Kristin Graham knew early in life that words were her superpower, but she didn’t know then how far that ability would take her through the ranks of some of the world’s largest companies.
A former journalist and dot-com leader, Kristin spent 20 years leading culture and communications at global companies (most recently at Amazon).
During the pandemic, she left the corporate world to found “Unlock the Brain,” which examines the latest neuroscience, psychology, and habits to figure out how to unlock potential and performance.
Kristin is now a global speaker and strategist on communications, productivity, and habits and hosts the podcast, “Fewer Things Better.”
In this high-energy episode, Kristin offers wide-ranging communications advice, including how to write more effective emails and why 111 is the magic number of words.
She also shares several personal stories—like how having a son on the Autism spectrum shifted her focus from how to communicate elegantly to how to be heard in a noisy world.
When asked what her superpower is, Kristin responded, “I help busy, overwhelmed people learn how to write better, faster, and do fewer things better. I do this through simple concepts from brain science, behavior research, and studying the attention economy.”
Listen to the full episode here:
Resources from the episode:
- Learn more about Kristin and how you can do fewer things better here.
- Listen to Kristin’s “Fewer Things Better” podcast here.
- Articles, videos, podcasts; you name it, she’s done it! Check out other places Kristin has shared her potential + performance tips and tricks here.
- Connect with Kristin on LinkedIn.
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Transcript
The following transcript is not certified. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. The information contained within this document is for general information purposes only.
Speakers: Kristin Graham and Mark Wright
KRISTIN GRAHAM 00:03
I think watching people be, uh, bold showed me a lot more than watching the template for how to get promoted. So many people are trying to chase that, and I would rather be wrong out loud than write and have my integrity for sale, meaning rewarded for having my integrity for sale.
MARK WRIGHT 00:29
This is the BEATS WORKING show. We’re on a mission to redeem work. The word, the place, and the way. I’m your host, Mark Wright. Join us at winning the game of work. Welcome to BEATS WORKING on the show today, word matter. Kristen Graham knew early in life that words were her superpower. What she didn’t know then is how far that ability would take her through the ranks of some of the world’s largest companies. Kristen is a former journalist and dot-com leader who led culture and communications most recently at Amazon. During the pandemic, she left the corporate world to found Unlock the Brain. That’s a company that uses science to help people unlock their potential performance and do fewer things better, which is also the name of her podcast, Fewer Things Better. Kristin is fond of saying, let me nerd so you don’t have to, and how is that true? She can tell you why 111 is the magic number when it comes to writing emails, and also how having a son on the autism spectrum changed her outlook on what successful communication is. When we asked Kristin what she loves doing, she said, I help busy, overwhelmed people, learn how to write better, faster, and be heard in a noisy world. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kristin Graham. Kristin Graham, welcome to the BEATS WORKING podcast. It’s so good to have you here. I’ve been so looking forward to this.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 02:07
Thank you, my friend. So excited to be here with you as well. I’m such an avid listener of the podcast, so a thrill.
MARK WRIGHT 02:13
Well, we, we appreciate that. Um, as we were talking about, just off camera, I’m a huge fan of yours, and I, as I’m looking at all of the work that you’ve been doing, I, I’m just super impressed not only with the work that you’ve been doing, but the level at which you’ve been operating for so many years, and I’d love to know, first of all, when people ask you, hey, what do you do when you run into them on the airplane or in an elevator?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 02:36
Yeah, so I, I spent a very happy 20 years in corporate, and so I had lots of things I could say I did then, but it was always attached to a title and a brand that’s how we showed up in the world, our business cards. Um, but nowadays, uh, as a very happy entrepreneur, it is, I’m helping busy, overwhelmed people learn how to do fewer things better.
MARK WRIGHT 03:00
That’s awesome. So, let’s, let’s backtrack a little bit. I wanna know, where did you go to college? When did you decide you wanted to jump into Corporate America? And just take me back to that first part of your career.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 03:13
Yes. The, the big ominous decision that I didn’t really make. It’s all these twists and turns that made life so interesting. I went to a very small liberal arts college in Illinois, Northern Illinois, and I, that in and of itself was a wonderful story because I went up to a college recruiter. Remember those when you used to go to hotel ballrooms and speak to people, you didn’t click on a link. And I was, I, I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. And so, I thought for sure that meant just going left and heading over to California. So, I was picking up a bunch of brochures, I noticed one table where nobody was talking to this one individual, and as has become a theme in my life, Mark, making a conversation can change your life. And so, I went up to talk to this person just to be nice and changed my entire life. So,
MARK WRIGHT 04:12
Okay. I’m dying to know who was this person? Was it Steve Jobs?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 04:15
I dunno what college fairs you were going to. No, no. It was, um, it was at this Ball, hotel Ballroom in Phoenix, Arizona, like I said, and I went up to talk to this. His name is Spike Amir, and he is and was a big recruiter for this little liberal arts school, Lake Forest College, and I went up just to be nice and pick up the brochure and he said, have you ever been to Illinois? And I was like, no. It’s one of those flyover states, right? Um, and he opened a photo album, Mark, an actual photo album and said, this is Illinois, and remember I’m in a desert. So, looking at this, it’s very plush. It’s right on Lake Michigan. It’s just this beautiful campus. It’s 150-year-old college, and it was just everything I thought Hallmark movies were, and the very short version is he made sure that this scholarship kid found their way to that campus. And it changed the course of my life and set me on a career in Chicago and then Seattle, which we can get into. But um, it is the impetus of how everything began is very indicative of how it continued, and that is, um, people and words have always changed my life.
MARK WRIGHT 05:27
So, what did you major in Kristin?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 05:29
Oh, well, much to my parents’ delight, I decided to do creative writing at a liberal arts school. You might as well, like I, I actually did my senior thesis in poetry. I want everybody to get excited about this. It’s just, um, my son is taking an English class. He’s like, what’s this Norton Anthology of Literature? And I’m like, you mean these? And I pull out these giant books that you could like, oh, I love, I loved it, I loved it. So, I was a creative writing major. This is, they didn’t even have public relations or corporate communications or any of that. It was, it was, I studied Homer and Dante and wrote and, um, but it was beautiful. I, I marinated in words, and it was the best education of all. I loved liberal arts and, um, it was such a fantastic opportunity for me to be different.
MARK WRIGHT 06:17
So, when you graduated, you worked for an insurance company, is that right?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 06:20
Not right away. Uh, my very first job, and what became again, um, only systemic, when you look back on it, I went into a nonprofit because I didn’t have, I, I grew up in a military Catholic family, youngest, only girl, and I was the first woman to get a college education on both sides of my family, and so we did not have money. It was so that wonderful gentleman, Spike, who helped me even go to college, not just change the trajectory, but change the DNA of potential, which will be a big word I hope we come back to a few times. Um, but I didn’t, I, I didn’t have a lot of privilege coming out of college and so there was this wonderful job I wanted to take at this Sunday paper travel insert, remember those? You get all the inserts, the coupons, and the comics, and I wanted to work for this travel insert, but they weren’t hiring right away, and this nonprofit paid $4,000 more. Which is saying something. So, I went to work for a nonprofit making $20,000 a year, um, just enough to barely cover the bills, living in Wrigleyville, Chicago and worked at a nonprofit, which is such a wonderful introduction to business because you have to learn to do everything. Um, nothing is above you. Nothing has been as you, it is all of the things, and that was a wonderful indoctrination. It was from there I went into following words. So, I started out being their, uh, public relations manager, which was telling stories for a nonprofit. You and I just had a conversation about philanthropy and passion, and then I did take a circuitous path into different writings, and it was a few years out of college that I realized that words could actually be a career. I always just thought that words were part of a personality or they could help you influence, and when I started getting into these different organizations, I saw that I was better at words than other people seem to be, and what I thought was just a core component of a conversation. It’s like some people are great at math, but I didn’t know that words came faster to me than others. It was only in a business environment that I started to see that and that it could literally change behavior. And when I realized that that could be a career path, that’s when I decided to go to journalism school and was able to get a degree from, um, Northwestern, which is a fantastic organization.
MARK WRIGHT 08:53
Great journalism school. Yeah.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 08:56
And it was, um, in intense, in all, all the wonderful ways and it also helped so many people talk about imposter syndrome. It just helped me unlock the fact that words could be my business. I had official permission to be curious and to ask questions and to help be a megaphone for other people, which kind of tied in with that nonprofit and the rest of it, but also then gave voice to stories, and I loved it.
MARK WRIGHT 09:26
There’s an old, uh, broadcast writing teacher, I think he’s still alive. He’s probably in his mid to late nineties if he’s still alive, named Merv Block. Merv Block wrote what I consider the bible to broadcast writing. Uh, it’s a book called, um, writing Broadcast News, Shorter, Sharper, Stronger. He wrote for Cronkite. He wrote for, you know, legends in at the network level. But his, his book is super simple and it’s just about writing simple declarative writing. That sounds like talking and, uh, and I’ve loved his work over the years, and the thing that I struggled with most when I first got out of, out of, uh, broadcasting school was, was writing. I was super slow, really slow writing, and then what I realized, um, you know, years later is that good writing comes from clear thinking, and so I was so early in my in my career that, that my brain didn’t have the structure yet, that it needed to understand all the stuff that I was trying to write about. So I was, I was constantly playing catch up. But tell me about the early part in your career. Like gimme an example of when you realized, wow, this, this writing really does matter.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 10:38
Well, and it’s a muscle, I love how you just said that about the critical thinking that bleeds into the words, because a, a another component of the work I do today is I help people be heard in a noisy world. So it, it can come from words, but it also comes from listening in a lot of other elements. Um, but I think for me, where I started to realize it was an intrinsic ability was when I would listen, and then be able to translate it back exactly how you said that Shorter, Sharper, Stronger. Um, but that was, at the time I thought it was just me processing and the information and seeking clarification, making sure that I understood. And then when I saw the light bulbs go on in other people’s heads and I realized that I brought them along to the information, that’s when I saw that there was that, that chain link between information and wisdom. One of my favorite quotes is, and it’s so true in the digital age, but we are drowning in information and starving for wisdom, and I think that that has become, if I can play a very small part and not always about the byline, as you well know, sometimes the best stories are the ones that you don’t know where they originate from, but just making those connections, those, those light bulbs, that’s joy, that’s effervescence.
MARK WRIGHT 11:52
And every organization, hard stop needs good communicators, right? Because you talked about nonprofits, you talk about corporations. I mean, to just get business done. Lots of people need to talk to one another. They need to talk about the mission, they need to talk about product lines. They need to talk about how teams are working together, and so, if you don’t have strong communicators, throughout your company. It’s gonna be a long haul, isn’t it?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 12:17
Well, I certainly think so. The challenge is, I have never met an executive who didn’t think that they were a strong communicator. So, they’re more like, what do I,
MARK WRIGHT 12:27
And how many, how many boring speeches have we heard from those same executives at rotary meetings when it’s like, come on, please don’t give me your shareholder notes that you just gave last week. Tell me a story for gosh sake.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 12:42
That’s just it. Oh, so Mark, I know we’re gonna get into the brain here soon, but story lights up the brain. That’s the science of it. Facts and figures illuminate two parts of our brain, but stories take four quadrants of it, and so it’s exactly that, what you said though, of getting of really helping to educate and influence at the same time. To say, just because you spoke doesn’t mean everybody heard and understood. And then you take mediums and modalities in the digital age and it’s just, we’re, we’re, we’re lucky if people can capture a sentence these days but, uh, there is a lot of education still. Look at all of the layoffs that have been happening in the last short while and just the the art and science of human conversation is still developing.
MARK WRIGHT 13:31
Yeah. I wanna talk a little bit about your, your work history. You spent, uh, something like eight years at, at Expedia at a really high level. Um, tell, tell me about Expedia and what you did there.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 13:43
Expedia was a lot of fun. It’s what got me out to Seattle. Uh, after grad school, I was coming into the world, uh, right when 911 happened, and so, I ended up going not into traditional journalism, but into corporate, uh, completely on accidents, and because I was trained in words and poetry and journalism, walking into business, uh, I didn’t get the Dilbert handbook. And so, I would go into the meetings and be like, well, that sounds like baloney. Can we say it this way? And I was not always popular, but it, it got the job done. And so, but that’s when I realized that people were my favorite beat because as an employee, I’m always in my own audience. And so, and I, I loved your, um, I loved your podcast with Howard Bahar because his book really resonated with me when I was early days at Expedia, and one of the things that he came and spoke at Expedia, he said, only the truth sounds like the truth, and that was such, so validating for those of us who live in the currency of words. Um, but such a validation in terms of everything that we’re talking about in terms of redeeming the workplace and authenticity and the rest of it. And so, bringing that principle with the backing of science and information psychology is how a lot of influence can be done. So by the time I came to Seattle and to the dot-coms, so I, I went sideways into corporate communications, did, did the big consulting companies, 100-year-old insurance companies, did all the, uh, the living MBAs. But then when I went into dot-com, it was so delicious because it’s the most 24/7 global inclusive, because that’s the world of dot-coms. I was working at the time for 35-year-old CEO, who was a mergers and acquisitions guy who wasn’t used to the people side, and it was such a fun. It went back to my nonprofit days of everything is your job, and communication was the thread that ran through it, and people were the, the daily barometer of whether the truth sounded like the truth. So, and it was a portfolio company, so it was multiple countries, multiple brands. There was no one size fits all, which just nothing sharpens your knife faster than learning and running at the same time.
MARK WRIGHT 16:10
So, you were in uh, recruiting, if I’m not mistaken, right? Or no?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 16:15
At one point I was hired to come in as their, their very first director of internal communications. You pick, pick a brand anywhere and they’re gonna have advertising, they’re gonna have public relations. If they’re public, they’re gonna have media relations and investor relations. Very few are like, let’s scale up the internal communications. They’re usually like, let’s just put that on an HR person and do a newsletter, and so I was controversial even coming in. In fact, during the interview they said he is not fully convinced about the benefit of this, but the, the survey results show that we need some improvement. That is human capital. After all, you are talking to a financier and they said you have one year, you have no staff, no budget, no guarantee this job will continue after year, and I was like, done. Put me in the game. Like that’s, that’s the best I knew. I never wanted the Dilbert cubicle in five years in the same role. So, I was like, great sink or swim, let’s play dot-com and that’s what that was.
MARK WRIGHT 17:13
Well, gimme some examples of, of your work at Expedia. I’ve always been fascinated by people who can work within the corporate structure, but I’ve never, I’ve never been a fly on the wall to, to those types of meetings and, and the strategy and all that stuff. Um, so pull the curtain back a little bit, Kristin, if you would there.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 17:31
Well, a lot of it at times can seem like lather, rinse, repeat, especially in the, the stayed big companies that I was with, which is why going into dot-com felt fresh and fluid. It, um, as I mentioned, the, the CEO was 35 years old, um, and he’s now the CEO of Uber. It’s Dara Khosrowshahi, and so brilliant brain into a new environment for him, and it’s so much less structured. So now talking about business meetings in dot-com environment, but it was, it was so asynchronous because you didn’t really know whose title was what, and there were, there weren’t the Midwestern business suits and where I had to be escorted in by somebody, three levels above me to attend this meeting. Um, it was very fluid and it was, the ideas had center stage. Um, and that was fun. A lot of swearing, a lot of, um, spaghetti on the wall and that, that’s where I could take the construct and the appreciation for business principles, but then play, it was intellectual finger paint. And then because of that growth and that dyna, there was I think a 10, 10,000-person company when I joined. 10-year-old, 10,000 company, not even 10,000. And so, with acquisitions and mergers and divestitures culture, which is the thread of what we’re talking about, right? That fabric and everything came in and was, was different and upside down, or it was from Southeast Asia, and there’s no book that gets you up to speed on business the same way that that just does in the moment. It’s like boiling water. So, you could not be an expert, which was delightful and terrifying at the same time. You just didn’t have time. So, I think I’d been there a year, a year and a half, and as with all things, and I think journalists love this. We, we want to be, um, instant experts on lots of things. I wanna be an inch deep and a mile wide, like just give me something new every day. And that definitely was dot-com. But they would say, okay, we need you to be on this project for a while, or we need you to take over for this while we’re hiring, and I spent three months leading up campus recruiting. I was doing my handover being like, okay, here’s everything that’s wrong and everything that your new recruiting leader needs to fix, and by the way, we’re going into recession cause it was 2008, and I got a call that night from the executive saying, we want you to do it, and I was like, I, I’m literally unqualified, and she said, we all are. That was one of the most liberating things because I’m a GenXer, I have three college degrees now Mark. Like, I sit in the front of the room, I research everything. I’m a mad nerd, and what dot-com did was said, just go! Dot-com enabled intuition instead of tenure. It rewarded, tenacity, it rewarded integrity, and that’s when I put all of that passion together and was able to say, you mean I can fail? And they said, fail, but fail forward, and that was liberating.
MARK WRIGHT 20:48
Yeah. We have a boss, uh, you know Dan Rogers?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 20:51
I do.
MARK WRIGHT 20:52
You know, he, his saying is, make mistakes at full speed. So, you know, the emphasis is on taking action cause that’s where you learn and that’s where you make progress, right?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 21:01
It is. And so, when they said you’re now in charge of global recruiting,
MARK WRIGHT 21:06
So, you had, you had nothing on your resume that said anything about
KRISTIN GRAHAM 21:10
No. Well, so as a communicator, I was always working with HR or the employer brand or awards or executives. I always had my fingers in a lot of things as, as we do. And so, they said, we, we don’t need the textbook on recruiting. We need a good leader, and you know how to talk to people and what else is recruiting the people. So they said it would be a six-month assignment, it lasted three years and it just catapulted me. So, cause when you’re in communications and Mark, I think you get this too. Your job is to help other people. Land well, sound well, think through things. You’re a partner, you come in in recruiting, you’re a service provider. They, they wanted it done yesterday. They wanted it cheaper. They wanted it. So, these people, these executives, and leaders all over the world who loved me one minute, were like, we need this fixed now. And so, I think it came from that scrappy untraditional businessperson for me to come back and be like, uh, no. How about your people quit canceling on interviews? How about we do this? And it was just, it broke it open. I’m like, why are we not at historically black colleges? Can we think about this differently? And then they were like, who is the, what is happening? And it was fun. You put, like I said, I have older brothers who are both over six feet. It’s like, let’s go, let’s have this conversation. Um, and that’s what made the business fun. And I knew, I knew I couldn’t possibly show up. It was my first executive title and I’m like, I didn’t earn this, I don’t have the credit. And so, I had to rely on the team and the first thing I did was not meet with all the executives and the direct reports. I went to the recruiting coordinators, and I sat next to them, and I said, show me how you schedule a loop. Show me, show me what it looks like when a resume comes in. I know nothing, and knowing nothing.
MARK WRIGHT 22:56
What does that for, for those of us who don’t know, what, what is a loop?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 22:59
A loop is when people are it, they schedule them to come in and talk to three or four or five different people. Um, and all of the mechanics of just scheduling, how do they get there? What time, what, what time zone? All of it but I went to the front line because I was able to, I had permission to say, I don’t know this space, and as, as a journalist, I always got to do that. Tell me what this looks like and tell me how that works. But I hadn’t done it in business. I thought in business you had to earn your way up the ladder by doing it in the right order, and I loved getting blown out. There was no way I could be credible because I didn’t have the knowledge. So that allowed me to be a student and to go to the people who did know and I’m eternally grateful for that leadership lesson.
MARK WRIGHT 23:44
So, you mentioned Howard Behar a little bit ago from Starbucks, and when I asked Howard about, you know, give me some tips on hiring people, and he said he always hired for values first. He said, you know, the accounting department can interview them about their accounting skills, but I’m gonna, I’m going to ask them about their values. Like, what, what is, what does your family love about you? What does your family hate about you? When you, uh, when you were recruiting, like, what was, how did you sort of infuse that, that honesty? And I, I just think it’s fascinating people who can sort of ask some questions of someone to determine whether they’re gonna be a good fit for a company. That, that seems super hard.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 24:24
It is. It is. Well, it’s like dating. It’s like parenting. It’s like all of it. It all comes down to not just the question you asked, the space in between the question. So, I’ll say, I’ll say two things here that I learned from that cause of course there were, uh, great teams who were doing the actual hiring. I was supposed to be the strategic leader, and I’m sticking my nose in anything. I’m like, I’m sitting in on this interview. Um, and Howard came and spoke at Expedia around the same time. He was still at Starbucks at that time, and one of the things I remember back to the values conversation, he said, and then I looked for it as I went into subsequent, uh, candidate selection. He said he would go and sit in Starbucks anonymously, just go sit in the coffee shop and he would, um, have a napkin on the floor and see who walked by of the team members and who picked up the napkin and how quickly, and, um, and it’s, I I, everybody can look good on paper, right? And so, in those conversations, so, so I remember that in terms of look for the napkin in people’s stories. But then the second thing I brought into that, uh, which is from our journalist days, is it’s not in the question, it’s the space between and holding space so that everybody’s scripted. I, I did that for the executives. It’s the conversation that happens when, when it’s not scripted, and so just waiting or say more about that or, and people get very uncomfortable when they’re not following something that’s glossy and pretty and the real conversation. So, people are gonna hand you the resume. That’s their, that’s their script, cause that’s the construct of how we operate but it’s the story, and I usually, and I still do this to this day, I’ll say, tell me something interesting about you that has nothing to do with work. That’s great for the person next to you at the airport or at the cocktail bar, just because it forces you to be like, who’s, what’s your napkins? What are the things that you care about? What would you stop to do? So, coming at it from an untraditional place allows the stories, and, and it also, when we get into equity and inclusion and belonging, and especially the brain, and the story that got me into being an advocate for human potential was because it’s, it’s in the differences that the real juice is not the conformity of how many years you spent here and which degrees you have. It’s, um, what makes you, what’s your special sauce.
MARK WRIGHT 26:52
Yeah, totally agree with that. So, when did you go to Amazon, and what was your job there?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 26:57
So, Amazon, I went there in 2016. So, which was following, for anybody keeping track a scathing article in the New York Times in 2015 about the culture at Amazon and really a hardcore reverberation around tech in general, but they, they took, uh, focused aim at Amazon, and my intention after leaving, uh, such a big job for so long and I took a sabbatical in between, I want, I, my intention, and again, it’s never up to me, the universe has, keeps reminding me was to go smaller and to have bigger fingerprints, et cetera, cause by that time I had had the financial success that I wanted to kind of follow where were, was impact over income, which is a personal mantra of mine. And, but in the beautiful network of the world and the people that you collect as you go through these experiences, I had a sponsor who, who said, why don’t you just, why don’t you come in and, and do a conversation with us? You’ll make us better. Which, which is brilliant recruiting strategy by the way. It’s, uh, hey Mark, I’m, do you know anybody who might like this job or right. It’s just, it’s such, it’s great psychology and I fell for it hook long and sinker and I used to do it for a living, but, uh, she said, come in and, and help us be sharp and, uh, so I went through anybody going through an Amazon loop is, it’s like defending a master’s thesis. It, Amazon is, um, a whole different university when it comes to business from their compensation philosophy to their communication practices, which I can speak to in narrative paper writing to their interview process. I had an eight-hour interview. It was an intensive, but I, I was just in it for the experience. It was like, if nothing else I can say that I interviewed there and I was very similar to the others of, of course you have the construct of the question. Tell me about a time and some of the business elements to suss out key qualifications, but like, cause I love the story between the story and so,
MARK WRIGHT 28:58
and you must have had a ton of, uh, you know, experience from Expedia that you could translate in terms of lessons and abilities and stuff like that, right?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 29:06
Sure, and Amazon is very methodical. They, they call it their mechanisms for identification and for hire rate, and I’d, I’d known about the company I, I’d recruited against them for a decade. So that’s fun. Um, and there’s a lot written on the Amazon culture and at the time I was interviewing for, uh, a role in kind of diversity and inclusion and I, by the end of it, I was telling them why I wasn’t the best candidate for them, and you know, and here’s all the reasons why. And so afterwards they came back and said, cause I basically talked myself out of that role. I’m like, I am not what you need. I know this to be true. Um, and they came back and said, how about a different role? How about we talk about something over here? And so that was fun because it just goes back to why don’t you, one of the things I really love about their culture, and they have the ability and the privilege to do this, is they can just bring on talent and then find a role. I mean, they’re so large, and, and so they have that, um, seeking excellence criteria, which is, which is really special. So, coming in and I started in AWS, which is their cloud division, Amazon Web Services, which again was another, at that time, 10,000-person unit. I was like, oh, I’m at the largest company in the world, but in a small subset. Well, that didn’t last very long, but it is like going from community college to Harvard, the being around extra sharp knives all the time, and the critical thinking, which you were saying earlier. Um, and it was a whole different communication style, but it was such a playground. I’ve, and I have an MBA, but I feel like it was a different level of application. It wasn’t theory anymore. It was, um, really around the germination of ideas, and that was cool. The egos are stripped out of it. In fact, it’s very much the opposite. You don’t get big executive titles, very, very few do. It was really all about you go into a meeting, you don’t have any idea who’s who, and, and that’s liberating. And so really being among world-class thinkers, um, who’s, who routinely challenged, but challenged your ideas as a way to invest in them, not to criticize them or to ensure, uh, conformity. It was very much like, we want to be the best, so we will bring our best brains and sharpen all corners of this, and it was, it was an investment. It, it’s, it was, it’s not soft and fuzzy, but you come out. It was, it was like going to professional personal trainers every day being like, shift this, do this, think about this, and, um, people investing all the time to keep getting you to the next level of thinking.
MARK WRIGHT 31:51
So, what does it take to succeed at Amazon for somebody who may be just coming out of college now and looking at that company?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 31:58
Well, that’s a different question than how I would answer it for me. I’ve heard a lot of people say that if you come early in your career to Amazon, it’s a phenomenal training ground. Think of an athlete early in their, um, arc of really getting to understand form and measure. You’re working with the best of the best, uh, physiologists and sports psychologists and all the rest of it. For me, I was in my forties, and it was, again, wildly liberating. I didn’t need the title, or I wasn’t necessarily chasing the next, I could sit and enjoy the seasoning of great brains around me because I, I already had confidence in my competence. So that was fun. If you’re at a different point in your career, I can see why that would be, um, something that you’re constantly striving for or looking for mile markers along the way. I was like, this is gonna be fun for however long it lasts, and then the world changed when I was there, so I was, um, I had multiple roles, but I spent the first year of the pandemic cuz I was working in culture and communications in my last two years there, and I was there for almost five, and, but that first year of the pandemic where that was culture is a beautiful brochure or it’s a page on an internet, you insert covid and culture all of a sudden is daily actions. And so that was a whole different level of seeing great companies rise up to take care of people, and I was, uh, very privileged to, to get to see that. So, you can have all the mechanisms, all the benefits of Amazon, but to see how everyone in that space led forward was a whole thing on redeemed workplace or not so redeemed as we saw in different industries.
MARK WRIGHT 33:49
Yeah, what a strange thing that Amazon was perfectly positioned to be the company that everyone went to during the pandemic, right? I mean, we had to get stuff delivered to our houses, but, but from a culture standpoint, what, what, what changed when the pandemic hit at Amazon?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 34:07
One of the things that I was able to see, and of course I have a small view because it’s such a large company, is they were one of the, they really stepped forward with communication, especially in the point of saying, we don’t know the answer yet. So often companies or brands or leaders, they, they hesitate, we don’t wanna speak until we have everything. We filled out every Q and A until it’s been proofed and polished nine times, and again, I came from copywriting and editors, and I understand the aspiration for perfection, but there’s no room for it in culture. Messy and authentic beats polished and perfect any day of the week. And so, what I really was able to observe Amazon do was to step forward and say, here’s what we know as of this date and time, and lots of Qs without As right questions, without answers. They were also one of the first where it was feasible to send people home without large committee meetings. One of the, one of the elements of just being able to be, do, do the right thing, do the people first. Now of course there are elements within that company where people had to be in person, but every time I was able to go into the office, I, my joke was it was more sanitized and safer than my local grocery store. Um, the, the provisions, they were one of the first to roll out covid testing that got dropped off at your home because of their size and scale, they could offer benefits that weren’t those award weddings on the side, it was like, here’s a hotline you can call if you have questions for this. They could use their influence, their impact to really do things that were meaningful. And so, a and they were among the first that says, we don’t expect you back again for those who qualify for at least six months. And it ended up being over three years. And so, you didn’t have to worry, and I was a single mom at the time with, with younger teenagers of being like, I, I’m just gonna be here, and they were able to bring forward choice and I think especially if you go into BEATS WORKING and culture choice is the economy that is gonna change the dynamic more than conformity.
MARK WRIGHT 36:13
So, I’d love to talk about the company that you, you founded during the pandemic, but I, I would love to go back a little bit. You mentioned your boys talk about what it was like being a mom in Corporate America and how you managed to, to balance all of that, because I have such respect for, because as you know, we, if we’re gonna be honest, uh, women have to deal with when they have children, have to deal with so much responsibility to get, especially single parents, but even not just to get, just to keep everything done in a day. Oh, and by the way, you have a full-time job at, at the biggest company in the world. So, what was it like being a, a mom during those years and did you have to draw some lines? Did you get help from some of the companies that you worked for? What was that like?
KRISTINE GRAHAM 37:00
Well, that’s such a layered question on, on a lot of levels, and I, I love having the opportunity to explore it because I think we, we learn through other people’s shared experiences. I, um, was very fortunate that from when I moved into Seattle and into the dot-com arena, I was at a position that afforded, um, a lot of benefits, financial benefits for sure, instability. I also, I, I was married for almost 20 years, so I did have a partner and our, our family decision, especially when our children were younger, was that, uh, my former husband stayed home. And so, as I took this global job where I was traveling all over, I had the benefit and the very distinct privilege of knowing that, uh, my children were with the primary, uh, caregiver and parents. And so that is a element that I don’t think can ever be overlooked. I think it’s easy to kind of step into a demographic and talk about being a woman in business, but I really have to acknowledge the advantages that I had in that, uh, mm, exclusive of gender. Just having that, um, care provision regardless of how it’s, um, formed. It, it could be through communities or additional family members, but for me that absolutely allowed a whole different level of, um, ability to perform, because I think that for any working caregiver, but certainly for parents, your, your mind never stops running of what cost is being paid for what I am experiencing in the moment. And so, by the time I was divorced, it, I was at Amazon and at that time I did have teenagers, so it wasn’t the same care, and then Covid, of course, on top of it, it wasn’t the same care level as a lot of other employees and employers were, were dealing with, right the, the very young, um, or different elements of needs. So as much as I and I, I was able to be one certain, certain levels, especially my Expedia days and was their first Chief Diversity officer, I led a lot of, um, efforts that way, but I always did so from a, a perch of privilege. And so, I always have to honor that and acknowledge that and still be able to see that that voice that we talked about earlier sometimes is there to move things out of the way for the others. And so while my personal journey, and of course it has its challenges because anybody who’s been through a divorce or parenting, uh, can say that. But um, it really was more around how much wider can we make this road? Because whatever we achieve is very, very superficial unless we send the elevator back down for others.
MARK WRIGHT 39:52
Hmm. Wow. That’s well said. So, talk about Unlock The Brain. When did you set, decide to form that company?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 40:00
Uh, well, I’d had the idea as most entrepreneurs have an itch in their brain forever, and I think I really enjoyed being an intrapreneur for so long. I’d had these wonderful landscapes to be able to go and play. And so I felt like I had those same qualities and attributes of, um, that entrepreneurial vision with the comfort and security of somebody else’s background. And so, when I was at Amazon, I mentioned earlier, they have a very unique communication process, which is a, a, a written, like a white paper, a memo, and part of why I had some confidence going in was like, I know how to write. I’m in the corporate headquarters. It’s my native language. I know my way around words, and it was humbling. Every big impetus in my career, Mark comes from being deeply humbled, deeply humbled and, uh, fail fast. Is that what Dan said? Yeah. Fail publicly. That’s a good one.
MARK WRIGHT 41:00
Make mistakes at full speed. Yeah.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 41:02
Full speed. Full speed. Yeah. Trip over both your feet at the same time. Um, and, and so I, I was brought in and of course everybody thought, oh, we’ve got this great writer, and I went to write my first paper and oh, it was very, very painful. So I found myself in a big, big conference room with 300 other people taking this class. It wasn’t offered. It was by a, an individual and I was a student and I’m sitting in there and I’m a big nerd, but I don’t like not being good at something. That’s why I’ve never picked up golf for the record. But, um, and, and I was watching and learning and being humbled by this structure and afterwards I walked up to the, the facilitator and said, if I’m struggling doing this, I’m guessing a lot of other people are, do you need volunteers to do it? And because it wasn’t, Amazon is very much self-service, as, as an employee and as a learner, like, figure it out, right? We hired the best, go figure it out, and so, this narrative process, which a lot of interviews and, and a lot of strategic meetings are all based on you write a paper, you present the paper, everybody reads the paper, then they discuss it. That is not the way normal business operations work.
MARK WRIGHT 42:17
So, is that universal throughout Amazon? Is that just the way the company works? If, if we’re thinking about you know, making a foray into this new market and they want to have a meeting about it. Everybody writes a paper first and then comes to the table.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 42:31
A team can write a paper. It’s not necessarily each individual. So, there’s a lot of contributors to it, and it’s not every meeting. There are certainly regular meetings where people talk to each other, but if you are doing decision-based meetings and it really gets into that double click, then double click again of explore it, look around, and it’s also what Jeff Bezos called the Great Equalizer. It takes it away from the person presenting and it puts it on the idea there’s no bylines on it and it’s about data yes, but even, um, they also have a format called a press release FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions where part of the paper is writing it as though it’s already occurred. And so a great example is Prime, which many of us enjoy Prime. The concept of it was presented as a press release. So, I listened to your great podcast with Justin about the entrepreneurs and what journalists hate about, uh, press releases but the methodology behind this one was, have you anticipated the questions that you’re gonna ask? And it really, you said it earlier, that clear thinking, it gets into, you don’t have to have all the answers, but can you acknowledge back to what we were talking about earlier? Can you acknowledge the component of it? Can you get other great brains? So, a large majority of meetings, I’ll say it that way, do rely on a written format of some element in order to make business decisions. So, I ended up volunteering to teach this class, and at the time I was in AWS, and I ended up for the next four years teaching that as a volunteer to tens of thousands of Amazonians all over the world. So, when you ask about what got me into my entrepreneurial journey, um, words are, words are my favorite roommate from when I was a kid with a typewriter in my room. But bringing words and light bulbs to other people felt like a purpose, and we teach what we most need to learn bar done. That’s so the only way to get better is to be in it. And so, when you go and you volunteer to teach something to hundreds and thousands of people who are hired to be the best in their fields, and then they give you feedback. Like our joke is, feedback is a gift, but you might wanna keep the receipt and you know, you’ve been on the other side of editors and producers and um, but the best part was being able to learn collaboratively and the more people challenge you and question you, and then I became better at not just being a presenter, cause I’ve been a public speaker for a long time, but how to enable information to land. Not just how to say it pretty or to say it American or to say it this way. And so, I really dug more into brain science and information psychology and then good old fashioned elbow grease of like every review, everybody getting up there. And so, for years I was able to go from the interns to every new executive who came through and really experience human learning, human potential. And I’ve long had an interest in the brain, which we can talk about if we have time, because of a lot of personal experiences I had. And then as a journalist, the more I saw that each adjustment allowed a larger potential, a larger expanse, to really allow ideas to land where most made sense for them and it just sharpened me on a whole different level. So, I knew I wanted to be of service in the world, and while I was there, I created a lot of, I had lots of other conversations, how to be productive, how to write better, faster, how to lead, and I just started thinking, I wanna bring these ideas to others so that we can have this animated kitchen of learning. And um, yeah and then Covid just gave a platform where people’s desire for education and connection was just, um, a perfect mix.
MARK WRIGHT 46:43
Yeah. I think it’s so inspiring, Kristin, that you’ve been learning and teaching almost simultaneously your whole career. Um, and that’s just super fantastic. So, Unlock the Brain is a consulting firm, is that right?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 46:56
Yes. So, the entire premise of it is to bring information and I said earlier to the busy, overwhelmed. The people who, we don’t need five-page papers, we need like 15-second clips and to really appreciate the overwhelmed brain, my interest in neuroscience goes back for decades and it’s really understanding the nuances of that along with kind of mass communication cause there are lots of realistic elements of where we have to get a lot out there, like what we are doing now, but how can we make there be bite-sized options that people can consume instead of saying there’s only one way for this to be delivered.
MARK WRIGHT 47:41
Talk about your son. You have a son with autism, and, and, uh, I read that that changed how you look at communication and, and I, I would love to know how, how that happened.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 47:54
Hmm. Well, I have two parts to this story. The first is that my oldest brother is developmentally disabled. And so, think back to 1960s military, uh, classified as, uh, clinically retarded. Those were the terminology of the time, certainly not how we use our words now. So, before I was even born, that was the construct of our family. So growing up I have always been exposed to alternative learning and not very, um, inclusive. So, and we also were in the military for a long time, so through different countries, through different dynamics, and I learned and saw. As I came into the world, that’s the only world that I knew what it was like and how people interacted with people who were different and all of the nudging of what should be and shouldn’t be. And so then I became a voice for him and in a lot of other ways, but also understood the ecosystem of the unsaid. Uh, my empathic abilities have been finely tuned since I was before I could walk because I know what is being said, but I also know what’s being meant, and, and I’m sure you’re like this as a storyteller, a look on a face, a small adjustment to a word, it makes a big difference and a lasting impact. So then fast forward,
MARK WRIGHT 49:19
So, as people, sorry to butt in, but as so as people are interacting with your brother, you’re noticing as a kid, The real meaning of what they’re saying may not be the words that they’re using, and just the social cues and, and there’s, there’s, you know, so much stigma around learning, you know, around learning disabilities and mental disabilities. Wow, that’s fascinating. That, that shaped you, that as a kid.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 49:44
Oh, and then you take the, uh, you take the military on top of it, and you take the education system and then you take gender dynamics and, um, cuz I have another older brother who is incredibly intelligent, full scholarship, um, CFO and you have these two dynamics of the brain, right? And, and a lot of misunderstood components of just mental abilities at that time. So, I had my own, uh, reasons for being a student of that space, but really a student of watching how other people are because yes, integrity and courtesy and all of the false meetings of words, which is why I’m sure I leaned into it more too. And then when it fast forward and now I’m, you know, accomplished in having got my degrees in this, and then I become a mother, and, um, my oldest son is on the spectrum and it was when, it was actually the day I was leaving to go to the airport to fly to Seattle to interview for this job at Expedia. Mark. I’m sitting at the preschool where they slide a piece of paper across, I think it’s three and a half at this point, and say, um, if, if he’s on the autism spectrum, here’s, here’s what it means. A photocopied piece of paper to give to a parent to tell them what their kid’s potential is, and so my roots, uh, with, with my brother and just the rest of it, I mean that, that scrappy, that scrappy person was like, where’s a piece of paper that’s gonna tell me everything he’s capable of? Because if we conform to the world that just says, oh, if you’re this, then you’re this. Um, which is what I watched the whole world do. And, and as a good GenXer, right? And as somebody who didn’t come up with financial means and then was able to get a lot through dot-com, I was like, this stuff, this doesn’t always equate. So there is, there isn’t fairness out there, but there is always potential. So, I think you make your own. So, when I’m, when I’m given this piece of paper and told that this is what is gonna happen to my child, um, I was like, well, no thanks. And then they were like, you’re gonna take a job and move away from friends and family and have this big dot-com thing, and I landed in, in the middle of Seattle who had access to autism research centers and all this other asterisks of, well, what about this? And so, it was more of a thank you for the information. I’ll insert my own punctuation here. I firmly believe that there should be a lot more commas where people wanna insert periods. And it was, it was a personal pursuit though. You can’t come out of that as a parent and not have all of the layers. And so, I go from this highly trained and educated person whose whole day was spent speaking to an individual, a soul who was processing my words completely differently, and when he was, he was probably five or six, and he said to me at one point, cause I was distracted in the kitchen, he said, did you hear my talk? And I was like, you know what, buddy? I didn’t say it again. You’ve got my ears now, and that, that changed my career on different levels too but I didn’t know it at the time. So, everything I learned about neuroscience and the human potential and neuroplasticity was not because somebody photocopied a piece of paper, but it was like, but what else? What else? And so, the more I learned about that, the more I would see it in my day-to-day, and I’m like, are these connected? Is the neuroscience connected to information psychology? And, and so that when Unlock The Brain, it’s about human potential and it’s about getting out of our own way, and it’s also, we respond to science because everything in academia and, and professional, we’re saying, do this, do this formula. But everybody, we root for everything. We double-click on every rocky story out there is the person who overcame the conformity. So, what if that could be something? So, as I go to universities and, and the military and companies, it’s unlocked the brain because it’s not, here’s the one way that you’re supposed to do, uh, productivity or communication. It’s what if we allowed there to be a choice economy? What if inclusion was actually a competitive advantage? And it takes, as you well know, it takes the outside person coming forward and saying that, and that is, I think, my greatest opportunity now.
MARK WRIGHT 54:21
And I think that story illuminates a really fundamental truth in the world today. And that is, the better that I am at understanding other people, however diverse they may be, for whatever reason, the more successful I will be in whatever situation, right? As a, as a partner, as a dad, as a, as an employee, as a coworker. I mean, isn’t that, isn’t that the universal truth that, that we’re starting to just begin to tap into?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 54:51
I think that’s gonna be the best competitive advantage out there of being able to say, uh, bring your whole self, right? That’s like the new thing. Bring yourself but bring it when and how you can. And one of the, the key components that I bring forward with companies and groups that I work for is chronobiology. Everybody wants to talk productivity and how to hack it and how to do all this stuff, but I like to lean into the science and the brain and say, what about the different types of day and what does that do biologically? And my partner, he’s a night owl, I’m an early bird. We’re not right or wrong, we just are. And so, what if we could bring science to liberate us from having to be right. We could just say, oh, that’s an, and that’s an ampersand. That’s a, we can both coexist. And then what if we unlock that words come fast to me. So, if I can do something in 10 minutes, why am I gonna spend the next 50 minutes in your meeting? Liberate me, let me go do something. Let’s, let’s have a baton that goes between brains instead of, we all must be in this very expensive meeting at the same time, and I think when we get away from that, it’s really going to be, uh, the next level.
MARK WRIGHT 56:02
And, and they’re like, come on Kristin. Aren’t you committed? What are you, what are you distracted? And it’s like, no, I’m just efficient. Let me leave the meeting.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 56:09
Yeah. That’s when they used to hand me the pen and say, why don’t you take notes? It’s like, that’s sweet.
MARK WRIGHT 56:14
So, did you, uh, one of the reasons I was chuckling is you were telling that that chronotype story, John Medina, the, you know, the brain scientist, you know, John, I think
KRISTIN GRAHAM 56:21
I love him.
MARK WRIGHT 56:22
Um, you know, I asked him if you, if you could do something in Corporate America, he said, frankly, I would match chronotypes. I would, I would do a chronotype assessment and match people on shifts based on their, um, on their chronotype. Like, like I’m the same way. Uh, uh, I think as you, did you say your husband is a, is a night owl?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 56:44
My partner is. Yeah.
MARK WRIGHT 56:45
Your partner is. Yeah. And me too. I mean, it takes a couple of cups of coffee before I can even talk in the morning but come 8:00 PM man, turn me loose. I’m, I’m on fire.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 56:57
Exactly. And I think that that’s just, and what kinda goes back to the brain of like, um, what if it wasn’t a social condition of who, who’s doing it right? And what if we didn’t say Mark just set your alarm 30 minutes earlier. Like, what, what if we just said, how do you best shine and how can we get there? And that didn’t seem like something soft or squishy and
MARK WRIGHT 57:18
There we go.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 57:20
I think we’re seeing it in academia, we’re seeing it in professional. Covid turned the world upside down. Let’s keep going.
MARK WRIGHT 57:28
Um, if you haven’t, and I’m talking to the listeners, if you haven’t checked out Kristin’s, uh, LinkedIn page, I love it. It’s just beautiful little lessons based on all of your, your knowledge and expertise that you’ve, that you’ve built up over the years. Um, the most recent one is finding and using your voice, a guide to ignoring the BS, and it doesn’t say BS. A guide to ignoring the BS and embracing the awkward awesomeness of you. I love that. So, in, in these types of, you know, little snippets, little articles, I love the fact that you’re just giving little bursts of information and, hey, have you thought about it this way? Or maybe in this situation, maybe show up like this next time and don’t be so hard on yourself, right? So, like, specifically that, that article, tell, tell me what you hoped the takeaway would be.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 58:21
Well, I call them brain snacks. I’m never gonna come out and I, I love John Medina and I love, I I, and I read, I always say I nerd, so you don’t have to, that’s why companies hire me. I’ve done all the research, I checked it three times. Um, I’ve cited my source. Uh, I love the principles and the theories. And so, what I try to offer is not as the capital E expert is the, just the little thought bubbles, the brain snacks that says, what about this? What if it’s not about being right or wrong? What if it’s just about learning another way to look at it. And so, coming into that, and so much of it comes from the conversations that I have with others all the time. In fact, my, my last podcast was, I always say to my friends, beware cause you’re gonna show up there. But it’s, um, yeah, it’s, it’s taking those conversations and being like, maybe there’s an additional way to look at it, and, and all my podcasts are 10 minutes or less because it’s all about the attention economy. And so, it’s coming forward and saying, what if you could think of something smart but quickly and you can ruminate on that? And it doesn’t have to be a yes or a no. Just see what you lean forward into because that becomes the truth for you. It’s not because we have to go and do it this way, but we can do it a little bit better and truer to who we are, and I’ve spent decades making everybody else sound great. So, the last couple of years have been very, very interesting to put out ideas that are just kind of, for everyone. It’s open-source code and, I just wanna let it breathe.
MARK WRIGHT 59:55
Sort of like Linux, you know, wisdom, communications, wisdom. I love it.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 59:59
Yeah. What if we didn’t have to be experts, but we could just share ideas?
MARK WRIGHT 01:00:02
Wouldn’t that be cool? I love that idea.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:00:04
I like it.
MARK WRIGHT 01:00:05
So, a mutual friend of ours sent me an email recently. Attached is speaking of nerding out. Attached is a document, my friend and fellow word nerd, Kristin Graham, put together on how to write better emails faster. Did you know that 49% of people stopped reading an email after the 111th word? She’s got the science to back it up in quotes. Um, so this is an example of you doing the nerd, uh, the nerd work so that we, we don’t have to, okay. So, give us, uh, we’re, we’re running a little short on time, but I have to, this is great because I’ve got, I looked today, and I have 41,000 emails in my Gmail account. Uh, I should probably delete some of them.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:00:47
Namaste.
MARK WRIGHT 01:00:48
But yeah, give us some advice on how to write the best email at work.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:00:53
Oh gosh, this makes me so excited. Okay but I’ll do it quickly because as our friend said, uh, this was one of my first classes, the Write Better Faster. So, when it comes back to the attention economy, there’s three things that are gonna make your email stand out. You ready? The first is the subject line. That is the billboard on the information highway seven to nine words or less, my friends, right? But no emojis. You don’t need anything there. But quick seven to nine, that is your, your front door mat. Uh, the second thing is what I always call the bottom line on top, the BLOT. Don’t, it’s never, ever a bedtime story. Email should not take. I used to work in an executive that says, you have two swipes to my finger before I just hit delete. Cause everybody’s reading it on the go. So never ever bury the lead, right Mark?
MARK WRIGHT 01:01:38
So, get to the point, right?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:01:40
Get to the point. And in fact, a lot of people I worked with would put blot the bottom line. In fact, my episodes, I always say the bottom line on top of this because it’s, it’s such a courtesy to say, if you need to go, go friends, like here’s the bottom line on top. And so, we don’t need to be cute, we don’t need to be clever. Um, clarity is kindness. So just say, this is what the message is about. And then the third tip is, yes, you lose half your audience after 111 words. The average corporate email is 425 words. Most people will not get past the first 100. So just structure it. It’s all about attention economy and just plan accordingly. So subject line, bottom line on top. Aim for 111 words. That doesn’t have to be 111, but just make your most important points in the first 100.
MARK WRIGHT 01:02:31
And it, it stands to reason that that brevity is actually a positive because I’ve heard about studies that say that I don’t know how much, but 40, 50, 60% of emails, uh, are misconstrued. Like they don’t, like the original meaning of the email is not interpreted the way that the, the writer intended, and maybe, maybe that’s cause it’s 500 words and it’s going all over the place.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:02:57
Same with text though. It’s not just the length. I think it’s our social and communication atrophy from the last few years. It’s a big conversation. I do, especially with university students.
MARK WRIGHT 01:03:08
Um, as we start to wrap things up, Kristin, I’d love to know what, what are some things that are on your to-do list? I mean, in terms of like companies you wanna work with, or initiatives you wanna roll out, or, it seems like you’ve found a sweet spot of, of really helping people in a lot of different ways and companies as well through language.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:03:29
It’s been so fun. So, a, a large primary element is keynotes and workshops, and that’s all fun, but I really wanna move towards kind of on demand, brain snacks, on demand, cause we just don’t have the ability to always have this personal connection as delightful as it is. And so, it’s really being able to say, how can there be that free economy so that it’s, it’s put out there in a lot of the other spaces. Um, and the information belongs to everybody. So, it’s not some proprietary, you, you have to do this in order to get the secret there. The secret there, and that’s why my podcast is called Fewer Things Better. It’s um, what if we actually could enjoy the life that we work so hard for? What if the best commodity of all was time not getting to the bottom of that inbox. And so, it’s really kind of that permission to live your life instead of achieve your life. And that’s going to be one of the components that I hope it is brought forward. It’s permission to unlock the brain, and a lot of that is just to say Good enough. Good enough.
MARK WRIGHT 01:04:37
Wow. So, in, in your mind, is that how work is, is going to be redeemed in this country? That’s our mission on this podcast is to redeem work. You know?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:04:47
It is, and I think it comes back to, uh, work being redeemed because it isn’t about management by walking around or all of the other outdated elements. Even though I love Tom Peters, it really becomes, what if it was a free market society? What if we put problems up into this intellectual cloud and let people source the solutions instead of following the formula that outdated principles put forward? So, I think the more comfortable we get being uncomfortable, the better and faster we’re gonna be able to do what we need to do and then live how we want to live because that’s, and that’s what I love about what Dan says too. BEATS WORKING because if it doesn’t feel like work, we’re always gonna come back to do more of it.
MARK WRIGHT 01:05:36
Yeah. Kristen, who was the, do you have a boss that stands out over the years that that was just really the gold standard of what, what you hoped to be?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:05:48
Hmm. Well,
MARK WRIGHT 01:05:50
Or did you have a lot of bad bosses?
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:05:52
I, I’m afraid it’s more the latter. Um, I’ve had a lot, especially as I was doing a lot of management, it, it was more like, oh, let’s do the collection of, uh, um, all the things not to do, which is also my parenting principle too. Uh, but I think I had a lot of people, so, so going back to that CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi being able to be in a room, admit that he was wrong, say who owns the decision? It’s, it’s never owned by a title. I think watching people be, uh, bold showed me a lot more than watching the template for how to get promoted. So many people are trying to chase that, and I would rather be wrong out loud than write and have my integrity for sale, meaning rewarded for having my integrity for sale. And we’ve all left conversations where we just felt it in our gut, and I think following those instincts and doing the work instead of chasing the money, it’s always easy to say that once you’ve had both a title and money, but kind of the, the elevator back down is to say that there is no tradeoff for passion. And so, leaving a very comfortable job in the middle of Covid while divorced was about, um, and Steve Jobs has this great quote that says, if you have the right vision, you never have to get pulled. You’re always moving towards it, and it’s that too. It’s, it’s that thing that you do in the times that you’re not paid for it early in the morning, late at night. It’s the passion, and we keep trying to trade that for achievement. And that’s what I want my teenagers to have that sense of what matters is what matters, not what other people tell you matters.
MARK WRIGHT 01:07:40
Hmm. Well, Kristin Graham, this has been so much fun. Thank you for spending the time and for redeeming work in so many ways at so many different companies over the years. And we’ll put, uh, show note links to all of your amazing content, um, so that folks can connect with you outside of the podcast here. So, thank you so much. This has been fun.
KRISTIN GRAHAM 01:08:00
Thank you, my friend. Really appreciate it and you.
MARK WRIGHT 01:08:02
I’m Mark Wright. Thanks for listening to BEATS WORKING, part of the WORKP2P family. New episodes drop every Monday, and if you’ve enjoyed the conversation, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Special thanks to show producer and web editor Tamar Medford. In the coming weeks, you’ll hear from our Contributors Corner and Sidekick Sessions. Join us next week for another episode of BEATS WORKING where we are winning the game of work.
