Lisa McGill 

Fit I think, has been an age old problem and challenge for a lot of companies because we tend to focus so much on skills. What have you actually done? What is your background? What companies have you worked at? What's your degree in? And those are all very important and very tangible, but fit. I ki everyone might define it slightly differently, but in the past my peers and I sort of define it as people that are gonna share similar values. and we just talked about how we incorporated the values into our talent strategy. But but it cannot be at the surface level. It has to be aligned with the company, the person's manager, their direct manager, because they're the ones that they interact with the most. And do they possess the right motivation, the right behaviors and attitude and approach so that they can help themselves, their team, and the company achieve goals and be highly productive.

Nasser Oudjidane

Hello and welcome to our series of Scaling Stories, a discussion with people, leaders about their lessons building teams at some of the world's fastest growing companies. I'm thrilled to introduce our guest today, Lisa McGill, an advisory board member and former Chief Human Resources Officer at CrowdStrike. Lisa, huge welcome and thank you for joining. To get started, could you share a brief introduction about you and your background? 

Lisa McGill

Hi, Nasser. Yes, and it's great to be here. I appreciate you inviting me to your very successful podcast. As you said, I have spent most of my time in high tech was at CrowdStrike, both pre and post i p o. I was previously at Silver Peak, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprises. Most people have heard of them and was at Fortinet and Brocade as well as Foundry Networks, all in chief people, officer roles, all public companies. So you can imagine the responsibility and growth there. And then I also have an MBA from Pepperdine. And I serve as an advisory board member and investor to SemperVirens, which is a venture capital company here in Silicon Valley, focused on HR technology companies. And I advise several of their portfolio companies. 

‍Nasser Oudjidane

Thank you. And to, look back on. The, seismic growth where you were a part of specifically at CrowdStrike, what would you say were the challenges that come to mind when, being a steward of growth at the chief people officer level?

Lisa McGill

That is a great question, and I think especially if you're in the technology sector, technology moves lightning speed. Innovation doesn't sit and wait for you to catch up. So you as a people leader have to be very, collaborative with your peers and you have to really examine what's working and what is not working in order to reach that scalability. When that level of growth is happening. So you've really gotta make sure that your hiring processes are automated, especially in the area of scheduling. I mean, that seems like something so minor, but scheduling interviews can consume an enormous amount of your, staff's time, especially if your managers then have to cancel and reschedule, automate that, automate as much as you can. And, we did that very effectively. So, , you've got to hire the right people. Make sure, I'm sure we'll talk more about that, but make sure that you've got the right processes in place to do that. And you're leveraging technology, but also scale. You've got to have, you've gotta go digital, you've got to transform the way you do things in order to meet that fast. Absolutely. Lightning speed pace that companies gearing up to go i p o and competing with their their innovation with the competitors at a such a fast pace. That's the key. 

Nasser Oudjidane

What were some of the surprises? What perhaps what some of the items that you weren't expecting leading companies from pre IPO to the actual IPO itself.

Lisa McGill

Oh, there's never any surprises, right? Everything that you're told when you're considering going somewhere it's all rosy. No, I'm glad you asked that question because of course there were some surprises. I think the biggest one was, as I, I lifted the covers within my first couple of weeks I noticed that we had a sales attrition problem, which is a huge problem for a company that is gearing up to go public in the next 12 to 18 months. You've gotta be growing your revenue and the amount of productivity lost every time a salesperson leaves is extremely costly which I'm happy to share with you more about later, but 50% of our new hires within the sales organization were leaving. And the, sales ramp was taking too long and then for people to be leaving in less than a year, just when they were reaching potentially their, high optimal productivity, huge issue and huge cost. That was a big surprise now. And I did not have enough budget to scale to achieve some of those items that I talked about earlier. Like opt optimizing our systems maybe changing out some of our systems and tools, implementing new new automation and tools. We just didn't have enough budget. So that was a big challenge that I had to overcome and that wasn't easy. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. And let's get into talent strategies and, some of the items that you were discussing just a minute ago. , let's start from the top. Why do you think it's critical that people, leaders, talent leaders, have a strong and clear talent strategy, and what have been some of your learnings, approaches, and experiences there?

Lisa McGill‍

Yes. It's, important not just for the talent organization to have a clear talent strategy, but the entire organization as a whole. The reason for that is that it creates alignment, it creates clarity direction, a positive energy. Everyone is every organization within the company has people, and so it impacts everyone. So I think what's important about that, no matter what your role, you can impact revenue, you can impact profitability. A lot of people don't think they, they can, they kind of wanna hide behind that in a way. But you really have to start with that talent acquisition strategy. Where, what kind of jobs do you need? And what kind of skills do you need people to have? Are skills changing? Do you already have those skills? Do you know how to recruit for those skills? And where are those skills? Are you going to be hiring in new geographies? So you really need to look very closely at the roles, the responsibilities, and then the skills needed. In some cases, you might have to do some re-skilling that is part of your talent strategy as well. And then it's also things like organic versus inorganic growth. , you need to then determine if you're going to grow organically. You need to do some of those things I described, which is go digital, transform your business so it's operating as efficiently as possible, and you're doing as few non-value added things as possible. If you're going to grow inorganically through mergers and acquisitions, you need to make sure your team is equipped and experienced enough to handle it. M and a is complicated at all levels of the organization, and it doesn't matter if it's a small acquisition or a huge acquisition. So make make sure you've got a clear strategy and you're aligned with the rest of the organization, and that the rest of the organization also has m and a capabilities and experience. There's a few other pieces that I think are really important for that strategy, culture and brand was a big one for CrowdStrike because People needed to know who we were and what was important to us, and you can really leverage your values a but you have to do it in a meaningful way. And one of the things that we really leveraged was our subject matter experts in-house. We really leveraged them rather than coming up with a lot of big expensive marketing campaigns, which by the way can be very impactful. We really targeted cybersecurity talent is hard to come by. Where do we need the talent? And we developed our brand and focused our brand around being able to attract and retain people from a TA perspective or a talent strategy perspective. That was the importance of brand to us. We absolutely were in lockstep with our marketing team so that we had similar alignment and we were leveraging things that way they were doing on social media. And those types of avenues. However, we really leveraged our subject matter experts in-house. A lot of them came from the technology space. A lot of them came from sy systems engineering within the sales organization and product management, we really tried to pick and choose some of our diverse employees as well, so that we would come across and, we truly wanted to hire more diverse talent for the obvious reasons. But we leveraged organizations like SWE, which is the Society of Women Engineers, and we had a number of our top female employees, technical employees. Hosting panels, speaking engagements at events, conferences. We really tried to pinpoint which conferences to speak at. We had them write articles. We helped them. Of course, some of them didn't come naturally to them. So anyway, leverage your, internal folks as best you can. Get them out there, build your brand. This is why people are gonna wanna join. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Thank you. That was great. Really succinct summary. I mean I, love the idea how you started with, it's part of the values and then it's aligned to the whole organization because it's part of the business strategy and it sounds obvious but often it's overlooked. And also really liked what you discussed regarding SMEs with the collaboration with marketing and how you are also representing society with regards to the, makeup of the, those team members. We touched upon comp, and I think that's a whole nother podcast in terms of how to get that right. But after you've defined that, how do you define the fit? How do you ensure that the people that the, company is trying to hire are aligned to what the company defines as quality? And then, there's the separate component of ensuring that the leadership are actually bought in as well.

Lisa McGill‍

Yes. Fit I think, has been an age old problem and challenge for a lot of companies because we tend to focus so much on skills. What have you actually done? What is your background? What companies have you worked at? What's your degree in? And those are all very important and very tangible, but fit. I ki everyone might define it slightly differently, but in the past my peers and I sort of define it as people that are gonna share similar values. and we just talked about how we incorporated the values into our talent strategy. But but it cannot be at the surface level. It has to be aligned with the company, the person's manager, their direct manager, because they're the ones that they interact with the most. And do they possess the right motivation, the right behaviors and attitude and approach so that they can help themselves, their team, and the company achieve goals and be highly productive. if that fit isn't right. There's gonna be misalignment, and we'll talk more about that, I'm sure too. But the, buy-in to that fit is critical, especially in the hiring process. And so having the talent acquisition team align with managers and the executives on what is most important, not just from a, skills and capabilities perspective, but also behaviors and critical values and competencies. So that's really the key. And from there you can, if you get that right, you're ultimately gonna save on attrition later on. So the TA team is very focused on getting that fit right. They have a vested interest. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of how this intersects with technology implementation to achieve the goals, especially when considering and you look back on kind of that seismic growth that you were a part of, were there tools perhaps feel free to shout them out, that you think can, actually contribute to, to, to achieving this in the most efficient way possible?

Lisa McGill‍

Yes. Because ultimately you're looking for stickiness, right? We talk about quality of hire and a lot of companies are now starting to measure that. It's always then a little bit nebulous in terms of how do you measure it. I shared a little bit with you about those sales new hires who were leaving in less than a year. Well, that's right about when you're getting every quarter that they're there, you can get more and more feedback on whether or not they really are working out. are they the quality that you expected? And you do that through conversations, the TA team, with the hiring manager and the employee themself and anyone else that they interact with. Are they achieving their goals? Are they are they aligning well? Is there a good fit? So you can establish your quality of higher index and metrics, but you're ultimately looking for that stickiness. To address that sales hiring issue that we were having at CrowdStrike, we actually leveraged a, company called Perception Predict, which is an Australia based company. They're very, good at helping companies determine top behaviors that you might be looking for in candidates, so before you even hire them, what we did is took our existing sales teams, ran them through this. It's an AI based behavioral based assessment tool. So they answer all these questions. There's a ton of AI and algorithm programming behind it, but ultimately it identify, it helped us identify the top five qualit. That our top performing sales people have, invariably then those were the qualities we would want to ascertain in the candidates that we were putting through the process. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Thank you for sharing. We can put that in the show notes. It sounds like a useful resource, and I'm assuming that it can help guide the creation of a competency based. Interview model or assessment model. And that's how you're able to actually decide yes or no. 

Lisa McGill‍

Exactly. And you can leverage it for, any function. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Right. And could you speak a little bit more about the, sales example of the performers that were leaving in some of the metrics, data numbers around essentially the cost of a bad hire. Why is it so important to actually spend some time looking into this? 

Lisa McGill‍

Yeah. I, know that most of the HR leaders today look at that on, a daily basis, if not quarterly, right. Boards look at that data now nowadays, especially because it can cost millions of dollars in just the example that I gave you. We were talking about a hundred people in that first year that had left right when I joined a hundred people. If they're making $150,000, generally the cost of someone leaving is one and a half times their salary. So you can do the math. It's over $20 million that with a hundred people leaving. That's real money that will get people's attention, that will get the executive team's attention. You'll get more funding if you need it when you're talking about those kind of numbers. And it's, interesting because you don't always realize that at the time. Now, some of the attrition if it's wanted, then you tend to overlook those. But if it's unwanted and it is not performance based, you can do something about that and you really should do something about it. So it's very real and you, need to, present the data and measure and, positively impact revenue and profitability by leveraging that data. Those are real numbers and it's massive. And that's just one example. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Yeah. I, love how you, you've you've, kind of described this because from what I'm hearing, and please correct me if I'm wrong you've, gone to other business leaders and have told a story about how this is not a cost center issue. This is a, profit center issue. HR is not a cost center In this example, It could have cost 20 million. It's probably lost you more from lost net new arr if these people were performing. And I find it quite interesting how you've managed to kind of, speak to other business leaders to try and actually solve this as a business problem.

Lisa McGill‍

Yes, it's really critical. You can take the same approach, of course, leveraging the productivity numbers, right? So I mean think about how much time engineers spend engineering teams. Cause it's never just one person spend on hiring a new engineer to their team. and if they're turning lots of cycles engineering engineers need to be picky. They need to be particular about who they're hiring, but they can churn a lot of lost productivity hours and that impacts the company in a significant way, especially if they're then missing engineering launch dates, major milestones, 

Nasser Oudjidane

Right, yeah. Because often that's not even observed, not only at the attrition part, but also cost per higher. is that factored Your cost per hire? 

Lisa McGill

Yes. Absolutely. And, revenue per employee. That's a huge metric that not a lot of HR leaders are looking at yet. And it's been around for a while. I've been leveraging it for years because a lot of times you think, oh, it's just the sales employees that should be linked to revenue per employee. But it's not because as we've been talking, every person in every function directly or indirectly impacts revenue. And looking at revenue per employee will be absolutely indicative of your cost structure. And are you spending too much money? Where do I need to cut? The two are directly linked. So anyway it's, a, there are so many interesting metrics the, obvious ones are useful, like time to fill, cost per hire, but you've gotta link cost per hire to the attrition and productivity.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. And I was also thinking about cost per hire when considering engineering time interviewing and all of the wasted hours. That I've been when you're bringing the VP of engineering who could be actually making sure that product release is shipped on time, is actually speaking to a candidate that hasn't been mapped properly to competencies, and that person may not be hired, but. Is actually perhaps rejected. Well, that person perhaps shouldn't have been brought in front of the VP engineering in the first place. 

Lisa McGill

‍Yes. I think there's a lot of of initial cycle time that can be saved. There's another company that I advise called Karat They are, I think of them as an, extension of the engineering team. Though they're not in-house, they work very closely with the in-house engineering teams and they do a lot of that front end interviewing for them. So imagine the time that companies are saving and a lot of enterprise companies are now starting to use them. So I'm a huge advocate. Of that model for that very reason. You, articulated it beautifully, Nasser because your engineering teams need to be spending time elsewhere. A lot of 'em don't even like interviewing to begin with. So if they can pass on some of that front end and then when they get when they can weed out and get it, narrow it down to the top candidates, that's when you bring your, engineer experts in-house to help solidify the final candidates.

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, and let's talk about regrettable attrition. Like as companies are focusing more on retention this year, what are some of the ways that you found to be successful to ensure employees are, productive, are happy and, ultimately can, grow the business? 

Lisa McGill‍

Yes. By the way, that is another. Statistic that's critical for boards. Boards are asking for much more detail these days around regrettable attrition, but it's not new. There's a lot of talk right now about the quiet quitters and they've been around forever. As a leader, there should be nothing quiet about it. You should be having regular conversations. So I would rate as number one to address regrettable attrition is. Relationships. And and that's why that fit is so important. You're building a relationship when you're hiring someone and then don't leave it there. You wanna let that and evolve that conversation and that relationship to its full extent. So form those relationships. Make sure you're always reiterating how important they are to the strategy to the company's success, and recognize people, especially in front of their peers. The best way to do that is when you're having all hands meetings, team meetings, peer recogni. There's lots of peer recognition platforms out there too, by the way, which allows not only you as a manager, Their peers can recognize each other in a meaningful way. People love that type of appreciation, recognition. They feel like they're, being called out for the right behaviors. If they're demonstrating values, if they were demonstrating security mindedness. And so link it to your values and then it's even better because again, you're building on that engagement. People will feel less inclined to leave if they feel part of it. compensation and benefits are important too. I never wanna undervalue them, but they're never the top reason that someone leaves. You've gotta be flexible. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah, love how passionate you are about these topics. And perhaps just to perhaps unravel that a little bit more and, talk about how this is linked to how the talent and people landscape is changing. There's obviously a tremendous amount of events, if we wanna call them, that over the last couple of years. 

Lisa McGill‍

It's not changing Nasser, it's changed, right it, truly has. I think if anyone is asleep at the wheel on that not sure they're gonna catch up. And that could be at the individual leadership level or at the company level. So it is companies can't afford to turn the blind. So I would say if it was a, it was an, unfortunate catalyst, but Covid was the one of the primary catalysts for companies to embrace remote work CrowdStrike was ahead of the game there. George Kurtz, who is their founding ceo e and is still there going strong, always adopted that mentality of hire the best people wherever they are in the world. And that mentality truly works, especially if you're trying to find hard, skills that are, not necessarily predominant in the workforce. . So you've gotta be flexible and if you haven't adopted that or you're trying to go back to everyone in the office, I really would caution you on that. But you also, you know what, there's four generations in the workforce now. Baby boomers, gen X, I'm actually Gen X gen Y are the millennials and then Gen Z, we have this melting pot of each of those generations. Each of those people work in a very different way. They process information in a very different manner. Their styles and approach, everything is different. And so you've gotta be really savvy as a manager and leader to be able to adapt. So that's really, I think being mindful of that and companies need to help support their managers in that area through training. Ion learning is another great example. They really help managers focus on. Areas of differentiation in terms of diversity, and that's another area of diversity, just having those generations mixed together. But just being more mindful of that 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

yeah so much to unpack there with regards to what, what, has changed. But I, found what I'm gonna take away and, really think about is how you've illustrated the point with several generations in the workforce. the diversity of thinking just within the generations, let alone class, ethnicity, gender, or anything else. It's really quite really quite something to, be thinking about and how that also intersects with remote or in person. And what do people need, not only what do people want in order to actually flourish within the organization.

Lisa McGill‍

Exactly. It's, almost more fundamental than that. So yes I, know it's, it's this sort of absolutely bifurcated content and , it's complicated for companies to be successful these days, and there is so much competition. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. And there's a lot of BS advice and I'd love to ask you what, have you heard? I dunno that it's recently or whether there is anything that stuck with you that you think, hang on this, shouldn't be promoted. I think this belongs in the trash because anything comes to mind. 

Lisa McGill‍

I know there, there is a lot of that out there. And distilling it is it's funny cuz we talked about competency based interviewing in the interview process. That's where, you're gonna hear it the most. It, so that really helps weed through the BS that candidates dish out. Did they really do what they say they did. But on we talked about values earlier and I, was reflecting on this when we first met in terms of this question, values can be total BS if they are not truly embraced. At the very top by the CEO companies can live or die by their values, and they really have to be meaningful. And everyone looks to the CEO o to be a, an ex example of that. And so for good or bad, it's really, you could have three to six really great values. They totally make sense. Everybody identifies with them. But if the ceo, and therefore maybe this whole senior executive team does not live and breathe it, then none of it matters, right? Yeah. And yet, if a company that is linking so many things to including your customers, to your values, your CEO better be living and breathing them.

‍

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Yeah. It's don't mean performative values have to be true. . Yeah. Really interesting. Exactly. When you look back at we spoke about diversity, how you've helped champion people from diverse backgrounds, particularly women. What have you found to, has, what have you found to worked and what hasn't worked?

Lisa McGill‍

I, think the reason I focus on it is because I have two older brothers, so I always kind of was the little underdog of the family, but also in technology, especially the more senior you you climb, you realize that there aren't a lot of women around. So I do tend to focus on women but I, adore men so it's not that I'm anti-men. I think that's critical. The reason I bring that up is because in any kind of de and I initiative, , it is critical to not ever push it. Don't ever try to push your agenda. It, must be systemic. There must be a, true cause reason and rationale to do it. And so I, I think DE&i has been around for forever now we're able to start measuring why it's important and how many companies that are very, successful are because they have such differing points of view experiences and approaches. But I've learned to not push that agenda. It has to solve a real business issue. I've learned to find the k kind of ambassadors within the organization who also might be that of that mindset. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

A major milestone in your career is achieving what you've done at such a young age chief people officer at 34. What would you say were some of the major lessons surprises of your journey that you may think could be helpful for for our audience to take on board and. take away. 

Lisa McGill‍

Well that was only last year. Just kidding. It seems like forever to be honest when, that happened, but I think again, when it happened, I was the only female executive. Many of my peers were obviously much older. They'd been in the industry for a long time. The value of that is think of how much you can learn from those people. And I really, did learn from them. They were all for the most part, very respectful. And the one surprise was the HR function at that time, right? Because that was a while ago, was just kind of still viewed as administrative. It wasn't necessarily as strategic as it is today back then, and I felt it more once I was in the top role cuz I didn't really fully appreciate that until the buck stopped with me. And it was at that time that I went back and got my mba, which I self-funded at the same time, but I was working full-time and paid for it myself. But the value of doing that was so that I could speak their language. I needed to understand every element of that business. And at the time it was Foundry Networks, which was a data networking company. Highly technical. It was an engineering company for sure. It was hardware and software manufacturing, the whole gamut. So if I didn't understand that business, there was no way I was gonna gain any credibility with my peers, and I would never be able to even develop an effective talent strategy, let alone have any kind of meaningful impact on the business. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. Revenue, profitability never been so important especially at this time. In terms of this context. And I love how you've kind of described not only your personal journey going into. The, C-suite and the boardroom, but also the journey of frankly, HR and people operations from administrative, strategic, proactive. And you've actually commented in the past that there's more of a need now than ever for HR and talent management expertise at the board director level. Can you comment on why you think that is and where do you think we go from here? 

Lisa McGill‍

Yes. And before I do that, I would say I am seeing so much more emphasis playing being paid on hiring the right chief people officer. They are a hot commodity right now, so that's actually really, good for the, industry and the profession. It's starting to get the recognition and the, perceived value and impact that it deserves. But the short answer to your question Nassar is that. boards today, especially public boards, are spending at least 25% of their agenda time on human capital, people related issues. We know some of them, right? Some of them are highly publicized in the industry, and it's critical. The challenge is, I mean, 25%, by the way, is a, it's a huge chunk of time. The challenge is most boards don't have that skill and capability on their existing board team. In fact, many CEOs don't necessarily have that expertise, especially in the technology space. Many of them are, technologists and have engineering backgrounds. They're not talent and human capabilities aren't necessarily at the top of their, competency list. So anyway, I think boards are ultimately going to start looking at expanding their boards with experience in those areas because, Yeah, think about the, number of issues that are related to culture. Compensation, diversity talent, availability, growing revenue in the right regions. Linking that back to the business strategy. There are so many issues that require their attention and so many shifts that have, been changing the way businesses work and the way people hire and retain. So it's having a big impact on businesses. It therefore has, gotten the board's attention. One side note is I recently completed my NACD certification, which is the National Association of Corporate Directors. Most people on this podcast may not have heard of it, but most public company boards of directors are affiliated with this association. And they validated that fact that more than 25% of the time of, board agendas is being spent on people issues. and the content. So it was 15 plus hours of content. More than 25% of that content was focused on talent related issues, succession planning but even beyond succession planning culture was a big emphasis at the board level, which I'm so pleased to see. So it was really, enlightening and just encouraging. Even cybersecurity is a huge topic on risk management, right. But companies need to be mindful of it. And even companies that are not cybersecurity experts are in the industry, better have good good IT teams and good security protocols to protect whatever data it is that they're housing.

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Right. And where does security start? It usually starts with your people first as well. 

Lisa McGill‍

Exactly, Yeah. They, are the most vulnerable and that's where the attacks are gonna occur the most. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah. It, just got me thinking about, you mentioned 25% and thank you for sharing that. Just awesome statistic. Really surprising 

Lisa McGill‍

I was actually surprised to see how, I mean, I sort of I sort of gathered that, but the average executive other than the ceo they, are not privy to board conversations. They're only privy to a piece of it. And so the broader board discussions usually occur behind closed doors. So it was a great statistic to learn. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Right. And it just got me thinking about, I wonder how much of the time is indirectly related to people and talent issue. 

Lisa McGill

Exactly. That you can imagine. Maybe it's, encroaching 75% . 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Absolutely. Moving on to closing questions now. What's one of one piece of advice that you wish you had when you started your career? In leading people teams. 

Lisa McGill‍

Wow, that's a great question and I, would probably link it to my own personal values. We each have our own set of values, which we probably learned at a very young age, but those have been my guiding compass. I I like to stay at companies a long time, and when I was at Foundry in Brocade, for sure, I was there close to 13 years. But it's really important if you're gonna be spending a lot of time, we spend most of our time in the business world versus with our family life. So unfortunately that just tends to be the way the numbers work out. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah. And what's, are you listening to read or perhaps if you reflect back watched that you found inspiring that helped contribute to, your growth? to get to the C level. Is there anything that perhaps reflecting back or, oh my gosh, now that you think's worthwhile, ? 

Lisa McGill‍

Well, I don't know about you and everyone else, but sometimes there's information overload, finding, picking and choosing what to watch, what to read is time consuming and, sometimes not always easy. So anyway, there's a lot of information out there, but it's, a great time that you asked because I read a book recently and you can get it on Amazon. It was a digital book on my iPad, but Levy Jones lovey of IG Jones came out with a book called Professional Troublemaker, the Fear Fighter. And I thought, what the heck? And I actually did hear her speaking at an engagement last year. So I got the book and it's basically, she's the spitfire, right? Her personality is so invigorating, but it's about recognizing that we all have fear. and we all experience fear at different times in our lives. We're afraid about asking for what we want. We're afraid of hearing the, word no, which is by the way, why I could never be a salesperson. We're afraid of being different we're afraid of everything. And this book was incredible because she doesn't say, don't be afraid, but she says, just recognize your fear and try to do things that are meaningful, that, that push you to confront your fear and get behind it. And you're never going to live your life without fear, but recognize it and try to do your best to overcome it living boldly in spite of it. So it was really, I found inspiring because especially if you're going through maybe a career transition which I was at the time, I was moving outta my operating chief people officer role and into this advisory role and starting to invest and starting to be on advisory boards, you really just wanna make sure you have some confidence to do that and that you can identify what you're afraid of and, try to overcome it. Again, you won't ever dismiss it. So anyway, she's really, good. So that was a really good book. I would highly recommend it. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Thank you for sharing. Living boldly is gonna stick with for a while 

Lisa McGill

Yeah living boldly 

Nasser Oudjidane

And we'll put professional troublemakers in, the show notes for sure. So that folks can check that out. Yeah. Last one. What, is one thought valuable phrase if, any, that you live by it. 

Lisa McGill

I've noticed this more because I have twins and they're, almost 10 years old now. So I I have been focusing more on like, let's try to give back to those who are less fortunate. It's easy to be very kind of self-focused and, I said earlier, you have to be your own best advocate, but it's also important to not just continue to want, Like how can we give back? What I've done personally is mentor. And again, it's what's important to everyone has different areas of importance, but mentoring has been really fulfilling to me. It's a way that I can give back my support, my expertise, share my knowledge, maybe save somebody some headaches. There's a great team that I work with that is called Techstars, and they have what's called an accelerator program for new entrepreneurs who are coming out with a new company, a new product to help. Solve a real issue. And it's phenomenal because these entrepreneurs are truly inspiring, but they also need help and guidance. So anyway, there are lots of ways you can give, back but also just ways that like I, in my past careers really leveraged veteran hiring programs. These veterans who have really served their country but then may struggle to find their place back in society and finding the right jobs. Now, cybersecurity actually is really well aligned to their backgrounds, but that's just one example. So lots of ways to give back. And I'm trying to teach my kids that as well. 

Nasser Oudjidane‍

Yeah, really worthwhile initiatives. Lisa, thank you for sharing your story, your experiences, and your knowledge. This has been incredible. Thank you.

Lisa McGill

Thank you so much for having me, and people can reach out to me if they'd like. LinkedIn is best.

Nasser Oudjidane

Awesome. 

Lisa McGill

Thanks Nasser.