Jessica Osborn - The human element of business

[00:00:00] Welcome to Resilience Unravelled Hi everybody and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast that examines all aspects of personal and organisation resilience. A huge all-encompassing subject that covers the ability to thrive in life by harnessing your cognitive, emotional, physiological and contextual abilities. I

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[00:01:17] and not grinning, scrilling is different isn't it? Smiling away in front of me is Jess Osborne. Good evening to you, Jess. Good evening. Now I can tell even from those two words you're from across the bond. So where are you in the world? I am based in Austin,

[00:01:33] Texas but I do work for a business out of the UK so I'm very used to greeting somebody at a different time than the time zone I am living in. That was going to say, Austin, Texas. Fascinating part of the world at the moment. Blimey. Interesting political

[00:01:47] changes going on over there. Blimey. Yes. You're working for a UK company. How does that work? Yes, so I work for a UK company and I actually run the teams outside of the UK. So I work

[00:02:05] the start of my day with my team that's based in Paris. I then spend a little bit of time with folks who are making things happen in the UK and then I spend the middle of the day

[00:02:15] with my North American team and the end of my day with my Australian and New Zealand team. So you're 24-7? Well, I do try to set some boundaries to where I have a personal life.

[00:02:25] I'm also a mother of two so I tend to just catch the beginning of the Australian day and the end of the French day. I was going to make a British witticism about the French

[00:02:38] there but I managed just to stop myself because I'm growing up mature these days. I appreciate that. So tell me a little bit about yourself. What does it do? Tell me a bit about

[00:02:49] your background. Yes, so I am a VP of customer success as we've been talking about my team and customer success is a term that has become increasingly more well known but isn't known in all circles. So I'll just back up and explain what it actually is.

[00:03:07] So it is essentially helping customers to achieve what they bought a solution for and it's become an increasingly popular profession as the subscription economy has boomed. Its primary goals are typically to help businesses retain their customer base and increasingly the current economic conditions to grow their customer bases.

[00:03:30] That's what I do by day and I would say one of the things I love the most about my job is actually the human element. So that's yes, definitely the customer relationships that we maintain and the things we're able to accomplish with our customers but I also love

[00:03:45] being a leader of a team and a manager and helping people accomplish what they are inspired to do in life. Helping people be their best selves and helping them accomplish the things

[00:03:57] they dream about but might not actually believe as possible until we work together and make it happen. Very good. Well okay so let me just pick a few things there if I might have a may. So customer success is that just a rebadged customer satisfaction?

[00:04:13] So that's a good question. I would say it's very similar to the more long-standing profession of account management but the primary difference between account management and customer success is that account managers are aiming to grow a customer base on behalf

[00:04:31] of the company and customer success managers are targeted towards getting a customer to achieve outcomes and then as a result they hopefully retain and grow. So it's really a lot the same as account management but just in terms of what the objective is slightly more focused on outcomes

[00:04:50] for the customer. Okay makes sense. Now you said you talked about all those things and you said that's what I do by day and I was intrigued to know what you do by night. Do you sort of don a superhero

[00:05:01] outfit and patrol the streets of Austin looking for mad cows or something strange? Well I did mention I'm a mother which some would say is one of the hardest jobs out there

[00:05:16] and then I would also say that I'm a social impact enthusiast. So whether it's different places that I've worked that have been focused on making a social impact or causes that I'm involved in

[00:05:30] I do try to give back to society. So tell me more about that. What a social impact enthusiast? I mean are you're queen of the TLA's it has to be said but tell me more about that.

[00:05:41] Sounds fascinating. Yeah so the first I would say personal experience that I had that really felt meaningful was getting involved with big brothers, big sisters and it's an organization here in the

[00:05:59] U.S. that helps children by connecting them with mentors and so my husband and I actually did it as a couple and we were connected with a young man at the time he's a young man now

[00:06:11] he's a father now but at the time he was about 10 years old and we just were part of his life essentially just getting together once a week we would go camping we would do different things

[00:06:20] together and just by nature of having that relationship we were I think a positive impact both ways. We learned a lot about his life and we were able to give him a lot of exposure to

[00:06:31] the outdoors, go camping, do things that he didn't normally get to do in his regular life so that was a really eye-opening experience and I think over time and especially becoming a mother

[00:06:43] the the cause that I'm most passionate about is helping kids get their best start in life and so when I moved to the UK I was involved in the Princess Trust which also

[00:06:54] aspires in that direction. I also saved the children just donor at this point I think as I've gotten older and I have less time a lot of my impact goes through donating and then I've also

[00:07:10] right after I moved back from the UK I worked at a company that helps charities with their fundraising in fact it's the parent company of Just Giving in the UK so I also during the pandemic worked at a

[00:07:27] company that's a benefit corporation that was helping to connect people with food and housing and other really important resources and we were working with the largest hospital systems across the US providing that resourcing so yeah hopefully that gives you a flavour of

[00:07:47] it's very interesting you talk about volunteering because there's a lot of research that shows how good volunteering is for your mental health and I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that? I absolutely believe that getting to a place where you are able to self-actualize

[00:08:09] and by that I mean obviously we're all individuals living our own lives and it's really easy to get in our own heads and to think about things like how do I compare to other people my age

[00:08:22] am I married do I have this do I have that and I found that to be the cycle that leads to depression and frustration and not something that I really enjoyed and then when I shifted to thinking about

[00:08:37] things from a perspective of I'm just the small piece in this much larger thing that's going on and things like volunteering I think really put that into perspective right because again you get exposure to people who are in different circumstances and you realize that you could actually

[00:08:55] make a huge impact on somebody's day just by saying hello to them just by being a positive force in their life and you start to realize that every interaction isn't just about that little dialogue

[00:09:04] that's going on your head but a much larger perspective. And it's fascinating I happen to be involved in the charge of the sector as well as some things I do so we have volunteers and it's really tricky isn't it because volunteering seems to be particularly

[00:09:19] something you do when you're a bit younger maybe more of a social conscience maybe more of an awareness of other things but what happens I suppose you get on the sort of corporate treadmill and the family treadmill one one's own personal family treadmill and you end

[00:09:33] maybe a bit of a cynical way of pulling it but you end up just losing that that extra time and I just wonder if we lose something of our own experience when we actually are focused in with

[00:09:45] you so much. I totally agree I think I've tried to find creative ways to give back just even by shifting my work to be focused on that because as you as you mentioned you get on the corporate

[00:10:00] treadmill so working for a business that isn't just focused on driving profit for shareholders but is also mission-based and trying to achieve something positive in the world is a realistic way that I've been able to continue to give back but I do agree it gets a lot harder

[00:10:19] with your own time to continue to give it as you get more and more commitments and so it's finding the other ways that you can realistically make an impact. But it's often fascinating for organizations isn't it to do payroll giving or

[00:10:32] and there are a lot of interesting collaborations between charitable orgs and commercial organizations swapping resources backwards and forwards you know projects in different countries and I think an imaginative use of cross-sector working can be really powerful for team building

[00:10:49] and that what you were saying earlier which is about how do you live your best life will you sometimes live your best life by taking the skills which you don't particularly enjoy

[00:10:56] in your current situation but applying them in a place that has a cause base to it and I think there's a missed opportunity don't you that is not enough of this perhaps considered.

[00:11:05] I totally agree that there's a missed opportunity there and I think team building is so critical for a team to be able to accomplish the corporate goals that it has and I have seen that by

[00:11:19] going and working at a school and painting the curbs and things like that it's a great way to do team building that also gives back to the community so I do think the more that corporations

[00:11:30] can make time and space for their employees to do that I think it'll yield benefit not only to the community that these organizations are a part of but back to the organization as well. Yeah yeah it's fascinating so obviously we're talking about resilience and I would say

[00:11:45] actually volunteering and having a cause bigger than ourselves is something that might build resilience that might actually build perspective and I wonder if you have thoughts about it consciously like that or use different methods to build it. Yeah it's a great point I feel like

[00:12:06] the first time you build resilience is when you face hardship and you learn how to overcome that and in my life it was fairly early stage my parents divorced when I was six and they both

[00:12:20] struggled with alcohol addiction at various times after that and I was always part of a very loving family but I did find that during those challenges I had a lot of shame around that

[00:12:33] and I sought help through my network and I had a friend Monica Mackley who told me you know Jessica actually it's the hardships that you face that build character and as soon as she told me that that was that moment where I went from inside my head

[00:12:52] all this shame around what I was going through to suddenly thinking actually this thing that I'm going through is going to give me empathy that I probably wouldn't have had otherwise. I lived in a very privileged neighborhood and my family didn't struggle for money and so honestly that

[00:13:08] hardship that we went through is what gave me a connection to all of the hardship that other people experienced and I think that's what then motivated me to want to connect outside of

[00:13:20] my own experience to charitable organizations but just in general people you can you share a lot with people when you're willing to be vulnerable and share what you've been through and helping

[00:13:33] people have that moment like Monica gave me where you go from looking at it one way and if feeling like a really negative thing to something that's really empowering that helps

[00:13:42] you achieve a lot in your life is I think just one of those really powerful monuments that I if I could help people get to that moment over and over again I would I would feel like I'd accomplished a lot in

[00:13:52] this lifetime. That's interesting so how do you do that? So I think how do you help people get outside of their own perspective? Well I think a really common practice for perspective that certainly has been around for centuries is meditation right and it's become more and more

[00:14:16] mainstream but it's really just that how do you disconnect from your thoughts? How do you make space and then suddenly when you have that space where you're not in the emotion in the moment

[00:14:28] you can suddenly have a perspective of something and again outside of yourself so looking at something from the angle of the people that are also involved in the situation and seeking help from

[00:14:42] your friends and being vulnerable about it I think all of those ways can really help you have a different perspective and oftentimes that can really be the difference between thinking some things insurmountable versus being able to actually achieve it. And that's fascinating

[00:14:59] because that dissociation is often a sort of a trauma response but actually what you're saying is it can be used proactively or actively to to get a different sort of result which is

[00:15:09] which is quite a it's interesting perspective. Yeah I love Tara Brock for that I think she explores trauma a lot and she has her reign methodology that recognize allow investigate nurture and I mean it really is just understanding the trauma not pushing it away it's trying to

[00:15:31] really connect with it and to find how you're nurturing yourself through it and I think in a lot of times in life it feels normal to push away the negative emotions and I think the biggest

[00:15:43] lesson in life I've learned is to go through them versus to push away from them. Yeah I think but then again that's the toolkit isn't it I wonder if that toolkit comes with

[00:15:52] wisdom and actually of course you face adversity when you're quite young and it often seems to be the case that people who face adversity in very young ages are rather made or broken by it.

[00:16:04] So it is quite fascinating to see you know where's that it's like the old you know fancy fascinating study on the Romanian orphans you know how does how does some cope with

[00:16:13] exactly same conditions how does some thrive and some not and some of its environment and some of its parenting and such like but what is it about you that allowed you to sort of take the path that

[00:16:26] you did was there anything you look back on? Honestly I think I was very fortunate to just have love our family life wasn't perfect but it was always a very loving environment and when I think about the passion I have for children having their best start in life

[00:16:46] the main objective is just helping children be in a loving situation because I think whether you don't have money whether you're going through hardship if you have loving support I think you can get through so much and so I think I was very very fortunate to always have

[00:17:02] that ingredient and I think that certainly helped me to to overcome adversity. So that sort of love that nature nurturing sort of approach does that sort of feed into the way that you team build

[00:17:16] lead and manage? 100% and it's funny because sometimes I'm resistant to using the word love because it's weird in the corporate world but I've found that it's the simplest way to articulate what it is but I think the re-brand for the corporate world would be kindness

[00:17:34] but not kindness in terms of niceness. I think sometimes kindness gets conflated with niceness and I think that nice is not kind. What is kind is clear and direct and so I am a very

[00:17:46] direct person I will tell people like it is and I'll ask them to do the same for me not just sugarcoat things not to you know try to preserve my ego but just tell me what's

[00:17:55] going on and if they're having a challenge or if I could be doing something better and so yes definitely I bring that to the way that I approach leadership in T-building it's always with care for the people that I'm working with and the respect for their perspectives as

[00:18:12] well. In fact I love the word respect because if you think about it it's spec like spectacles and read to you know redo or re-approach and so it's it's basically trying to look at

[00:18:23] something through somebody else's spectacles and yeah exactly. And I mean may be able to say you're actually treating people like adults rather than like children and sounds like you've been on one of my courses I'm just saying because actually I think so many leaders and managers

[00:18:40] just they're so frightened of the people especially in a modern age aren't they? They seem to be frightened of just dealing with people where they are and as adults and allowing people to

[00:18:52] be themselves with all their frailties and faults and talents and curiosity and being clear in saying what you want and seeing what you expect if someone's doing well you tell them if someone's not doing

[00:19:03] as well as you want you tell them and you stop something and this should be becoming a huge problem and you I mean yeah in America that seems to be a bit you almost have a double

[00:19:12] perspective on this because you have books like Radical or Candor and I just I just I'm sort of endlessly baffled while you have to have a book that's sort of said just just say it as it should

[00:19:23] treat them like a ladle basically. That's so funny that you say that because Radical Candor is one of my favorite business books so but here's why I would say because I think probably because in

[00:19:38] our American culture yes and let's say the way I like to think about Americans versus British people is a peach versus a coconut so on a peach you know we're so nice and squishy on the outside

[00:19:52] like you said when you first started talking to me that I had a big smile on my face you know so that's the peach right like we seem very very nice but then to get to our inner core we've

[00:20:03] got a pit so it's actually a lot harder to break through to what's real on an American whereas the way I think about British people is much more like a coconut you hit that pit

[00:20:14] from the outside and then once you're in you're really in and so I think it's probably the difference between just the American culture where niceness is kind of the normality and so I think Kim did a

[00:20:27] really good job of helping people realize that nice isn't helpful and here's how you could do it otherwise. I'm quite impressed that you think British people have as much hair I've been

[00:20:37] looking at my own picture at the moment I quite like to have a coconut on my head I think that really fantastic. One of the things I've got to ask you and obviously we're on a podcast and we're

[00:20:47] sort of audio only but I've been absolutely fascinated by the most giant pair of feather-based earrings that you've seen to have there now are they symbolic is this part going back to some

[00:20:57] sort of Navajo tribe you belong to is this part of your character or are you just like furry earrings you've got to tell me. So you know it's funny that you asked this

[00:21:10] so I've done 23 and me and I also my family is pretty into genealogy and so apparently my grandfather's I think it was my grandfather's great grandmother was supposedly part of the the Choctaw tribe however depending on who you speak to in our family some people think it's

[00:21:33] just lore versus reality but I do have Angolian Congolese just like a little bit. You know normally you would think that it would be native blood but apparently there is a history of

[00:21:46] African escaped slaves joining the Choctaw tribe so anyway all that to say I whether it's true or not that I that I I descend from that I do actually have an affinity for feathers and

[00:21:59] and I've always been kind of drawn to feathers and I actually this is weird to say out loud because it does verge into the woo-woo but I do tend to see that when a white feather comes my way

[00:22:10] that there's some sort of like encouragement and sign from the universe that I'm moving in the right direction. Do you see it's just red rag, red rag to a bull because when we see white feathers

[00:22:20] coming our way usually they're accompanied by the rest of a seagull stealing our chips but I'll put that to one side but what I think I think that's really I think that's really fascinating enough never thought about this before because I've done the genealogy

[00:22:34] thing and it's back to that thing about seeing yourself as part of a wider thing you talked about this idea of seeing yourself as a small part of something greater and the genealogy thing does

[00:22:45] do that isn't it? It does you realize that you're just one little blip on a huge lineage of people over time and I do think the belief that we're all one is a really powerful,

[00:22:59] powerful belief if you can find the way that you relate to others I find this helps me in business all the time there's sometimes where you know you're at conflict with people and it's really

[00:23:09] frustrating and I find that if I bring a perspective of trying to approach the problem from where they're coming from and also give them the grace of whatever emotions come with the perspective that they're coming with I can usually find a resolution even in situations

[00:23:28] where people are so frustrated that they typically wouldn't pass through it so I found that to be particularly helpful in finding win-win opportunities to make things better. And of course the point goes

[00:23:41] back to what we were saying earlier which is if you're dealing with issues early then the things aren't escalating it's a massive huge issues and I do watch many aspiring leaders and managers

[00:23:52] or people who are newly on the sort of treadmill ladder not treadmill we shouldn't call it really. You do see them ducking the issue being frightened being frightened to hurt people's

[00:24:04] feelings is one of the most common things I hear and and of course as soon as you're frightened to hurt people's feelings you want to treat people like a child like children's and that's

[00:24:12] not the workplace anymore is it? And I think we've lost that sense of that's them and their stuff and your you and your stuff but it sounds like the way you're nodding it sounds

[00:24:22] like you agree which is I hope we're gonna have a fight every second but sadly we're gonna agree again. Well what I was about to say is um one I used to engage Karen Wunderland to come in

[00:24:35] and do team building with my teams and she was a consultant and she brought in this framework of parent child adult and was that transactional analysis there you go so I'm sure that's

[00:24:50] exactly where she got it from she just introduced us to that as parent child adult and so she had us look at various scenarios we were in with either our clients or internally and analyze where we're approaching it from a parental perspective, a child perspective or adult to

[00:25:07] adult and obviously the goal always being that adult to adult and I found that that framework very very helpful so as I was nodding and when I was trying to jump in earlier was to say

[00:25:17] I totally agree that that tends to happen um where I often find myself wanting to take on more be more of the parental um and I think again that comes from earlier in my my lifetime when I picked it up

[00:25:30] quite a bit um and I found that that's not helpful and you just need to go for that adult to adult so um totally agree with that. Well look I am very sad I'm afraid I have to say I'm very

[00:25:43] sad because our time is up and I would love to spend our time talking to you today but I need to be respectful of your time and um it's been great it's been really interesting fascinating

[00:25:53] and the the peach and the coconut will go into my lexicon of stories which I invented so but I will always I always give credit where credit's due is if you've done yourself to you know so that's

[00:26:06] been fantastic but look if people want to connect with you or talk to you or explore more of the sort of work or thinking that you are involved with tell us how they can do that.

[00:26:18] Yes so um just linked in I'm Jess Riser Osborn uh please come connect with me I'd love to continue the conversation. Brilliant it's been an absolute joy thank you so it's been a I've had

[00:26:30] this has been my podcasting day and you're the last person and actually it's so lovely to finish on such a high so thank you so much I really appreciate your time. Thank you. You take care. Hi thanks for listening hopefully that was a useful and interesting episode

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