Mafalda Garcês

I really think that it's important that we don't take ourselves too seriously and that we have fun in what we are doing. Don't be afraid of laughing with your co workers of having fun, of inserting, when appropriate, humor to engage with with other people, because in the end of the day, this is about our human experience. And I think having fun and being true to yourself is the most important advice.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Hello and welcome to our series of scaling stories, a discussion with when talent leaders about their lessons building teams at some of the world's fastest growing companies. I'm excited to introduce our guest today. Mafalda Garcês, the country leader and senior people director at Dashlane. Mafalda a huge welcome and thank you for joining us.

Mafalda Garcês

Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here today.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Great to get started. Could you please give us a brief introduction about you and your background?

Mafalda Garcês

Sure. So my name is Mafalda. As you already mentioned, I'm Portuguese was born and raised in in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal and I studied psychology in college I was really driven to towards helping people and focus on mental health. But soon enough, I understood that my path was not really towards that type of support to individuals but more towards what pcan we do differently in terms of an aspect of everyone's life that it's work and how can I affect that positively so people can enjoy themselves and can be happier and fulfilled in their in their lives? That's why I decided to change paths into Organizational Psychology and started working in HR over 10 years ago. Currently, I'm a senior director Dashlane you as you mentioned, so I work very closely with senior leadership. And my objective is basically to help them develop and implement people initiatives and support our business goals here at Dashlane. And of course, these means different things, and I wear many hats. So I lead the Dashlane Talent Team, I own the global l&d strategy I also go to senior leaders and managers and I lead our operation here in Portugal.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Quite a lot of hearts there. I've been fascinated from the discussion that we had prior to this episode about how you take a sledgehammer to traditional approaches to HR, could you share how and why you're focused on viewing HR as helping solve the business's problem?

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, absolutely. So for me HR is thing it's a central piece of solving business problems, because usually problems are created by people or solved by people, right? So it's important that the people team and the HR function is in the in the center of solving those problems. And basically I think that we shouldn't necessarily adopt the same solution to all the problems we have. So I am all about doing a proper organizational analysis, see what is the problem in hand and make sure that I understand in depth, what are our business objectives in order to really deploy solutions that makes sense so tailor made would be the expression I think makes sense to to use to describe how I approach HR in general.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Um, what's your approach to the organization or diagnosis and then intervention has, has anything worked particularly well for you with regards to the identification of those problems and then approaching the solution, which is then tailor made?

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, absolutely. So I, I think that the organizational diagnosis part is really critical. And this needs to be done continuously. It's not something that you do, and then you stop and you implement a solution and then you repeat the cycle. So for me, it doesn't work in cycles. It works in a continue and it needs to be very straightforward. So we need to make sure that we are always hearing our internal clients very frequently and systematically, and it can be through our one on ones that we do with several people in your organization, not only with the leadership, but everyone in your organization, having group moments where we can talk to folks and see what is going on. And also, of course, use company surveys that it's the most traditional practice to really get to a great picture of where we are right now, what are the problems we are solving and what are the blockers we have? So this is on the diagnosis part and on the intervention part. I I believe I have four pillars that I would like to share with everyone hearing us to today. One of them is HR management. And here I would put everything that is related with performance management. Our talent development strategies would also fall into this pillar and of course, the diversity and well being strategy that the company needs. To have. And then I will go to one on one intervention so we know as people team that not everything can be planned and we will have a doc situations that we need to jump into and they need to be managed case by case. So they would fall into the second pillar. And those interventions are very individual or happening in small groups or in small teams, and we need to hear exactly what it's happening in there in order to solve it. The third pillar, I would say it's the structural type of interventions. That we might need to do and here I add every work related with how we design our organization in order to achieve our business results, how we design the roles that we need to have, how are we measuring success in those roles? How do we increase quality of management, and all the strategies we can and should implement to create jobs that are rich in terms of opportunities for folks to develop? And finally, the last pillar I would say it's the strategic type of interventions and here, I would put everything that is related with the facilitation of change because we know that business reality especially in a fast paced world is ever changing. So we need to support our business and facilitate this this change.

Nasser Oudjidane  

That's awesome thank you for sharing that. And you've spoken about fostering a culture within a team to go process for the sake of process. Something that stuck with me before was not losing the lesson. For the sacred process. Could you explain a little bit more about what you mean by that and any practical tips that can help? You know, the people and culture and talent specialists listening how to culture foster that culture within their teams? 

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, so first of all, to give context on why I have that strong belief, so I've worked in big and small companies and I've I see the value in the toolkit, I see the value in the processes that we usually as a function, need and deploy. My approach is a little bit different because I think we should always criticize, why we have those processes. Why are we measuring this and not something else? Why are we doing performance management this way and not in a different way? And when we ask the right questions, and when we hear our business and think about our business needs, we will likely come to different solutions. Some of them are well tested and we know already what can go wrong and that is really reassuring. But some of them can be innovative and we can fail, right? I think failure is really a big part of our job. And I mean this in a very, very positive sense because we are testing and experimenting and we are bringing innovation to our organization and our people are unique, so we need to be unique in the approach we have towards them. That's why I think it's so important to know what we are talking about and know what strategies work know what type of processes we need to run even governance purposes and everything else. But also, feel free to throw all of that into the garbage bin and think what can we really do that makes a difference here. So for example, maybe we can when we know there is a conflict, we can go through the normal process of coaching the manager in order for the manager to talk with the person and then it will take the time it needs to see the problem being solved. But maybe if we have the right level of rapport with the folks involved, maybe we can seek with both of them and maybe we can facilitate a discussion. Maybe we can use radical candor to move past that conflict for example. So this is what I mean, know what you are doing, but sometimes think what makes sense in that specific situation you are in. t

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, go it. And in terms of what you just mentioned, regarding the HR toolbox approach to solving the business problem, why do you think it's important that you build the HR toolbox with the necessary experience and knowledge?

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, because when we are talking about people and when we are talking about organizations, we have signs to back up why some things are done in a certain way. And I think that's important. We don't ignore everything and in my toolkit in the in the toolkit that I that I believe we in HR, we should have, I'm talking about scientific, proven tools that can work and sometimes not just tools but also knowledge that we can apply an example of that very simple one would be for example, it's important for us in the people team, to be very aware of biases, and how do they manifest themselves what can be done, if we have no idea about them, it will be extremely difficult to identify and correct a situation so it's important that we have that technical knowledge, but at the same time, it's important that we look at the situation for what it is and not always trying to fit it into something we already saw in the past. Maybe they see something new is also changing, right? So it's important to to look at the situation and really see what can I apply from my toolbox here or is this so new that I don't have any tool to really apply a situation that I think exemplifies this very well, is with the beginning of COVID. We knew all about remote work. We were at Dashlane for example already experimenting with it. We had some folks already remote, some folks doing it at a certain frequency, but we didn't know how to move a whole organization into remote mode from one day to the other and how to navigate different layers of legislation happening in different countries at the same time and how do we consolidate all of this at such a fast pace, maintaining the business running smoothly, but at the same time, having human concern for the well being of each and every employee we have. So this is one of those moments where you look at your toolkit. You have some tools in there that might be helpful, but none of them is going to fully respond to to the crisis in hand. So it's important to assume I have no idea exactly what it's going to work here we will need to test and we will likely fail in some aspects of this. But we need to continue to push we need to learn from those failures and we need to feel better the next time. 

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, for sure. And do you think there are any specific experiences perhaps drawing on your own illustrious career that can contribute to building that HR toolbox in a robust and? And I'd say knowledgeable way. Is there any specific areas of HR for example, you think is absolutely critical to gain whilst one is building up their experience with a few years you know, working within HR broadly or recruiting? 

Mafalda Garcês

Yes, definitely. So, on one hand, I would put everything there is related with human behavior. So it's important to have insights about human behavior and know how, what is the science around it what is already studied, read and learn more about it. So that would be one angle that I think it's important to explore. And the second one I would say it's related with data. And it's important in the HR function that we are comfortable with, with numbers that we are comfortable with analytics and that we can see patterns that are arising so we understand again, thinking about those four pillars that I was mentioning before, is this an organizational wide intervention that needs to be done? Is this something that it's happening only on this team, so it needs to be an ad hoc approach. And if we don't have both the analytical knowledge and the people knowledge, it's going to be extremely difficult to gain this type of knowledge. We need to study for sure. And I don't think there is one single line of studies that can get you there i think you can benefit from different backgrounds and it will put you up to speed at different levels. Psychology being one of them, but I know people who studied management and are great HR people, people who studied mathematics and they're great hrs it really depends. What I think it's really important is that you always work on yourself and always think about what am I lacking? What are the parts of my job that I'm not so comfortable with? And don't be afraid of look into that and learn more and ask for exposure to that part of the job. Even if it means that potentially you won't get the promotion next year but you are learning a lot then the other advice is try to diversify the type of companies you work for the type of industries but also the size of companies usually bigger companies that are they have a long lifing in the market. They have a very strong base and that that is I think something really good to experience at least once in your in your career. Because you will learn about the structure you will learn about processes you will learn about how to make something big work but I think it's also really interesting to jump into a new business that has absolutely nothing and you need to create everything from scratch. So I would suggest to folks listening that they diversify their career portfolio. 

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah. And I think what you just mentioned is quite timely as this can be the new segment. Speaking of building things from scratch, I'd love to learn a little bit more about Dashlane and its mission and vision. And then you know a little bit more about what you're doing there. 

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, absolutely Dashlane mission is quite straightforward. We make life online simple and secure for thousands of businesses and millions of people. In a way we want everyone to claim back the ownership of their data. We want to empower businesses and their people to ensure they are able to protect themselves online while making the internet easy to use. And if you think the internet has been around for quite a long time, but we don't see a lot of innovation to create a seamless online experience. However, we do see an increase in terms of online risks especially related with data breaches that affect businesses of every size and individuals the like. So I believe that Dashlane’s mission is more relevant than ever, in making life simple and secure is such a great thing to work for every single day.

Nasser Oudjidane  

witnessed some phenomenal growth there and building a variety of functions from scratch. I'd love to start with the practice of coaching at Dashlane there's there seems to be an have instilled a strong practice Could you speak a little bit more about that?

Mafalda Garcês

Absolutely. So we have a team of people partners who meet very frequently and the frequency obviously will depend on the relationship that the coachee wants to build. But every single manager at Dashlane has a dedicated person that that is going to to coach them and our coaching culture is it's all about reflection and making sure we are asking the most relevant questions to help the manager to help the individual understand more about themselves and more about their teams gaining sight and become a coach themselves. Right so it's like a train-the-trainer. We want the manager to become a coach to their team members and to help their team members reach the next level. So we meet with them frequently. We ask them lots of questions. We hear we hear them we try to refocus them on what is essential. But it's basically a one-on-one relationship that we build with every single manager and in my view this is worth more than any MBA or any type of management training that you can that you can take. It's like having your own personal coat at the distance of a message and able to meet with you weekly feel if you wish to do so to brainstorm them to ask questions to help you evolve. I see this as really such an amazing thing that we do for for managers at Dashlane. And also something that is quite value. 

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah,I love it Train the Trainer is is there a an agenda that is created by the trainee in terms of the things that they want to speak about, or is it a combination of two parties? discussing what, what the subject of the discussion will be. 

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, so it's a combination there are some topics that we always cover. Like for example, how is the team performing this is something that we frequently discuss, even to make sure that the manager is paying attention to how things are running. And that's that's something that we that we cover on our end then of course, we cover other aspects like engagement have they run engagement checks with their with their team? What are the concerns that they are having, but on the other hand, we also want to leave space for their own personal growth right? And what are the challenges that they are facing? First of managers that I work with it's communication, and how can I help them have a more impactful communication style for some others is the first time that they are managing a team. So it's all about learning the basics and making sure that they feel confident enough when they when they are meeting with our team members when they are caught off guard because it's going to happen and for senior leadership, it's sometimes about asking questions to prompt more strategic thinking and to have them consider the wider impact a certain decision might have. Usually taking the people angle but not necessarily only taking the people angle. 

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah.I'm reflecting on the journey that you've had so far with Dashlane what has been some of the challenges and perhaps even surprises going through hypergrowth? 

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, so that's a very interesting one. And I will start locally so locally, when I joined the there was a total of zero employees. And and then other two people join more or less at the same time that I that I did too. It was the three of us for a while and we were building from scratch locally, but of course with the help from the two offices that already existed in the in the United States and in France, and with the added responsibility of creating a culture that it's not totally misaligned from what we have in in the other offices, but at the same time that feels natural and feels relevant for us locally. So that was the first challenge. Nowadays. We are over 80 people hear in Portugal, and I've it was my fourth anniversary this week. So for years and 80 people I think it's quite an achievement locally. And then on the other hats I use as the leader for our talent acquisition team. So we started 2021 with 204 roles to close more than half of them being in engineering and product and you know, from everyone, you speak with how difficult it is to, to have access to great talent in those areas. So I am very proud to say that my team closed 97% of the roles we started in 2021. And this was such a great achievement. For us as a team. It was a team of four recruiters and then we added three RPOs to help us different moments. We went through a lot together as you can imagine, but I believe the key aspect was are we working as a team are we helping each other do we have clear, SLA s and commitment towards our candidates and our internal customers and those have been critical for the success and to make sure that we are growing in in the in the right direction. The other challenge of hyper growth that I think it's important to highlight is that hyper growth doesn't necessarily mean adding immediately more value or adding immediately more speed to the business it's sometimes mean exactly the opposite. If it can be disruptive to have someone joining your team you need to take time to onboard them to build them to bring them up to speed. And we have a very complex product, definitely technically. So it's it's quite important to have sustainability in our growth. So we are not experiencing the same hyperr growth as I experienced in other companies that potentially have a simpler product to work with. But our growth we always think about sustainability we think about the impact adding more people to a team is going to have and we do the math we think about is this actually going to accelerate. Is this going to take us a little bit more time. Is it worth taking more time or not? And I believe those challenges are great ones and I would say we have been successful in doing them. 

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, that's great to hear and congrats on the four year anniversary.

Mafalda Garcês

Thank you.

Nasser Oudjidane  

And with regards to the roles that were filled, were most of them directly sourced by your team. 

Mafalda Garcês

No, not mostly. We have around 20% of candidates coming through sourcing and we did a very, very high effort two words, our employer branding so we have I don't want to say an existent because it's never in existence, but we didn't invest much in our employer branding before. And recently we decided to make a very constant effort towards our employee branding have a clear statement to what we are adding to our candidates lives. And I believe it also made a great difference. The numbers show that the largest percentage of people we hired was through direct application. So we have even in the in difficult roles like we closed a VP of engineer that applied that that's something that I don't see a lot of colleagues being able to say. And I think that that's also due to the huge investment in terms of time that we that we made in our employer branding. Of course sourcing remains a priority for my team. And this is an area where I think we can and should improve because we have this talent war I don't particularly like the term but I do agree that we are trying to engage with the best talent in the market. and we need to make sure we have this network and that people know us that people engage with our with our recruiters and that needs to be a continuous effort for me sourcing is not just about sending that message when you have a role open. It's about building the relationship even before you need that person to be hired. 

Nasser Oudjidane  

Right. And i your team structured for specific roles and functions so engineering recruiters and product sales etc. 

Mafalda Garcês

Yes and no. So we do have recruiters that are more experienced Anthony, but I have decided, to have resilience and to have resilience, we need to know how to work in different roles. We need to how to assess different people. And we need how to learn how different candidates in different roles will, will engage with us. So I've, I've been paying attention to that aspect. And I would say that we have some specialists, but our specialists are totally able to work outside of their comfort zone whenever necessary.

Nasser Oudjidane  

I find that fascinating. how you've described it as building resilience. So I'm assuming that infers lack of flexibility to scale up and scale down is when the business needs. Are there any specialists with regards to those that are responsible for perhaps speaking to the candidates, and perhaps discovering if they're a fit and persuading them about the benefits of Dashlane versus the other options? And those that are perhaps more responsible for top of funnel sourcing? Are there any distinction or specializations there?

Mafalda Garcês

No, not so much. I would say the type of specialization is more, for example, people who are more used to work in engineering and they are more fluent in terms of the types of technology and can actually talk to a candidate in their own language. So that would be more the type of specialization I am referring to. Of course, naturally, we have people who are great closers great negotiating with candidates, we have folks who are amazing, creating strong and impactful messages. We have other folks who have an eye for people, right, who can do incredible interviews and gain insight. So I would say we naturally have that. But something that we do very constantly is how do we spread that knowledge? How do we teach each other? What we are doing that it's actually different? So everyone can can raise to that level? So I would say that's something that as a team, we do quite frequently we do sourcing parties we do we meet at least twice per week, all together, and we share what we are doing, what is working, what is not working, what is the challenges that we are having, if there is any manager that we are having a little bit more difficulty influencing, and how we can test a different approach. We we help each other whenever we need to close a candidate I can remember even this week, we had a US based recruiter working with a Portuguese based recruiter in order to close a candidate because they had different parts of knowledge that would actually lead to a more successful result. So we do have a very strong collaboration and team spirit.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, it's awesome to hear this collaboration and this multidisciplinary approach. And I also would love to hear about the initiative. You mentioned about building Employer Branding, it seems to be something that, you know, is there's been a tremendous success, having VPs of engineering apply for jobs. It's it's not it's certainly not frequent, as you said, Are there any other initiatives that you're proud of? Or, you know, have like really moved the needle?

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, so not related with talent, but for example, related with engagement. I worked on a initiative that we called engagement check. And basically what it is a very simple methodology and framework to help managers take the pulse of their team members individually and making sure that we Score engagement and we act based on that.

Nasser Oudjidane  

I thought of the NPS score. So this is like an employee net promoter score to discover and perhaps do a pulse check on how satisfied they are. How engaged they are?

Mafalda Garcês

II? I think it goes a little bit beyond that. But it could be a good analogy to say yes, it's close to that it goes slightly beyond. But he added that the idea is that is the same how closely is this person to actually leave? And then of course, what is the impact it will have in  our business? So we can define what is the best course of action on again, on a case by case scenario.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Okay, got it. And this is the last one, before we move into the closing questions. How do you think about tech implementation to achieve? You know, the company goals? And are there any that you're willing to shout out that is delivering value to you?

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah, so I think that implementation and technology's really critical and such a helpful way of making our life easier and quicker. By started working in a world where we use Excel files for everything. And sometimes we even do things by hand, and to see how much we grew from from that reality not that long ago. To to nowadays, it's, it's incredible. Something that I would say, makes a huge difference, especially because I didn't have in any of my pasexperiences is an onboarding tool, we work within border. And I think it's, it's such a, such a simple but effective tool to have a process that works when you are onboarding people, but also when you are offering people, and it still enables it to to have a close relationship with the employee, but also give guidance to the manager and to anyone else who needs to be involved in parts of of that process. So that would be one that I think makes two critical touch points in the employee lifecycle easier. And, of course, I work with greenhouses as an ATS and I am happy with, with how it works. Sometimes I wish we could do a little bit more in terms of reporting, but I but I work closely with them. And I know that it's something that they are always working on. So I would also shout out to them. And last but not least, least, LinkedIn. It's an amazing tool that we all work with. And it's not the only base for sourcing. And I think it's important to continue to remind people that sourcing does not equal sending a message on on LinkedIn, but it's often also part of the sourcing process. So the talent Insights tool, for example that LinkedIn offers is something that I find really useful specially to have a more strategic approach to recruitment and to come prepared when you are meeting hiring manager. And they want that very unique unicorn, and you can present them with an insight and be very realistic about how probable it is that we actually find someone with all of those characteristics. And if it has a very positive impact in terms of really going back to what it's truly necessary.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, love the way that you're leading with data, to manage expectations and to perhaps guide the discussion to its conclusion, For the final set of questions. What's one piece of advice Do you wish you had when you started your career?

Mafalda Garcês

I, I think something that I would say to my former self is, you are not always right. And you are not always wrong. You are not always right. Because I think that when we, when we finish our studies, and we are so driven so full of energy, we think we know better than everyone else. And sometimes, I wish I would have slowed down a little bit and actually have the patience to hear more with people who had back in the day, like 35 years of experience have to say, even if it was to do different, but but I think it is important to hear what folks who are here for longer have to teach us. And the second part of you are not always wrong, because I as many people out there also suffer from impostor syndrome. And it's quite easy for me to go into a zone where I think I'm not good enough where I think I'm not an expert. I think I'm not. how did they actually promoted me to this role? It's a thought that comes often to my to my head. So I think it's important to think that sometimes you know, more than what you then what you think. And it's important to also trust your instinct, and that links with what we spoke before, about how it's important to learn how to fail better, because we will fail. So just fail better.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, with continuous learning, as you're saying. I love how you, you can actually, as you've just demonstrated, you can have two opposing thoughts in your head, and they can still be true.

Mafalda Garcês

Yeah.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Is there anything that you listen to read or watch for inspiration

Mafalda Garcês

I am an avid reader. And I spent quite an important chunk of my free time. Browsing through Linkous, for example. It's a great resource that I use very often, where you can have snapshots of What's New, and have lots of technical books for, for example, that's something that I would recommend for folks who don't have the time to sometimes read the full book immediately or just want to, to have an idea of what is happening out there. They also have very interesting podcasts about lots of different topics. I also follow lots of people who work in HR in our people who I respect and I see what they are writing about. I pay a lot of attention to my peer group, because usually a problem that I am facing, I'm not the only one facing it. So I think it's important to exchange ideas and hear to what others have to have to say. But I would say the most important resource for me is the time I spent speaking with people, we the employees of Dashlane no matter who they are, where they work, what they are doing. Hearing them, it's where I learned more about how to be better at my job and how to really have helped have an impact on Dashlane.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah well, I think that's just so central to the overarching theme of our discussion about HR helping solve the businesses problem. I I recall what you said earlier, where you mentioned, when you're doing one on ones you described internal clients. And there's, there's almost like a symmetry here with how, you know, in startups, we approach our customers, and try to listen and speak to them as much as possible when that can help us guide the direction because we're always learning. And it seems that you're you're taking a very similar approach with speaking to internal clients, which are Dashlane coworkers to be better.

Mafalda Garcês

100% I really think that in a way, we are all leaving our own startup, that is our career and we should continuously listen to our stakeholders and learn from them.

Nasser Oudjidane  

What is one thought value or phrase that you live by?

Mafalda Garcês

It's a difficult one. For me, I don't recall just one thing that I that I live by. But if there is something that I think it's important is to not take yourself too seriously. And that was a mistake I made a lot in in my personal and professional life and something that I've been moving away from. So I really think that it's important that we don't take ourselves too seriously and that we have fun in what we are doing. Don't be afraid of, of laughing with your co workers of having fun of inserting when appropriate humor to, to engage with with other people, because in the end of the day, this is about our human experience. And I think having fun and being true to yourself is the most important advice.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. What are some of your goals for the future?

Mafalda Garcês

Well, my goals, they are related with learning, specifically, so I want to learn more about my job. And I am very excited with all the changes that we are seeing in the world. I know it can be daunting at times, and I am also sometimes nervous and anxious with everything that is happening and all the changes that are so fast and sometimes when we think we Okay, so did now it's going to be better. Something happens. But at the same time I find this fascinating how we can learn so much about how to lead remote teams more efficiently, how to reengage people who are silently leaving or not as engaged as they were, how do we rekindle relationships when we don't have the office to go to and in face to face relationships I think the HR function is going to change so much and we are going to focus on so many different things in in the future. So I one on one hand, I cannot wait on the other hand, I want to learn more and then add more to my toolbox do to be ready for the challenge.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Okay, great. Well, Mafalda  this has been awesome. Thank you for your time.

Mafalda Garcês

Thank you so much for having me. And have a great day everyone that’s listening.