Composable without Compromise: Team Diversity for success with Jasmin Guthmann

[Music] thank you [Music] hello everybody we are live yet again and so this is composable without compromise where we have a set of fixed questions that we always ask and we love getting different answers and I'm sure today those will be quite different so with me today is Jasmine and a lot of viewers will probably know you Jasmine but for the people who don't can you say who you are what you do all that stuff sure thanks Tim and thanks for having me in the first place my name is Jasmine I am we're a couple of hats and that's probably why a lot of people know me through various things that I do um for my day job I'm the head of corporate Communications at content stack um and we're partners and we really truly appreciate the work we do together so that's one part yeah exactly and then if I put my other hat on I'm a VP at the mock Alliance the mark Alliance is a non-profit industry body that was founded three years ago by just five companies and it has grown into this beautiful living and breathing thing that has more than 80 members amongst which are companies like AWS and Google uniform and we just came off of Mac 2 our second annual thought leadership conference in Amsterdam and I'm sure we'll touch on that later so that's uh the other thing that I do and the third thing that I'm very passionate about and I will squeezes in here is women in mock because it's important and women in mock is a subdivision of the mocha Lions a group of very passionate and dedicated women that get together and we do have male allies too so it's not a closed shop that's very important to me and we advocate for more women in Tech really it's as easy as that because guess what we may think we've come pretty far but reality is there's still a lot of work to do so ooh that was a mouthful but uh those are important things that's awesome and so today's title is it's basically this we have a bunch of questions about composable in our space but they are very open to also talk about diversity and women and mac and maybe before we get going I think it's important to highlight that you guys and Maca Lions just launched the Mac Alliance mentoring program for women or I guess anyone who wants to join so I'll just quickly put that on the screen so would you mind explaining a little bit what this is before we dive into our series of questions oh no absolutely not thanks for for allowing me to do that because it's super cool so what we've done is we've launched the womenmark mentorship program um just a few days ago and we um you know were hoping to match 50 mentors and mentees so it's one-on-one coaching for women in Tech no matter their seniority level no matter what they're from no matter where they want to go one-on-one coaching we believe is the one of the best available Tools in your toolkit to really progress in your career in your networking to make new connections to really get to where you're wanting to go so the mentees in a program will all be female because that really is the target audience that isn't the most desperate need for support and many of the women that we speak to don't necessarily they would never put up their hand and say I need mentorship I am important I need attention it's something that would never cross their mind so what we've set out to do is let's provide them an opportunity let's make sure that we find those women that deserve that kind of support and mentorship and make them part of the program the link that you're seeing on the bottom right here takes you to the form that you need to fill in very straightforward very easy promise it doesn't take more than three minutes to fill it in and that's all you need to do at this moment in time and there's a drop down it makes you ask you whether you want to be a mentor or a mentee so select mentee fill in your stuff you're good to go these forums will probably only be open until end of June because and I'm I'm happy and scared at the same time our launch of the program was so successful we've had so many mentors sign up that we now need to make sure that we you know don't die of success as somebody said very fitting me I'll keep that one in my back pocket it doesn't happen often but that's nice though and it's amazing because what we really wanted we were going to match the mentors and mentees across six different topics and the cross time zones because you really if you're you know in Asia you a mentor in the US is not going to do you any good because you will need to meet a witching hour so we were asking a few questions time zone is one of the topic you're most interested in is another and it will match mentors and mentees the program will kick off in September and from September to March every couple will have six hours of one-on-one mentorship time how you want to spread that out over the six months completely up to you and your Mentor uh so very a lot of freedom um but a very fantastic opportunity mentors that's one important thing are not all going to be female but they're going to be anything that crosses your road so it's male female Tim is one of them thank you so much for signing up very much appreciate it because we need male allies if we're asking the women in and off themselves to bring about all the change it's not going to happen so we have male female and diverse mentors which I think is amazing Megan Stabler from Bigcommerce is also signed up big of hers so we're really trying to be as diverse and the mentors as we possibly can it will match every mentor to amen t so not to be missed all right well that plug needed to be in here that's why I did it early so we have most people watching all right so let's get into our questions and then see how this all this same theme weaves through all of those so we tend to start with this one so what is an unexpected or surprising outcome of transitioning from a monolithic to a composable architecture freedom to me is is the most surprising outcome because you you know while you're still on a monolithic system many people have no idea what's possible if they moved to a composable architecture so in many cases people I talk to are like yeah it you know it's not great but I mean it is what it is we've had it forever it's super expensive we have a five-year licensing agreement that we don't want to break and we can't get out of and you know the grass is won't be greener on the other side once they make the transition to the other side um the the joy and the sparkle return into those people's eyes many times right because all of a sudden they have the freedom to be creative again they are not bound anymore by lots of manual processes or by just one way of doing it or by the time it takes to do something because that is the only way the monolithic system knows to operate once you've transitioned to a composable architecture you're really free to do what you can imagine exactly which can also be scary so that's probably the all the other unexpected outcome it's you need to be you need to like you need to embrace change because everything is going to be changing and by everything we're not just talking about the technology that in most cases is the easy your part um but then your ways of working need to change your teams can work in a different way they have to work in a different way and that's two sides of the same coin it's easier for some and harder for others exactly what I've always well I've recently learned this by people who who are actually in this monolithical system where they had to do content creation and Publishing and campaigns and they just said yeah we have a really high threshold for pain oh my god wow that's the thing that you just mentioned because that it's kind of crazy that that actually means that they just keep sitting in this complicated piece of stuff that they can actually not move fast with and they know it and they know it but they're just like this is my job I'll shall do it the best way and then actually they should try to influence um the people around them to say hey let's do something more composable and then with incomposable it can also be hard because it's hard to implement sometimes you need to do your homework and so it's um it's interesting to say the least and that's a nice bridge to our next question it's like if you um what would be your advice to agency or SAS company XX my advice would be there's no I in team what we what I still see a lot is that um it's a game of everyone for themselves and by themselves and that is not going to winning you be that's not a winning model it's not a future fit model either because guess what a composable architecture by definition means that there's going to be more than one company trying to serve the customer the customer in most cases really doesn't care where the problem originated what they care about is that it gets fixed they don't even care who fixes it so how are we going to come together as an ecosystem really and I think that's the way everyone needs to think about it especially if you're an agency or a sales company exec it's not about you it's about the the greater good sounds cheesy but you know you are now part of a bigger ecosystem how start behaving like the ecosystem and stop you know behaving like the single vendor that is trying to sell their one capability that is just not going to take you far enough if you won the long lasting relationship and a winning relationship it needs to be all about providing in the first place the best possible solution for the customer's problem and then it's about continually re-evaluating [Music] you're stuck you know what what has changed um most companies don't know what they will be needing in three years from now because nobody knows what they will be needing in three years from now I'm I could say six months there probably because it is like things change so much especially in Commerce and Tick Tock Trends and all that stuff you need to be ready for change and what what interests me in this is that some pieces of software are smaller in their scope and they can kind of just fit like a puzzle piece but then others are still agnostic but more of like a team buy-in for example something like uniform where you actually have everybody in the team that can work with all those tools that would normally just be for one person and so it's um I love to see this grow because in the beginning of the Mac Alliance we didn't have the enable enablers like the AWS and the netlife was just the singularity items and it's it seems to be growing into this wider proper team buy-in for everyone so it's um exciting stuff yeah and I think that's that's absolutely heading in the right direction and we'll see more of that in the SI is the solution implementers the agencies have a very important role because they are in a unique position that they can function as the trusted advisor to a brand that is trying to do better but then that makes the sis much more responsible because if you're in your mind stuck with your preferred Partners whatever you call them Platinum tier one all that stuff yes all that good stuff that is like 25 years old and has never changed if you're operating in that model and that's all you are willing to sell to your customers I think that's not going to work either so yeah the sis have a unique opportunity to to Really you know be that Central source of Truth and really bring about lasting change but they need to be more flexible in the selection of their partners but you know um easy for me to say harder for them we both work in places where this is normal but I would say for these agencies you go from a platform first to a value first offering and it will just happen it's not easy but there you go and so if you could wave a magic wand and change something right now in the space of the Mac Alliance or the composable stuff what would it be oh if I had a magic word all the things I would do um well I mean the one thing is what I would immediately do it brings us back to the women in mock topic we just had an award ceremony at Mac 2 and it was um a very sad Affair in the sense that I you know we kept announcing winners and winner after winner after winner came onto the stage and I kept pinching myself because none of the people that walked onto stage were women it was all middle-aged white men that came to collect the trophies which you know was good in a way because it really it really magnified the issue that we're that we're having but is that is this the person that came off to actually get this award is that just a representative of a team and do they have women in the team that Excel that just should stand up and say I will take this award or are they just no women in these teams and see it's interesting because I mean I had a few conversations with these people after um Michael from the wwf's the World Wildlife Fund um was a winner amazing guy he was he walked up to me immediately and he was like Jasmine I'm I'm I'm really sorry but we did not think about this we just didn't think about it we have fantastic women on team but we just the thought never crossed our mind that we should have made sure to bring one of them along so here's my first Mentor mentee question how do you get someone who knows she can be on stage or day and really rock that stage and should be there what are some tactics that maybe you might even employ to actually make sure that it's you rather than the dude by default are there any specific things you can tell us yeah well I mean there's I think that's there's multiple things that you can do and and the responsible is with the responsibility is with all of us so if you're a woman and you're being asked to speak somewhere or to attend an event or to attend a round table where you know you're going to be the only woman speak up say you know I think we do we don't I'm invited to a panel that is me and five other men I'm asked to host the panel but I'm not asked to sit on the panel there's a big difference yes there is it's usually you know all my appellant they're like oh yeah let's find a woman to moderate it and it's like no yeah it's actually predicting this isn't it that is not the deal it you know it kind of looks better than if you didn't have any but yeah it misses the point so for for those of us who are extrovert and outspoken and have a bit of visibility I think that's on us to make sure that we we you know we bring everyone else right along with us bring a friend if you're being asked to speak and you're unable to recommend a woman that you know that is capable but also if you're doing a company event or a partner event or any event and there's plenty of us involved in those doesn't matter where you're male or female if your company is doing any type of event make sure that at least half of your speakers are female that your panels are 50 50. that you're not just asking the CMO who happens to be a woman because more women in marketing than in any other function make sure that you're not making it you're not taking the easy route it's very easy to do some things and usually that's where everyone stops um for Mac one the first thought leadership conference that we did um I was in charge of the agenda together with the team and the first we did a call for papers like anyone would do was putting on an industry conference and I got the list back first time and I looked it and I was like um so there's 95 white male dudes on here and you know what the funny reaction was it was the team that presented it only realized that when I said it so you know they compiled the list and they thought nothing of it because it's it's the normal thing at a Tech conference that your your applications are all male so now the question will be why is that to your point if you have a woman on your team that is amazing and you want her to speak you put her forward yeah and this is the only thing I do generally lately I don't actually go to panels anymore I just ask my colleagues or my friends to go because I've been I I spoke a countless thing so for me it's less important I still love it obviously but and we try to do the same with live streams and stuff but I don't know sometimes I've noticed there's a few things here that my female friends they kind of used it like because on the offense that I speak at that are relatively bigger now um they have this real real diversity thing going on and they would ask women to come and speak um but it was really the diversity place like a silly thing kind of yeah but then my friends would go on and be so good that they would be asked back all the time and so they make use of this silly thing and to just say screw it I don't care if the diversity spot I'll just be better than anybody else on that stage and so you can use it but for me it's so hard to say these things because I have the automatic privilege of walking into a room and it's fine it's hard to think about sometimes it is and that's why you know you're doing a fantastic job putting your female friends forward and thank you for doing that because we need more of that if you're not in a room and nobody recommends you it's not happening and you can you can scratch the door as long as you want you know you need that sort of uh behind the scenes support uh people to speak up for you in your favor when you're not around and that really is what allyship is all all about you know let's let's all be the rising tide that raises all boats because it is in the small things sometimes people tell me yeah Jasmine but what can I do I mean the tech industry is such a hard place for a woman to work in and again I would challenge that and say that is the easy way to look at it you know just blame it on the circumstances well but it's the same for everyone yeah but it doesn't have to be so what happened at Mac one to close that Loop is we pushed back and actually what we did and yes it is more work but it will actually make your event better what we did is we went back to every single application and we said hey we love the topic is there a female or your team that could speak and how what was the outcome of that because I didn't attend that event so I don't know well we had the we had we had actually had a 50 50 split female male speakers which is unheard of in in the Tech conference scene so proof that it is possible the interesting thing that happened is about half of the submitters that we went back to were you know unresponsive is the kindest thing I can say yeah well um the other half turned into the biggest allies and they said oh my goodness now that you've pointed it out yes absolutely I have a woman on my team that I can add that I would like to take the stage and now that you've asked me actually I can think of three more in these other places that I think would be great speakers how about I connect you yeah and this is the interesting thing here when you look at that is that the intent is never wrong it seems but people just aren't not aware or doing other things or they're busy so sometimes we just need finger pointers like you to nicely point and then suddenly everybody turns around or most of them and then you're fine which sucks let's be honest but the the fact that that worked like NSO for Mac 2 I didn't see all the talks but again at the drinks in the evenings there were actually a lot more women than I anticipated being there but the recent years it has been better like all the tech conferences where I spoke a lot more women are closer yeah that's good and actually we've seen a total number of women employed in Tech rise it went from a shocking 11 percent a few years ago at least 227. okay which is you know we're we're not saying that we're not making progress I think because we're more outspoken and these topics are addressed more openly that absolutely helps um and still you know we know that we can make it better and why would we you know why why be complacent with what you have sort of like a monolithic stack I mean see here's how they go hand in hand yes we could say oh yeah oh well I've tried you know but it's hard it's all just stay in my little place over here and I'll it is what it is or you can just you know do that little extra thing and be like no I I refuse to accept that you know that's the box that you want to put me in um here is someone that I know the more I can make a connection or an introduction or you know here's someone that needs someone to speak or even smaller again if it's your own company event make sure that you're asking the right people it doesn't it it's you know we all default to oh yeah this guy over here has done all the talks uh we'll just ask him yeah we could but we could also you know invest a little more time and effort and find the person that is very capable and maybe a little shy and maybe needs a little convincing but maybe you're changing that person's life because I think I've seen that a few times and I do want to close this Loop by saying like I'm putting women on stage or like giving them award for great work it's not just because there's a lot of value there and we sometimes forget about the value that women bring it's not just because we need 50 50 equal split no there's actual real value like I've seen that in when I still worked at fallback we both worked there at the same time I think um when I did this huge product projects with lots of developers we we managed to get almost 50 50 for a lot of our scrum teams and there's seven eight people in these and the teams that had a nice equal balance were performing a lot better than the teams that didn't and I don't have hard numbers here because you lift that crazy busy life and then you look back you're like oh wow there's this difference here and I think it's good to put that here in here to say that there is a huge value of having somebody with a different brain almost on stage or in your team because it just it changes the game yeah and there's actually a great um some cool Sorry continue I'll put a comment on screen but continue your thoughts okay no and I'm you know if you're looking for data there's actually great research on risk taking and what they find isn't that's one of the points why diverse teams perform better you know we're not trying to to create diverse teams for for the sake of creating diverse teams that would be weird it's like I don't want the job because I'm a woman I want the job because I'm freaking great at what I do but in in terms of risk taking it's actually men take and depending on the group if there's a lot of male energy in a group the males are more prone to take risky decisions and fail the women are more strategically inclined they will take a risk but only if they perceive it worth it so if you applied it to your teams here's one of the proof points why diverse teams perform better the women on a team will not readily jump at anything you throw at them because they they are better equipped at that risk reward sort of evaluation so there's a lot of great research out there that proves your point and you've just you know told what you experience yeah it's just whatever we saw happen and like having a female product owner to stand her ground to her crazy bosses is so much better than have a male product owner who will just argue like simple things like that it really works and so with that in mind do you see in this whole composable thing that we're all working together like this in this whole you know connected fabric Thing do you see any bottlenecks and let's stick to the process side of things because we're in it now anyways there's plenty of bottlenecks different for every organization but really the the the point being is the technology is relatively easy the change is the change part is the hard part so Tech is easy change is hard um and that is goes anywhere from um had a great conversation with Danielle de Liberty who's the CEO at some station and she said well sometimes we forget to train people on new tools so we're all excited about implementing this new technology but you know you need to train people how to use it because otherwise they'll just sit in front of this new shiny thing that you've sold them but they won't know what to do with it um and there's a great big that's a great big bottleneck and another one is maybe your new tech requires a new way of working because you know all of a sudden life example from a customer of ours they the creative team used to do their drafts in PDF can you I mean even seeing it in there so you know the the the tech team was super excited and said hey creative team this is awesome you don't have to send around these PDFs anymore and then all the comments and then you know huge data size files crap all the kind of good stuff and the creative team was like uh no we want to keep our PDFs we're not you know unless you can prove to us that your review process is going to actually make my life easier I'm sticking with my PDF because that's what I know that's where I can track all the change that it's safe haven right that I know what I know and if you take it away from me you better prove that what you're giving me in return is actually going to be better exactly so that's that to me is is probably the biggest the most underestimated bottleneck it's show people what your Tech is going to do for them most business people don't care so much about whether the component is named X or you've swapped it with Y or you know whether it is throw in any technical spec that you like what they actually yeah I know it's ridiculous huh but it's true and it's not and full disclosure it's not 10 years ago it no my one of my last projects at an SI had every creative delivery had at least 300 Pages PDF but then they didn't use a really good system to make that PDF consistent so we would sometimes spend half an hour to find a change that they wanted in a certain component because we didn't know because the layout was constantly slightly off and yeah I think we lost three four sprints on just that and the project was six prints you know and customer keeps paying but they got the the creative agency not it wasn't us right so it's always that stuff and so these kind of bottlenecks we kind of can see even when it was still a monolith we now also had them incomposable they're just more fragmented now I guess in a sense there are more there's more of that than you and I can't even think of because in our minds you know it's it's so last century but but it's actually a lot of people's daily reality and you need to factor that in if you're working with a brand that is used to that kind of process you need to take that into consideration so really doing your homework in a sense and anticipating what your customer will need is becoming more and more important and much more of what the customer needs is only initially on the tech side and much more is to be gained in a sense on on the people and process side exactly but but what feature of old Tech would you actually like to bring back because I know we talked about stuff that fuels last century for us right still happening but were there any things back then that you loved and that you don't see right now if the answer is no totally fine oh you know I and funny enough I I cannot think of anything in a business context honest to God because uh it all sucked uh you know what I've heard people say for example like an example like if I want to let's say make a new campaign for my website I kind of just want to be in one browser tab I don't want to go out of it at all no but but the thing is that is kind of a good ask because why would you need to understand all these Mac components as a Content editor or you don't see it like that we'll see and to me that it so depends on your personality almost um I know people who are comfortable with 20 gazillion tasks tabs open in their browser and it makes me dizzy just looking at it if I have more than three tabs five Taps open you know I'm that's I don't like intense again myself yes see and it's but I know that I know people that have that are very comfortable with that same with oh here's an here's oh do you remember the days when we well here we go when we stored file all the files on-prem in folders and then you shared your folders with the whole company and then somebody went in and changed the folders oh yeah that stuff has happened a few times but I've run websites that were literally on the server in the corner right that stuff existed and it's promised exists to this day no definitely so see and I remember that was a fun day one day when I I used to work in an advertising agency very very back in the day and we all came to work one morning and uh all the computers were turned off and they had paper pages of paper in front of them that said no internet no notice notes no time tracking so we all basically just turned around and went home because there was no work from home so maybe you know and even that I don't want to bring back so okay you know none of it we're good polaroid pictures is what I like but that's you know for my personal entertainment I love polaroid pictures might see some here but I printed out again and put on my wall because they're all digital right so you kind of still want that sometimes I do print pictures the ones that I do want to look at because you know pictures on your phone and maybe that is definitely something you know printed pictures or developing film is such a it's an art watching this won't know what that is you were just in the chat do you know what developing film is I'm old enough that my dad did it on in the basement attic on the attic sometimes or head or like the fun red lamps and all the crazy things yeah and the chemical but we'll see what Savannah has to say in the chat in a second um while we wait this is a fun one so how would you explain composable architectures to a 15 year old and I'm asking this because we always say maybe like an older relative or something but I want to know how people who are kind of digitally native that are young how would you explain this because they might actually do know less and you know what it's it it's a very different approach to an older person I think the Lego uh example always works right because um you that's a concept that people are familiar with if you talk to a 15 year old about Lego they will probably already look at you square and be like what I think the best way to explain it is uh think about composable architecture like uh about fortnite creative oh there you go yeah make it you know make it you have target audience audience adjusted messaging it's my pet peeve you know you have to explain more in marketing so here we go this stuff for example because in fortnite creative players are given complete freedom to create worlds and battle arenas now I'm not not an expert at all so I'm don't you know not going to go any further into detail but that to me is exactly what you can do if you move to a composable architecture you build whatever you want with the things that you have and you can change it at any given point you if you don't like it you rebuild it if you want to add something you add it if you want to remove something you remove it so to me my best educated guess I I guess the 15 year old would sort of get a sense of what that's about probably all right so now that we've gone through all those questions and thank you for that last one um there's a few comments I want to highlight and then I have us then I have one last question on my end about women in Tech sure and I'm thinking because there's a few people here in the chat they might also have some questions so first of all we have Shannon here that's a lot of chemicals in the Attic yes that was a little intense but then again it was the 90s so maybe we didn't care I don't know and then we have something from Mickey my friend and I showed a film container to his nephew and he said why do you have to have such small Tupperware there you go and we use those for for lots of things remember the and it wasn't always black and the lid was gray exactly exactly and we're dating ourselves here I love that um so I do have one question and this I'm I know the answer from how my friend would attack it but that might not have been the best like she is an excellent developer like better than most and she would work at a startup in a product team and then just take initiative and build something that really change like moved the needle for this product really awesome stuff and then she would just do that but she was ignored a little bit and then at one point it was shown um or at least the the founder so hey there's this cool thing and then her product lead a dude stood up and said yeah I built that or at least he took he kind of he didn't say he did it but he took the um credit right and so she has a now figured out a few things to do to make that not happen but what would be your concrete advice for something like that to the people here in the chat yes so you actually get credit for what you've done what very specific things you can do in a process to actually help that the answer is surprisingly simple but also not surprisingly hard to hard to implement especially for people like her and there's plenty of people like her yeah that do the work very you know intrinsically motivated she just wants to do great work exactly and she's not she's not concerned with what many people would call self-promotion and so even when I say that stuff if I say the word self-promotion many people many of them women like say oh no that's a I don't want to do that why because we're raised that way um you're not supposed to make a show about yourself and that is something that we all need to leave behind and the best possible a quick note I know you're watching and you have to listen to this please please my colleague yeah exactly no very let me give you a very um because we're talking concrete concrete example from my team where I have a fantastic fantastic woman on a team who does an amazing job but she does it in quiet like so many she's like you know she she pulls all the ropes she talks to all the people she gets all the right people in the right place she makes sure that everybody puts their input word needs to be put it in so all the hard work all the nuts and bolts that nobody ever sees which is which was a problem because you know not now I am as the team captain or I'm being asked so what does she do all day I'm like oh you have to be kidding me yeah you know you know yours so here's your responsibility as a team lead if you have a team again um there's no I in team I make sure that all my people take all the credit I take zero credit for anything that happens in my team because I'm you know yes I'm orchestrating I'm helping I'm unblocking when that needs to happen but what I make sure and here's where my team sometimes hates me I gently irresistibly keep nudging until people like her start self-promoting and for her in that very specific case it was she she now sends a regular email to a pretty large distribution list of very important people which she hated took me weeks for her to do it for the first time but I insisted um and I helped you know ride and and breed and but I made sure that she's the sender she is sending it out regularly and I I've asked her to include everything that people need to know and even if she doesn't get a single response it's about getting the word out there creating the visibility about all the things that you're doing because guess what nobody reads Minds we're not you know we're not superhuman we people don't know unless you tell them people don't know make that your base assumption and it's not about bragging about what you've done it's a it's it can be completely without emotion it's a very rational statement here's what I've been working on here's where I'm you know where I'm trying to take it here's what you can expect to see from me in the next four weeks whatever your context is that is you know a very easy thing to do easy in a sense of you know sending an email is really not not that big of a deal but you need to make sure that it happens it happens regularly you're in the sender make sure that the right people see it if you don't have a team lead that is supportive that sucks um but it happens I totally get that in that case it's even more important that you don't just sit in your box that that person has given to you start networking because whoever is in charge of you right now may not be in charge of you forever hopefully he or she isn't if she or she's not supportive so start creating connections talk to people it doesn't have to be formal just ask for 15 minutes of their time or over coffee or over lunch or just a slag to say Hey you know would like your thoughts on this and that start creating connections so people know you and what you do and then from my experience things fall into place sooner or later sometimes it takes a little longer yeah but um you know those are the two things that I would render as concrete advice yeah I tend to say just work in the open and be bold but not so bold that you become annoying which that is a really fine line and it's the man that the last bad somehow you can just be annoying and it's like oh he's just pushing his ideas for a moment somehow this is harder I wish I could relate to help but I cannot but the one thing actually I said that to many people and I'm not sure this is actually a good thing to say in this day and age but it seemed to how do you say it gave the the right impression but don't say that again kind of thing it's like just act like a white dude what would a white dude do when he walks into a room and expects certain things don't do that however but just have the is the Mind Trick just think about if I send an email I assume it will be read and that's fine if I walk into a room and I sit down in a meeting they'll listen to me and almost when you act with that privilege it might actually work but the longer I think about that and the more I'm saying it now I know this is a relatively safe space I'll just talk to you about it yeah sure I haven't said it recently though because I'm not so sure if it's an actual fit it doesn't work let me tell you that go they appreciate the thinking so you know you're actually thinking about you're aware that it's different for you and for them yeah yeah um the problem is to your point if I go in and behave like a white dude I'm the b word can I say that we're in a safe space I'm the yeah we're on YouTube you're fine so but also that happens relatively fast then instant the second I'm I'm and see I would say I stand up for what I believe in the that is not how it's being perceived what is what's being perceived is oh God here comes the cranky again you know oh God annoying um so you and that's an important thing it don't let that make you bitter because it again it does it's just you need to find a different way to package things I'm still saying the same thing but I'm using different words yes and that is that is a complete Game Changer but you need help especially when you're starting to do that because many of us don't even know that what we say you know creates that kind of perception which is why nice loop back into the mentorship program mentorship is so important I think at any time in my career I've both been a mentor and a mentee I'm still a mentee right now because sometimes I get stuck in my own head and I'm like why are they treating me that way it's unfair la la la and then I need someone to to sort of listen to me whine and then say screw my head back on right and say well Jasmine vent a little bit exactly let me think let me let me tell you what you just what I heard you say and how I think you you know how I would interpret that so I benefit a lot from working with male mentors because your perspective is different oh yeah I tell them a story of what happened at work and I I get all hung up in something and he looks at me square and he's like I think you're overthinking that I think what happened is and I'm like oh what happened to the fact that there is a not so much thinking going on in a lot of workplaces in that sense and that's not a bad thing to say it's just men just don't work that way and it's generally not specifically against someone else I imagine because like this is the one thing that's a bit more personal perhaps but like for example my wife is not very healthy right and so she has a wheelchair nowadays and so we have a car where we we park it on a wheelchair spot and people are kind of easily upset because she doesn't look super sick but then I open the trunk and get the wheelchair and all the things and interestingly is that people don't I don't know they're just first people think about themselves but second if you haven't seen anything happen like that you just don't think about it so people are not inherently bad the only problem is when you give them feedback in a bit of a harsh way because you're like again come on they generally think they're generally good people and then they realize oh crap for the last few years I have not been doing this well and then you step on their toes or on their egos or wherever you want to say it and so it's it that's that makes it a bit complicated so it's almost on to the woman in this case like how do I give that feedback so people don't feel attacked by their own sereness of not having seen this for the last whatever 10 years and that must be a hard position and I wish I could relate but I cannot and you know it's I think the important point is to be aware that that's the case and again not be grumpy about it because you think it's unfair you it doesn't matter it is what it is but if you're you know if you're wanting to go places that you haven't been before you need to um use language to your advantage you need to use your position to your advantage and there's you would be surprised and amazed to see what that can do and you know it is a it is an opportunity if you're aware enough that you can get out of your own head and you know look at situations in a different way most people can only think the way that they think and that's a mistake that we all make at times you know you just project out you think oh I would do this so that's surely what everyone will be doing oh yeah well guess what no so you know that's um it's there's Beauty to be found in that and knowing that you have all the power you you control you everyone else not in your control but what you do and how you make them feel is very much under your control so you know start there and take it in small steps Rome wasn't built in a day you know all you need to do is little things small things one thing at a time day after day after day and then those little things will add up and we'll add to something very beautiful well with that bombshell I think this is a very lovely ending however I know there's a few people in the chat so if anybody has any questions for Jasmine because she she actually answers with things you can change right now or tomorrow right so if you have anything feel free to ask but if not um Jasmine where can we find you and if people wanted to follow you or reach out um what what would be the best place LinkedIn very straightforward um hit me up find me there um drop me a note happy to connect and then we can take it from there awesome and so would you want to be a mentor or a mentee I'm always both I'm always oh yeah you just said that no and you know what I learn I learned and even as a mentor even as a mentor you're a mentee at the same time because every person I mentor teaches me something about myself that I wasn't aware of and if it's just you know someone telling me their view on things and I'm like oh my goodness I had no idea that other people saw it that way so it's um always vote for me awesome um I just signed up as a mentor but I think I'm going to learn more than I can give 100 and I'm sure I like that dialogue yeah you have a lot to give so you know it is it is mutually beneficial so for anyone who's watching if and we've had some people come to us and say Well I'm I'm not quite sure if I'm good enough to be a mentor male people as well and I looked at them square and I was like are you kidding you were the CTO of a global company how how could you not have enough to share you're a fantastic person by by the way so if you're watching this and you're asking yourselves well maybe I don't I don't know put your best foot forward if you know if you're willing to be open and to listen to someone who's willing to tell you about the challenges they're facing hit the link fill in the form if you can think of some one female that really really could do with that opportunity to have that one-on-one coaching please do send them the link and sign them up and we'll match as many as we can awesome I'm looking forward to my match and see what will happen and how much I'll learn from that as well yeah anyways so the link is below we know where we can find Jasmine and that's it we did it in 53 minutes I'm pretty happy with that time box because now it's my wife just sent me a message that is 28 degrees in European Celsius but it feels like 42. we shall see but it's time for that now and so um thank you so much Jasmine um it was also lovely to see you in Amsterdam the other week and um let's move this forward and do a lot more with this topic I think it's very important absolutely agree thanks so much for having me Tim pleasure as always Cheers Cheers see you soon