring and could be thinking about how to do it differently than maybe they were doing it last year, years before, how the book says you're supposed to do it. So Lauren as always enjoyable to start the day with you. Thanks so much for being part of the conversation.
Lauren Ruffin:
Best way to start my birthday ever [inaudible 01:02:01].
Tim Cynova:
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